On November 16th, an American missionary, John Allen Chau, 26, died brutally after illegally entering onto the Sentinel Island. The Sentinel Island is an isolated Island off of India in the Bay of Bengal. Chau paid two fishermen to transport him to the island to the island even though it is illegal due to past incidences of violence towards foreigners that have tried to interest with the extremely isolated Sentinel tribe. According to his journal, when John Allen Chau was finally confronted by tribesmen he offered fish, a soccer ball, scissors, and safety pins; he also tried communicating, speaking in a South African language but was laughed at by the tribesmen. A tribesman came running at him with a bow and arrow ready and aimed at him he got to his canoe and was able to paddle away without being injured. Chau ignored his warning though and returned to the island later to continue his attempt to convert these islanders to Christians. The fishermen claimed to have seen a body that looks like Chau being buried in the sand on the beach. Indian authorities have decided they should not go to the island and attempt to find and recover the body and write and official death certificate for Chau. The main issue with going to recover the body is that it could cause even more conflict and possible lead to the killing of even more people.
While I can understand that the job of missionaries is to spread the word and message of their religious belief, but their are limits to how far this should go and in my opinion I believe that John Chau went passed those lines. Not only did he break the law, but he came back multiple times after clearly not being welcomed onto the island, and he knew that there was a high chance that he would not survive this trip according to his letter to his parents. I think that morally it is wrong to try that hard to force your religion onto another person or group, and it is almost taking advantage of the Sentinel tribe considering that they are extremely isolated and have no other contact with the outside world. I feel for Chau’s family for their loss but I also have to say that after doing 5 minutes of googling on the Sentinel Tribe I saw multiple reports of violence towards outsiders and it seems pretty obvious that it simply would not be safe to go there. He knew what he was getting himself into and he acknowledged that he might die yet he still felt the need to try and covert this independent tribe. On the topic of whether or not Indian authorities should recover his body, while I think it is sad that he will not get a proper funeral I do not believe they should try and recover his body. By going and searching for his body it will only cause more conflict and death.