The statement of mutiny prisoner Doodnath Tewarry: an ethnographic study

Abstract

Tribe is a colonial construct. It is an outsider’s belief on the natives of a certain geographical space. This work takes the case of Doodnath Tewarry, a mutineer of 1857, who having escaped from the Andaman open penal settlement and after spending a year with the aborigines, and marrying two of their women and deserting them while one was pregnant, surrendered at Port Blair on 17 May 1859 to report that the aborigines were plotting a war against the settlers. After the Battle of Aberdeen, Dr. J.P. Walker, Superintendent of Port Blair, recorded Tewarry’s statement in great detail at Ross Island from 26 May 1859 to 4 June 1859. The primary/secondary sources of information that the court provides becomes one of the major methods by which the British could—with the statement of convicts such as Doodnath Tewarry—in detail document the customs, traditions and ways of life of the aborigines. This study analyzes and critically investigates convict Doodnath Tewarry’s statement, given at Ross Island to Dr. J.P. Walker at Port Blair on the backdrop of contemporary ethnographic studies. Such court statements have made their way in documenting knowledge pertaining to aborigines in different parts of the Empire.