Tribal Education

A Chinese Buddhist monk (I-Tring) in his travels of 672 AD described Nicobarese tribals living entirely ‘naked’. At present the Nicobarese, particularly, young ones are seen wearing ultra modern fashionable dresses and driving modern vehicles, playing modern musical instruments and winning prizes in modern games and sports. Some of them have become Doctors, Engineers, Teachers, Administrators, Radio Programmers etc. How did they reach the present position of civilization from almost primitive nakedness? The author has found its answer in the impact of modern education on the life-ways and thought-ways of the tribals. He holds that modern formal education is a forceful instrument which has changed the values and attitudes of the tribal people and created in them the urge of necessary motivation to achieve social class ascendancy and social mobility. It is responsible for cutting down the deep and thick roots of traditions, superstitions, ignorance backwardness, parochialism etc. of the Nicobarese tribals.
Before establishment of Penal Settlement in 1858 at Port Blair by the British India Government, not much was known about Andaman and Nicobar Islands due to their remote situation in the Bay of Bengal. The Islands are rapidly shedding their sinister reputation of “Kalapani” and are heading towards the path of development and modernity. Only scanty literature is available about them and their aborigines (some among them are probably world’s only ploaeolithic (old stone age) people) as the island remained in the shroud of dread and darkness for a pretty long time.