Colonial contact in the 'hidden land': Oral history among the Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh

Indian Economic and Social History Review

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 335-365

  Blackburn, Stuart ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 2442540494     PISSN: 00194646     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/001946460304000304     Document Type: Review

References (92)

1. The area of present-day Arunachal Pradesh formed part of the North-East Frontier Tracts of Assam during the colonial period; in 1954 it became part of the North-East Frontier Agency, in 1972 a union territory and in 1987 a state.
2. Sometime between 1948-50, Apatanis and Hill Miris burned down a local school in protest against Assamese language instruction (Public Record Office, London. FO 371/84250. Calcutta Special Report no. 71, dated 7 Oct. 1950).
3. Sumit Guha, Environment and Ethnicity in India, 1200-1991, Cambridge, 1999, p. 8.
4. As is well-known, the category 'tribe' is ethnographically imprecise (applied loosely to groups who differ in social structures, political organisation and subsistence strategies) and historically constructed (applied to those groups whom others wish to control) (Morton Fried, The Notion of Tribe, Menlo Park, Ca, 1975; Guha, Environment and Ethnicity). However, in the context of northeast India, the term does refer to small-scale societies that are marginalised within mainstream subcontinental culture and separated from it by fundamental features such as religion and language, diet and clothes. The observation that tribes are best understood 'as secondary formations, reactions to the formation of states' (Guha, Environment and Ethnicity, p. 2) applies more to the forests and hills of the subcontinent than to the Himalayas. Finally, although in most of India the term is politicised and controversial, not least because of the list of 'Backward Tribes' and 'Scheduled Tribes', in Arunachal Pradesh, where tribes predominate, the term may be politicised but it is not controversial and is often used with pride (Andre Béteille, 'The concept of tribe, with special reference to India', in A. Béteille, Society and Politics in India: Essays in a Comparative Sociology, London, 1991, pp. 57-78).
5. As is well-known, the category 'tribe' is ethnographically imprecise (applied loosely to groups who differ in social structures, political organisation and subsistence strategies) and historically constructed (applied to those groups whom others wish to control) (Morton Fried, The Notion of Tribe, Menlo Park, Ca, 1975; Guha, Environment and Ethnicity). However, in the context of northeast India, the term does refer to small-scale societies that are marginalised within mainstream subcontinental culture and separated from it by fundamental features such as religion and language, diet and clothes. The observation that tribes are best understood 'as secondary formations, reactions to the formation of states' (Guha, Environment and Ethnicity, p. 2) applies more to the forests and hills of the subcontinent than to the Himalayas. Finally, although in most of India the term is politicised and controversial, not least because of the list of 'Backward Tribes' and 'Scheduled Tribes', in Arunachal Pradesh, where tribes predominate, the term may be politicised but it is not controversial and is often used with pride (Andre Béteille, 'The concept of tribe, with special reference to India', in A. Béteille, Society and Politics in India: Essays in a Comparative Sociology, London, 1991, pp. 57-78).
6. As is well-known, the category 'tribe' is ethnographically imprecise (applied loosely to groups who differ in social structures, political organisation and subsistence strategies) and historically constructed (applied to those groups whom others wish to control) (Morton Fried, The Notion of Tribe, Menlo Park, Ca, 1975; Guha, Environment and Ethnicity). However, in the context of northeast India, the term does refer to small-scale societies that are marginalised within mainstream subcontinental culture and separated from it by fundamental features such as religion and language, diet and clothes. The observation that tribes are best understood 'as secondary formations, reactions to the formation of states' (Guha, Environment and Ethnicity, p. 2) applies more to the forests and hills of the subcontinent than to the Himalayas. Finally, although in most of India the term is politicised and controversial, not least because of the list of 'Backward Tribes' and 'Scheduled Tribes', in Arunachal Pradesh, where tribes predominate, the term may be politicised but it is not controversial and is often used with pride (Andre Béteille, 'The concept of tribe, with special reference to India', in A. Béteille, Society and Politics in India: Essays in a Comparative Sociology, London, 1991, pp. 57-78).
7. As is well-known, the category 'tribe' is ethnographically imprecise (applied loosely to groups who differ in social structures, political organisation and subsistence strategies) and historically constructed (applied to those groups whom others wish to control) (Morton Fried, The Notion of Tribe, Menlo Park, Ca, 1975; Guha, Environment and Ethnicity). However, in the context of northeast India, the term does refer to small-scale societies that are marginalised within mainstream subcontinental culture and separated from it by fundamental features such as religion and language, diet and clothes. The observation that tribes are best understood 'as secondary formations, reactions to the formation of states' (Guha, Environment and Ethnicity, p. 2) applies more to the forests and hills of the subcontinent than to the Himalayas. Finally, although in most of India the term is politicised and controversial, not least because of the list of 'Backward Tribes' and 'Scheduled Tribes', in Arunachal Pradesh, where tribes predominate, the term may be politicised but it is not controversial and is often used with pride (Andre Béteille, 'The concept of tribe, with special reference to India', in A. Béteille, Society and Politics in India: Essays in a Comparative Sociology, London, 1991, pp. 57-78).
8. Velcheru Narayana Rao, Sanjay Subrahmanyam and David Shulman, Textures of Time: Writing History in South India, 1600-1800, Delhi, 2001, p. 4.
9. Ibid., p. 21.
10. Chris Healy, From the Ruins of Colonialism: History as Social Memory, Cambridge 1997, p. 52.
11. Healy, From the Ruins, pp. 50-53.
12. Ajay Skaria, Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and Wildness in Western India, Delhi, 1999.
13. His claim that 'hybrid histories are the moments when powerlessness betokens power' (ibid., p. 13) is not convincing.
14. For an excellent study that uses social memory to reconstruct the history of ordinary people in Rajasthan in the 1930s and 1940s, see Ann Grodzins Gold and Bhoju Ram Gujar, In the Time of Trees and Sorrow: Nature and Power and Memory in Rajasthan, Durham, N.C., 2002; for a detailed dissection of a single event in Indian colonial history, see Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992, Delhi, 1995.
15. For an excellent study that uses social memory to reconstruct the history of ordinary people in Rajasthan in the 1930s and 1940s, see Ann Grodzins Gold and Bhoju Ram Gujar, In the Time of Trees and Sorrow: Nature and Power and Memory in Rajasthan, Durham, N.C., 2002; for a detailed dissection of a single event in Indian colonial history, see Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992, Delhi, 1995.
16. Thomas Abercrombie, Pathways of Power: Ethnography and History among an Andean People, Madison, 1998.
17. Chris Gosden and Chantal Knowles, Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change, Oxford 2001; Janet Hoskins, The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History and Exchange, Berkeley, 1993; Janet Hoskins, Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People's Lives, New York, 1998. See also Kirsten Hastrup, ed., Other Histories, London, 1992; Jacques Le Goff, Memory and History, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Carman, New York, 1992 [1977]; Jeanette Mageo, ed., Cultural Memory: Reconfiguring History and Identity in the Postcolonial Pacific, Honolulu, 2001.
18. Chris Gosden and Chantal Knowles, Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change, Oxford 2001; Janet Hoskins, The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History and Exchange, Berkeley, 1993; Janet Hoskins, Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People's Lives, New York, 1998. See also Kirsten Hastrup, ed., Other Histories, London, 1992; Jacques Le Goff, Memory and History, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Carman, New York, 1992 [1977]; Jeanette Mageo, ed., Cultural Memory: Reconfiguring History and Identity in the Postcolonial Pacific, Honolulu, 2001.
19. Chris Gosden and Chantal Knowles, Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change, Oxford 2001; Janet Hoskins, The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History and Exchange, Berkeley, 1993; Janet Hoskins, Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People's Lives, New York, 1998. See also Kirsten Hastrup, ed., Other Histories, London, 1992; Jacques Le Goff, Memory and History, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Carman, New York, 1992 [1977]; Jeanette Mageo, ed., Cultural Memory: Reconfiguring History and Identity in the Postcolonial Pacific, Honolulu, 2001.
20. Chris Gosden and Chantal Knowles, Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change, Oxford 2001; Janet Hoskins, The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History and Exchange, Berkeley, 1993; Janet Hoskins, Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People's Lives, New York, 1998. See also Kirsten Hastrup, ed., Other Histories, London, 1992; Jacques Le Goff, Memory and History, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Carman, New York, 1992 [1977]; Jeanette Mageo, ed., Cultural Memory: Reconfiguring History and Identity in the Postcolonial Pacific, Honolulu, 2001.
21. Chris Gosden and Chantal Knowles, Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change, Oxford 2001; Janet Hoskins, The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History and Exchange, Berkeley, 1993; Janet Hoskins, Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People's Lives, New York, 1998. See also Kirsten Hastrup, ed., Other Histories, London, 1992; Jacques Le Goff, Memory and History, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Carman, New York, 1992 [1977]; Jeanette Mageo, ed., Cultural Memory: Reconfiguring History and Identity in the Postcolonial Pacific, Honolulu, 2001.
22. Chris Gosden and Chantal Knowles, Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change, Oxford 2001; Janet Hoskins, The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History and Exchange, Berkeley, 1993; Janet Hoskins, Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People's Lives, New York, 1998. See also Kirsten Hastrup, ed., Other Histories, London, 1992; Jacques Le Goff, Memory and History, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Carman, New York, 1992 [1977]; Jeanette Mageo, ed., Cultural Memory: Reconfiguring History and Identity in the Postcolonial Pacific, Honolulu, 2001.
23. The only tribe in the state with its own script (derived from Mon-Tai) are the Khamptis, a Buddhist group who migrated from the Shan area of northern Burma in the late eighteenth century. Among Buddhist tribes on the border with Tibet, Monpas use the Tibetan script, while the Membas use the Hikor script and the Khambas the Hingna script, both derived from the Tibetan.
24. Many oral histories are expressed not as narratives but through conversation; see, for instance, Elizabeth Tonkin, Narrating Our Pasts, the Social Construction of Oral History, Cambridge, 1992, p. 125.
25. Tattoos worn by both women and men have gone out of practice, banned since the early 1970s by the Apatani Student Association.
26. For overviews of these movements in northeast India, see Sanjib Baruah, India against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality, Philadelphia, 1999; Jyotirindra Das Gupta, 'Community, Authenticity, and Autonomy: Insurgency and Institutional Development in India's Northeast', Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56(2), 1997, pp. 345-70.
27. For overviews of these movements in northeast India, see Sanjib Baruah, India against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality, Philadelphia, 1999; Jyotirindra Das Gupta, 'Community, Authenticity, and Autonomy: Insurgency and Institutional Development in India's Northeast', Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56(2), 1997, pp. 345-70.
28. For the history of British relations with the tribes of present-day Arunachal Pradesh, see H.K. Barpujari, The Problem of the Hill Tribes of Assam, 3 Vols, Gauhati, 1970-81; L.N. Chakravarty, Glimpses of the Early History of Arunachal, Itanagar, 1995 [1973] 3rd edition; B.C. Chakravorty, British Relations with the Hill Tribes of Assam, Calcutta, 1964; Jyotirinda Nath Chowdhury, The Tribal Culture and History of Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, 1990; Jyotirinda Nath Chowdhury, Arunachal Pradesh: From Frontier Tracts to Union Territory, New Delhi, 1983; N.N. Osik, Modern History of Arunachal Pradesh (1825-1997), New Delhi, 1999.
29. For the history of British relations with the tribes of present-day Arunachal Pradesh, see H.K. Barpujari, The Problem of the Hill Tribes of Assam, 3 Vols, Gauhati, 1970-81; L.N. Chakravarty, Glimpses of the Early History of Arunachal, Itanagar, 1995 [1973] 3rd edition; B.C. Chakravorty, British Relations with the Hill Tribes of Assam, Calcutta, 1964; Jyotirinda Nath Chowdhury, The Tribal Culture and History of Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, 1990; Jyotirinda Nath Chowdhury, Arunachal Pradesh: From Frontier Tracts to Union Territory, New Delhi, 1983; N.N. Osik, Modern History of Arunachal Pradesh (1825-1997), New Delhi, 1999.
30. For the history of British relations with the tribes of present-day Arunachal Pradesh, see H.K. Barpujari, The Problem of the Hill Tribes of Assam, 3 Vols, Gauhati, 1970-81; L.N. Chakravarty, Glimpses of the Early History of Arunachal, Itanagar, 1995 [1973] 3rd edition; B.C. Chakravorty, British Relations with the Hill Tribes of Assam, Calcutta, 1964; Jyotirinda Nath Chowdhury, The Tribal Culture and History of Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, 1990; Jyotirinda Nath Chowdhury, Arunachal Pradesh: From Frontier Tracts to Union Territory, New Delhi, 1983; N.N. Osik, Modern History of Arunachal Pradesh (1825-1997), New Delhi, 1999.
31. For the history of British relations with the tribes of present-day Arunachal Pradesh, see H.K. Barpujari, The Problem of the Hill Tribes of Assam, 3 Vols, Gauhati, 1970-81; L.N. Chakravarty, Glimpses of the Early History of Arunachal, Itanagar, 1995 [1973] 3rd edition; B.C. Chakravorty, British Relations with the Hill Tribes of Assam, Calcutta, 1964; Jyotirinda Nath Chowdhury, The Tribal Culture and History of Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, 1990; Jyotirinda Nath Chowdhury, Arunachal Pradesh: From Frontier Tracts to Union Territory, New Delhi, 1983; N.N. Osik, Modern History of Arunachal Pradesh (1825-1997), New Delhi, 1999.
32. For the history of British relations with the tribes of present-day Arunachal Pradesh, see H.K. Barpujari, The Problem of the Hill Tribes of Assam, 3 Vols, Gauhati, 1970-81; L.N. Chakravarty, Glimpses of the Early History of Arunachal, Itanagar, 1995 [1973] 3rd edition; B.C. Chakravorty, British Relations with the Hill Tribes of Assam, Calcutta, 1964; Jyotirinda Nath Chowdhury, The Tribal Culture and History of Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, 1990; Jyotirinda Nath Chowdhury, Arunachal Pradesh: From Frontier Tracts to Union Territory, New Delhi, 1983; N.N. Osik, Modern History of Arunachal Pradesh (1825-1997), New Delhi, 1999.
33. For the history of British relations with the tribes of present-day Arunachal Pradesh, see H.K. Barpujari, The Problem of the Hill Tribes of Assam, 3 Vols, Gauhati, 1970-81; L.N. Chakravarty, Glimpses of the Early History of Arunachal, Itanagar, 1995 [1973] 3rd edition; B.C. Chakravorty, British Relations with the Hill Tribes of Assam, Calcutta, 1964; Jyotirinda Nath Chowdhury, The Tribal Culture and History of Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, 1990; Jyotirinda Nath Chowdhury, Arunachal Pradesh: From Frontier Tracts to Union Territory, New Delhi, 1983; N.N. Osik, Modern History of Arunachal Pradesh (1825-1997), New Delhi, 1999.
34. In some cases, British officials continued to make these posa payments to tribes right up until 1947.
35. On these armed conflicts, see K.S. Singh, Tribal Society in India: An Anthro-historical Perspective, Delhi, 1985, pp. 119-54. Well-known examples include resistance by the Bhils in 1818, the Kols and Bhumijs in 1831-33, the Santals in 1855-56 and the Munda groups from 1874 to 1901.
36. Osik, Modern History, pp. 23-68.
37. Chowdhury, Arunachal Pradesh, pp. 135-36. A summary chart of many (but not all) conflicts with hill tribes is given as an appendix in Chakravarty, Glimpses of the Early History.
38. Chowdhury, Arunachal Pradesh, pp. 135-36. A summary chart of many (but not all) conflicts with hill tribes is given as an appendix in Chakravarty, Glimpses of the Early History.
39. Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalayas; Berkeley, 2000 (revised and expanded edition), pp. 129-31.
40. E.T. Dalton, 'On the Meris and the Abors of Assam', Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. 14(1), 1845, p. 429
41. Dalton, 'On the Meris', p. 428.
42. From H.M. Crowe, Account of a Journey to the Apa Tanang Country (1890), quoted in Verrier Elwin, India's Northeast Frontier in the Nineteenth Century, Bombay, 1959, pp. 196-97. A second visit by Crowe and a Capt. Dun, a few years later, confirmed these impressions (ibid., pp. 199-201).
43. From H.M. Crowe, Account of a Journey to the Apa Tanang Country (1890), quoted in Verrier Elwin, India's Northeast Frontier in the Nineteenth Century, Bombay, 1959, pp. 196-97. A second visit by Crowe and a Capt. Dun, a few years later, confirmed these impressions (ibid., pp. 199-201).
44. From H.M. Crowe, Account of a Journey to the Apa Tanang Country (1890), quoted in Verrier Elwin, India's Northeast Frontier in the Nineteenth Century, Bombay, 1959, pp. 196-97. A second visit by Crowe and a Capt. Dun, a few years later, confirmed these impressions (ibid., pp. 199-201).
45. British Library, OIOC, Eur Mss. D932/2, Leventon Papers, 'Report on the Apa Tanang Expedition of 1897', by R.B. McCabe; see also Elwin India's Northeast Frontier, p. 191.
46. British Library, OIOC, Eur Mss. D932/2, Leventon Papers, 'Report on the Apa Tanang Expedition of 1897', by R.B. McCabe; see also Elwin India's Northeast Frontier, p. 191.
47. The only dissenting voice appears to be Eleanor Bor, wife of a Political Officer in the 1930s, whose single visit to the Apa Tani valley prompted this observation: 'The Apatanang men were naked except for a very small apron-and a tail made of plaited cane ... these people are reported to have been cannibals ... they appeared to answer so accurately to those almost legendary tales of Himalayan savages' (Eleanor Bor, The Adventures of a Botanist's Wife, London, 1952, p. 29).
48. Ursula Graham Bower, The Hidden Land, London, p. 116.
49. Ibid., p. 219.
50. Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, Himalayan Barbary, London, 1955, p. 63.
51. Ibid., p. 63.
52. 'Report on the Apa Tanang Expedition of 1897', by R.B. McCabe; Sir Robert Reid, History of the Frontier Areas Bordering Assam, 1863-1941, Shillong, 1942, pp. 274-76. The details of the expedition come from McCabe's 1897 report.
53. 'Report on the Apa Tanang Expedition of 1897', by R.B. McCabe; Sir Robert Reid, History of the Frontier Areas Bordering Assam, 1863-1941, Shillong, 1942, pp. 274-76. The details of the expedition come from McCabe's 1897 report.
54. The Inner Line was established in 1873 in order to demarcate the extent of British administration; normal government bureaucracy operated up to the Line, beyond it tribal authority prevailed. For the text of this legislation, see T. Nyori, History and Culture of the Adis, New Delhi, 1993, pp. 317-18.
55. British Library, OIOC, Mss Eur D932/2, Levenson Papers, 'Report on Apa Tanang Expedition of 1897', by R.C. McCabe, p. 2
56. Sir Robert Reid, History of the Frontier Areas, p. 274.
57. The photograph is found in the British Library OIOC, Mss Eur D932/4, Levenson Papers.
58. Hage Hiiba's account was recorded on 5 Mar. 2002 and 4 Apr. 2002, in the village of Hari; another account, by Hage Tapa, was recorded on 11 Apr. 2002, also in Hari. Both were translated with assistance from Hage Komo and Hage Gyati. Attempts to collect Nyishi oral accounts of this event were unsuccessful.
59. Angus Hamilton, In Abor Jungles, London, 1912, pp.188ff; 332ff. Thirty years later, Fürer-Haimendorf found that he had to compensate the kinsmen of some of those killed when he travelled through the same country for the same purpose, namely to discover the nature and scope of Tibetan influence (Fürer-Haimendorf, Himalayan Barbary, pp. 207-8).
60. Angus Hamilton, In Abor Jungles, London, 1912, pp.188ff; 332ff. Thirty years later, Fürer-Haimendorf found that he had to compensate the kinsmen of some of those killed when he travelled through the same country for the same purpose, namely to discover the nature and scope of Tibetan influence (Fürer-Haimendorf, Himalayan Barbary, pp. 207-8).
61. Hamilton, In Abor Jungles, pp. 341-42.
62. British Library, OIOC, L/P&S/12/3114 Political (External) Dept. North Eastern Frontier, Assam, Annual Reports on Frontier Tribes, Annual Report for 1932-33.
63. British Library, OIOC, L/P&S/12/3114 Political (External) Dept. North Eastern Frontier, Assam, Annual Reports on Frontier Tribes, Annual Report for 1935-36.
64. See, however, the quotation from Eleanor Bor in note 26 above.
65. Alastair Lamb, Tibet, China and India, 1914-1950: A History of Imperial Diplomacy, Hertingfordbury, 1989, pp. 417-19; Dorothy Woodman, Himalayan Fronters, a Political Review of British, Chinese, Indian and Russian Rivalries, London, 1969, p. 211.
66. Alastair Lamb, Tibet, China and India, 1914-1950: A History of Imperial Diplomacy, Hertingfordbury, 1989, pp. 417-19; Dorothy Woodman, Himalayan Fronters, a Political Review of British, Chinese, Indian and Russian Rivalries, London, 1969, p. 211
67. J.P. Mills remarked that Davy's attempts to reconcile Nyishis and Apatanis had 'tended to alarm both' (Public Record Office, London, FO 371/53661, 'Programme of work for North-east Frontier Agency for 1945/46' dated 14 August 1945). See also Barpujari, Problem of the Hill Tribes, Vol. 3, 1981, p. 272.
68. The only written source to mention the raid is a local publication (Takhe Kani, The Advancing Apa Tanis of Arunachal Pradesh, Itanagar, 1993, p. 26) which notes that after F.N. Betts left, there was 'hostility between the Government Sepoys and the Apatanis', that this hostility was locally called Kure chambyo, that a few Apatanis lost their lives in the attack, and that this hostility caused the government to rapidly expand its administration.
69. The section from middle of page 111 to the middle of 113 in Fürer-Haimendorf's 1955 book is omitted from its updated version (Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, Himalayan Adventure: Early Travels in North East India, New Delhi, 1983).
70. British Library, OIOC, L/P&S/12/3118.
71. Public Record Office, Commonwealth Relations Office, DO 142/461. Fortnightly reports on the Assam Tribal Areas. Reports, second half of June 1948, Office of the Advisor to the Governor to Assam for Tribal Areas, Shillong, to the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations, Delhi.
72. Public Record Office, Commonwealth Relations Office, DO 142/461. Fortnightly reports on the Assam Tribal Areas, Reports, first half of July 1948 and second half of July 1948, Office of the Advisor to the Governor of Assam for Tribal Areas, Shillong, to the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations, Delhi.
73. This official version may have been fabricated in order to deflect any potential criticism of those responsible for maintaining peace and calm in the valley. That the raid did, in fact, occur is proved by the internal consistency of details in the oral accounts from a wide spectrum of people.
74. Guha, Unquiet Woods, passim.
75. A resistance to 'outsiders', conveniently identified by a local word, was a common factor in other conflicts between tribes and the state in India (K.S. Singh, Tribal Society in India, p. 149).
76. Fürer-Haimendorf, Himalayan Barbary, p. 78.
77. The Assam Frontier Regulation Act of 1945 recognised the authority of village councils and village headmen, which were allowed to police their own affairs but not inter-tribal affairs.
78. Public Record Office, London, FO 371/53661, 'Programme of work for North-east Frontier Agency for 1945/46', dated 14 Aug. 1945.
79. British Library, OIOC, L/P&S/12/3117, fortnightly reports on the Assam Tribal Areas. Reports, first half May 1947, Office of the Advisor to the Governor to Assam for Tribal Areas, Shillong, to the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations, Delhi.
80. Graham Bower, The Hidden Land, p. 169.
81. British Library, OIOC, L/P&S/12/3114, J.P. Mills, 'Report on the Assam Tribal Areas for Year ending 30 June 1945', Shillong.
82. British Library, OIOC, L/P&S/12/3117, Fortnightly reports on the Assam Tribal Areas, first half Sept. 1945. From Office of the Advisor to the Governor of Assam for Tribal Areas, Shillong, to the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations, Delhi.
83. J.P. Mills. 'Problems of the Assam-Tibet border', Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, XXXVII(2), 1950, p. 158.
84. One hundred and fifty permanent porters were employed in the Siang region (Public Record Office, London, FO 371/53661. Letter of 17 Oct. 1945 from the Joint Secretary to the External Affairs Dept to the Secretary to Governor of Assam).
85. This section was excised from the second edition of Fü rer-Haimendorf's book (Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, Himalayan Adventure); see note 44 above.
86. Fürer-Haimendorf, Himalayan Barbary, p. 109ff.
87. Ibid., p. 110.
88. British Library, OIOC, L/P&S/12/3117. Fortnightly reports on the Assam Tribal Areas. First half Sept. 1945, Office of the Advisor to the Governor of Assam for Tribal Areas, Shillong, to the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations, Delhi.
89. British Library, OIOC, L/P&S/12/3117, fortnightly reports on the Assam Tribal Areas. Second half Nov. 1947, Office of the Advisor to the Governor of Assam for Tribal Areas, Shillong, to the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations, Delhi.
90. Graham Bower, The Hidden Land, pp. 224-30.
91. Apatanis are buried, and the graves of the wealthy are often marked by bamboo altars, or more recently by concrete structures.
92. Tonkin, Narrating our Pasts.