TRN0010.1177/0265378818810271TransformationDingluaia research-article8102712018

Article

Transformation 2018, Vol. 35(4) 240­–250 Maps, Mission, Memory and © The Author(s) 2018 Article reuse guidelines: Mizo Identity sagepub.com/journals-permissions https://doi.org/10.1177/0265378818810271DOI: 10.1177/0265378818810271 journals.sagepub.com/home/trn

Lal Dingluaia Department of and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham, UK

Abstract This article will examine the role of imperial maps, Christian mission, shared memories and collective consciousness in the formation of Mizo identity. Arguing that imperial maps, supposedly based upon objective European science, were meant to suit specific purposes and were laden with deeper agendas, this article will maintain that other aspiring maps also depicted conflicting claims to territory and overlooked specific details rather than giving factual descriptions. This article will look at how borders and boundaries thus constructed have actual impacts upon the people, places and spaces they divide and include. It will particularly deal with the aspirations of the Mizo Christians who embraced during the colonial period, and how they are ‘in ’ but often feel ‘not of India’, and will interrogate the Biblical and historical dimensions of their mental maps.

Keywords Dialectic of inclusion and exclusion, Hindu nationalism and Mizo identity, maps and colonialism, mission and Biblical interpretation, shared memories and collective consciousness

Introduction As expanding empires in the heyday of colonialism were largely consolidated through maps, the eventual disintegration of the British empire in the mid-20th century spawned aspiring and com- peting maps. Meant to suit specific purposes and laden with deeper agendas, these maps depicted conflicting claims to territory and overlooked specific details rather than giving factual descrip- tions. This article will look at how borders and boundaries thus constructed have actual impacts upon the people, places and spaces they divide and include. It will particularly deal with the aspira- tions of the Mizo Christians, who are ‘in India’ but often feel ‘not of India’, and will interrogate the Biblical dimension of their mental maps.

Contours of Mizo Identity and Their Mental Maps The , before they assumed their Mizo identity, were branded by the British who annexed their land in the 1890s as the Lushais. The Lushais had been reckoned to confine

Corresponding author: Lal Dingluaia, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK. Email: [email protected] Dingluaia 241 themselves mainly in the Lushai Hills, the place allocated them by colonial discourse,1 but their stories and memories extended far beyond those Hills. Those memories that transcended and trans- gressed their Hills helped them in constructing their more inclusive Mizo identity and a mental map which extended far beyond the limits of their Hills. So, Mizo is a generic name for various clans who, by and large, adopted the Duhlian dialect spoken by the Lusei clan. Formerly known as the Chins/Kookies/Lushais by the British,2 the Mizo settled in and around (literally ‘land of the Mizo’), which is in the north-eastern part of India bordering Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). From being a part of Assam as Mizo District after the inde- pendence of India, Mizoram became a full-fledged state of India in 1987. Due to different types of boundaries that separated them for decades, the relationship between the various Mizo clans is one of an ‘other/brother’.3 But their shared memories and collective con- sciousness,4 as well as their stark difference from the plain people of the surrounding areas, give them a sense of kinship and belonging. One crucial , etched in the collective consciousness of the Mizo people in different Hills, is that they had originated from a place called Chhinlung. Chhinlung chhuak (literally ‘out of Chhinlung’, a mythical place from where their ancestors sup- posedly emerged) refers to the common matrix/womb that the Zo people believe they share despite some slight variations in their dialects, customs and practices. Another vital piece of their memo- ries is that of the Rih lake of Burma/Myanmar. The pre-Christian Mizo believed that the spirits of the dead passed through this lake before reaching their eternal abode. Folklores, stories and songs perpetuate the legend of the Rih lake and the name still holds a charm for these people. So central is the lake in their narrative that it prompted the ironic saying: ‘the largest lake in Mizoram is Rih lake but it is situated in Burma’. Another tradition which breached their immediate vicinity was the ‘’ encased in sakhua – often decoded as their primitive ‘religion’. Basically, the pre-Christian Mizo had a vague concept of Chung Pathian, a benevolent supreme ‘ on high’ that rarely interfered in their daily lives. But there is a more ritualistic aspect in their ‘religion’ as embodied in sakhua. Sakhua was perpetu- ally reinvented, probably after mightier foes annihilated their community leaders when they settled somewhere around Khampat in Burma/Myanmar. The surviving members who scattered across the hills, to get blessings and protection from sickness, started invoking a deity or sa with the confined to respective families. The notion of sa and another cognate word kung implies the main trunk of a tree which supports the branches or a primordial root which upholds one’s being. Changing ‘affiliation’ from one’s particular sa was akin to cutting off one’s identity to assume another, and it was denoted by the word saphun – phun implying the uprooting and replanting of a tree. To appease the sa, the priests who led the rituals closed their incantations by saying, ‘May the one whom our grandparents venerated heed us’. Zairema, who has extensively studied Mizo reli- gion, infers that this closing formula was made by the ‘unassertive’ priests to make sure that they did not fail to address the one their ancestors had taken as deity. As time passed and families evolved into clans, specific ancestral names and the places/hills/villages where they had previously settled were added to the formula.5 Most of the places these memories invoked lie outside the present political boundaries of Mizoram. But like the memories of the land of Egypt invoked in the Jewish Passover meal (Ex.12- 14; Num. 9:1-5), remembering the name of different places in their ‘rituals’ and stories forged a deep sense of kinship for the Mizo. These memories/consciousness that embraced a shared notion of origin and destiny gave meaning to their life from which sprung forth their sense of values and identity. The geographical space embedded in those memories, from being ‘merely an area of space’, evolved into a ‘space with meaning: a territory’.6 The ‘shared memories’ became territorial markers that served as ‘the classificatory distinction of a “we” in contrast to a “them”’,7 which was unleashed in the ‘aspirational maps’ of ‘Greater Mizoram’. 242 Transformation 35(4)

Depiction of the Mizo and Their Territory in Various Maps Besides these ‘given’ or primordial aspects which make territoriality instinctive, there is a ‘con- structivist’ factor that determines the Mizo identity and territoriality. Before the ‘institutional phe- nomenon of borders’ determined the limits of their sovereignty ‘through unequal power relations’,8 their territory was ‘just areas where the people were ethnically related but constantly at war with each other, sometimes from village to village’.9 After they encountered colonial power/s that relied on maps to define ownership and influence, a more coherent, though often fractured, identity was constructed. As these maps predate and initiated a specific sense of Mizo identity and territory, we shall first look at how they depicted and negated the Mizo and their territory.

The British India Maps. These maps, supposedly based upon objective European science, are the archetype of later maps. Economically motivated, they were meant to protect British interest and divide the people according to administrative convenience. These maps can fall under two periods: the periods before and after the Chin-Lushai Expedition of 1889–1890. Before the Chin-Lushai Expedition, on imperial maps depicting ‘claims to territory and demar- cating growing spheres of influence’,10 the Mizo territory was usually represented as an unknown/ empty space, a frontier to the expanding British India. But with the thriving tea market in Britain in the early 19th century, an embargo on Chinese tea imports, and the discovery of indigenous tea in India11 resulted in the eastward expansion of the British Empire beyond the demarcated Cachar District of Assam into the hill countries. Though the British had no direct economic interest in the hills area,12 they felt the need to establish clear boundaries that would serve as a line of control to protect their interests in the plains area from recurring raids by the hill people. 13 So, the British administrators proposed ‘a boundary which the Lushais should respect’.14 Around 1864 when the messengers of Mizo chief Vanpuiliana ‘expressed great dread at the advance of tea gardens’ into their territory, Captain Stewart, the Deputy Commissioner of Cachar District, tried to diffuse the situation ‘by showing how advantageous to the Hill Tribes the vicinity of a garden would prove’.15 On 16 January 1871, JW Edgar, special Deputy Commissioner of Cachar District, came to the village of chief Suakpuilala, a prominent Mizo chief with the hope of settling ‘a boundary from the borders of Manipur to Hill Tipperah, where ordinary British civil jurisdiction should cease’.16 This proposal, which later became the basis of the ‘Southern Cachar District Boundary’, intruded deep into the Mizo territory. It angered the Mizo chiefs and they set out ‘to attack the tea gardens, each chief assigned to attack certain specified garden’. On 23 January 1871, one party which raided Alexandrapur tea garden, and killed James Winchester and took his daughter Mary and others as captives. The British’s attempt to recover these captives resulted in the Lushai Expedition of 1871– 1872 and the ‘placing of line of strongly manned posts along the whole Southern Frontier of Cachar and Syhlet’.17 Recounting this Expedition, Woodthorpe make an insightful remark that echoes the plight of the Mizo chiefs:

The tea-gardens, which were originally confined to the northern part of the district, have of late years been sweeping further and further south, as enterprising individuals have been found to take grants from Government for the cultivation of the tea-plant.18

As land was ‘merely an area of space’ for the taking, a wasteland in colonial discourse,19 the Mizo raid was a ‘marauding excursion’ by ‘savages’ that needed to be tamed through a series of punitive military expeditions. But, for the Mizo who conducted raids to prevent ‘encroachment’ upon their land, this land had always been an intrinsic part of their identity. It was their ‘sacred territory’ in the form of a ‘ ground’ for elephants – sai ram chhuahna – which is an Dingluaia 243 essential social event with deep religious, economic and cultural implications. In traditional Mizo belief, to attain the status of thangchhuah which entitled a person’s soul to reached pialral, or , one needed to kill an elephant and other wild animals on the chase. To have a successful elephant hunt, a solemn kawngpui siam was performed and a holiday had to be observed if the hunting party succeeded. The meat was shared by whole villages, and the elephant tusks were traded and also used as earrings which were the most precious ornament of Mizo women.20 One of the blessings they bestowed upon a new born baby boy was to say, ‘He will become a brave man/warrior and shoot an elephant’.21 Losing this territory greatly undermined every aspects of their lives. So, a period of calm was followed by more raids which resulted in the punitive military expedi- tion of 1889. After the Mizo chiefs were subjugated, the British annexed their territories, adminis- tering the northern part from Assam and the southern part from Bengal until the larger part of it became one district of Assam in 1898. In 1904, the British ‘redefined’ the boundary without con- sulting or informing the Mizo chiefs. Zairema observed that the boundary line of 1904 ‘carved out from the Lushai Territory all the best cultivable lands and forest wealth to be included in the Cachar District’.22 Later, Lushai Hills was designated an ‘excluded area’ under the Government of India Act, 1935 which ‘implies that Lushai is outside the control of the Provincial Legislatures’ in Assam.23 Thus, the imperial map of British India can rightly be seen as ‘a model for, rather than a model of, what it purported to represent’, ‘designed to summarize precisely those aspects of a complex world that are of immediate interest to the mapmaker and to ignore the rest’.24 They also determined how the Mizo were imagined.

Map of India Union. The current ‘official’ map of India was based upon the imperial map of British India. To differentiate it with other maps, we will call it the ‘secular/Indian National Congress map’ since the territorial boundaries were inherited from the British ‘geographical conception of India’25 largely on a non-religious basis. Intertwined with the idea of an ‘Indian’ nation, this map embodies the ‘Indian nationalist’ aspiration to maintain the geo-body of India intact at all cost, which often entails a military rather than a democratic solution. As an inheritance from the British, this map failed to represent the aspiration of the Mizo people since its inception. This aspiration was initially asserted in a ‘Memorandum’ submitted on 26 April 1947 to ‘His Majesty’s Government’ by leaders of the Mizo Union, a political party formed on 6 April 1946. In the ‘Memorandum’, they stated that ‘the total Mizo population of the contiguous area’ (i.e. Lushai Hills, Cachar District, the States of Manipur and Tripura, Chittagong Hill Tracts and the Chin Hills (Burma) with an area about 15,993 square miles) comes to ‘roughly 328,400’. This makes it ‘the more imperative that His Majesty’s Government … should do the just and proper thing and grant the Mizos their just demand for territorial unity and solidarity’.26 But, instead of integrating all Mizo inhabited areas into one political entity, their territory became part of India, Burma and East Pakistan. In the map of India Union, the British map of 1904- an ‘imaginary line made on [a] table for administrative convenience’ - was ‘imposed’ to delimit the Mizo territory. This map determined the boundary of the Lushai Hills Autonomous District Council (1952) and the Union Territory of Mizoram (1972) after the North Eastern Re-Organisation Bill, though protested vehemently by the Mizo elected representative, was passed in the Indian Parliament in 1971.27 For the Mizo people, this map produces what Migdal has described as ‘multiple types of boundaries overlapping one another’ and ‘numerous mental maps’ that ‘generate many different forms of belonging’.28

Map of Hindustan. We can label this as ‘the Saffron/Hindu Nationalist map’. This map was based on the ideology that ‘Hindus should constitute an exclusive and self-governing nation of the 244 Transformation 35(4) future’.29 Looking at the historical background, Jaffrelot considered Hindu nationalism as running ‘parallel to the dominant Indian political tradition of the Congress Party’, and it can be traced back to the 19th century Hindu reform movement which is an ideological reaction to European domina- tion. While the founders of Congress defined the Indian nation not on the basis of cultural features but on territorial criterion, Hindu nationalism:

assumed that India’s national identity was summarized by Hinduism, the dominant creed … Indian culture was to be defined as Hindu culture, and the minorities were to be assimilated by their paying allegiance to the symbols and mainstays of the majority as those of the nation.30

This ideology was codified by Savarkar in his book Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? Written in the early 1920s, this book was the initial effort at conferring what Savarkar called the Hindu Rashtra (nation) with a specific identity: namely Hindutva.31 Important tenets of the Hindu nation are religion, land, race and language. Thus, Hindutva was equated with ‘Hindu, Hindi, Hindustan’ and Hindu nationalism is the outcome of ‘superimposition of a religion, a culture, a language, and a sacred territory’. Savarkar’s ideology inspired Keshav Baliram Hedgewar who founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to propagate the Hindutva ideology and infuse new physical strength into the majority community. The RSS collaborated with Hindu Mahasabha to form the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951, which is the forerunner of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).32 The BJP was formed in April 1980, under the leadership of Atal Behari Vajpayee. In 1984 the BJP won only two seats in the parliamentary elections. But in the 2014 elections, the BJP and its allies, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), had a landslide victory. BJP won 282 seats, which was 10 more than the required majority, and the NDA won 336 seats and formed a new government. More recently, after the last round of state elections in 2018, BJP and its allies are in power across 80% of India’s geographical expanse, governing over 70% of the Indian population.33 This ‘Saffronization of India’ could have profound impact on the Mizo Christians. Hindutva, the watchword of the BJP, symbolizes the ‘Indian’ identity, whereas the religious minorities, particu- larly Muslims and Christians, are outsiders – as they locate their holy land, their cultural identity, outside of India – and they must cling to Hindutva culture, which is the national culture.34 Associating Christianity with foreignness, vows to free India of Christianity by 2021 and a demand for people to convert to Hinduism to be able to stay in India were popular notions that caught the imagination of many Indians.35 This rhetoric strikes at the very root of Mizo Christian identity.

Map of Pakistan/Bang-i-Islam. Originally conceptualized by Choudhry Rahmat Ali and endorsed by the Muslim League, this map basically envisaged a separate Muslim province/homeland out of British India. Obscuring ground realities, this map force-fits the Mizo territory as part of Bang- i-Islam. Although the actual territory was very different from the one envisaged by Ali, 36 Chit- tagong Hill Tracts where many Mizo had settled since time immemorial became part of East Paki- stan/Bangladesh when the British left India. They became the Jumma people, which is the collective name for all indigenous peoples in the region, and ‘the Bangladesh government also settled hun- dreds of thousands of Bengali people in their midst, who now make up the majority of the popula- tion in the Chittagong Hills region’.37 Considering the rigid stance of the Myanmar government towards ‘Bengali immigrants’ in Burma/Myanmar, the recent publication of the controversial National Register of Citizens which left around four million ‘immigrants’ stateless in Assam38 and the growing Hindutva forces in India, the squeeze for spaces in ‘Islamic’ Bangladesh could have further serious ramifications for the Mizo territory and identity. Dingluaia 245

Precursors of the Mizo Christians’ Mental Maps When we survey different ‘aspiring’ maps, we see that they are often loaded with hegemonic agen- das. The boundaries constructed using partial criteria tend to negate the aspiration of other groups. This tendency anticipates, if not justifies, the existence of competing maps replicating the pattern of imperial maps based on the same logic. It was from this background that more profound and definite mental maps, permeated with Christian symbolism and often crisscrossed with boundaries, emerged among the Mizo. But it begins with the deconstruction and realignment of pre-existing borders and boundaries. The annexation of the Mizo territory by the British was soon followed by the arrival of Christian missionaries. As the had no script of its own, the missionaries used the Roman script for Mizo language and formal education, and created the Mizo Alphabet in March 1894. The first primary school opened on 2 April 1894, and the Gospel of Luke, John and the Acts of the Apostle was translated into Lusei/Duhlian vernacular in 1896. The missionaries conveyed their messages through songs, simple stories and pictures, and incorporated them into the educa- tion system. As the Bible and literacy went together, the Bible can be considered as the ‘new fetish’ of the Mizo. And as the message is the medium, the Lusei/Duhlian dialect became the lingua franca of the Mizo. Besides the linguistic barriers, Christianity also overcame the establishment of separate villages and communities based upon clanship divisions. As different families and clans strictly observed particular sakhua, changing one’s sakhua was akin to cutting off one’s identity and risking the wrath of the family deities. But the Christian story of the mighty Jesus Christ who healed the sick and cast out demons was indeed ‘Good News’ which levelled and transcended the former clanship divisions. The significance of Chhinlung chhuak was bolstered, if not usurped, by the Biblical myth of ‘our first parents Adam and Eve’. Christian sakhua was disseminated into the surrounding villages, often considered as foes before this. Within 50 years, almost all the entire Mizo nation had been converted to Christianity. Another important concept that transcended its symbol of a rigid divide in the Mizo imagi- nation is the traditional pialral, incorporated into the Christian heaven. Pialral had always been exclusively reserved for the affluent and the privileged few who can fulfil the arduous thangchhuah requirements. Thangchhuah were distinguished by various social symbols in life and were entitled pialral in the afterlife. Since ‘believing Jesus’ opened the road to pial- ral/heaven in the new sakhua, the new equation was between ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers’. Thangchhuah and its imagined borders were made obsolete after virtually all the Mizo embraced Christianity.

Charting the Terrain of Mizo Christians’ Mental Maps We have mentioned that the Mizo cherished and hung onto the memories of faraway places through their stories, songs and rituals. When they embraced Christianity, they initially ‘changed their tune’ and sang translated songs. But these songs did not satisfy the of the Mizo who related every aspect of their life, with its ups and downs, with songs. After an emotionally-charged revival in 1919, they started composing indigenous hymns but the ‘imagined topography’ drastically changed. The desire to transcend the world and its suffering was a recurring theme. The idyllic place they longed to reach was either pialral, Canaan, Zion or the New Jerusalem. Patea, who composed the first indigenous Christian hymn in 1921, adorned the 55 songs he composed with biblical imagery, mentioning Zion thirty one times, Calvary twenty times, Salem/Jerusalem seventeen times, Canaan ten times, Bethlehem seven times and Jordan six times.39 246 Transformation 35(4)

Calvary particularly charmed the Mizo Christians and EL Mendus, one of the Welsh missionaries, remarked that the name of Calvary became better known even than the names of their own hills in the height of the 1919 revival.40 Though Rih lake was mentioned now and then in lyrics to refer to the dead, their laments started to contain expressions like ‘standing on the stormy bank of the river Jordan’ and ‘gazing at the promised land from the top of Mount Pisgah’. As they revelled in the land of the Bible in their imagination, new localities that were inhabited more recently were often named Bethlehem, Bethel, Canaan, Galilee, Goshen, Hermon, Salem, Zion, etc. This also affected the way names were given to persons and things. While names in the past often reflected a feat of their pro- genitor, now it become commonplace to take a Biblical name as a first name. As the enchantment with Biblical names was not confined within Mizoram, it can serve as significant boundary markers in places like India, Burma/Myanmar and Bangladesh where the majority were not Christians. These ‘imaginations’ transpired into ‘collective consciousness’ that fostered a deeper sense of kinship. Christian solidarity that transcended boundaries was often expressed in the form of sharing, a much-cherished ethos of the Mizo that was enshrined in the popular saying, sem sem dam dam, ei bil thi thi.41 Mizo Christians often witnessed revival movements that engulfed the entire country and ‘whenever there was a revival there was also brotherly love in a marked degree’.42 Besides the great efforts made to share the revival experiences with their ethno-culturally related groups outside Mizoram, priority in mission and relief works was also given to them. A fine example will be what was known as Chanchin tha dak (Gospel Mail) in 1946. This project was undertaken by the Young Lushai Association (an NGO now known as the ) with the initiative of Robuanga, a zealous evangelist of Ruan tlang village in Mizoram. Seeing that their brethren in Burma had nothing to read and that they were very poor, Robuanga appealed to Christians in Mizoram to donate books and any kind of school literature for them. These items, along with other goods, were put in wooden boxes called Chanchin tha dak and were carried through numbers of villages by young volunteers after the customary manner of carrying the sick or a corpse. Recounting the event, Bawla claimed that the epic journey of the boxes matched that of the ‘ark of the covenant’ in Israel (1 Sam.4:5) and that the ‘goodwill mission’ greatly impressed the recipients in Burma who, in the past, would engage in bitter fights with the people of Mizoram.43 And despite the ‘other/ brother’ tensions prevailing among the Mizo people settling in various places in and around Mizoram, calamities and conflicts usually bring out the best of these kinships, with the initiatives often taken in , the capital of Mizoram.44 In fact, Aizawl was often referred to as the ‘Jerusalem of the Mizo nation’ in common parlance, which clearly reflects the Biblical nature of Mizo Christian solidarity. Perhaps, the influence of the Bible upon the Mizo Christians’ mental map may be best depicted in the logo of the Gospel Centenary, celebrated in 1994 to commemorate the arrival of the Gospel in Mizoram. This logo, largely inspired by the Biblical concept of a chosen nation,45 reflected the Mizo Christians’ common perception that they received the Gospel from far away while their land- locked country was ‘insulated’ from the influence of three great religious traditions – Buddhism in the East, Islam and Hinduism in the West. Moreover, this logo reflected their belief that they were chosen to ‘lighten up’ the surrounding nations who were not Christians. While Biblical imagination can transcend boundaries and bring solidarity, it can also divide people and create multiple boundaries in society. The notion of being chosen usually involved the need to segregate from the ‘other’, drawing ‘boundaries’ between the included and the excluded. And if this obsession goes together with apocalyptic millennialist belief, it literally leads to the creation of separate communities. One such ‘eschatological community’ in Mizoram, called Lalpa Kohhran Thar (The New Church of the Lord), believed that God had chosen them over the now- forsaken Israel of the Bible and regarded their leaders as ‘the new Moses’. Another form of segre- gation was the desire to ‘return’ expressed by those who considered themselves to be ‘the lost tribe Dingluaia 247 of Israel’. Accordingly, around 5000 members from the Bnei Manasseh community in and around Mizoram have migrated to Israel since 1989 and adopted the Jewish belief.46 While mental maps often envision boundaries and territories without separate political sover- eignty, it can also inspire and transpire into demand for political autonomy. In the Mizo context, Biblical imagery was interwoven into the discourse on political struggles. As mentioned, in 1947 the Mizo Union petitioned ‘His Majesty’s Government’ to ‘grant the Mizo people their just demand for territorial unity and solidarity’. After being in the Indian Union for nearly 20 years, the (MNF) submitted another memorandum to the Prime of India on 30 October 1965 seeking ‘political self-determination’, stating:

[The] Mizo people had not been able to feel at home with Indians or in India, nor have they been able to feel that their joys and sorrows have really even been shared by India. They do not, therefore, feel Indian. Being created as a separate nation, they cannot go against the nature to cross the barrier of nationality.47

On 1 March 1966, the MNF declared independence from India, citing among other points that Indian ‘secularism … leads to suppression of Christianity’, and that India ‘attempts to wipe out Christianity, our sole religion’. This was preceded by the publication of Exodus Politics by the MNF. The declaration of independence was followed by a bitter armed struggle, which initially started with the launching of simultaneous attacks on Indian army posts in Mizoram which was aptly code-named ‘Operation Jericho’. ‘Babylonian captivity’ and ‘martyrdom’ were other power- ful imagery drawn from the Bible in relation to their suffering and struggle against India.48 As the MNF demanded ‘re-unification of all Mizo inhabited areas under a single administrative unit’, the Mizo National Army volunteers took an oath by swearing on the Bible, with the strong conviction that they were fighting ‘For God and Our Country’.49 Though the creation of a greater Mizoram was not endorsed with armed struggle anymore after the Mizo Peace Accord was signed in 1986, the aspiration is far from over. As we have seen, sev- eral factors can spawn a ‘perceived threat’ to Mizo identity and their religion which can fan the passion for it. And if recent events can be any indication, the people of Mizoram will find justifica- tion from the Bible to defend and fight for their God-given land. Reflecting on a recent boundary dispute between Assam and Mizoram that resulted in bloodshed,50 and stressing the need to make a united effort to solve the conflict, an influential Mizo leader started his regular column in one of the most-widely circulated Mizo newspaper with the Biblical verse, ‘Do not remove the ancient landmark that your ancestor set up’ (Prov. 22:28).51

Conclusion We have seen that the identity of the Mizo is a complex one tied into the complexities of colonial expansion. This forms the background of how their conception of the Bible transformed the Mizo Christians’ imagination, thereby constructing and bolstering new identity and territoriality in the process. Their imagination transcended their immediate contexts and its cultural symbols and dwelled on the Holy Land, i.e. Israel, and this also continues to shape their self-ascription. But in India, the Hindu nationalists who insisted that every ‘Indian’ must cling to Hindutva culture were gaining strength. For them, Mizoram is on the Indian map but not on their ‘Indian’ mind, while for many of the Mizo Christians they were ‘in’ India but ‘not of’ India. This dialectic of inclusion and exclusion will continue to impact the fragile Mizo identity.

Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. 248 Transformation 35(4)

Notes 1. Here, colonial discourse refers to ‘a system of statements that can be made about colonies and colonial peoples … It is the system of knowledge and beliefs about the world within which acts of colonization take place’ ((1998) Colonial discourse. In: Tiffin H, Griffiths G and Ashcroft B (eds) Key Concepts in Post Colonial Studies. London: Routledge, p. 41–43). 2. The British were aware that ‘Chins/Kookies/Lushais’ was a misnomer. See Carey BS and Tuck HN (1873) The Chin Hills: A history of the people, our dealings with them, their customs and manners, and a gazetteer of their country, Vol.1. Rangoon: Government Printing Press, p. 3; Reid AS (1893) Chin Lushai Land. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., p. 5; Woodthorpe RG The Lushai Expedition, 1871–1872. London: Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, p. 10. 3. This denotes the fluid and complex relationship between the various clans of the Zo people who live beyond state borders and international boundaries, thereby becoming aliens on the one hand, while still being kin due to co-ethnicity on the other hand. See McConnachie K (2018) Boundaries and belonging in the Indo-Myanmar borderlands: Chin refugees in Mizoram. Journal of Refugee Studies 31(3): 314–333. 4. According to Crosby, ‘shared memories’ and ‘collective consciousness’ are two important components for the existence of a nation. See Crosby S (2005) Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 8, 9. 5. See Zairema (2009) Pi Pute Biak Hi. Edited by Chuauthuama. Aizawl: Zorun Community., p. 195ff. 6. Crosby (2005: 10). 7. Crosby (2005: 16). 8. Diener AC and Hagen J (2005) Borders: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 4, 6. 9. Lintner B (2015) Great Game East: India, China, and the Struggle for Asia’s Most Volatile Frontier. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, pp. 100, 101. 10. Matthews JA (2008) Geography: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 5, 6. 11. See Misra B (1987) Quality, investment and international competitiveness: Indian tea industry, 1880– 1910. Economic and Political Weekly 22(6): 230–238. As Piya Chatterjee has argued, ‘[Tea] becomes a medium through which the chronicles of global expansion and conquest can be told’ (Chatterjee P (2001) A Time for Tea: Women, Labour, and Post/Colonial Politics on an Indian Plantation. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, p. 21). 12. See McCall AG (1949) Lushai Chrysalis. London: Luzac and Co., Ltd., pp. 5, 65. 13. See Woodthorpe (1873: 6); Zairema (2009) Memorandum on inter-state boundary of Assam in Barak Valley. In: Zairema and Chuauthuama (eds) Random Notes. Aizawl: Zorun Community, pp. 227–244. 14. MacKenzie A (1884) History of the Relations of the Government with the Hill Tribes of the North-East Frontier of Bengal. Calcutta: Home Department Press, p. 295. Cf. Woodthorpe (1873: 14). 15. MacKenzie (1884: 299). 16. MacKenzie (1884: 305). 17. Zairema (2009: 229, 236); MacKenzie (1884: 317). 18. Woodthorpe (1873: 9). 19. Colonial discourse often ‘erased prior constructions of the land, allowing it to be seen as an empty space, ready to receive their own inscriptions’ ((1998) Palimpsest. In: Tiffin H et al. (eds) Key Concepts in Post Colonial Studies. London: Routledge, p. 174–176). This was achieved through the establishment of the Assam Wasteland Grand Rules of 1838. Other acts were also incorporated later which further enabled ‘British planters to own large tracts of the most fertile land of Assam at highly concessional rates’ (LaFavre G (2013) The tea gardens of Assam and Bengal: Company rule and exploitation. The Trinity Papers, 1 January, p. 17. Available at: http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/trinitypapers (accessed 21 April 2018). 20. See Shakespear J (1912) The Lushei Kuki Clans. London: London: MacMillan and Co., Ltd., pp. 12, 14, 35, 77; cf. MacKenzie (1884: 307). Baker, describing the country passed through by his column when they were dispatched to Suakpuilala’s village on 20 February 1869 after some unrest, stated that elephants ‘are extremely numerous in these valleys’ (Woodthorpe, 1873: 28). But, ‘within thirty years of British rule in the Lushai Hills these forests became almost free from that animal’ (Chatterjee S (1985) Mizoram Under the British Rule. Delhi: Mittal Publications, p. 187. Dingluaia 249

21. Challiana (1956) Hmasang Mizo Awmdan. Serkawn: South Lushai Mission Press, p. 2. 22. Zairema (2009: 242). In 1904, tea ‘occupies half a million acres of land that were formerly waste and non-productive, and of that area 64 per cent is in the province of Assam and Eastern Bengal. The industry gives lucrative employment to over 600,000 persons. The invested capital comes to well over £20,000,000. [The exports amounted to] 200,000,000 lb., valued at £6,000,000’ (Watt G (1907) Tea and the tea plant. The Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society XXXII, p. 64–96). 23. McCall (1949: 238). 24. Winichakul T (1994) Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-body of a Nation. Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, p. 130; Scott JC (1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, p. 87. 25. Edney MH (1997) Mapping and Imperialism: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765– 1843. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, p. 16. The Indian nation ‘encompassed all those who happened to live within the borders of British India’ for the founders of Congress (Jaffrelot C (2007) Hindu Nationalism: A Reader. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 4). 26. Memorandum submitted to his Majesty’s Government, Government of India and its constituent Assembly through the advisory sub-committee by the Mizo Union on 26.4.1947. Available at: shodhganga.inflib- net.ac.in/bitstream/10603/67695/17/17_appendix%20iii.pdf (accessed 21 April 2018). 27. Zairema (2009: 236–237, 242). 28. Migdal JS (2004) Mental maps and virtual checkpoints: Struggles to construct and maintain state and social boundaries. In: Migdal JS (ed.) Boundaries and Belonging: States and Societies in the Struggle to Shape Identities and Local Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 3–23. 29. Bhatt C (2001) Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern . Oxford and New York: Berg, p. 76. 30. Jaffrelot (2007: 3–7). 31. Bhatt (2001: 105, 106) remarked that Savarkar was influenced by ‘far-right wing nationalist ideologies emanating from Eastern and Western Europe’, particularly ‘Nazi Germany’. 32. Jaffrelot (2007: 14–17). 33. Jaffrelot (2007: 14–17); Times of India (2018) From 1980 to 2018, this is how the BJP has risen. 6 April. Available at: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/from-1980-to-2018-this-is-how-the-bjp -has-risen/articleshow/63638579.cms (accessed 22 April 2018). 34. Zavos J (2005) The shapes of Hindu nationalism. In: Adeney K and Saez L (eds) Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism. London: Routledge, p. 36–54. 35. Lowry L (2018) Hindu leader demands all Christians leave India in publicized video. Open Doors. 1 June. Available at: https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/stories/hindu-leader-demands-all- christians-leave-india-in-publicized-video/ (accessed 24 April 2018); Srivastava P (2014) ‘We will free India of Muslims and Christians by 2021’: DJS leader vows to continue ‘ghar wapsi’ plans and restore ‘Hindu glory’. Mail Online India, 19 December. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews /article-2879597/We-free-India-Muslims-Christians-2021-DJS-leader-vows-continue-ghar-wapsi -plans-restore-Hindu-glory.html (accessed 22 April 2018). 36. Ali’s scheme ‘envisaged massive transfers of Muslim populations from other parts of India’, and was dismissed as a ‘“student scheme” which was “chimerical” and “impractical”’ by even the Muslim delegates attending the round table conferences in London (Jalal A (1994) The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 12). 37. Robert Meganson (2015) Hidden Bangladesh: Violence and brutality in the Chittagong hill tracts. Amnesty International UK. Available at: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/groups/wirksworth-and-district/ hidden-bangladesh-violence-and-brutality-chittagong-hill-tracts (accessed 4 April 2018). 38. Saw Yan Naing (2017) Myanmar conflict: The view from Yangon. BBC News. Available at: https://www. bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41163655 (accessed 4 April 2018); Soutik Biswas (2018) What happens to India’s four million ‘stateless’ people? BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia- india-45002670 (accessed 30 July 2018). 39. Lalthangliana B (1986) Patea leh Damhauhva Hnuhma. Tluangmami: Tahan, Kalemyo, pp. 1–84. 40. Mendus EL (1956) The Diary of a Jungle Missionary. Liverpool: Foreign Mission Office, p. 82. 250 Transformation 35(4)

41. This means ‘Share liberally and live long, withhold and die soon’. Zairema called this ‘the ideal guiding pre-Mizo Christian society’. Zairema (2009) Corruption and Mizo society. In: Zairema and Chuauthuama (eds) Thukhawchang Mi Pekte Hi. Aizawl: Zorun Community, pp. 360–368. 42. Thanzauva K (ed.) (1997) Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Mizoram 1894–1957. Aizawl: SL&PB, pp. 66, 67. 43. Bawla LR (1984) History of the Presbyterian Church of Burma. Kalemyo: General Assembly Sub Committee, The Presbyterian Church of Burma, pp. 12–14; cf. Lawmsanga (2016) Theology of Mission: Postcolonial Perspective. Aizawl: Lalmuanpuii, pp. 197–199. 44. See McConnachie (2018: 11–14). 45. According to Anthony D Smith, the myth of ethnic chosenness is one of the four essential mechanisms for ethnic self-renewal (Smith AD (1991) National Identity. London: Penguin Books Ltd., pp. 35–36). 46. Lintner (2015: 106, 107). For a detailed study of the issues, see Vanlalchhuanga (2010) An Zirtirnate leh an Chanchin. Venghnuai: Gosen Home. 47. Memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister of India by the MNF General Headquarters, Aizawl, Mizoram on October 30, 1965. Available at: shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/67695/17/17_ appendix%20iii.pdf (accessed 21 April 2018). 48. Lintner (2015: 90); Zoramthanga, the second-in-command of the MNF during the conflict, wrote a song of exhortation called ‘The Cross of Christ in our Land’, based on Exodus 23:20. See Zama C (2005) Mizo Hnam Hla. Aizawl: C. Zama, pp. 79–81, 84. 49. See Lintner (2015: Chapter 3) for a brief account of the MNF movement. 50. For a detailed account of the confrontation, see Sapdanga K (ed.) Vanglaini XXXIII/59, 11–12 March 2018, pp. 1–3. 51. Chuauthuama (2018) Tanrual a hun. Vanglaini XXXIII/64, 17 March, p. 8.

Author Biography Lal Dingluaia is currently doing his PhD at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is an Ordained Minister of the Presbyterian Church of India, Mizoram Synod. From 2014-2017, he was teaching Christian Theology and Ethics at the Aizawl Theological College, Aizawl, India. His area of interest include the theology of Augustine and John Calvin, Christian eschatology and theological hermeneutics. He is the author of ‘Judgment According to the Deeds: An Appraisal of Article X of the Presbyterian Church of India’s Confession of Faith (New Delhi: Christian World Imprints, 2015).