Arunachal: Nocte digest appeals to develop Hakhunthin as a major tourist destination in Tirap
KHONSA- In an attempt to create awareness of the historical and religious significance of Hakhunthin, Nocte Digest initiated a 3 km uphill trek to the former settlement of 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.
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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 4 spelling and vocabulary books in Romanized Nocte language.
Nocte Digest appealed to the group of more than 50 people, including the village Chief, elders and the executive members of the Namsang Youth Council to extend their support in developing Hakhunthin as one of the major tourist destinations in the district.
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It 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 deathly small pox epidemic contributed to it. This is best described in “My Story”, an auto-biography of Wangpha Lowang, former Lok Sabha MP and one of the founding fathers of Arunachal Pradesh.
