ernment identified a sub-cate-
gory of seventy-five Primitive
Tribal Groups, including the
Shompen, requiring special
attention.^4 The Nehruvian
Panchasheel— Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru”s “five
virtues” or guiding principles
of tribal policy— announced in
1952 that “Tribals should be
allowed to develop according
to their own genius”
and that development
“should be undertaken
without disturbing tribal social and
cultural institutions.”Such progressive statements, how-
ever, sit uncomfortably next to the
rhetoric—and the actual practice—of
Indian development. Observers both
within and outside India have
attacked the various Planning
Commissions, the (supposedly) over
powerful and politically insulated
bureaucracy and other elite agencies
of social planning. Indeed, some
have thrown into question the very
notions of national development and
modernity that expressed the ethos
of the Nehruvian state.^5 Nehru him-
self pronounced hydroelectric dams
the “temples of modern India”, and
many development objectives from
the 1950s were pursued without
proper consideration for environ-
mental impact, while some conser-
vation measures, such as the
famous Project Tiger, were under-
taken with little regard for social
impacts. In contrast, some policy-makers
today have accepted the idea that “natural”
environments are indeed cultural land-
scapes. Indian officials and politicians have
been moved to this realisation by political
realities; there are political prices to be paid
for barring local human communities from
designated protected areas. Conservationauthorities have also learned that ecological
stability of protected areas depends in
some cases on anthropogenic activities. For
instance, the experience of the Bharatpur
Bird Sanctuary, a flagship conservation
experiment of the 1960s, revealed that the
(artificial) wetlands that attracted dozens of
species of birds became choked with
weeds, leading to significant loss of ecologi-
cal functions, when the grazing of cattle
was prohibited in the sanctuary.^6There has been little serious challenge to
the idea that indigenous (“tribal”) people
have a strong ethical claim to remain in or
near the landscapes they have inhabited for
generations, and apart from which they
would lose their livelihoods and their cultur-
al distinctiveness. At the same time, theHistory, cculture aand cconservation
Kuhou and Katpui were a Shompen couple that I had a
chance to interact with closely while I was involved in the
ecological surveys of the GNBR on the West Coast. Kuhou
used to work on the coconut plantations in the Nicobarese vil-
lage of Kopenheat for a man called Chintaan, and he also
worked occasionally at Pulokunji for Chintaan”s brother.
Kuhou still hunted in traditional Shompen fashion. On several
occasions he had eaten with us in our temporary camps. I
remember the toddy that he offered us the evening before
we left for Campbell Bay. I visited him again early in 2001 at
Pulokunji. He seemed surprised to see me there. There were
seven people in that village: Chintaan’s brother, Kuhou,
Katpui and her two children, and her sister and sister’s child.
When I visited Great Nicobar in November of that year, I
learned that all of the people of Pulokunji had died after
drinking from a bottle that had washed up on the shore. A
lot of flotsam washes up on the west coast during that sea-
son. They probably thought it was liquor. All of them soon
died, with the exception of two boys, aged eight and twelve,
who survived alone for twelve days. The nearest habitation
was Kopenheat (twenty kilometers away) and they could not
have crossed the two rivers without a hodi. A naval vessel
found the dead bodies and brought the two living children to
Campbell Bay. The boys have been resettled to a Nicobarese
village, Chingham. Pulokunji, which Boden Kloss had men-
tioned in his narrative a hundred years earlier, had been
wiped out.“Tribals sshould
be aallowed tto
develop aaccording
to ttheir oown
genius” aand
development
“should bbe uunder-
taken wwithout
disturbing ttribal
social aand ccul-
tural iinstitu-
tions.”