Lushai Hills Research Articles

THE GENESIS AND GROWTH OF MODERN HEALTH CARE FACILITY IN MIZORAM

Until 1894, scientific health care facility was by and large non-existent in Mizoram (the then Lushai Hills), an isolated hilly state in North East India. In their secluded life, the Mizos maintained their own culture and their traditional belief and practices, language, Codes of justice and morality. It was the British administration and the Christian missionaries who introduced modern health care facilities in the state. The Mizos seems to have been quite receptive to the new system as a result of Christian instruction and the efficacy of the new system of health care.This paper provides an outline of the growth of modern health care facilities in the state since its inception till the dawn of the new millennium. It is desirable that the facility increases over time and should cater to the growing needs of the people with the increase in population and modern health consciousness. It also attempts to throw light on the Mizos traditional concept of illness and afflictions and their own system of treatment so as to get a keener insight into how societys attitude towards modern health care system has changed over time.

New Records of Soil Galumnid Mites (Acarina: Cryptostigmata) from Dampa Tiger Reserve, Mizoram, India

Among all the soil micro- arthropods, mites are predominant and playing important role in increasing soil fertility through organic decomposition and they are inhabiting in all types of soil but predominantly found in soil litter, humus, and compost heaps. The present research work has been done to identify and prepare a record of the soil Galumnid mites from this region as very few works has been done on the taxonomy of this important group in this geographical area as well as in India. Only one major work has been found which was published by Sanyal (2009)[1] on the study of oribatid mites of Mizoram. Amongst all the States of India, Mizoram has the highest area under forest cover in terms of percentage of geographical area. Dampa Tiger Reserve of western Mizoram of India is located at Indo-Myanmar hotspot in the Lushai hills is one of the remotes Tiger Reserve of the country and immensely rich in floral and faunal biodiversity. 9 species including 5 genera of Galumnid mites are newly recorded for the first time from this area of study.

COLONIAL MIZORAM: FOREST PRODUCE AND FARMING METHODS

Frequent raids of areas that the Lushais claimed as their hunting grounds occupied by the British culminated to the creation of the Lushai Hills district under the British rule. Maintenance of public order being the prime concerned, policies relating to forests and fields were sparse allowing traditional patterns of livelihoods to continue almost unchanged. The demand for forest produce was only outside the District as there was no local industries or enterprises that needed raw materials. Trade in forest produce and traders, however, were introduced in this period. Trade permits were issued, Mahal awarded for extraction along the river banks, and minor forest produce were covered by permit and Royalty was collected. Difficult terrain, poor transportation system and shortage of labour were impediments to timber trade. Lack of supervision and management practices rendered the timber traders a free hand, leading to unsystematic felling of trees and damage to productive potential of forest resources. Mizos continued to depend on jhums and local forest resources for livelihood during the whole period of colonial rule. Training of inhabitants to hunt for financial prizes by officials led to the extinction of a number of species. The calls for conservation and forestation was not effective as it was perceived that the hills and jhums land replenished quickly causing no discernible negative impact.

BRITISH ADMINISTRATION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON MIZORAM FOREST

The Colonial history of Mizoram (Lushai Hills district) witnessed a very little state intervention in matters of religion and customs. The advent of Christianity and education was phenomenal in changing the animistic world view and attitude of the people towards natural features and use of resources. The Lushai Hills district being a single political entity with fixed boundaries governed by Inner line Regulation, villages were concentrated in a given domain and the people were forced to rely on the shrinking resources domains to meet basic needs. Though Forest Department was created to enforce the State dominion over forest resources, the degrees of imperial control are different in the hill areas. In Lushai Hills district, concern to maintain public order outweighed the economic interests. The hill forests had less commercial potential in terms of species and their number and poor accessibility tended to restrict timber exploitation to areas on the route of navigable rivers. Small and localized reserves such as, riverine, roadside, and town reserves were created by executive order. Outside the reserves, people were entitled to remove forest produce for consumption. While the people utilized forest and fields as the basic resources for survival, the government utilized it for wealth.

Regulating Slavery: The Bawi Question in Colonial Lushai Hills

This paper tries to understand the process by which the colonial government in the province of Assam “resolved” the slavery question in its frontier areas in the early twentieth-century. It argues that the use of semantics, especially the language of law was crucial in recasting the master-slave relationship into a contractual bond. Such transformations allowed most of the traditional rights of the master over their slaves to be kept intact, while allowing the relationship to outlive colonial rule.

Deviance and Empire: Major Anthony G. McCall’s Lushai Chrysalis

The British colonial empire was one of the largest and most influential empires in history. It spanned across various parts of the world, including territories in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific. Throughout its existence, the British Empire faced numerous acts of defiance and resistance from the indigenous populations of the colonized regions. In addition, the annals of history are replete with acts of defiance that originated within the colonized territories themselves, rather than from external forces. One such act of defiance was by Major Anthony G. McCall, who was appointed as the Superintendent-in-Charge of Lushai Hills (present Mizoram) during the 1930s and 1940s. McCall broke with protocol to lambast the policies of the British administration leading to his removal in May 1943. The events of his life in Lushai Hills have been documented in the book Lushai Chrysalis or Lushai Land of Tranquility and Upheaval (1949). The book is not only an important ethnographic document in the study of Northeast Indian history but it also gives insight into the personality of McCall and other ICS officers of the British administration. This, in turn, provides better insight into the working of the British colonial structure and gives us alternative viewpoints to what is normally seen as a monolithic one.

Small Wars and Pacification in the British Empire: A Case Study of Lushai Hills, 1850–1900

ABSTRACT The British Empire was at the height of its power in the late nineteenth century. Most scholars focus on imperial expansion. However, not much light has been shed on the process of consolidation, which I term pacification. This paper tries to cover this historiographical slip by making a case study of British pacification of the Lushai Hills of North-East India. While analysing this micro region, I shall contextualise it within the broader policies of the British imperium. Both Callwell and some of the modern commentators are wrong in asserting that British Empire building involved a display of brute force in curbing the insurrectionary natives. Overall, British consolidation policy was more complex. Repeated application of a moderate amount of violence through the medium of small war prepared the ground for pacification. The non-military components of pacification (construction of roads, schools and a job creation programme) are equivalent to what modern-day scholars term winning the hearts and minds of the populace of the disturbed regions. Use of proportionate force and implementation of certain non-military schemes enabled a small number of white men to rule over millions of brown people for more than a century.

Insurgent law: Bengal Regulation III and the Chin-Lushai expeditions (1872–1898)

AbstractThis article studies the adjudicatory practices deployed by colonial military and police forces during a series of punitive British expeditions in the eastern frontiers of British India and the northern reaches of British Burma, specifically the Lushai and Chin Hills in the late nineteenth century. It magnifies the lives, deaths, and afterlives of two ‘tribal’ chiefs of Lushai Hills. Among others, these figures were held responsible for a series of raids carried out in the settled British territories of the northeastern frontiers in the 1890s. After a few inconclusive skirmishes with the British expeditionary force, they were apprehended and imprisoned in a jail in Hazaribagh under the preventive detention act of Bengal Regulation III of 1818, which was reserved and designed to arrest political dissidents of the empire. After a few months, two of them, Liengpunga and Khalkam, were found hanging from the windows of their prison latrine. The British administration labelled these deaths as suicides and closed the cases. The article opens them up. In doing so, it narrates an oblique history of the Scheduled District Act of 1874 which removed hill districts from the jurisdictions of regular courts. By focusing on the historical imbrication of Bengal Regulation III of 1818 in the Scheduled District Act, the article highlights the punitive techniques embedded in the seeming protectionist impulse of the colonial state, something that persists in India's administration of the Northeast region. Closer to the concerns of this issue, it reflects on a legal genealogy of tribal subjects in South Asia.

Unsettled autonomy: Ethnicity, tribes and subnational politics in Mizoram, North‐east India*

AbstractThis article takes a critical look at the relationship between subnational struggles, tribal politics and political aspirations in Mizoram, North‐east India. It examines how community dynamics and relationships shape the demand for autonomy in a diverse and complex region like North‐east India. Looking at communities registered as tribes in the government scheme of classification, it underlies how autonomy becomes an arena where communities mobilise both against the central state and within themselves. The paper examines the formation of Lushai Hills District Council and the Pawi–Lakher Regional Council (PLRC) in Mizoram, their subsequent development as in the case of the Mizo Hill District Council to Union Territory and statehood and the split in the case of the PLRC into three distinct autonomous councils. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it notes that while territorial autonomy requires recognition and legitimation from the state, the way ethnic groups deploy demands for autonomy is inspired, if not instigated, by the nature of the relationship and interface within and across communities.

Rediscovery of Sarcopyramis subramanii Nayar (Melastomataceae) 94 years after type collection from India

Sarcopyramis subramanii Nayar (Melastomataceae) has only been collected once in India, from the Lushai Hills in Mizoram state in 1926. We found this species 94 years after the collection of the type material. We present a detailed taxonomic description, photographs, and a map of the distribution of this species. A comparison of S. subramanii with the allied S. nepalensis Wall. is provided to facilitate its identification.

‘Forest Conservation without Conservancy’: A Study on the Strategic Aspects of the Inner Line Reserve in Colonial Assam

The article tries to understand how forest conservation in colonial Assam was used to facilitate British political administration in the region. It highlights on the Inner Line Forest Reserve situated in the frontier region of Lushai Hills and the Cachar district of the province that was established more with the purpose to protect the tea gardens of Cachar from Lushai raids than with any plans of forest conservation. ‘Inner Line’ was the name given to this buffer forest zone as it served the purposes of Inner Line Regulation than any conditions of colonial forest administration in India. The article has attempted to trace the background of Inner Line Regulation in the region and its implementation in the hill areas of the territory. It endeavours to understand why the application of colonial forest administration in Lushai Hills was kept at its minimum level. The article tries to comprehend that the creation of Inner Line Reserve was another British management mechanism to tackle the tribes of Lushai Hills.

Possessing Christianity in Northeast India: Kelkang, 1937

AbstractIn 1937, a spirit moved in the mountains of Northeast India. It presented local villagers with a visceral anticolonial vision, laicized religious practices, and offered alternative definitions of expertise and literacy that sidelined colonial and missionary authorities. Its message pulled together a complex range of clans, pilgrims, and roadworkers, and reconciled them according to contemporary local logics. This article uses the ‘Kelkang incident’ of the Lushai Hills District (today: Mizoram) to reverse the polarity of conventional writings on prophetic rebellion in two ways. First, it asks not how the colonial state dealt with a prophetic rebellion, but how a prophetic rebellion dealt with the state. Second, it asks not what the moving spirit of Kelkang symbolized, but what it did and how people interacted with it. Placing upland spirits, humans, terminology, and concepts at the centre of the analysis, the article argues that a more open-minded approach to the history of religion can better reveal processes of mediumship and rapidly indigenizing Christianities as well as the much broader malleability of concepts like ‘conversion’, ‘revival’, and ‘Christianity’.

Riverine bazaars, trade and chiefs in the colonial Lushai Hills

ABSTRACT The Lushais maintained commercial contact with the surrounding plains traders in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The British administrators recognised the importance of trade and bazaar in relation with independent Lushai chiefs and to use them as a diplomatic tool to influence the behaviour of the Lushais. The British introduced riverine bazaars in the interiors of Lushai hills to satisfy Lushais’ desire for tradable commodities; to facilitate the interests of plain merchants in a profitable rubber trade; and to provide security to their subjects within their territories. The failure on the part of the Lushai chiefs to provide security to the marketplaces and resumption of raids in the British territories paved the way for the British to directly interfere in the Lushai affairs. This paper contradicts the Romantic notion of Lushai village communities being self-supporting and isolated autarchy and the notion of self-sufficiency of ‘Indian village communities’ as propagated in the nineteenth century.

Social Change in Lushai Hills

Social Change in Lushai Hills

Globalizing an Indian Borderland Environment: Aijal, Mizoram, 1890–1919

The borderlands of India’s northeast are often seen as historically isolated, remote and inaccessible. In recent years, there has been a growing awareness that such areas were much more open than hitherto assumed. This article tracks dynamic historical change in the Lushai Hills District, or what is today the state of Mizoram. Taking the upland colonial headquarters of Aijal as its vantage point, the article looks closely at the coerced construction of a network of thoroughfares that underwrote new commercial, ecological and missionary presences in the region, and that allowed both the development and dodging of new regimes of state control and surveillance. A borderland- rather than state-centred approach reveals vibrant trans-regional trails of money and information, trade and technology, migrants and labourers, plants and animals. While colonial agents in the early twentieth century sought to congeal longstanding flows of guns and people, restrictive measures were often met with subterfuge and evasion, producing new opportunities and corridors for movement. Understanding Aijal’s position as an entrepôtof pluricultural exchange and as an intensifier of regional circulation draws attention to ranges of human experience that stretch beyond the usual state-focussed boundaries of historical inquiry. This article seeks to contribute to a growing literature that challenges the idea of northeast India’s remoteness.

Morpho-Agronomic Diversity in Pole-Type Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) Landraces from Lushai Hills of North-East India

The present study was based on morphological and agronomical characterization of 23 pole-type common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) landraces collected from Lushai hills of North-East India. Extensive variation in plant and seed traits was found in 16 morphological and agronomical characters. Cluster analysis based on Euclidean distance grouped the genotypes into five main branches, reflecting their growth type and reproductive traits. Significant positive or negative correlation was observed among important traits. Principal component analysis was used for assessing patterns of variation by accounting for all the 10 quantitative and six qualitative variables together. Ordination among accessions showed that the first five principal components had Eigen values greater than one, and cumulatively accounted for 72% of the variation. Characterization based on quantitative and qualitative traits enabled separation of accessions into various groups representing landraces with distinct characters.

Rescuing Imagined Slaves: Colonial State, Missionary and Slavery Debate in North East India (1908–1920)

Although the colonial State and the Christian missionaries shared the same colonial space pursuing their modernist respective projects, they did not really share similar ideas on modernity and civilization. The result often was open conflict. One such event occurred in war-time (1908–14) Lushai hills (Mizoram) when a radical Welsh missionary demanded that the colonial administration abolish an institution which he saw as ‘slavery’. The administration denied the existence of any such institution and in turn expelled the missionary for interfering in tribal life. This article examines the construction of ‘slavery’ and larger implication of understanding of indigenous socio-cultural institutions by westerners, but also intervenes on the larger debate of using enlightenment-rationalist paradigms in disrupting indigenous traditions and institutions.

Bamboo, Rats and Famines: Famine Relief and Perceptions of British Paternalism in the Mizo Hills (India)

Abstract As the British entered the Mizo hills (part of the Indo-Burmese range of hills, then known as the Lushai hills) to chase the headhunting tribal raiders and try to gain control over them by securing a foothold in the heart of the hills at Aizawl, they witnessed an amazing ecological phenomenon: a severe famine apparently caused by rats. The Mizo hills are covered extensively by various species of bamboo, which periodically rot, flower and seed. The bamboo seeds appeared to be a delicious food item for jungle rats, which emerged in massive numbers to devour them, and the consumption of bamboo seeds seemed to produce a vast increase in the rodent population. Once the millions of rats had exhausted the bamboo seed, they began to attack the standing crops in the fields. As they devoured the grains the resulting scarcity of food led to massive hardship, starvation and deaths....

MITHUN - AN IMPORTANT BOVINE SPECIES OF INDIAN ORIGIN

SUMMARYThe Mithun (Bos frontalis) is a heavily built semi domesticated bovine species originated in north eastern hill region of India. In some folklore, Mithun have been referred to as the descendent of the Sun. There are interesting and divergent legends about the orig of mithun among different in tribes. Even today, mithun is used as a holy sacrificial animal to appease the Gods by the tribesman. It is a woodland animal found at an elevation of between 2 000 and 9 000 feet. The habitat of mithun extends like a long curved belt of hills from the Akasan hill and Chin Hills of Burma through the Chittagong hill tracts of Bangladesh and the Lushai (Mizo) hills of Manipur and Naga hills of India. The geographic zone is covered with tropical evergreen rain forests. At higher elevations mithun territories are also shared by yak (Poephagus grunniens), while at lower altitudes domestic cattle and mithun co-habit. The information contained in the article is primarily based on a field survey carried out on mithun of Porba village of Nagaland. Some data collated and published by other departments is also included.

Tectonic significance of anomaly-elevation relationships in northeastern India

Northeastern India comprises several geologic units having widely different tectonic histories. These include: 1. (1) the Shillong Plateau. 2. (2) the Naga-Lushai Hills. 3. (3) Eastern Himalaya. 4. (4) the Bengal Basin. 5. (5) Brahmaputra Valley. The nature of the gravity field over these areas has been studied in detail by Mukhopadhyay (1974). The correlation of free-air and Bouguer gravity anomalies with elevation has been studied using spot values as well as averages over 1 2° × 1 2° and 1° × 1° areas. The latter clearly suggest that there are five different geotectonic units in northeastern India having characteristic mass distributions. The relationship of gravity versus elevation suggests that a thicker and denser crust may underlie the Shillong Plateau. The relationship for the Naga—Lushai Hills indicates the influence of normal root formation under these hills. The Folded Belt of Tripura, as well as the Himalayan foothills have a larger than normal mass deficiency for the same elevation. In the Bengal Basin, thickness of sediments alone controls the nature of the gravity anomalies. But over the Brahmaputra Valley, the anomalies are largely controlled by low-density sediments of the valley and to some extent by the root effect of the neighbouring mountains.