Press Release in behalf of Indians of North Texas

INDIA MOURNS THE LOSS OF ITS HERITAGE = DRAFT PRESS RELEASE IN BEHALF OF INDIANS OF NORTH TEXAS -

I am pleased to request India Association of North Texas and Indians in behalf of the Indian community to share the following press release and hold a candle light gathering to honor Bo, an end of an era. This is an intial draft, it will be revised with a few good comments that extoll the virtues of our great heritage.

I request India Association of North Texas and Indians in behalf of the Indian community to share the following press release and hold a candle light gathering to honor Bo, an end of an era.

This is an intial draft, it will be revised with a few good comments that extoll the virtues of our great heritage; India.

INDIANS MOURN THE LOSS OF AN ANCIENT TRIBE

Dallas, Texas, February 11, 2010.
http://mikeghouseforindia.blogspot.com/2010/02/press-release-in-behalf-of-indians-of.html

The Indians of North Texas are saddened to note the end of an era with the death of Bo, of the Bo Tribe in the Andaman Islands, a Union Territory of the Democratic Republic of India. It is a loss of our heritage.

Marking the end of a language and an entire people, the last member of the Bo, an ancient tribe that lived in the Andaman Islands, has died. When Boa Sr., as she was known, died last week, she was believed to be about 85 years old. Her husband had died years beforehand, and Boa, whose name means "land" or "earth" in the Bo language, had no children.

The Bo are believed to have first come to the Andaman Islands – located roughly 850 miles off India's east coast in the Bay of Bengal – 65,000 years ago. Bo was one of at least 10 pre-colonial languages spoken on the islands. According to Survival International, an advocacy group for native peoples throughout the world, the Bo was one of the oldest surviving human cultures on earth.

Of the thousands of Great Andamanese who once inhabited the islands, only 52 people are still alive today. But Boa Sr., who also spoke a local dialect of Hindi as well as the amalgam language called Great Andamanese, was the last of her particular tribe."

"She was the only person who spoke Bo," Anvita Abbi, a professor of linguistics at India's Jawaharlal National University, told The Times of London. "At times, she felt very isolated and lonely as she had no one to talk to in her own language."

In 1970 the Indian government began relocating the Bo to a settlement of concrete row houses on Strait Island. Boa Sr. was moved in 1978, and Abbi said she often said that she missed her old life in the jungle."What's important is that we learn from this lesson and do everything we can to protect the remaining tribes like the Jarawa and the Sentinelese, who are still there and remain threatened," Greg said.Now kept in a protective quarantine by the Indian government, the Sentinelese received worldwide attention in 2004, when they were filmed running out of the jungle firing arrows at passing helicopters shortly after the Asian tsunami killed thousands on the Andaman and Nicobar island chains.

Abbi argues that preventing the extinction of other Andamanese languages is crucial if we hope to expand our understanding of how language in the region evolved over time."It is generally believed that all Andamanese languages might be the last representatives of those languages which go back to pre-Neolithic times," Abbi told the BBC.But the death of a language also has other implications. "A language contains the memories and experiences, everything that explains and encapsulates a way of life," Grig said. "It's sad for the entire world."

The Undersigned Indians are planning to hold a candle light gathering to mourn the loss of one of our wings that made us a composite India.

We are proud of our heritage - a multi-faith, multi-cultural, multi-regional and multi-linguistic society, where we have come to accept and respect every which way people have lived their lives. For over 5000 years, India has been a beacon of pluralism and co-existence; it has embraced into its fold the Aryans, the Greeks, the Turks, the Christians, Jews, Muslims, Bahai and the Zoroastrians along with her own indigenous traditions of Hindus, Jain, Buddhists and Sikhs.

India has over 300 indigenous tribal cultures, her own traditional medicine and we mourn the loss of an era, and one of the oldest living tribes on the earth has come to and ends with the death of Bo.

Candle light gathering

Place:
Date and Time:

Source of information is listed at: http://wisdomofreligion.blogspot.com/2010/02/ancient-tribe-goes-extinct-as-last.html

Signed by

Mike Ghouse

Please add your name at this link, the best few short comments will be incorporated in to the press release.

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