Violent clashes broke out in Churachandpur last week between individuals belonging to the Zomi community on one side, and those belonging to the Hmar and Kuki communities on the other. All three communities fall under the larger Zo umbrella.
Who are the Zo people?
The Zo people are an ethnolinguistic group who speak the Kuki-Chin languages, a group of related Sino-Tibetan languages. Linguist Linda Konnerth in 2018 gave Kuki-Chin the alternative moniker of “South-Central Trans-Himalayan” languages, because of negative connotations of the term “Kuki-Chin” for many speakers of languages in this group.
Although there is no universally accepted origin story, the scholarly consensus is that the Zo people settled in what is today Myanmar thousands of years ago, travelling from China via Tibet.
Constant feuds among various tribal clans drove many westward to modern-day Mizoram and parts of Manipur in the 17th century. There they settled in new villages, but remained socially and emotionally enmeshed with the Chin tribes of Myanmar.
Today, a majority of the Zo population lives in “Manipur and Mizoram in Northeast India, Bangladesh, and Chin State of Myanmar”. (Thangtungnung, H, ‘Ethnic History and Identity of the Zo Tribes in North East India’, Journal of North East India Studies, 2015).
The Zo people comprise various sub-tribes and clans such as the Chin, Kuki, Mizo, Lushei, Zomi, Paitei, Hmar, Ralte, Pawi, Lai, Mara, Gangte, Thadou, etc.
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Apart from ethnicity, the tribes are also knit together by religion. Traditionally, the Zo people were animists and practiced ancestral worship. Due to proselytisation by British missionaries from the 19th century onwards, a majority of Zo people today are Protestant Christians.
What are the dynamics between various Zo tribes?
At the heart of the clash last week is a long power struggle over the representation of various small tribes, with their unique identity, that are clubbed together as the Zo. Notably, tribes identifying as Zomi reject the term Kuki, pointing to its colonial origin, and oppose “assimilation” by that “hegemonic” identity.
But power struggles aside, the idea of “Zo reunification” holds emotional appeal among many. Today, the Zo people straddle domestic and international borders, which were erected rather arbitrarily by the British, or for administrative reasons in the subsequent post-colonial states. That there is no Zo administrative unit — nation or otherwise — is a product of specific historical circumstances.
Although the movement for reunification itself has petered out — in no small part due to the sheer political implausibility of being carve out a integrated Zo land from areas in Manipur and Tripura, Mizoram, the Chin and Arakan states in Myanmar, and the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh — the idea still resonates in Mizoram.
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As Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) president Lalduhoma said in 2023: “The vision of my party is that, there will come one day, when all the Zo people are put under one administrative unit — this is our mission.” ZPM is the main opposition party in Mizoram.