1. Process of Cultural Creolisation among the Local Born of Port Blair, Andaman Islands.
- Author
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GHOSAL, SAMIT
- Subjects
- *
ETHNIC identity of Creoles , *MULTIRACIAL people , *ANTHROPOLOGICAL research , *PIDGIN languages , *CREOLE dialects - Abstract
In an island situation when a group of individuals belonging to different cultural, linguistic and religious backgrounds come in close contact as a result of their forced confinement their survival instinct and their biological, social and economic needs hold them together. The paper attempts to understand the historical process of societal and cultural transformation through which the people born in Port Blair, Andaman Islands, emerged as a vibrant community. The process is best explained in terms of 'cultural creolisation' drawing analogy from Dell Hymes' (1971) notion of the 'creolisation of language'. A 'pidgin' is formed in a contact situation, which in the course of time becomes a 'creole'. This paper deals with the descendents of ex-convicts, who were released from the confinement of their walled cells once they served the term but were never permitted to leave the island. So they married with whomeveravailable resulting in mixed families of Malayalam speaking Muslim husband from Kerala, a Hindu Bengali-speaking wife from erstwhile East Bengal, and a Punjabi Sikh daughter-in-law. The sheer necessity of day to day living forced them to evolve a pidgin which over years became their common language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2014