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Extract from letter no. 211G dt. 11th July 1905 from Mr Williamson S.D.O. Mokokchung to the Deputy Commissioner. |
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The total number of murders, therefore, about which I have received reports amounts to 454 during the last 3.5 years. For the reasons given in my last Annual Report it might not have been possible to prevent the murders across the Tizu which during 1904 and 1905 amount to 130. But all the other 324 murders, or an average of over 90 a year, which have all occured in a portion of the frontier not much more than 30 miles in length, could have been prevented without any increase to the Military Police Battalion and without the expenditure of a single extra rupee. These figures, it must be remembered, represent only the numbers of murders about which I have received information. As pointed out in my Annual Report others must have taken place about which nothing is ever heard. |
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6. If the present awful condition of affairs is to cease, the only solution as far as I can see is annexation. Let the country annexed be called a political control area if necessary, but let the inhabitants clearly understand that they are British subjects, and as such they may look to Government for protection and redress in return for the obligations we impose on them as regards raiding. I have written at length on this subject in my Annual Report. If we cannot annex, I think our policy should be one of strict non-interference. I do not see how we can logically or with any measure of success steer a middle course. If a savage comes to us for protection or redress which we cannot give him on the grounds that our policy is one of non-intervention, we can hardly in turn, I take it, place restrictions on him as regards raiding and expect him to consider the feelings of Government on this subject. |
