In the sweltering haze of April 1858, under the cover of a moonless night, Convict No. 276, Dudhnath Tewari—a sepoy branded a mutineer in the fires of 1857—slipped the chains of his exile. He was not alone. Led by the wily Aga, a fellow prisoner claiming knowledge of hidden paths, Tewari joined a desperate band of ninety men fleeing the nascent penal colony on Ross Island. Their destination was uncertain: perhaps freedom across the treacherous Bay of Bengal, perhaps Burma’s distant shores. But the Andamans, those emerald sentinels of isolation, had other plans.
The escapees, a ragged alliance of rebels and deserters, included stragglers from Phoenix Bay and Chatham Island, where the rhythmic hum of the fledgling sawmill echoed the grind of colonial ambition. They rafted across narrow channels, their makeshift vessels creaking under the weight of hope and hunger, before landing in the unforgiving jungles of South Andaman.
The sojourn began as a nightmare. For eight days they stumbled through dense thickets, thorns tearing at their flesh, the air thick with the buzz of insects and the distant calls of unseen beasts. There was little food, save for wild fruits that twisted their stomachs; water came from creeping vines and fleeting springs. Thirst claimed the weakest first—twelve men left behind to wither like fallen leaves.
The group soon splintered, morale fracturing like dry bamboo. Tewari, a Brahmin by birth, clung to survival with the stubborn grit of a man who had already defied an empire. Yet, on the fourteenth day, fate ambushed them. A party of nearly a hundred Andamanese warriors emerged from the foliage like shadows, bows drawn taut, arrows glinting like accusations.
The escapees signaled surrender, arms raised in futile appeal. But the air filled with the whistle of death. Arrows rained down, felling dozens in a chaos of screams and blood. Tewari, struck in the eyebrow, elbow, and shoulder, feigned death amid the carnage. Beside him lay the bodies of his companions Shoo Dull and a Kurmi caste convict. Those who survived the initial attack were dragged away—or so the tribes believed.
Yet Tewari’s odyssey took another unexpected turn. Captured and bound, he was ferried by canoe to Tarmogli Island, where members of the Aka-Bea-da sept of the Great Andamanese nursed his wounds with earth and herbs. Suspicion lingered like morning mist. They shaved his head, stripped him of clothing, and forbade him from carrying weapons. Yet, gradually, acceptance grew.
Pooteah, an elder, gave him Leepa, a woman of about twenty, and Jigah, sixteen—daughters of the clan. Tewari immersed himself in their world: a life unburdened by gods or gold, where babies nursed at any mother’s breast and the forest provided without demand.
In time he claimed five wives in all, the ceremonies little more than the sharing of a meal. For one year and twenty-four days he lived among them—naked, nomadic, and attuned to the rhythms of tide and forest. The Great Andamanese, fierce guardians of their archipelago, appeared to have woven an outsider into their social fabric.
Yet beneath this fragile idyll simmered resentment. Since 1857 the British had encroached steadily, carving settlements out of sacred lands and felling forests to sustain their penal colony. The tribes, numbering between 5,000 and 8,000 across several clans, had resisted fiercely for decades, killing shipwrecked sailors and repelling explorers with arrows that defended ancient sovereignty.
With the colonial foothold at Port Blair strengthening, the Andamanese began to plot retaliation. Rumours of a mass assault on Aberdeen and Atlanta Point rippled through the camps. Tewari, privy to these plans, faced a fateful choice: loyalty to his adoptive kin or the promise of pardon from his former captors.
On May 17, 1859, he chose the latter.
Slipping away from his wives—one pregnant, another the symbol of trust soon to be broken—he surrendered at Ross Island and revealed the plan to Superintendent J. P. Walker. The impending attack, he warned, would bring between 400 and 600 warriors armed with bows and arrows.
What followed became known as the Battle of Aberdeen, a clash that etched betrayal into the Andamans’ blood-soaked soil.
Forewarned, the British fortified their positions. Convicts and sepoys were armed with rifles, and artillery was positioned at strategic vantage points. At dawn the Andamanese advanced in waves of defiance. Bows and arrows met musket fire as the air filled with gunpowder and cries.
Hundreds of tribal warriors—many of them young men who represented the future of their communities—were cut down in the clash. British casualties were minimal, a grim testament to the advantage of forewarning and firearms.
The “Aberdeen War,” as it later came to be called, shattered the Great Andamanese. Organised resistance collapsed. In its wake came disease—measles, syphilis, influenza—which devastated already weakened communities. By 1901 their numbers had fallen to just 625. Today barely fifty survive on Strait Island, their languages fading and their traditions diluted by government rations and settlement life.
Tewari’s decision was more than an act of survival. To many it remains the great betrayal. Rewarded with freedom, he eventually returned to his native village, leaving history to judge him ambivalently—hero to the empire, traitor to the tribes. Modo Lipa, believed to be Leepa, was abandoned and shunned, living as a silent emblem of deception.
The Andamans, once a bastion of indigenous autonomy, became first a penal outpost and later a union territory, their blue horizons now pierced by tourism and development.
Yet in the rustle of mangroves and the crash of waves echoes the Andamanese lament: a people undone not only by conquest, but by betrayal from within.
In this archipelago of forgotten wars, the Battle of Aberdeen remains a sombre reminder that empires are often built on broken trust—and the price is paid in vanishing worlds.
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Gajanan Khergamker is editor, solicitor, documentary filmmaker. A version of this article first appeared in The Draft
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