Much of the literature on “first encounters” is one-sided: it reveals our own preoccupations, but only rarely considers whether our questions are also theirs. In the Forest does not fall into this category. The book, authored by Vishvajit Pandya, a well-known expert on the Andaman Islands, is based on more than two decades of research and professional engagement with the different groups that inhabit them. Richly detailed yet broad in scope, the book combines an impressive array of archival and ethnographic source material, the density of which enables Pandya to productively revisit old questions and to pose important new ones regarding successive “contact events.” Particular emphasis is placed on the multiple ways in which Andaman Islanders have experienced and interpreted these events, as well as the roles both play in how they represent themselves to one another as well as strategically re-present themselves outsiders.
These concerns inform the overall structure of the book. In it, the author examines three separate yet interrelated regimes of representation through a series of paired chapters. The chapters provide intimate details concerning the visual and material worlds of the Andamanese as well as the interplay of both regimes in the form of the third: history. Because each chapter is contrastive in nature, the book's structure additionally foregrounds how different “contact events” inform the ongoing and active (re)negotiation of “Self” and “Other” involving members of some tribal groups—the Ongee, Jarawa, and Sentinelese, respectively—and their nontribal counterparts. Taken together, the author's nuanced account of these “contact events” provides fascinating insights into how those “in the forest” have imagined and consciously enacted their relationships with those of “out of the forest” over the past 150 years (p. 1).
Part I explores the visual aspects of various “contact events” and contrasts Andamanese interpretations of the colonial encounter with those of British administrators, ethnographers, and missionaries. According to the author, the former embed the “contact event” in the physical landscape and describe it, using a combination of oral testimonies, songs, and myths, as a site where iron was acquired and then integrated into the material culture of the Ongee. Because the acquisition of iron required contact with “outsiders” and such interactions could result in disease or violent death, the everyday tools made from the metal henceforth represented these outcomes, memories of which are evoked on a daily basis through the ritualized sharpening of foreign-produced iron blades upon locally available stones (p. 63). By contrast, British accounts assembled the Ongee out of photographs and textual descriptions, which were re-presented to officials as reports that informed different phases of the colonial project in the Andaman Islands (p. 20).
The chapters in part II shift attention to the rhetorical effects of material artifacts. Some of these were exchanged as part of “contact events,” while others were collected from the detritus of everyday life. For the Ongee and the Jarawa, foreign items believed to have “magical power” were incorporated into their body painting and related forms of ornamentation that, in the author's view, illustrate how history, represented in material form, is made manifest in the aesthetic realm. By contrast, items that the British gathered were typically placed in museums rather than worn on their bodies. But in both cases, the strategic re-presentation of these items in new contexts offers insights into how cultural taxonomies structure what is differently perceived to be meaningful and/or valuable as well as the complex ways elements appropriated from the “Other” also help constitute the “Self” (pp. 317–18).
Part III revisits these themes, but with a focus on “contact events” following independence, when the Andaman Islands were incorporated into the union territory of the Indian nation-state. In this instance, the focus is on the Jarawa, the only tribal group to be confined to a small forest reserve, which forms only a fraction of their former territory. This not only disrupted traditional patterns of movement, but also enabled Indian government officials to establish new forms of regulatory authority that drew liberally from old ones as a way to “protect” the Jarawa from outside influences and thus “preserve” them. Ironically, the physical boundaries put in place to maintain their public health and cultural purity within the reserve, the author points out, later served to undermine both. The Andaman Trunk Road, originally built to promote agricultural development, later became a key component of the islands' growing service sector, which now includes package tours to visit “primitive tribal groups.” The roadside “encounters,” where trinkets are exchanged and photographs taken, has unexpectedly transformed the Jarawa—from a group previously defined by their historic acts of “violence” against outsiders into a group in need of “compassion” from them (p. 271).
But only to a point, as part IV makes clear. This brief section touches on the Sentinelese who live in remote areas on the northernmost island. Unlike the Ongee and Jarawa, the Sentinelese are still represented in ways that evoke colonial-era accounts of “hostile encounters” and “cannibalism.” The examples, although quite brief and much less developed than those in the first three parts, nonetheless reinforce the author's main point, which is that members of the Ongee and the Jarawa have found ways to craft their own forms of self-representation out of the ongoing “contact events” with their “Others,” though in ways that often go unrecognized (p. 318). However, both chapters would likely have been more effective if integrated into prior ones. This is especially the case for chapter 8, “Towards a Political Economy of Visualized Material,” which not only summarizes many of the book's central arguments, but also situates them in relation the literature on encounters. That said, more explicit details on these debates at the outset would further broaden the book's audience and invite comparative questions regarding “contact events” elsewhere, especially if relevant studies from outside the Asia-Pacific region were included.
These minor shortcomings aside, the book represents a significant contribution to the scholarship on the Andaman Islands, yet remains accessible to the serious reader interested in indigenous interpretations of “contact events.” The author's approach should also be of considerable interest to scholars who seek innovative ways to integrate the archive with the field.
