Shompen: Existence of Nicobar’s oldest residents threatened by ‘development’

Remote community preserves traditions, knowledge, culture in tropical isolation

The Shompen of Great Nicobar embody a rare indigenous culture, sustaining themselves through hunting, gathering and horticulture, while preserving unique spiritual traditions, ecological knowledge and a lifestyle largely unchanged for centuries. But their existence now hangs in a balance with the Great Nicobar Mega Project that seeks to create a new ‘Hong Kong’ in the fragile ecosystem.

Great Nicobar Island’s ancient Shompen tribe, which has survived for millennia in the dense rainforests, faces an existential threat as the Indian government advances its ambitious Great Nicobar Mega Project. This vast INR 810 billion development plan threatens to wipe out one of the world’s most isolated and vulnerable tribes, along with irreparably damaging a delicate ecological balance.

The Shompen, with an estimated population of barely 300, are predominantly uncontacted hunter-gatherers who have lived in isolation for hundreds of generations deep in Great Nicobar’s tropical rainforest. Their nomadic lifestyle depends on hunting wild animals such as wild pigs, monkeys and lizards, gathering rainforest plants, and practicing small-scale horticulture. A carbohydrate-rich staple of their diet is the pandanus fruit, locally called larop. Their craftsmanship in bows, arrows, spears, and other traditional tools showcases their profound understanding of sustainable forest resource use.

Culturally, the Shompen remain distinct with their simple, functional clothing, clan-based rituals, and unique spiritual beliefs. They worship the moon as a divine mother figure, an animistic faith that guides their life and honours nature’s cycles. Their intimate knowledge of the forest ecosystem, encoded through generations, embodies an irreplaceable repository of biodiversity and indigenous wisdom.

Despite being recognised as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) by the Indian government and protected under the Andaman and Nicobar (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes) Regulation, 1956, along with the 1991 Wildlife Protection Act amendments, the Shompen’s existence is now imperiled and by none other than the government itself, which has come up with the massive ‘development’ project that will almost certainly wipe out vast tracts of rainforest and the life they contain.

The Great Nicobar project aims to transform the island into “the new Hong Kong” with a new mega-port, a defence base, an airport, a power plant, and a township intended for 650,000 residents, alongside plans to attract around a million tourists annually.

This development would require clearing nearly 130 sqkm of rainforest, including areas within the officially demarcated tribal reserve. Parts of these reserves have already been denotified for the project, displacing other indigenous communities like the Nicobarese whose ancestral villages remain devastated from the 2004 tsunami. Four Shompen settlements are perilously close to the project area, making their displacement almost inevitable.

The ecological impact will be severe as millions of trees will be cut, and crucial habitats for species such as the Nicobar megapode and saltwater crocodile will be lost. The project will also constrict the Galathea River’s mouth by 90 pc, disrupting upstream ecosystems and destroying the pandanus tree groves vital to Shompen sustenance. This environmental upheaval threatens to force the Shompen into unfamiliar territories, escalating the risk of conflict with neighboring tribal groups.

Human rights violations compound the environmental threat. The Shompen have neither been consulted nor given their Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) for the development, contrary to Indian and international laws, including the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act of 2006 and ILO Convention 169. The government’s continued push disregards the 2015 Shompen Policy, which mandates prioritising the tribe’s welfare amid development.

Activists warn that the population boom from the mega-project could bring diseases to which the Shompen have no immunity, just as “human safaris” and tourist intrusions might expose the tribe to trauma, alcoholism and exploitation. Similar devastating consequences were seen in other Andaman tribes like the Jarawa after exposure to outsiders.

Global indigenous rights groups like Survival International have condemned the project and published a detailed report titled Crushed: How India Plans to Sacrifice One of the World’s Most Isolated Tribes to Create ‘the New Hong Kong which has been sent to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and other UN officials.

They have urged the Indian government to immediately scrap the project, reinstate and expand tribal reserves, and respect the Shompens’ territory and cultural heritage.

In an unsettling parallel, while the Indian government strictly prohibits unauthorised contact with the equally isolated Sentinelese tribe of nearby North Sentinel Island, recently underscored by the arrest of a US national attempting contact, it is allowing development that imperils the Shompen on Great Nicobar, a community equally entitled to protection and isolation.

The Shompen, who have survived a million years through deep respect for their environment and an unyielding connection to their land, now face potential extinction that no amount of “development” can justify.