Vishvajit Pandya: Talking Trees, Silent Forests. Notions of Relationality in the Forest Cosmologies of the Andaman Islands
Abstract
Based on long years’ ethnographic fieldwork among the Ongee and Jarawa tribal groups of the Andaman Islands, this article seeks to understand the responses of both communities to state-imposed regimes of horticultural or plantation work in their forest Reserves. It brings together a series of conversations with Ongee and Jarawa elders over the years to understand why any work in the forest that demands either felling of trees or the introduction of new species or planting techniques in the existing forest ecosystem is deemed by both communities to be a disruptive intervention that threatens their lives and wellbeing. The article is structured around a series of key ideas elicited from conversations with Ongee and Jarawa elders that indicate the complex ties of kinship, mutuality, and reciprocity that sustain human and plant lives in the forest. These include the notion of a human/non-human collective in the forest, the notion of a plant ancestry for both communities, the identification of a “guardian tree” and the practice of “talking” to trees, the significance of endemicity in the forest, and finally the fears of outside intervention and disruption. All these ideas cohere around a relational cosmology that continues to invest order and meaning to Ongee and Jarawa lives in the forest. The article, drawing on anthropological scholarship that has deepened our understanding of relational cosmologies that continue to animate indigenous lives in various regions of the world, ends with a critique of state projects of tribal welfare that refuse to engage in a productive dialogue with communities whose lives it seeks to protect and improve.
[Andaman Islands, forests, cosmology, relationality, disruption]
