Nicobarese
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (22,100) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Nicobar Islands | |
| Languages | |
| Nicobarese languages | |
| Religion | |
| Christianity (98%), Islam (2%) (Both Christian and Muslim Nicobarese incorporate elements of their ancestral animistic religion in their worship) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
|
Shompen people? distantly related to Austroasiatic peoples |
The Nicobarese people are a Mon–Khmer-speaking people of the Nicobar Islands, a chain of 19 islands in the southeastern Bay of Bengal. Only 12 of the 19 islands are inhabited. The largest and main island is Great Nicobar. The term Nicobarese refers to the dominant tribes of the Nicobar Islands. On each island, the people have specific names, but together they are the Nicobarese. They call themselves Holchu, which means "friend".
The Nicobarese are a designated Scheduled Tribe.
The Nicobarese may not have been the first people to live in the islands, they appear to have shared the islands with Shompen who came to the islands earlier. The islands have been under the power of various Asian empires in the 16th century, Great Britain from 1869–1947, and India from 1947. Today they are administered by India as part of the Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The Nicobarese language is part of the Austroasiatic language family. All of the different islands speak different dialects of the Nicobarese language. The separate islands are categorized into four groups, although most of the people understand the Car Nicobar dialect.
Most of the people of the islands are of the Christian religion, which was taught to them by a man named John Richardson who translated the New Testament into Nicobarese. Besides Christianity, other Nicobarese follow the traditional religion of the islands, which is animistic in nature. They believe in spirits, ghosts, and the existence of the soul. A person becomes a ghost after their death when their soul leaves their body and the ghosts of all the Nicobarese are all around the islands. They believe that the spirits are responsible for all of the unfortunate occurrences on the islands, in the event of which shamans are called upon to handle the bad spirits.
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Wikipedia