‘All militias in Manipur must give up arms’

Mizoram chief minister Lalduhoma of the Zoram People's Movement created a buzz in September, when media reports emerged of a speech he had given in the US, of the need to reunify the Zo people's traditional lands, now split across India, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

In an interview with Prawesh Lama, the former Indian Police Service officer clarifies that he never meant the creation of a separate nation for the Zo, but a reunification under India's umbrella. Edited excerpts:

Since this controversy has a historical context, tell us about the background of the Mizo People?

Our forefathers were the indigenous people living in present Mizoram and the adjoining areas covering approximately 145,000 sq km. Each village or town had their own independent chiefs but they were closely knit together by culture, tradition, and customs.

We were annexed with the British Empire with formal proclamation from Buckingham Palace. Soon, the British realised that people living in between Burma and India were of the same ethnic group, different from the others, so they decided to give them a separate administrative unit. They conveyed a meeting, the Chin Lushai conference in Fort William, Calcutta in 1892. It was attended by LG Assam, chief commissioner of Assam and Burma, commander in chief Madras, foreign secretary, military secretary, and the quartermaster general in India. They decided there should be a separate administrative unit for these people under the chief commissioner of Assam. So, the unification, right from the beginning, was to be within India. But unfortunately for us, this decision was never implemented. On the contrary, we were divided into three countries-India, Burma (Myanmar) and then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

So, your people wanted to be under India but you were brought under three different governments?