“A picture speaks more than a thousand words”. This adage is eloquently proved by this book on the social history of Mizoram.
For generations, many historians have treated images as lesser sources of evidence about the past than words and figures. But today, visual collections increasingly provide the central evidence for entire historical arguments. Photographs are of particular interest because they were created exactly at the time when the events or conditions occur, whereas other primary sources (such as letters, memoirs, autobiographies or oral histories) are usually recorded later. Photographs thus provide instantaneous eyewitness (or rather camera-witness) accounts.
Majority of these images collected by the authors over the years are photographs — over 17,000 of them, covering the period between 1860s and the 2010s. A quarter of them can be found in archives in the United Kingdom, but most of them come from well over 100 private and some official collections in India. The selection reflects both the authors’ decision to highlight certain historical processes and the limitations that image quality imposed on their choice. This effort made it possible to reveal little known facets of Mizoram’s history and to demonstrate how photographs can alter the historical narrative we construct.
In the south of the Himalayas, a crescent of steep mountains acts as the boundary separating South Asia from South-East Asia. They are the Naga Hills in the North, the Mizo, Chin and Chittagong Hills in the Centre and the Arakan Hills in the South. For many years, social scientists and historians have overlooked the communities in these hills. Many myths and misunderstandings about these societies continue to swirl around public discourse and policy-making at national and international levels, whilst local voices are largely unheard, if not actively silenced.
This book presents in detail the services of missionaries in changing the attitude of the indigenous people towards dress codes, customs, education and hygiene amidst many adversities. Today, the people of Mizoram pride themselves on inhabiting one of the most literate regions of India. In fact, the districts of Aizawl and Serchhip are the most literate in the entire country.
By its use of visual sources, this book emphasises how ‘indigenous people’ in Mizoram have used cameras to produce distinct modern identities and represent themselves to themselves, consistently contesting outsiders’ imagination of them as isolated, backward and in need of uplift.
The pictures become a testimony to the cultural development achieved by the Mizos during this period. A link between education in the European style and European dress was established early on, and it has persisted. This is notable in a sense, because in other parts of British India, the emergence of anti-colonial nationalism, especially since the Swadeshi movement of 1905-1908, expressed itself in the revival of traditional clothing among the educated. This adoption of the European dress marked the emergence of a new elite in Mizoram and a new way of signalling elite status and it distinguished the wearer from the uneducated.
Mizo nationalismThis book also brings out, through pictures, the rise of Mizo nationalism following New Delhi’s inadequate response to the famine in 1960-61, which resulted in widespread suffering as well as indignation throughout Mizoram. The famine changed the political landscape with the Mizo National Front (MNF) demanding complete independence from India for its failure to fulfil the assurances given to the people of Mizoram at Independence.
The retaliation of the Indian State, its army and its forced resettlement measures drove the MNF to take up arms. The insurgency lasted from 1966 to 1986, a period during which violent and less violent periods alternated. The rebel government functioned from Burma, China and Bangladesh as the situation demanded. With the Mizoram Accord signed in 1986, the Hills entered a new phase.
Apart from the Mizo nationalist struggle, the present volume also chronicles the issues faced by minorities — issues of economic rights and cultural identity that were compounded by political exclusion. While the Chakma were awarded an autonomous district in 1972, another minority section, the Bru, were left in the lurch. Threats forced tens of thousands of Bru to seek refuge in neighbouring Tripura. The discord between the Mizo state elite and the Bru minority is far from over.
The book is a major contribution to understanding the uniqueness of the North East, more particularly Mizoram, by offering a fresh approach to issues afflicting the region.
