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difficulty of impartiality |
| text: |
In 1938, shortly after I had returned from a year's anthropological field research in the Naga Hills, I wrote an account of my experiences among the people whose lives I had shared and for whom I had developed a deep affection. A year later that account was published in London under the title The Naked Nagas, and in addition to German and Spanish versions, a slightly enlarged Indian edition was published in Calcutta in 1946. Though written by an anthropologist this book was not in the nature of an academic study of one particular Naga tribe, but reflected the impression of a western observer exposed for the first time to close contact with an Indian tribal people persisting in an archaic way of life. My original plan to return to the Naga Hills and complete my study of the Konyak Nagas had to be abandoned because of the outbreak of the second World War, and it was not until 1970 that I was able to revisit the villages where I had stayed in 1936 and 1937. |
