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Dispute concerning the walling in of ancestral graves of the Semoma khel at Khonoma |
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To Khonoma where I found the Assistant Commissioner and Nihu waiting. The Semoma Khel had collected a huge heap of stones with a view to putting a wall round their ancestral graves. The Semoma Gaonburas showed me what they wished to do and proposed building a huge erection about three times the size necessary for the purpose. The Thevoma Gaonburas came privily and said that they were not going to object to the walling in of the graves as it was they knew really for the purpose of a religious duty but that their acquiescence in the walling in of the graves did not run to the building of the enormous work of earth and stone that Semoma contemplated. Merema appeared and stated that they objected to anything at all being done to the Semoma graves and the only reason they could give was that several orders had been passed against making new buildings of this sort in Khonoma. I pointed out that it would not be a new building but only a restoration of a very small part of an old one that had been destroyed as a result of disobedience of orders that had nothing to do with them. They reiterated that it was a new building having been erected shortly before the occupation of Kohima (or perhaps they meant Samaguting) by Government, any way "before the Sarkar came". I said that I was not prepared to take any account of anything that happened or did not happen before the Sarkar came. |
