The Great Betrayal Of An Andamanese Tribe
By Gajanan Khergamker
In the sweltering haze of April 1858, under the cover of a moonless night, Convict No. 276 Dudhnath Tewari, a sepoy branded a mutineer in the fires of 1857, slipped the chains of his exile. He was not alone. Led by the wily Aga, a fellow prisoner boasting knowledge of hidden paths, Tewari joined a desperate band of ninety souls fleeing the nascent penal colony on Ross Island. Their destination? A vague promise of freedom across the treacherous Bay of Bengal, perhaps to Burma's distant shores. But the Andamans, those emerald sentinels of isolation, had other plans.
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| Image for representational purpose only |
The escapees, a ragtag alliance of rebels and deserters, included stragglers from Phoenix Bay and Chatham Island—where the rhythmic hum of the nascent sawmill echoed the grind of colonial ambition. They rafted across narrow channels, their makeshift vessels creaking under the weight of hope and hunger, landing on the mainland's unforgiving jungles.
The sojourn began as a nightmare. For eight days, they stumbled through dense thickets, thorns tearing at flesh, the air thick with the buzz of insects and the distant calls of unseen beasts. No food, save for wild fruits that twisted their guts; water gleaned from creeping vines and fleeting springs. Thirst claimed the weak first—twelve men left to wither like fallen leaves.
The group splintered, morale fracturing like dry bamboo. Tewari, a Brahmin by birth, clung to survival with the grit of a man who had already defied empires. Yet, on the fourteenth day, fate ambushed them. A party of a hundred Andamanese warriors, shadows materializing from the foliage, bows drawn taut, arrows glinting like accusations. The escapees signaled surrender, arms raised in futile plea, but the air filled with the whistle of death. Arrows rained down, felling dozens in a chaos of screams and blood. Tewari, pierced in eyebrow, elbow, and shoulder, feigned death amid the carnage, his companions Shoo Dull and a Kurmi caste convict falling beside him. The survivors? Dragged away, or so the tribes thought.
But Tewari's odyssey twisted anew. Captured and bound, he was ferried by canoe to Tarmogli Island, where the Aka-Bea-da sept of the Great Andamanese nursed his wounds with earth and herbs. Suspicion lingered like morning mist—they shaved his head, stripped him of clothes, forbade him weapons. Yet, in time, acceptance bloomed.
Pooteah, an elder, bestowed upon him Leepa, a woman of twenty, and Jigah, sixteen, daughters of the clan. Tewari immersed himself in their world: a life unbound by gods or gold, where babies nursed at any mother's breast, and the forest provided without demand.
He claimed five wives in all, ceremonies as simple as the sharing of a meal. For a year and twenty-four days, he lived as one of them—naked, nomadic, attuned to the rhythms of tide and tree. The Great Andamanese, fierce guardians of their archipelago, had woven an outsider into their tapestry. Or so it seemed.
Beneath this idyll simmered resentment. The British, those pale intruders, had encroached since 1857, carving settlements from sacred lands, felling forests for their penal dreams. The tribes, numbering 5,000 to 8,000 across ten clans, had resisted for decades, killing shipwrecked sailors, repelling explorers with arrows that whispered of ancient sovereignty.
Now, with Port Blair's foothold firming, the Andamanese plotted retribution. Whispers of a mass assault on Aberdeen and Atlanta Point rippled through the camps. Tewari, privy to these murmurs, faced a crossroads. Loyalty to his adoptive kin, or the pull of pardon from his captors? On May 17, 1859, he chose the latter.
Slipping away from his wives—one pregnant, the other a symbol of forsaken trust—he surrendered at Ross Island, spilling secrets to Superintendent J.P. Walker. The impending attack, he warned, would be a storm of 400-600 warriors, bows against bayonets.
What followed was the Battle of Aberdeen, a clash that etched betrayal into the Andamans' blood-soaked soil.
Forewarned, the British fortified their positions—convicts and sepoys armed with rifles, artillery perched on vantage points. The Andamanese charged at dawn, a wave of defiance crashing against colonial steel. Bows and arrows met musket fire; the air choked with gunpowder and cries. Hundreds fell—young warriors, the tribe's future, mowed down in the melee. The British losses? Minimal, a testament to treachery's edge.
This "Aberdeen War," as history dubbed it, shattered the Great Andamanese. Organised resistance crumbled; the battle's aftermath invited disease, measles, syphilis, influenza, to ravage the survivors. By 1901, their numbers dwindled to 625; today, a mere 50 cling to existence on Strait Island, their languages fading, their customs diluted by government rations and concrete homes.
Tewari's act was no mere survival tactic; it was the great betrayal. Rewarded with freedom, he vanished to his native village, history's judgment ambivalent. a savior to the Empire, a Quisling to the tribes. Modo Lipa (perhaps Leepa), deserted and shunned, lived as a living emblem of deception, her story a silent reproach.
The Andamans, once a fortress of indigenous autonomy, became a penal outpost, then a union territory, their blue horizons now pierced by tourism's gaze and development's grasp.
Yet, in the rustle of mangroves and the crash of waves, echoes the Andamanese lament: a people undone not by conquest alone, but by the serpent in their midst.
In this archipelago of forgotten wars, the Battle of Aberdeen stands as a cautionary tide, reminding us that empires rise on the sands of trust betrayed, and the cost is paid in vanishing worlds.
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