FOR CONVENIENCE and also in line with my conviction, I have done away with the oboxious given names, except when strictly necessary and adopted the term Zo and related terms like Zogam and Zoram for our people and land I want to express my feeling at the outset that we have now come to a stage where it is no longer necessary to make elaborate efforts to prove the ethnic homogeneity of the Zos. Our task today is to make an earnest effort to see that the oneness with which God has created us is manifested in a visible form. While this requires a number of things, our main is to seek an acceptable nomenclature as our common name.
*The Given Names:*
In the ignorance of its existence of a comprehensive common name to identify the Zos, the earlier writers used various names such as Chin, Kuki, Lushai, etc. This was due to various reasons. As big tribe occupying a vast area of hilly terrain touching the plain of both Burma and the then undivided India, the Zos were then called by the more civilized people of the two countries as Kuki, Chin, Lushai, etc. While the Burmese called them Chin or Khyan, the Bengalese and others in the Indian side called the same people, Kuki with a variety of spellings. Naturally, therefore, the Britishers, the common rulers of the two nations adopted the given names. Thus were they known until the early 1870s when the third one, Lushai, was added to confound the confusion.
Soon, however, the British Military Commander and Civil Administrators most of whom were equipped with anthropological knowledge came to realize this people whom they called variously were more or less the same people and that some way they have to be dealt together. lt was with the relization that they began to use the hyphenated from such as Chin-Lushai (A.E.Reid), Lushai-Kuki (John Shakespeare) and Kuki Chin (G.A.Grierson). Sometimes, even the double hyphenated from of the three nomenclatures as Kuki-Lushai-Chin is to be found. For the same reason an attempt was also made with considerable seriousness in early 1880s to amalgamate and bring under one administration the three administrative units of the South and North Lushai Hills and the Chin Hills. A Conference held at Calcutta recommended the amalgamation of the Chin-Lushai Hills under one administration as "very desirable" which should be done "as soon as this can be". Unfortunately, steps had not been taken to materialize the recommendation as political expediency was paramount in the thinking of the then rulers. At that state the Zos were still in political wilderness. Political consciousness with a wider application was no where to be seen.
That consciousness, however, grow as the Zos came under the influnce of modern civilization. The first of this sign came when the Mizo Union, on the eve of Indian independence, submitted amemorandum to His majesty's Government,Govt. of India and its constituent Assembly through the Advisory Sub-Committee on the 26th April 1947 in which the party deplored the existing condition in which it found itself subjected to in strong terms:
It is a great injustice that the Mizos used inclusively for all Zo people having one and the same culture, speaking one and the same language, professing one and the same religion, and knit together common customs and traditions should have been called and known by different names, and throws among different people with their homeland sliced out and given to others.
Since then the unity and integrity of the Zos and that of their homeland remains the dream of every patriot and issues on which every struggle peaceful or otherwise, base their ideologies. And today, more than ever before, the need for the realization of that dream is greater and pressure harder.
*Towards A Common Nomenclature:*
The Zos have a number of traits peculiar and unique to themselves. One of such traits relevant is the peculiar sense of great importance we attached to names. Good and important as it may, it leads us to an almost imsurmountable problems. While others in our neighbourhood accepted the given names and be happy for unity afforded by them, the Zos would not. We would rather choose to suffer without one of our own.
Since time immemorial, we have been called by the Burmese Chin from which the great Chindwin river and the Chin Hills received their names. Then when sections of our people gradually move and came in contact with the plain people of Bengal and Assam, they got the name Kuki while those in Manipur received Khongsai from the Meiteis. But from quite early days of contact, it has been noted by several writers that the people to whom these nomenclatures have been applied neither recognized the term nor employ them for themselves. If they answer them when addressed, they, so says H.B. Rowney, "from knowing it to be the plain terms for their people". Nevertheless, they were used, Writes Grierson, "as a purely conventional one", and they did so against the conscience of the people.
The section of the Zos who most vehemently opposed and successfully resisted the application of the term Kuki to them were the inhabitants of the hill South Cachar district which later received its name as the Lushai Hills. But that again was not to the liking of the people as it was simply a corrupted from of Lushai, the dominant clan of the area. Though used inclusively to cover the whole population, the term Lushai had not received favour with many tribesmen is apparent by the fact as shown by the census report of 1901, that the majority of the population entered their names not as Lushai but against the names of their particular clan such as Hmar, Paite, Pawi and Ralte. The smaller section of Zos found in Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland, North Cachar Hills, etc. for sometime has accepted the term Kuki. But in no time, the said peculiar sense and certain other factors prevailed upon them too, leading them to question the credibility of the given name. Ultimately they have denounced it and ceased to used the term in favour of their particular cleans. Recently, writers and researchers in Burma too have not only questioned but also discarded the use of the term Chin as they consider it to be a name given by others with contempt in the same way it was given and discarded for the term Kuki in the Indian side. Thus, the three terms, Chin, Kuki and Lushai have come into disfavour with the people to whom they were applied.
What, then, is to be the name that could cover and would be acceptable to all clans of the Zos whose ethenic homogeneity has been proved Beyond doubt?
This question proved itself to be an unusually tough one to wrestle with. Many writers have made an attempt to suggest one or the other but found themselves bewildered and confused. Any attempt to pin the numerous clans down under one nomenclature eluded solution and continues to be so even today. It does not mean, however, a solution is an imposibility. In fact the people seem to have found the right term on which to base and build and which might be considered and accepted as the common nomenclature which also appears to be more ancient and more original than any other term current at present Zo.
The first mention of that term for the so-called Kuki-Chin people as Jo race is found in the writings of the Rev. Father Vincentious Sangermano, whose book, The Burmese Empire was published in Rome in 1835. He was quoted approvingly by Dr. Vumkhohau, a scholar, politician and diplomat and one of the most prominent figures among the Zo community in his forward to Captain K.A. Khup Za Thang, Zo Suan Khang Simna Laibu (Genealogy of Zo race of Burma), published in 1973. Another early mention of the term, the first on the side of the Lushai Hills, comes from the writings of Lt.Col. T.H. Lewin, the first Whiteman to venture into the wild and rugged Lushai Hills which till then was a terra incognito, so also the first to obtain an intimate knowledge of the inhabitants whose admiration had no bound for their White Chief Thangliana. It was he who in the course of his adventurous journeys and during the Lushai Expedition of 1871-72, the first to come to know that the generic name of the whole nation is Dzo. There were of course others like H.B. Rowney and Alexander Mackenzie who would not accept the existence of a common name for the whole race. And there is a certain degree of truth in their contention, because while writing their monograph the authors were more familiar with the section of our people found in Tripura, Cachar and Manipur, so-called Old and New Kukis, who were rather igorant of the term Zo except for a small tribe called Zou. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Zo was the only term used extensively both, in what now Dr. Vumson Suantak in his recent book calls Eestern and Western Zoram. The existence of the clan with Zou as its name in Manipur should be taken as a further proof for the extensive use of term variously spelled as Sho, Khzou, Chao, Chaw, Yaw, Asho and Masho to suit the other term that could be considered its rival shows its credibility and chance of it being accepted by all, not simply as a formulated nomenclature but as a generic name of undoubtedly ancient origin.
The main problem now is on the question of acceptance and use of the term by all concerned uniformly. For some reasons, rightly or wrongly, the need seem to have been felt in the past to affix the word, meaning man or people, to the generic name Zo either as a suffix, as in Zomi which is a form of common speech, or as a prefix as in Mizo which is a poetic form, both meaning exactly the same, Zo people or People of Zo. And while the people of the Chin Hills adopted the former, those in the Lushai Hills adopted the later from which their Hills later received its name as "Mizoram".
There is also difference of opinion on the meaning of the term "Zo". The earliest writers like FR. Sangermo (1835), TH. Lewin (1874) and A.S. Ried (1893) did not speculate as to what "Zo" means. So too was with John Shakespeare (1912) who perharps was the first to remark that the generation population of the Lushai Hills is spoken of as 'Mizo'. The translation of 'Zo' as highland or cold region and subsequently 'Mizo' and 'Zomi' as highlanders or people of the hills occurred rather late. The Rev. H.W. Carter of the B.M.S. in South Mizoram writes in the 1940s that like the people of Scotland who also lived in high hills the people called themselves 'Mizo' which means 'highlanders'. The Rev. JM. Llod who followed him translated the word Mizo' as people of the hills. Since then onwards almost every writer Zo or non-Zo seem to have accepted the reneringas correct. But in recent years, some writers like Lalbiakthang, IAS(Retd) and former Chief Secretary of Manipur State began to cast doubt about the accuracy of the meaning. He pointed out that 'Zo' refers more to the Concept of "health and pleasantness" rather than the mere fact of the Mizo villages being located on the hills which are often referred to as "tlang" than "Zo".
The real Challenge of rendering of Zomi/Mizo as highlanders come from R. Vanlawma, a veteran politician and a prolific writer of Mizoram. The etymological origin of the word 'Mizo' he thinks, is to be found not in the high altitude of their abode, but in the ethnic name of the people called "Zo". Basing on the findings of Dr. F.K. Lehman, head of Historical Departament, Illinios University in USA and one who has been doing vast research work on the Chins of Burma, Pu Vanlawma have propounded a theory that it was not the people who derived their name 'Zo' from the high lands and their farm lands, called "Zo", which derived their names from ZO PEOPLE for it was only they who cultivated such farms. Pu Vanlawma also pointed out the wide spread use of the word "Zo" and its variant spellings, such as, Dzo, Jo, Jau, Jou, Yo, Zhau, Zhou and such others in various regions in South East Asia, Burma and China in particular and, also the recent findings of Dr. Vumson Suantak of Zo clan about the existence of a great *ZO KINGDOM* in the upper reaches of Chindwin river sometime in the 11th or 12th century A.D. as pointer if not proof, that the word "Zo" is not merely a Highlander.
If we accept "Zo" as the generic name of the so-called Kuki-Chin-Lushai people, then the problem connected with the affix 'mi' (to "Zo") either as a prefix or a suffix will no longer stand as an obstacle on the way to our adoption of a common nomenclature. It was the misrendering of the word "Zo" as hill or highland which necessitated the use of the affix "mi" to make the inhabitants of a hill country, Highlanders.
We are "Zos" and the land we inhabit is Zoram or Zogam. It is God's will that we should be United as He has created us to do so. The exclamation of the Psalmist should ring in our ears as he sings:
"Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity". (Psalms 133:1).
22-04-2025 | Tuesday
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