The Jarawa Tribe of the Andaman Islands: The Road Through Their Forest

A single road cuts straight through one of the world’s last isolated hunter-gatherer homelands. This article covers the Jarawa tribe, and the decades-long fight over that road.

The Road Through Their Forest

IndSoc0043

1997

Voluntary Contact Begins

After decades of hostility, the Jarawa initiate peaceful contact

2012

“Human Safari” Exposé

A video of exploitative tourist convoys sparks global outrage

21 JAN 2013

Supreme Court Ban

Bars tourist convoys from the Andaman Trunk Road

2025

Population Recovery

Up to about 647, from 260 in 1998

The tension: a public road through a protected tribal reserve, balancing access against isolation.

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Timeline

• 1997: After decades of hostility toward outsiders, the Jarawa began initiating voluntary, peaceful contact.
• 2012: A video exposed tour operators forcing Jarawa women and children to dance for tourists, in what critics called a “human safari.”
• 21 January 2013: India’s Supreme Court barred tourist convoys from travelling the Andaman Trunk Road through the Jarawa reserve.
• 2025: The Jarawa population had grown to roughly 647, up from about 260 in 1998, reflecting improved healthcare access with limited outside interference.

Must Know

• The Jarawa are hunter-gatherers native to South and Middle Andaman. They live in nomadic bands of roughly 40-50 people, in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
• They hold Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) status. This status marks groups needing special protection due to their small population and pre-agricultural way of life.
• The Andaman Trunk Road runs directly through their roughly 1,028 sq km forest reserve. This creates a lasting conflict between public access and tribal isolation.
• Long tourist convoys once used the road for so-called “human safaris,” until the Supreme Court’s 2013 ban on tourist travel through the reserve.

Good to Know

• The Jarawa are believed to descend from some of the earliest human migrants out of Africa. They have lived in relative isolation for thousands of years since.
• A dedicated Jarawa Tribe Welfare Policy now governs contact. It includes periodic healthcare camps at the forest edge. A nodal officer also monitors vehicle movement on the road.
• Videography in Jarawa tribal areas is now legally restricted, a direct policy response to the 2012 exploitation controversy.

Test Yourself

Please wait…

1. The Jarawa tribe are hunter-gatherers native to which islands?

Andaman Islands

Lakshadweep Islands

Nicobar Islands only

Maldives

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Great to Know

• The Jarawa’s population recovery, despite ongoing road access, suggests protective policy can work even without full isolation. Regulation, not total separation, has been the operating strategy.
• The 2013 Supreme Court ban addressed exploitation directly, but the road itself was not closed or rerouted. That left the underlying access conflict only partly resolved.
• Voluntary contact starting in 1997 marked a real shift in the Jarawa’s own posture toward outsiders, after generations of active resistance to any interaction.
• PVTG status exists for a specific reason. Standard tribal-welfare approaches, focused on integration and development, can actively harm groups with populations this small and this isolated.