On January 10, 1929, a memorandum signed by 20 members of the Naga Club was submitted to the Indian Statutory Commission, also known as the Simon Commission, demanding exclusion of the Naga Hills from the Province of Assam. The underlying fear was that the Nagas would be lost in a sea of Indians if they came to be administered by the latter. John Hutton, an anthropologist who was the Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills, even suggested to the commission that a separate North-Eastern Frontier...