About Jarawa Tribe
- Geographical Location: The Jarawas are indigenous people of the Andaman Islands in India, they live in parts of South Andaman and Middle Andaman Islands.
- Population: Present numbers are estimated at between 250–400 individuals.
- Contacts with Outsider: They largely shunned interaction with outsiders, and many particulars of their society, culture and traditions are poorly understood. Since the 1990s, contacts between Jarawa groups and outsiders grew increasingly frequent. By the 2000s, some Jarawas had become regular visitors at settlements, where they trade, interact with tourists, get medical aid, and even send their children to school.
- Jangil tribe: There is some indication that the Jarawa regarded the now-extinct Jangil tribe as a parent tribe from which they split centuries or millennia ago, even though the Jarawa outnumbered (and eventually out-survived) the Jangil. The Jangil (also called the Rutland Island Aka Bea) was presumed extinct by 1931.
- Language : The Jarawas are one of the three surviving tribes in the area, the other two being Sentinelese and Onge. This triad is connected with the Greater Andamanese language clade on a typological—rather than a cognatic—basis, suggesting a historical separation of considerable depth.
- Hunting and diet: As the Jarawas are a nomadic tribe; they hunt endemic wild pigs, monitor lizards and other quarry with bows and arrows. They have recently begun keeping dogs to help with hunting, as the Onges and Andamanese do. Since this is an island tribe, food sources in the ocean are highly important to them. Men fish with bows and arrows in shallow water. Women catch fish with baskets.
- Jarawas Constitutional status: The Jarawas are recognised as an Adivasi group in India. The Jarawa are a designated Scheduled Tribe in India.
Tribes of Andaman & Nicobar
- There are 6 aboriginal tribes in Andaman & Nicobar islands belonging to two broad groups of Negrito and Mongoloid.
- Except Nicobarese (Mongoloid), the rest 5 are recognizes as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) i.e. Sentinelese (Negrito), Great Andamanese (Negrito), Ongs (Negrito), Jarawas (Negrito) and ShopPings (Mongoloid).
- Sentinelese: They are the only remaining tribe in the Andamans to still maintain their isolation from the rest of the world and live like hunter gatherers.They are connected to the Jarawa on the basis of physical, as well as linguistic similarities.Both Sentinelese men and women do not wear clothes.
- Great Andamanese: The great Andamanese is a collective term used for 10 different tribes that lived in most of the large islands in the Andaman.They are also known for their brave History where they fought with bows and arrows with the English men who tried to occupy their land (The Battle of Aberdeen).Today most tribes are extinct and their cultural and linguistic identities have largely been lost. (e.g. their members now speak mostly Hindi).
- Jarawa: Jarawas continue to hunt and gather nomadic tribes and are often hostile to outsiders. Men fish with bows and arrows in the coastal waters while women catch fish with baskets.
- Onge: They are a hunting and gathering tribe settled at Dugong Creek and South Bay on Little Andaman Island.
- Shompen: The Shompens are primarily hunter-gatherers and also practise a little bit of horticulture and pig rearing.
Nicobarese: They are the largest of tribes and are primarily horticulturalists
Source: PIB and The Hindu
