| caption: |
visit to Wanchu Nagas of Tirap district in 1962 |
| text: |
A lucky chance allowed me to visit an adjoining area, the Tirap district in 1962, and there, only some 20 miles north of my previous field of study, I was able to collect data complementary to the results of my earlier research. Though officially described as Wanchu, the people of that area are closely allied to the Konyak Nagas of the present Nagaland, and their inclusion within a different administrative unit is a matter of historic accident. It was accidental too that during the British period their villages had remained outside the administered region then known as the Naga Hills district. After some early brushes with British expeditions the Wanchus had been left to their own devices, and not until after 1947 did the government of India take effective steps to bring them under its administrative control. The middle-aged and older people I met in 1962 had thus spent the greater part of their lives under a political system organized on traditional lines. Here conditions were not very different from those prevailing among the Konyaks of the Naga Hills district a quarter of a century earlier, but the construction of motorable roads and the introduction of school education and medical services were just beginning to make their impact. |
