Reinventing the ‘Mizo’: Inclusive mobilization in the Lushai Hills

In Mizoram, we have shown how events in the post-colonial phase of state making consolidated the power of the state. Along with the gradual diminution of the authority of the chiefs in the Lushai hills, the commoners rose as a powerful social and political force. This was an outcome of the unique history of the state. Christian missionaries had brought into the Lushai Hills not only their faith, but also education. But missionaries were not very welcome in the eyes of the chiefs who were upholders of tradition. Missionaries were popular with the commoners, however, who saw salvation in the new opportunities that the former were providing. The commoners readily took to modern education, a commodity that was soon to become a passport to jobs and opportunities. It was the commoners who were best positioned to take advantage of this opportunity.67 The chiefs - commoners cleavage also had an ethnic aspect to it. Chiefs were Lushais, mostly of the Sailo clan, while the commoners were non-Lushai. Led by Hmars and Raltes, they also included Kuki, Paite and Simte clans. Hmars were mostly in trade and commerce and in salaried government employment, while Raltes made up the bulk of the church bureaucracy, a formidable force in the then Lushai hills. Commoners also enjoyed wider support in and outside the Lushai Hills, something that was to prove useful for identity mobilization in the post-colonial democratic dispensation.

Improvement in social and economic status and a realization of their advantages in the new democratic dispensation led to commoners demanding a place for themselves in the political future of the state. They opposed moves by the departing colonial state to uphold the chiefs’ dominance over the political future of the Lushai Hills. The following moves of the commoners’ leadership are not very clear. But based on documentary evidence and interviews with leaders still alive, one can piece together the sequence of events that led them to ‘reinvent’ the Mizo identity as a way to contest the chiefs’ monopoly. In 1946, non-Lushai leaders came together to form the Mizo Commoners’ Union (MCU). The significance of the name was important. Rather than Hmar or Ralte, they used the title Mizo. Amongst the Kukis- Chin family, ‘Mizo’ has long signified the general population of the hills, being derived from the phrase ‘mi-zo’, meaning ‘man of the hills’, and was meant to have little ethnic significance.68 This was against the official designation of the people living in these hills as Lushais, an ethnic category. Hence technically, there were a lot more people living in the Lushai Hills who were categorized as Lushai but who were not so ethnically. The MCU’s choice of ‘Mizo’, a neutral non-ethnic appellation, was instantly acceptable to those who did not wish to belong to the Lushai category.69 Using ‘Mizo’ also helped to forge commonness among non-Lushai elements and scale-up the MCU’s support base, something that was important for the organization, as Hmar or Raltes categories themselves would have been too weak to contest Lushai monopoly.70

But the leaders of the MCU went beyond just providing a forum for anti-Lushai activity. To secure political leadership of the Lushai hills, the party underlined the inclusiveness of the Mizo identity. In 1947 MCU renamed itself Mizo Union (MU), thereby claiming to speak for all Mizos, not only commoners.71 Among its renewed objectives were to “unify and integrate all Mizo people”, “to normalize relations between chiefs and the commoners”, “to act as a representative of the Mizo people” and “to popularize the Mizo language”.72 To enhance its social base, the party’s constitution listed 41 sub-tribes as those belonging to the Mizo category. Many belong to areas outside the Lushai hills, in Manipur, Tripura, Chittagong Hill Tracts and Burma.

Table 2: Tribe/Language Populations

Source: Rev Liangkhia (1947): Mizo Chanchin - II, Aizawl: 20; B Poonte (1965): Zoram Thlirna, Aizawl: 20; Goswami (1979: 18, quoted in Central YMA (1988): Our Land and Identity. CYMA No 29, 40-41 Aizawl and Census of India 1951, Language Tables for Assam.

Interestingly, at the core of the Mizo construct was the Duhlian language, a dialect that belonged to Sailo chiefs. Probably what motivated the leadership to use a Lushai symbol in an attempt to contest Lushai power was the place of Duhlian in the lives of people. It was this language that was the common thread between people from disparate cultural backgrounds who inhabited the Lushai hills, and even beyond. Re-emphasizing their commonness was central to the MCU’s attempt to forge a common identity. One of the first tasks the MU dominated LHDC took up was renaming the Lushai hills as Mizo Hills.73 Earlier, in 1951; the Census Commission under the MU’s influence had recognized Mizo as a tribal category in Assam, facilitating the MU’s drive to consolidate the Mizo identity. By 1961 the Mizo identity was a fait accompli. These were moves that would prove useful for the MU in its bid for power in the new post-Independence democratic set-up. With its broad political appeal and a large commoners’ constituency, the party was the overall gainer in the political contests. In the first elections held in the district in 1947, the MU won all but two seats to the Advisory Council. In 1952, it swept the polls to the Assam State Assembly, winning all three seats from the district. It also swept the polls to the newly constituted Lushai Hills District Council (LHDC) and the village councils. It would continue to do so to varying degrees in the elections to follow: 13 out of 22 seats in 1957, 16 out of 22 in 1962 and 9 out of 22 in 1970.74 Elections to VCs since 1952 have invariably seen the election of people who traditionally belonged to non-Lushai sections. The MU and its non-Lushai constituency also reaped dividends at the local level with the party dominating a majority of village councils in the 1950s and 60s. The MU won a majority in all 381 village councils in 1952 and 1957, in 280 out of 381 councils in 1960, 228 out of 411 in 1963 and in 66 out of 158 councils in 1971.75 Successive political parties have played up this integrative message, and have reaped its political gains. Regional parties emphasizing their Mizo credentials have on the whole performed better at the polls than national parties.

Table 3: Party Performances In Elections (Post 1986)

Source: Chief Electoral Officer, Mizoram
(MNF: Mizo National Front, PC: People’s Conference, Others: Parties such as Zomi National Party- ZNP)

This meant a near-total break with the past. The shift changed the power structure in the Lushai Hills, leading to the rise of the hitherto disadvantaged sections as the dominant element in modern Mizoram. But by keeping the doors to the Mizo identity open to all sections, state-making leaders were able to broaden their social base and appeal by letting traditional elites in as well, to participate in Mizo social engineering. Much of the Mizo success with stability has been an outcome of this mechanism. It has also meant the incorporation of the social forces in the state’s ruling structure, thus grounding state power firmly in ‘Mizo’ society, with the vehicle for this consolidation being a united Mizo identity. Social organizations have helped state-making leaders and dominant political parties in this task, by helping to consolidate the state-society compact and provide stability.

The role of the Presbyterian Church and Young Mizo Association (YMA), a quasi-church youth organization, is significant here. As in other parts of North East region, Christian missionaries were brought into the Lushai Hills by the colonial state to help with social change and as an adjunct to colonial objectives. But unlike elsewhere, colonial administrators in the Lushai Hills depended to a greater extent on the energies of mission workers for a variety of tasks, most notably to educate its people. Missionaries ended up playing a defining role in the social life of the people and in the making of Lushai society. 76 The Lushai churches’ principal vehicle for social change is the YMA, established to uphold tlawngmainai, or the code of social discipline. YMA was envisioned as a substitute for zualbawks, the erstwhile institution of youth dormitories that had helped Lushai chiefs maintain social control and stability in their village.77

Key areas of focus for the YMA and churches have been preserving the common Mizo identity and upholding order.78 The YMA has focused on promoting “the best in Mizo culture”. In recent times, it has sought to do this through “re-emphasizing Christianity, sowing seeds of nationalism, searching out and preserving (Mizo) territory and having good political leaders”.79 Its close relationship with the state is underlined by the fact that the constitution of the YMA declares, “government is our government”. Government departments have closely involved the YMA in implementation of their development programmes.80 For its part, the dominant Presbyterian Church has been actively seeking to promote order in society and encourage ‘ethical politics’. It regularly issues directions to candidates and to voters for peaceful conduct of elections.81 It also organizes political education seminars and political awareness campaigns besides the usual clutch of social interventions.82 The Presbyterian Church and the YMA are key institutions of Mizo society. Their organizational strength and reach make them powerful instruments of social control. Both are structured as centralized bureaucracies. 98% of the state’s population is Christian. The Presbyterian Church, the dominant one in the state, has an apex Synod controlling individual churches down to the village level in a tightly organized network. The YMA network is equally extensive and organized. The Central YMA (CYMA) that sits at the apex in Aizawl tightly controls around seven hundred branches in Mizoram and beyond, organized at village and regional levels.83 The YMA claims that every Mizo youth in the state and outside is a member of the organization. In effect each member of the Mizo community is bound into the Church-YMA framework. The organizational strengths of these bodies also mean they have sizeable budgets, financed by individual and public contributions.
 

Table 4: Annual Budget of Key Social Organizations (Rs. '000)

The centralized nature of these organizations, and their large budgets, means they are able to manage their entire organization right down to the individual village level and demand compliance with their programs and directions. Adding to integrative capacity of these social organizations is cross-membership among them as well as that with agencies of the state.84 The president of the Central YMA, Lianzala, is a middle-level civil servant in the state government’s health department. Similarly the administrative head of the department tasked with essential supplies, is also the head of the local branch of the YMA besides being a senior member of the Church. In fact a majority of the YMA’s key office bearers are government employees. Most of them also happen to be senior church members. Since the churches and the YMA between them make up the core of civil society in Mizoram, this bonding helps preempt many state-society conflicts.85 It is no wonder that the issues the YMA and Church have usually emphasized are peace and order; unity and a common Mizo identity; good ‘Christian behavior’; and social and political responsibility.

State-society relations in Mizoram are thus significantly different from those in Manipur. Firstly, state-making leaders politicized the common Mizo identity to thwart challenges from traditional and particularistic centers of authority. Mizo identity was so packaged as to include all elements of Mizo society, including those that challenged the construct. Construction of the Mizo ethnic category and its politicization was thus central to the state-making exercise. Political advantages associated with this social engineering helped institutionalize the Mizo construct. Contributing to this integrative process was the history of patterns of close relationships between the state and the principal social organizations in the Lushai Hills. In more recent times, the state has leveraged the strengths of these social organizations to reemphasize the inclusive Mizoness of society and uphold order and stability in the state.
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End Notes

67 For a survey of these dynamics see McCall (1949), pp.203-207.
68 J. Shakespeare, The Lushai Kuki Clans, London: Macmillan & Co., 1912, p.xiv.
69 In the 1951 census, for example, many Raltes and Renthlai, though they spoke the Lushai duhlian dialect refused to enter themselves as Lushai. B. B. Goswami, The Mizo Unrest: A Study of Politicization of Culture, Jaipur: Alakh, 1979, p.23.
70 This was actually a case of reinventing, but to give the name a different meaning so as to serve a particular purpose. It was not as if ‘Mizo’ was a totally new name. Tribes inhabiting the region have been known by different names to outsiders: in pre-colonial times, they were all called ‘Kuki’, a Bengali word for hillman. On British advent (first contacts began with confrontation with and eventual subjugation of the dominant Sailo chiefs, who belonged to the Lusei clan), the name Lushai (a derivative of the word Lusei) began to be used. This gained currency after the area was organized administratively as the Lushai Hills district. However, another name that was also occasionally used was Mizo. Some colonial accounts felt Lushais call themselves Mizao /Mizau (McCabe in Foreign Department, External Part A Prog. Dec 1892, no 43.) This was akin to the word ‘Zo’ often mispronounced as ‘Yo’, by which people have been known to refer to themselves (GA Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. III Pt. III: 2). Yet in 1930 there were as many as 15 categories under which the population of the district was being listed; Lushai, Poi, Lakher, Hmar, Ralte, Renthlai, Khinagte, Thadou, et al, but not Mizo. (Military Report of 1930 (Vol III: 201) quoted in BB Goswami 1978: 22).
71 This discussion is based on secondary sources and interviews with R. Vanlawma, founder member of MCU and MU (Aizawl, 11 July 2004).
72 Mizo Union Constitution, Mizoram SA.
73 The Lushai Federation opposed the act, claiming that the district had been the land of the Lushais, and that “they resented being subdued by some other tribes living amongst them”, who had “cunningly introduced the word ‘Mizo’, which had no distinctive existence” (Mizoram SA # 95-66 (General)).
74 Mizoram SA # 106-37 (General) and 196-7 (General).
75 Mizoram SA # 157-12 (general) as well as personal records of Bonthanga Poonte, ex-state social welfare officer, quoted in C. Nunthara, Mizoram: Society and Polity, New Delhi: Indus, 1996, p.77.
76 McCall (1949), pp.207-212.
77 McCall, one of the last colonial administrators in the district, was one of those who felt Christian missionaries had worked to compromise the hold of Lushai chiefs and their traditions. According to him, “the changes they (missions) have wrought, have been spectacular, ...necessarily involving attack after attack on tradition” and that had given “a final blow to the authority of chiefs in Lushai society.” (McCall, 1949:199).
78 Lalruatkima, ‘Preserving National Identity’, YMA General Conference, Khawzawl, 2002, (Vawi 57-na); and Lal Chungnuna, ‘Self Reliance’, Central YMA General Conference, Thenzawl, 2003 (Vawi 58 – NA).
79 Central YMA General Conference, Khawzawl, 22-24 October 2002, (Vawi 57-na).
80 Recent partnerships have been in provision of essential services and in implementation of development projects. Central YMA is a key actor in state government’s Intodelha (self-sufficiency) Project launched in the 90s, and in its recently started land allotment program to the poor. Newslink, Aizawl, May 23, 2003.
81 Synod Executive Committee meeting with new MLAs of the Assembly (17-2-1994); Mizoram Synod Social Front Occasional Bulletin # 2. March 1994
82 Synod Bu (Annual Report), Vawi 76-na (2000), 77-na (2001), 78-na (2002). Aizawl: Mizoram Presbyterian Synod.
83 YMA Report 2004. Aizawl: Central YMA.
84 This could perhaps be the result of colonial state-missionaries alliances in education and other social fields (McCall (1949), pp.203-205).
85 Interview, Thanhawla, Secretary to the Government of Mizoram (Aizawl, 2 July 2004).

*** The author is with the Development Studies Institute, LSE

*** This is a publication of the Crisis States Programme, Development Research Centre, DESTIN, LSE, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE.

*** The paper has been republished with due permission from Crisis States Programme, Development Research Centre, DESTIN, LSE, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE.

*** You may visit www.crisisstates.com for further readings.

to be continued...

Part 5