Politics of renaming: Why the Jero tribe called Port Blair Lao-Tara-Nyo – House of Evils

On 13 September, the under-secretary to the Ministry of Home Affairs of the Government of India wrote to the chief secretary of the Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Administration, conveying the approval of the competent authority to rename ‘Port Blair’ as ‘Sri Vijaya Puram’. The letter also had the Hindi version of the new name printed in Devanagari script. ‘Renaming’ of places is not new since the Modi-led BJP government came to power in the Centre in 2014. In 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi renamed three islands of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago called Rose, Havelock and Neil respectively as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep, Swaraj Dweep and Shaheed Dweep as a tribute to the revolutionary freedom fighter.

Naming and renaming is not only associated with identity but it also serves as a mark of political and ideological authoritarianism. A bridge, airport, park or road named after a distinguished personality is justifiable but renaming is a different ball game as it adds a political twist to the whole process, the way it happened in the case of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. What irks scholars and social scientists is renaming the islands of the Andaman archipelago using Hindi names when they have indigenous names for them in their languages such as Jarawa, Onge and Great Andamanese.

Members of the Jarawa tribe take part in an archery competition by making their own bows and arrows.

Andaman Islands, according to scholars, represent a rich variety of place names ranging from the indigenous native names to the names kept by the settlers. Place names give us immense information on the culture and priorities of the people residing there. “Place names like Puta-Tang, Jirka-Tang, Karma-Tang and Phul-Tang are all indigenous names. All these names end in Tang which is actually a modified version of the Great Andamanese word tong meaning ‘tree’,” said Anvita Abbi, linguist and social scientist who has been working on tribal and endangered languages since 1977. The Great Andamanese who inhabited the Great Andaman Islands once upon a time, were people who were close to nature, their life was symbiotically connected with the surrounding ecosystem. Anvita said the usual custom of naming places by these islanders primarily consisted of naming the place after the abundant natural resources of that particular area. Therefore, we came across names such as Maro Phong (literally Honey-Hole) where honey was found in abundance. Place names also indicated the unique topographical feature of the camping area of the indigenous community, according to the linguist who first visited the Andaman islands to conduct a pilot survey of the languages spoken in Great Andaman and Little Andaman in 2001. ‘Raat-Phor’ (literally big-bamboo-small bamboo), an area near today’s Mayabander, is an example. An obsolete name like Bol Phong (Bol fish-hole) was used by the Great Andamanese to indicate the region of the present Long Island.

“In EH Man’s dictionary of ‘Bea Language’ (a southern Great Andamanese language), we come across various place names across the length and breadth of the Andaman Islands. An interesting observation is that ‘Bea’ people who inhabited the southern Andaman had provided place names even for the northern regions of the Andaman Islands. The truth is that, when they accompanied the British colonisers in their Island expeditions, they were asked to tell the place names, and the clever Bea men instantly gratified them by uttering a new place name by looking at the visual and topographical landscape, which was fully descriptive of the new place,” writes Anvita in her study paper. Anvita said the native islanders usually kept themselves confined to their respective territories, but when the British colonisers coaxed them to come out of their abode and took them for various island expeditions, it also gave rise to strengthening of mythology and folktales in the communities. “For example, when ‘Bea’ people were shown the present ‘Saddle point’ the second highest hill in the Andamans, they were convinced that it was none other than ‘Puluga-Chang’ (the abode of the first man),” she added.

The Onge tribe perform their traditional games, dance and cultural programmes.

Anvita and her team also heard names like Toro-Tec (turtles-leaf) for a place near Mayabander implying that turtles were in abundance in the sea near this area. She said it is not surprising that Jero, who were extremely fond of turtle meat so much that they would risk their lives for hunting turtles, found it wittingly suitable to keep this name for the area. The tradition of place-naming by the Great Andamanese tribe ‘Jero’ is equally interesting. “The Jero were primarily seacoast dwellers and usually kept place names after the seascape. Their name for Port Blair, the administrative capital of the colonisers, ‘Lao-tara-Nyo’ (literally ‘house of evils’ or ‘house of foreigners’) sounds equally appropriate because it reminds us of the misery the Great Andamanese were brought to by their sojourn in Port Blair. It is sad that Britishers replaced these names by English names which are very opaque as they fail to relate to the ecology of the land,” said Anvita, who has documented a trilingual interactive dictionary (Dictionary of the Great Andamanese Language) and authored many books on the indigenous people and also documented the languages (includes those who are extinct today) spoken by the people in the islands.

When the A&N islands have a rich history of a vibrant indigenous culture, the Central government’s idea to rename the islands using Hindi names irks the scholars and activists alike. “Renaming a place robs the community of its identity, ancestral history and connectivity with its civilization. If the name Port Blair was to be changed why not adopt the indigenous name of the place encoded in Great Andamanese language which is our heritage language? Do people know that it was the Great Andamanese who fought the War of Independence against Britishers on the 17th of May 1859 on the soil of Andaman known as the battle of Aberdeen?", asks Anvita.

Geneticists claim that the Great Andamanese, an indigenous people of the Andaman Islands, are survivors of the first migration from Africa that took place 70,000 years ago. Considered the last representatives of those who lived during the pre-Neolithic times in Southeast Asia, scholars believe that they are possibly the first settlement of the region by modern humans.The Islands are home to four ancient tribes, the Great Andamanese, Onge, Jarawa and the Sentinelese. However, the language and people’s way of living are in significant danger today. While the languages of Onge and Jarawa are transferred intergenerationally, the language of Great Andamanese is moribund with four semi-speakers left as of 2022.

The Andaman Islands are separated from the Malay Peninsula by the Andaman Sea, an extension of the Bay of Bengal, and are part of the Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands belonging to India. The capital city of the Andaman Islands is Port Blair, situated in the south of the Islands, 1,255 km from Kolkata and 1,190 km from Chennai. There are 10 languages in the Great Andamanese family, which can be grouped into three varieties: southern, central and northern. These are: Aka-Bea, Aka-Bale, the southern variety; Aka-Pucikwar (known as Pujjukar in the currently spoken language), Aka-Kol, Aka-Kede, Aka-Jowoi, as the central variety; and Aka-Jeru, Aka-Bo, Aka-Kora (known as Khora by the present speakers) and Aka-Cari (known as Sare by the present speakers) a northern variety. Except for Jeru, all Great Andamanese languages are now extinct.

If you look at the tribal cultures, you will see that they are closely linked to the forests they live in. Nature plays a significant role in their day-to-day life. The so-called modern men destroyed these great forests in the name of development. Social scientists cite the Andaman islands as the best examples of this kind of ‘modernisation.’ By using various ulterior methods, the tribal communities have been constantly alienated from their forests and lands. “One of the subtle but classic examples is the Hinduization of the name Andaman itself and the attempt to pass it off as the only truth,” according to Pankaj Sekhsaria, author of Islands in Flux, a compilation of his writings on key issues and development in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands over the last two decades. “The standard and universal answer to the question of the origin of the name is the well-known Hindu god Hanuman. That the state too conveniently believes this is evident from the fact this is the story that goes out in the sound-and-light show that plays every evening at the Cellular Jain in Port Blair. No one is bothered that there are many other explanations as to why the Andamans are called so. Researches on Ptolemy’s Geography of Eastern Asia, a book written by Colonel G F Gerini in 1909, makes incredible reading in this context, but obviously, not many have bothered to read it. It is hardly surprising then that we care even less to know what the tribals themselves call these islands,” writes Pankaj Sekhsaria in his book titled Islands in Flux: Writings on the Environment and Indigenous People of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands published in 2017.

Being the largest archipelago system in the Bay of Bengal, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands consist of about 306 islands and 206 rocks and rocky outcrops, covering a total area of about 8200 sq km. Only 38 of these islands are inhabited, of these, eleven are in the Andaman group and 13 are in the Nicobars. This large archipelago is separated from mainland India by about 1200km. However, the nearest land mass in the north is Myanmar, roughly 280 km from Landfall Island, the northernmost island in the group. The closest landmass to Great Nicobar in the south is Sumatra, 145 km away. Union Home Minister Amit Shah in an X post on 13, September said, “Inspired by the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji, to free the nation from the colonial imprints, today we have decided to rename Port Blair as “Sri Vijaya Puram.” “While the earlier name had a colonial legacy, “Sri Vijaya Puram” symbolises the victory achieved in our freedom struggle and the A&N Islands' unique role in the same. “Andaman & Nicobar Islands have an unparalleled place in our freedom struggle and history. The island territory that once served as the naval base of the Chola Empire is today poised to be the critical base for our strategic and development aspirations,” he said.

Srivijaya is a Buddhist maritime empire based on the island of Sumatra (Indonesia) with a great presence across Southeast Asia during the 7th and 11th Century AD. “The (renaming) strategy adopted by the Modi-led BJP government sounds good. It reminds us of the Srivijaya empire of southeast Asia defeated by the Cholas and that a small part of that empire is with India today, with an Indianised name, thanks to the British. The indigenous tribal names would have no bearing in the Southeast Asian world,” said Paris-based historian JBP More. “If you look at the strategic point of view, it is better to call the island by an Indian name. Otherwise, it would not sound Indian and countries like Myanmar may stake a claim to it, as these islands are closer to the Burmese coast than India.” he added.