Tablighi Jamaat Coronavirus Spread Poses Threat To Tribes In Andaman & Nicobar Islands

Anthropologists and the entire administration of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands are extremely worried over the spread of the deadly coronavirus through Muslims who had returned to the archipelago after attending a religious programme at Nizamuddin in Delhi, organised by the Tablighi Jamaat.

Anthropologists fear that the import of this deadly and virulent virus to the archipelago will put at risk the aborigines there. Most of those who travelled to Delhi to attend the congregation at Nizamuddin, which has emerged as a coronavirus hotspot, are converts to Islam belonging to the indigenous Nicobarese tribe.

The Nicobarese have close contacts with some of the other aboriginal tribes like the Greater Andamanese, Onges, Jarawas and Shompens. Diseases like chickenpox and smallpox that followed their contacts with the outside world led to epidemics that decimated most of the population of these aboriginal tribes.

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