Migration and Social Change: A Study of the Bhantus of Andaman Islands (An Old and Rare Book)

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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 with the natural environment helped them to tide over the crises they faced initially in the Bay Islands.

DR. PALASH CHANDRA COOMAR (B. 1956) got his M.Sc. (1978) and Ph. D. (1993) degrees in Anthropology from the University of Calcutta. Dr. Coomar joined Visva Bharati in 1982 as Junior Research Fellow (U.G.C). In 1984 he joined the Anthropological Survey of India. While posted in the Andaman and Nicobar Regional Centre of the Survey he undertook research work among different ethnic groups of Andaman and Nicobar Islands including the tribals and immigrant populations. Dr. Coomar also studied the Sherpas of Darjeeling district of West Bengal and Sikkim.
Presently Dr. Coomar is serving the Directorate of Census Operations, West Bengal as Assistant Director. He has co-edited three books and published twenty five articles in different reputed journals and books. He is attached to the Journal of Human and Environmental Sciences as Associate Editor. He is also member of different scientific institutions and organisations.

SOCIAL CHANGE: HISTORY AND CONCEPT
Social change is an incontestable feature of cultural reality. No society on this earth whether of the present day or of the past, whether primitive or modern, can never remained absolutely static. Change is inevitable as everything is changing at every moment. Social change is the primary social fact as motion is the primary physical fact (Dewey, 1922). Most educated Indian be the political leaders, social reformers or academic and non-academic intelligentsia showed deep interest on social change in India. After independence, and, particularly, after the drastic transformation of the Indian situation during post-independence period, social change acquired even greater importance, especially from the planners and social scientists.
India like all other developing nations of the world, is transforming from a traditional, hierarchic, poverty-stricken nation to a modern, equalitarian and affluent one. This involves not only enormous social and economic changes but also changes in the personality structure of the individual. Although some of the societies are standing in the twilight of tradition and modernity and the choice is uncertain. Nostalgia for the past pulls them powerfully towards revival and vitalization of the traditional ways of life, and, at the sametime, the economic pay-off and the material prosperity of advantages of technological modernisation tempting them to accept the changes.
Various social scientists have conceptualized social change according to their own perceptions. Moore thinks that
Social change is the significant alterations of social structure (that is, of patterns of social action and interaction), including consequences and manifestations of such structures embodied in norms (rules of conduct), values, cultural products and systems (1968: 366).