KHONSA, 2 Feb: In an attempt to create awareness on the historical and religious significance of Hakhunthin, members of the Nocte Digest on Thursday conducted a 3-km uphill trek to the former settlement of the present-day Namsang village in Tirap district.
Reverend Miles Bronson, the Baptist pioneer of Northeast India, stayed at Hakhunthin for eight months, from January 1839 to October 1840, to impart Western education and to promote Christianity among the Noctes.
Though Bronson could not achieve much success in the latter, he and his wife were quite successful in opening an English school with around 20 regular students, and in publishing four spelling and vocabulary books in Romanised Nocte language.
Members of the Nocte Digest appealed to the group of more than 50 people, including the village chief, elders and executive members of the Namsang Youth Council, to extend support in developing Hakhunthin as a major tourist destination.
They also informed the gathering that a book titled Miles Bronson and the Noctes is going to be released in a couple of months, “which will minutely deal with the accounts left behind by the Bronsons on the Nocte tribe.”
Apart from the Bronsons, people might be interested to know why Hakhunthin was abandoned and how World War II and a deadly smallpox epidemic contributed to it.
This is best described in My Story, an autobiography of Wangpha Lowang, former Lok Sabha member and one of the founding fathers of Arunachal Pradesh. (DIPR)
