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Zomi people
Flag of Zomi people
Group of people in India and Myanmar


Zomi is a collective identity adopted some of the Kuki-Chin language-speaking people in India and Myanmar. The term means "Zo people". The groups adopting the Zomi identity reject the conventional labels "Kuki" and "Chin", popularised during the British Raj, as colonial impositions. Even though "Zomi" was originally coined as an all-encompassing identity of the Kuki-Chin-speaking people, in practice, it has proved to be divisive, with considerable number of groups continuing to use the traditional labels "Kuki" and "Chin" and only certain sections adopting the Zomi identity. The groups covered in the identity has varied with time. Compound names such as "Kuki-Zo" and "Zomi Chin" are sometimes used to paper over the divisions.

Etymology

The term "Zomi" combines the ancestral name "Zo" with "mi," meaning people in Zopau, their spoken language.

Historically, the term Zo or Jo has been documented in various contexts, such as by Fan Chuo of the Tang dynasty and Father Sangermo in 1783. The British colonial administration complicated their identity by using various names like Kuki, Lushai, and Chin, terms initially employed by non-tribal plain peoples of Burma, Bangladesh, and India to refer to the "wild hill tribes" in un-administered areas. The umbrella term "Kuki-Chin-Mizo" is often used to encompass the different ethnic groups inhabiting the Chin hills and surrounding regions.

Evolution of the identity

The Zo identity for the Kuki-Chin language speaking people spread across Northeast India and Myanmar's Chin State began to take shape soon after World War II. The people of the then Lushai Hills district in India (present-day Mizoram) rallied behind a "Mizo" ("Zo people") identity in 1946. In 1953, the Baptist Associations of Tedim, Falam and Hakha in Myanmar's Chin State adopted Zomi ("Zo people") as their "national" name (subsuming the various tribal identities). In India's Manipur state, T. Gougin formed a "United Zomi Organisation" in 1961 and "Zomi National Congress" in 1972. The final step in these Zomi nationalist movements was taken in April 1993, when a Zomi Re-unification Organisation (ZRO) was formed at Phapian in Kachin State of Myanmar, under the leadership of Tedim Chins and Paites. It had the professed objective of unifying all the Kuki-Zo people divided across national borders (India, Myanmar and Bangladesh) under a united "Zomi" identity.

With these antecedents, seven Kuki-Zo tribes of Churachandpur district in Manipur, that had previously declined to accept a Kuki identity, agreed to come under the banner of Zomi Re-unification Organisation in 1995. The seven tribes were Hmar, Zou, Vaiphei, Gangte, Simte, Sukte (Tedim Chins) and Paite, with the Paites leading the collection. Its formation day is said to be observed on 20 February every year as Zomi Nam Ni. By 1997, the organisation also formed an underground military wing called Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA) ostensibly to defend the tribes under its umbrella from rival tribes, mainly the Thadou Kukis.

During 1997–1998, serious Kuki–Paite clashes developed in the Churachandpur district of Manipur, killing 350 people and displacing 13,000 people. At the end of the conflict, the Hmar and Gangte tribes left the Zomi group, leaving only five tribes in the collection.

Diaspora

As of 2018, the Zomi are the second-largest ethnic group in the Burmese diaspora in the United States. Between 7000 and 9000 Zomi live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is referred to as "Zomi Town" within the Burmese diaspora. The concentration of Zomi in Tulsa is related to the fact that the Zomi are a largely Christian ethnic group and faced persecution in Myanmar under the military dictatorship. The resettlement of Zomi refugees to Tulsa was in part catalyzed by Dr. Chin Do Kham, who moved to Tulsa in the 1970s to study at Oral Roberts University, a Christian institution in southern Tulsa.

Popular culture

The first Zomi-language movie to receive a full-length theatrical debut was a 2021 English-Zomi bilingual film, written and directed by Burmese refugee Thang Mung, called Thorn in the Center of the Heart. The film first premiered in Michigan, where Mung was resettled by U.S. refugee services as a teenager.

See also

Notes

  1. Zomi Nam Ni is translated as "Zomi national day". Its celebration started in the Churachandpur town around 1994–1995. However, it was already being celebrated in Chin State to mark the day when Chins switched to a democratic system of administration on 20 February 1948, dispensing with traditional chieftancies. Starting out as "Chin National Day", the event is said to have been renamed as "Zomi National Day" in 1950.

References

  1. "Zomi flag vai gencian na". 13 June 2024.
  2. "Zogam Zomi Flag - TangThu Gen na - Pu KingMang". 10 May 2024.
  3. Suantak, Vumson (1 January 1986). Zo history: With an introduction to Zo culture, economy, religion and their status as an ethnic minority in India, Burma, and Bangladesh. Vumson. p. 1-7.
  4. Suan, Rethinking 'tribe' identities (2011), p. 176.
  5. Go, Zo Chronicles (2008), pp. 185–187.
  6. Zou, A Historical Study of the 'Zo' Struggle (2010), p. 61.
  7. Suan, Rethinking 'tribe' identities (2011), p. 180.
  8. ^ Haokip, The Kuki-Paite Conflict (2007), p. 191.
  9. Suan, Rethinking 'tribe' identities (2011), pp. 180–181.
  10. Zou, Emergent Micro-National Communities (2012), p. 322.
  11. Zomi National Day: 20th February, Zogam.com, retrieved 6 May 2024.
  12. Rammohan, Blueprint for Counterinsurgency in Manipur (2002).
  13. Choudhury, Sanghamitra (2016), Women and Conflict in India, Routledge, pp. 38–39, ISBN 9781317553625
  14. Rodger, Alison J; Mike Toole; Baby Lalnuntluangi; V. Muana; Peter Deutschmann (2002). "DOTS-based tuberculosis treatment and control during civil conflict and an HIV epidemic, Churachandpur District, India". Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 80 (6).
  15. Haokip, The Kuki-Paite Conflict (2007), p. 205.
  16. Mung, Daniel (2018). The promised land : Zomi diaspora in Tulsa (Thesis).
  17. Krishna, Priya (27 June 2022). "In Tulsa, a Burmese Cooking Tradition Takes the Spotlight". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  18. "Zomi USA: How a city in Oklahoma became home to an ethnic group from Southeast Asia". NBC News. 6 December 2016. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  19. Writer, TIM STANLEY World Staff (16 October 2013). "Former ORU professor, Myanmar native Chin Do Kham dies at 54". Tulsa World. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  20. Shields, Lauren (30 August 2021). ""Thorn in the Center of the Heart" will be Grand Ledge Sun Theatre's first showing since COVID". Fox 47 News. Archived from the original on 30 August 2021. Retrieved 1 September 2021.

Bibliography

Further reading

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