A novel that examines ideas of nationhood and citizenship, of modernity and development, the plight of those living on the margins, and how these minorities are manipulated and controlled by the developed world
Award-winning novelist Sujit Saraf’s newest book, Island, is a winner in every way. Its lyrical prose, thriller pace, and intelligence in examining the development debate make it a winner.
Satellite image of North Sentinel Island, one of the Andaman Islands. A protected area, it is home to the Sentinelese, an indigenous tribe in voluntary isolation. (DigitalGlobe/Getty Images)
At the heart of the story are Nirmal Chandra Mattoo, an expert on the tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, who lives in Port Blair, and Steven Li, a Chinese-looking American missionary who wants to take Christianity to North Sentinel Island, home to the last uncontacted people on the planet. Saraf’s Li is roughly modelled on John Chau, the American missionary who was killed on the island in the Andamans in 2018.
Mattoo’s warnings that any contact with the North Sentinelese is illegal and that two fishermen who had accidentally drifted towards their island some years ago were chopped with axes and their bodies hung doesn’t dissuade Li. The Americans has also chosen the wrong time – the Prime Minister’s visit to rename the island is due in less than two weeks.
Mattoo has spent a significant part of his nearly 50-year life studying the Jarawas, the Onge and the Sentinelese tribes in an official and unofficial capacity. In Port Blair, he runs a souvenir shop – Mattoo Tribal Arts – which stocks mostly fake made-in-Midnapore bows, arrowheads, and some photos. On a good day, he hopes to make a pitch to a rich American, praying that the stingy “LTC types” give his shop a miss. The LTC types have availed the Leave Travel Concession given by their government-owned firms to promote tourism in less desirable locations. In this case to see the “junglees.”.
Secretly, he hopes to finish writing A Complete Grammar of the Jarawa Language in the Andaman Islands – which has been “a constant reminder of the disappointments of his life”.
Like the charcoal-black tribes of the Andamans, Mattoo is an endangered species on the island. No one can match the fair-skinned Kashmiri’s empathy towards the tribals, his soft corner for the North Sentinelese and their cause, or his knowledge of tribal history and culture, which he now sees as a “burden and a hindrance”.
When twenty-something Li stops at his shop, Mattoo makes a sales pitch to him, mistaking him for a regular tourist. But Li plans to take Jesus’ message to the “RPGs” (Unreached People Groups), and he has prepared for this journey all his life. He went to a Christian college so that he does not stray from the path, majored in health and exercise science, and trained as an emergency medical technician. Besides, he has taken his tetanus, hepatitis A and B, malaria and typhoid shots, and has had “wilderness training” in challenging stations to keep his stamina up. Li has also researched well and knows Mattoo is his best bet.
Mattoo’s life changed when he first visited the island as part of an Archaeological Survey of India (AnSI) team three decades before. He was a part of the first contact mission in North Sentinel – the untouched home of the extremely hostile Sentinelese tribe who are said to have been cut off from the world 30,000 years ago. Ever since, they have lived on their 8×8 km island alone – “proud, isolated and in no need of contact”.
Mattoo became the face of this mission when they accepted a coconut from him, even though he felt a twinge of pain: “This first contact mission was no triumph—it was the beginning of the end for the Sentinelese race, and he was party to it.” The contact ended when, on one such mission, the Sentinelese squatted in a “defecation ritual” presenting their bare buttocks, “whose meaning was obvious in any civilisation, neolithic or otherwise,” writes Saraf.
But Li is confident that “God will protect” him, even though the middleman who arranged his visit and Mattoo’s presence on the trip cheekily reminds him: “But Coast Guard Hindu, not Christian… Money will protect, not God.”
Despite Mattoo’s warnings, Li lands on the hostile island and announces, “My name is Steven. I love you, and Jesus loves you.” And then he thinks, “Now he will wait as long as he needs to. He will not hurry the gospel. An hour or two will not matter to a people who have lived in sin for thirty thousand years.”
Even as Li is stranded on the island, Mattoo is beckoned to Delhi to take charge as a scientific advisor in the newly floated Andaman Development Authority. The mission is to increase the inflow of tourists to the islands and to make them a popular destination like Hawaii. Mattoo is at his wit’s end when he hears the proposed “national integration” of the tribes. He tries to reason with the authority, but his ideas are shot down, even by those whose intentions he had not doubted.
Saraf’s own research into the lives of the tribes is commendable, as is his portrayal of Mattoo’s melancholic life and his almost fatherly concern for the endangered tribes, especially the Sentinelese. The good dose of dark humour, such as when he refers to Li as “The Sentinelese Jesus,” stings, as does when Mattoo’s father dismisses his son’s research career, confusing the Andaman tribes with the better-known Gonds.
