Professor J. H. Hutton Rev. Christopher Gardner, Helena Brown, A.
C. Brown Bhutan P. R. Bakshi 'Public Odium,' the Press, and PROs Stephen Parkinson British Voluntary Service N. E. Higgitt. M. Le Marchant Royal Flush James Dow Thy Naga Revolt Thalidomide Babies THE NAGA REVOLT Slit--1 write with reference to Mr. Patterson's article on the Naga Revolt in your issue of September 14. to correct what is perhaps a rather misleading distinc-
tion made by him between "'subject Nagas" . who came under British jurisdiction after military annexation of this limited part of the Naga terri- tory in 1879' and ' "free Nagas" . . . who continued to rosin the adjoining territory outside of anyone's Jurisdiction.'
The Naga Hills, as administered in 1947, had been occupied piecemeal from 1866 onwards as an expensive but inescapable policy of insurance against raiding by Naga tribesmen, first across the boun- daries of Nowgong and Sibsagar and even Cachar districts, later across the eastern boundary of what had become the Naga Hills district; for each advance Involved ultimately a farther one either to prevent raids or to protect friendly villages. A definite boundary was agreed to between Assam and Burma, as far as I can remember some time in the Twenties, and although the British authorities on either side never administered right up to the interprovincial frontier, they certainly recognised no permanent dividing line between 'free' and 'subject' villages. It is quite accurate to say that the administered Nagas asked the Simon Commission to have them excluded from India. I do not recall that the un- administered Nagas had anything to say about it at ,all. If any of them did come to see the Commission from the unadministered area, they could only have spoken for themselves, since unadministered villages had no common polity and were without a common language or any knowledge at all of Hindi. Assamese or English.
States policy of a confederation of Himalayan ''atC's may have some meaning for Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan, but the Nagas have about as much in common with those populations as they have with ,r1,ulatis generally, and a great deal less than they have with Manipuris, Karens and Indonesians, to say nothing of the other hill tribes of Assam. The Naga 1-14.1s are not really part of the Himalayas. from v ,`,Ich they are cut off by the Assam and Hukong a they have not the economy or resources for '1 viable independent State, and could not of their evwn revenue maintain educational or medical staff, or en keep Up reliable communications by road in their own very difficult terrain. Moreover, the ques- tion of the Manipur State, plumb in the midst of the scheme tribes, would have to be considered in any such eh •erne as that suggested, to say no more of the adjacent hill districts of Assam and Burma. Whatever the faults of the Indian Government since e,e the taking over of the Naga Hills, they have of length offered the tribes a very handsome solution which problem in a separate State of their own, and any be the extreme of foolishness to refuse nd any advice given against acceptance would to binto be directly contrary to the interests of the
against How far the Nagas as a whole are for or the hard core of the resistance movement I
have no means of knowing or finding out, but I strongly suspect from what I know of them that the majority would welcome any solution which would enable them to go on living in their own way without excessive and unnecessary interference.
New Radnor, Presteigne. Co. Radnor 3. H. HUTTON
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