Madhumala Chattopadhyay Biography 
Madhumala Chattopadhyay is an Indian anthropologist who is credited to be the first person to make friendship with Sentinelese, the most isolated people of the world belonging to an island in Andaman Nicobar. The woman who made the Sentinelese put their arrows down, Madhumala shared good relationship with the tribes who are best known for harming and killing intruders to their small piece of land. She came to limelight years later in 2018 when a US missionary was killed by Sentinelese for entering their island. Sentinelese is the oldest group of people on earth with less contact with outer world, and they have their own culture and way of living.
Madhumala Chattopadhyay was in her 20s when she contacted with the Andaman people in early 1991. She was a young anthropologist then, trying to make friendship with the most isolated people of the world. Sentinelese lives in the North Sentinel Islands of the Andaman for the last estimated 60,000 years, shunning any contact with the outside world, and they are the first inhabitants of India.
Though contact expedition with the Sentinelese has been done multiple times before, it was in 1991 only when a woman became a part of the team. She was a researcher at Anthropological Survey of India then, when she landed in the isolated continent. She had 6 years of experience in this field till then. Madhumala is also the first woman to be accepted by another Andaman tribe, the Jarawas. Women folk readily accepted her.
Her efforts towards the field are long forgotten. Currently she works in the mid-level bureaucracy of a central government ministry in Delhi handling routine government files. She has also authored one book - Tribes of Car Nicobar.
Published: December 28, 2018
Updated: December 28, 2018
