Subjects

Migration and Social Change : A Study of the Bhantus of Andaman Islands

Palash Chandra Coomar, ASI, 1997, 250 p, tables, ISBN : 8185579415, $92.00 (Includes free airmail shipping)

Contents: 1. Introduction. 2. The Bhantus : habitat and distribution. 3. The livelihood pattern : activities and mutualism. 4. The gotor and other social networks : structure and function. 5. The crises of life : birth, marriage and death. 6. The social control : system and activities. 7. The world of supernaturals : beliefs and practices. 8. Inter - community linkages : symbiosis and adjustments. 9. Developmental programmes : impact and understanding. 10. The Bhantu society : continuity and change. Glossary of local terms. Bibliography.

"When a group of people migrate or are rehabilitated in a new place, quite different from their homeland, the members of the group face a number of problems. There they not only face a new physical environment but come in contact with a new ethnic and cultural environment. They have to cope with this new situation and make themselves adjusted to this environment by adopting different traits and elements for their survival. The Bhantus of South Andaman are such a group of people who were brought from erstwhile United Province during the first quarter of this century as convicts and gradually settled there. To the Bhantus the physical, ethnic and cultural environments in South Andaman were absolutely new and strange. Naturally at the initial phase of their adjustment in the Andamans they faced a number of problems which they subsequently over came by adjusting to the peculiar environment of Andamans. In the process they also established their relations with the neighbouring population, mostly the immigrants.

"The present book discusses the way the Bhantus adjusted with the new physical environment in Andamans and imbibed new cultural traits from the local immigrant population such as the Bengalee, Tamils, Mophlas, 'Ranchiwallas' and others. Their social and economic interdependence and adjustment wwith the natural environment helped them to tide over the crises they faced initially in the Bay Islands." (jacket)

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