Heading south from Assam into MIZORAM, “land of the highlanders”, a winding mountain road takes you into forests and bamboo-covered hills. Mizoram is a gentle pastoral land, and the Mizos are a welcoming people who see very little tourism. Whitewashed churches dot the landscape, giving it more of a Central American feel than a state squashed between Myanmar and Bangladesh.
The Mizos, who migrated from the Chin Hills of Burma, were regularly raiding tea plantations in the Assam Valley right into the late nineteenth century; only in 1924 did the British finally manage to bring about some semblance of control. They opened up what was then the Lushai Hills to missionaries who converted much of the state to Christianity. Aizawl, the capital, is a large sprawling city built on impossibly steep slopes. In the heart of the state, traditional Mizo communities occupy the crests of a series of ridges, each village dominated by its chief’s house and zawlbuk, or bachelors’ dormitory. An egalitarian people, without sex or class distinctions, the Mizos remain proud of their age-old custom of Tlawmgaihna, a code of ethics that governs hospitality. They enjoy a 95 percent literacy rate, and many speak English and are culturally more influenced by the Christian West than by India. Permits required to enter.
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Bamboo, rats and revolution
Bamboo, rats and revolution
Mizoram’s two main species of bamboo flower every 48–50 years, attracting hordes of rats and boosting their fertility rate fourfold. The rats devour crops, leaving famine in their wake. The first time this happened, in 1959, the government was seriously unprepared, which led a council clerk, Laldenga, to found the Mizo Famine Front (MFF). Set up initially to combat famine, it transformed into the Mizo National Front (MNF), a guerrilla group fighting for secession. The government’s heavy-handed response in 1967 – rounding up Mizos from their homes into guarded villages under curfew – boosted support for the MNF. Bangladeshi independence was a bitter blow to the MNF, however, which had relied on Pakistani support. Moderates on both sides eventually brought the MNF to the negotiating table, where statehood was granted in 1986 in return for an end to the insurgency. Mizoram is now the most peaceful of the “seven sisters.” However, in 2007 the bamboo began to flower again, the rat population grew and crops were devastated. Although the state authorities were slightly better prepared this time, the national government was slow to react and many people suffered serious hardship.
