Nicobarese people

Last updated
Nicobarese
Total population
29,099 [1]
Regions with significant populations
Nicobar Islands, Flag of India.svg  India
Languages
Nicobarese languages
Religion
predominantly Christianity, others inc. animism
Related ethnic groups
Shompen people
Austroasiatic people

The Nicobarese people are an Austroasiatic-speaking people of the Nicobar Islands, a chain of islands in the Bay of Bengal north of Sumatra, forming part of the union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. The Nicobar Archipelago consists of 19 islands, and only 12 of them are inhabited. These inhabited islands are Car Nicobar, Chowra, Bompoka, Teressa, Nancowry, Pullomillow, Great Nicobar, Camorta, Katchal, Trinket, Kondul, and Little Nicobar . The largest and main island is Great Nicobar. The term "Nicobarese" refers to the dominant tribes of the Nicobar Islands and are most significant tribal population in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands due to their large numbers and the very wide area they occupy as compared to all the Andaman tribes put together. [2] Each island's inhabitants have specific names, but collectively they are known as the Nicobarese. They call themselves "Holchu," which means "friend." The life of the Nicobarese revolves around nature. The socio-economic conditions of the people of Nancowry islands play an important role in the religious practices and social life of the Nicobarese community. [3]

Contents

The Nicobarese are a designated Scheduled Tribe in India. [4]

A group of Nicobarese dancers Nicobarese People.jpg
A group of Nicobarese dancers

History

The Nicobarese may not have been the last people to live on the islands; they appear to have shared the islands with Shompen who came to the islands earlier. The islands have been under the power of various Asian empires in the 16th century, Denmark from 1754–1869, United Kingdom from 1869–1947, and India from 1947. Today they are administered by India as part of the Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Language

The Nicobarese language is part of the Austroasiatic language family. All of the different islands speak different dialects of the Nicobarese language. The separate islands are categorized into four groups, although most of the people understand the Car Nicobar dialect.

Religion

Most of the people of the islands are of the Christian religion, which was taught to them by a man named John Richardson who translated the New Testament into Nicobarese. Besides Christianity, other Nicobarese follow the traditional religion of the islands, which is animistic in nature. They believe in spirits, ghosts, and the existence of the soul. A person becomes a ghost after their death when their soul leaves their body and the ghosts of all the Nicobarese are all around the islands. They believe that the spirits are responsible for all of the unfortunate occurrences on the islands, in the event of which shamans are called upon to handle the bad spirits.

Art

Their painted sculptures are related to the oral tradition and the myth of Nicobarese origins. In their conception of the world, they inhabit the kingdoms of the sea, the earth and the sky, which they cross through the magic-religious sphere. These anthropomorphic creations are the spirits of living beings, natural elements, even everyday objects. They live with human beings or visit them from another world. In the houses, the spirits of the ancestors of the family inhabit the sculptures and are thus an integral part of the domestic environment: the inhabitants of today live in harmony with those of the other worlds, represented by the images.

Society

A traditional Nicobar hut Crafts Museum New Delhi 3 Sep 2010-11.JPG
A traditional Nicobar hut

The Nicobarese are headed by a matriarchal chief. The first matriarchal chief of the Nicobarese was Islon who married Mewalal, tahsildar of Nancowry in 194142, and became the most influential person in the Nicobar Islands.

On the Nicobar Islands, men and women have approximate equal status. The women can choose their husbands, and after marriage they are free to live with either of the couple's parents. The Nicobarese men value the women economically because they not only take care of household duties, but also tend to the plantations and gardens.

The villages on the islands consist of sporadically placed huts strewn about in designated areas. The huts are normally round with dome-shaped roofs. They are typically raised above the ground and have ladders that the residents pull up after they climb into the huts at night.

Economy

The Nicobarese have a traditionally horticultural economy; they base their monetary existence on the growing of coconuts, pandanus, areca nut palms, bananas, mangoes and other fruits. They also hunt, fish, raise pigs, make pottery and make canoes. Many of the older Nicobarese are illiterate, however today the younger Nicobarese receive free education through the government. Nicobarese are becoming educated over time and they are seen in multiple government jobs as doctors, teachers, policemen and clerks, among other occupations. [5] [6] The recent publication on the intensive ethnographic details of Nicobarese life highlights the different dynamics of their past and present lifestyles. [7]

Notable people

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicobar Islands</span> Island group in the Indian Ocean

The Nicobar Islands are an archipelagic island chain in the eastern Indian Ocean. They are located in Southeast Asia, 150 kilometres (93 mi) northwest of Aceh on Sumatra, and separated from Thailand to the east by the Andaman Sea. Located 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) southeast of the Indian subcontinent, across the Bay of Bengal, they are part of India, as the Nicobar district within the union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Together with the Andaman Islands to their north, the Nicobar Islands serve as a maritime boundary between the Bay of Bengal to the west and the Andaman Sea to the east.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicobarese languages</span> Subgroup of the Austroasiatic language family

The Nicobarese languages or Nicobaric languages, form an isolated group of about half a dozen closely related Austroasiatic languages, spoken by most of the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands of India. They have a total of about 30,000 speakers. Most Nicobarese speakers speak the Car language. Paul Sidwell (2015:179) considers the Nicobarese languages to subgroup with Aslian.

Nancowry is an island in the central part of the Nicobar Islands chain, located in the northeast Indian Ocean between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.

Trinket Island is one of the 24 islands that make up the Nicobar Islands chain, located in the northeast Indian Ocean between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. It is located east of Kamorta Island.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shompen people</span> Ethnic group of India

The Shompen or Shom Pen are the Indigenous people of the interior of Great Nicobar Island, part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicobar Islands rain forests</span>

The Nicobar Islands rain forests is a tropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion in the Nicobar Islands, which is part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands union territory of India. The Nicobar Islands are in the Indian Ocean, lying north of Sumatra and south of the Andaman Islands. The islands are politically part of India, although physically closer to Southeast Asia. Millions of years of isolation from the mainland has given rise to a distinct flora and fauna, including many endemic species.

Nicobar district is one of three districts in the Indian union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The district's administrative territory encompasses all of the Nicobar Islands, which are located in the Indian Ocean, between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The headquarters of the district is the village of Malacca, located on the island of Car Nicobar.

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The Nicobar bulbul is a songbird species in the bulbul family, Pycnonotidae. It is endemic to the Nicobar Islands.

Shompen, or Shom Peng is a language or group of languages spoken on Great Nicobar Island in the Indian union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, in the Indian Ocean, northwest of Sumatra, Indonesia.

Teressa, or Taih-Long is one of the Nicobarese languages spoken on the Teressa Island of Nicobar Islands in India. Bompoka dialect (Pauhut) is distinct. As of 2001, there are 2,080 speakers.

Central Nicobarese is a group of Nicobarese languages spoken by 10,000 people on the Nicobar Islands. The varieties spoken on the various islands apart from Trinket are not mutually intelligible, and are considered separate languages:

Southern Nicobarese is a Nicobarese language, spoken on the Southern Nicobar Islands of Little Nicobar (Ong), Great Nicobar (Lo'ong), and a couple small neighboring islands, Kondul (Lamongshe) and Pulo Milo. Each is said to have its own dialect.

Katchal, or Tehnu (Tēhnyu), is a Nicobarese language spoken in the central Nicobar Islands. Apart from the dialect of Trinket, it is not mutually intelligible with the other Central Nicobarese languages. The population of Trinket was evacuated to Nancowry and Camorta after the 2004 tsunami, and can be expected to disappear as speakers assimilate.

Nancowry Subdivision is one of three local administrative divisions of the Indian district of Nicobar, part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is an archipelago of 572 islands of which 37 are inhabited. It is an union territory of India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederik Adolph de Roepstorff</span>

Frederik Adolph de Roepstorff was a Danish philologist who worked in the Andaman penal colony in India, where he was shot dead by a convict. He studied the languages of Andaman and Nicobar tribes and collected numerous natural history specimens. The Andaman masked owl was named after him by Hume.

References

  1. CENSUS OF INDIA 2011. "LANGUAGE" (PDF). Government of India. p. 20.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  2. Tyagi, Renu; Dhall, Meenal; Kapoor, Anup Kumar. "Aging and Health Challenges of Tribal Population: An Empirical Study Among Car Nicobarese of Nicobar Island of India". The Oriental Anthropologist: A Bi-annual International Journal of the Science of Man. 23 (1).
  3. Kumar, Shrawan (1985). "The people of Nancowry Island: Their changing condition". Human Science. 34: 138–145.
  4. "List of notified Scheduled Tribes" (PDF). Census India. p. 27. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 November 2013. Retrieved 15 December 2013.
  5. Saini, Ajay (24 October 2015). "Post-Tsunami Humanitarian Aid: A Trojan Horse in the Southern Nicobar Islands". Economic and Political Weekly. 50 (43): 52–59.
  6. Saini, Ajay (1 August 2015). "A Decade of Disaster and Aid in Nicobar". Economic and Political Weekly. 50 (31).
  7. Sahay, Vijoy (2023). Experiencing Anthropology in the Nicobar Archipelago (1st ed.). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. p. 272. ISBN   9780367539825.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)