Facts And Discovery

North Sentinel Island

           
                                   North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman island an archipelago in the Bay of bengal which also includes South sentinel island It is home to the sentinelies  a people who have rejected, often violently, any contact with the outside world. They are among the last uncontacted people to remain virtually untouched by modern civilisation. Nominally, the island belongs to the South andaman administrative district, part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar island. Indian authorities recognise the islanders' desire to be left alone and restrict their role to remote monitoring; they do not prosecute them for killing non-Sentinelese people. North Sentinel is surrounded by coral reefs, and lacks natural harbours. The entire island, other than the shore, is forested.

North Sentinel Island is part of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. It is home to the Sentinelese people, who are among the world’s last uncontacted tribes – that is, indigenous groups that maintain no contact with modern civilisation. Most past efforts to contact the Sentinelese have been met with hostility. No missionary has ever got close enough to proselytise to them. Chau took this as a challenge. He was killed shortly after arrival, his body visible from a distance on the beach. Indian police refrened from retrieving it.

On the documented occasions when onge-speaking individuals were taken to North sentinel island in order to attempt communication, they were unable to recognise any of the language spoken by the inhabitants. It has been recorded that the Jarawa and Sentinelese languages are mutually unintelligible.

John Allen Chau knew he might die. The 26-year-old US evangelical missionary was killed, in late November, on North Sentinel Island, by members of the indigenous community that he sought to convert to Christianity. He saw this as his life’s mission – and understood the risk. Most of the media coverage has focused on the fact that Chau approached the Sentinelese in violation of Indian law, which protects them from external interference. His mission was deemed at best misguided and at worst plain wrong.

                        TN Pandit was the first anthropologist to enter the isolated Andaman island of North Sentinel, back in 1967. He says he was surprised when he heard that an American evangelist, John Allen Chau, had been killed by the Sentinelese. Speaking to ET at his residence in New Delhi, 83-year-old Pandit narrated his experiences of interacting with the Sentinelese, among the few remaining isolated tribes in the world. The tribe is not hostile, nor do they raid their neighbours, Pandit says. “They only say, leave us alone,” said Pandit, also the author of the book, The Sentinelese. 

The Sentinelese survived the Indian ocean earthquake and its after-effects, including the tsunami and the uplifting of the island. Three days after the earthquake, an Indian government helicopter observed several islanders, who shot arrows and threw spears and stones at the helicopter Although the tsunami disturbed the tribal fishing grounds, the Sentinelese appear to have adapted. In January 2006, two fishermen fishing in illegal waters were killed by the Sentinelese when their boat drifted too close to the island. There were no prosecutions.