A documentary crew embarks on a journey to the Amazon rainforest region in search of an elusive tribe, stuck in the ‘stone age’, that indulges in cannibalism. During their course of filming, the controversial crew rapes a tribal woman. In the next frame, the same woman is killed and stuck on a pole wherein the crew laments about the barbarity of the tribal people. Later on, the crew is attacked and killed by the tribals with the woman in their crew violated in the most brutal manner. Ruggero Deodato’s masterpiece Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is a divisive cinematic treat, nevertheless a social commentary on the urge to ‘civilise’ the ‘uncivilised’. A gripping story of violence created by the so-called primitive and modern man.
On November 17, there was an incident that can fit the frames of Deodato’s cinematic grammar. According to The Guardian, in his quest to declare Jesus to an isolated tribe in the remote Sentinel Island, John Allen Chau was killed. During an earlier attempt, an arrow stuck on his Bible and saved his life, still he persisted to make contact. Should we condemn the ‘murder’ or the ‘intrusion’?
Anthropologists in the quest for knowing the unknown, missionaries in the quest of mainstreaming the deviants and capitalists in the quest for new resources and markets are continuing their journeys to the most remote and isolated parts of our world. In this context, the question that we should ask is what purpose these pockets of isolated tribals serve in our world. Are they reminders of who we should not be? Or are they reminders of who we could be? Obviously, one is not endorsing practices like cannibalism and headhunting.
In my own forays into the tribal regions in Central India, I have seen the uneasy co-existence of the modern and tribal world. With varying degrees of modernity, the tribal landscape is under transition. A movement from the past to the so-called future. It is the material conditions and capabilities or the empowerment of the individual and community that determines where we are located in the scale of modernity. Interestingly, the tribal landscape is a self-sustaining universe without the moral panics and worries of the modern world. The absence of competition for resources prevents them from worrying about tomorrow, the future.
The forest provides them with whatever they need and since their needs are met by the forest and nature, they are not worried about what is next in their life. They seem to be happy or satisfied in their own world. During the weekly market, even today, most of them sell their forest products only to buy the provisions they need and do not carry back any surplus cash. However, this seemingly happy world where they enjoy their traditional ways of life do not ensure that they can enjoy or have a material life equivalent to their capabilities and resources available to them as members of the larger society. So, should we empower them to enjoy and access the resources and services that we all have?
The flip side of this empowerment or mainstreaming process is the transportation of the worries of the ‘mainstream’ into their world. Today there is anxiety and worries infused by the aspirations that are embedded in the ‘mainstream world’—worries about the type of education, employment, acceptance by the non-tribals, matching the standards of living expected by the ‘society’, feelings of inferiority with respect to the traditional mode of living. In their desire to be accepted, they no longer take resort to traditional modes of health, healing, cultivation and life. This predicament is a price of the transition from the happy traditional and self-sustained world to a complex, dynamic and modern world with better educational, medical and legal facilities. Is the price of transition too heavy or justified?
Tribals who have been exposed to ‘society’ and its culture have started adopting the outside culture. For instance, it is reported that the tribals who are employed in the government services have been giving dowry during marriage whereas, in the traditional arrangements there is no dowry system. Increasing alcoholism among tribal youth is attributed to two factors: primarily, the negative consequence of their interaction with the non-tribals at the local level in the attempt by the tribal youth to get acceptance among various social groups and secondly, the tribal youngsters who go out of the region for education purposes and find alcohol as the only medium to socialise with other students.
As Milton Friedman had famously said, there are no free lunches; the civilising missions either by state or non-state factors are exacting a price. By embedding the self-sustaining worlds of tribals in our economy and society, we are depriving them of their freedom and autonomy. Indigenous knowledge is also lost in this transition since it is seen as an undesirable element, objects of scorn, by the more advanced population. However, the amorality of the modern world, bereft of fraternity and solidarity, is sapping the human in them. We are all being reduced to mere statistics in the global world of commerce and trade. What we have lost is the sense of communitarian life. More significantly, Mother Nature is no longer the provider but the supplier of our market-induced needs and demands. In doing so, we have violated her in the most brutal manner and the planet is rapidly descending into an uninhabitable place.
Sentinel Islands and other similar places are stark reminders of how we can have a society without the trappings of modernity. It is a reminder that we can all still live in a community with minimum needs and still find peace. As far as the question of the killing is considered, it will be pertinent to recall George Bernard Shaw: “When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him, he calls it ferocity.”
—Rakesh M. Krishnan is a historical sociologist based in Hyderabad