Road to Extinction: Can Palaeolithic Africans Survive in the Andaman Islands? (Eb)

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A ROAD TO EXTINCTION is a plea for the survival of a group of palaeolithic tribespeople who, against the odds, have retained their extraordinary culture in the forests of the Andaman Islands, 400 miles off the coast of Burma in the Indian Ocean.

The Andamans were taken over by the British in the late 1850s for the establishment of a penal settlement following the Indian Mutiny, and the author's family was involved for several years in the islands' administration. They now belong to India.

For centuries, the islanders, whose origins can be traced back to Africa 100,000 years ago, have resisted all efforts to accommodate them into modern civilization. They are now at risk of extinction and there is no meaningful plan to protect their interests, other than by doing exactly what they do not want and engaging them in development programmes and giving them handouts.

Irrespective of the mistakes the British made in the past, India has had exclusive responsibility for these tribespeople for nearly 70 years and during this time its involvement has been a complete and destructive failure. India needs to recognise the urgency of the situation and intercede, at last, to give the people the security but also the privacy that they require, encouraged if necessary by other sovereign states.