Trajectories of Mizo tribal historiography

Abstract

The British colonizers, while writing about Mizoram and Mizo history, stressed their achievements in uplifting the Mizo community. Christian missionaries from Wales landed in Mizoram after the British colonizers annexed the land. They also followed the British administrators’ patronizing way of writing Mizo history. They saw the Mizo people as savage, and unsaved who needed the Gospel. They viewed Mizo society as one that needed a complete transformation. The first-generation Mizo Christians, too, looked at Mizo society from the Western lens. That was because missionaries trained them to be as Western as possible. A significant shift in Mizo Christian historiography emerged in the 1990s, emphasizing that tribal communities accepted Jesus Christ not because of external factors such as the arrival of missionaries from a foreign country, but because God resides in their hearts and that the Holy Spirit inspired them to believe in Jesus Christ, whoever the agent was.