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Zo-inhabited areas | |
Language | Kuki-Chin-Naga Languages |
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Location | Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh; Manipur and Mizoram, India; Chin State, Myanmar [1] |
Today part of | India Myanmar Bangladesh |
Population | 1.5 million (2003) [2] |
Zogam (or Land of Zo People) known as Zoland, [3] Zoram, Lushai Hills, [4] Kuki Hills, lies in the northwest corner of the Mainland Southeast Asia landmass. This is the traditional ancestry homeland of the Zo people or Zomi who lived in this area before the colonial period under British rulership. [1]
One Zo folksong delineates the area of Zogam as follows:
Penlehpi leh Kangtui minthang,
A tua tong Zota kual sung chi ua;
Khang Vaimang leh tuan a pupa
Tongchiamna Kangtui minthang aw
Translation:
(The famous Penlehpi and Kangtui
Between the two is the Zomi country
The Southern King and our forefathers
Made an agreement at the famous Kangtui)
This old folk song tells of the area of the Zomi ancestral homeland, for Penlehpi is a Burmese word for the Bay of Bengal and Kangtui is identified with Tuikang (Chindwin River). [5] [ better source needed ]
Chin State is a state in western Myanmar. Chin State is bordered by Sagaing Division and Magway Division to the east, Rakhine State to the south, the Chattogram Division of Bangladesh to the west, and the Indian states of Mizoram to the west and Manipur to the north. The population of Chin State is about 488,801 according to the 2014 census, and its capital city is Hakha.
Mizo Union was the first political party in Mizoram, in Northeast India. It was founded on 6 April 1946 at Aizawl as the Mizo Common People's Union. At the time of independence of India from British rule in India in 1947, the party was the only political force in the Lushai Hills. It won the first Mizoram District Council general election under the new Indian Union in 1951, and consecutively in 1957, 1962 and 1966.
The Mizo people, historically called the Lushais, are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group primarily from Mizoram in northeastern India. They speak Mizo, one of the state's official languages and its lingua franca. Beyond Mizoram, sizable Mizo communities live in neighboring northeast Indian states like Manipur, Assam, Meghalaya, and Tripura, with minority populations also found in Myanmar and the United States. Mizoram is the second most literate state in India, at more than a rate of 90%.
The Chin people are an ethnic group native to the Chin State of Myanmar. Strictly speaking, the term "Chin" only refers to the 53 sub-tribes of the Chin ethnic group, divided and recognized by the Burmese government. They speak the Kuki-Chin-Mizo languages, which are often mutually unintelligible but are closely related.
The Paite people are an ethnic group in Northeast India, mainly living in Manipur and Mizoram. The Paites are recognized as a scheduled tribe in these two states. They are part of the larger Zo people, but also use their Zomi identity along with all the 7 tribes under "Zomi Council". "Guite" is a major clan of the Paite people.
The history of Mizoram encompasses the history of Mizoram which lies in the southernmost part of northeast India. It is a conglomerate history of several ethnic groups of Chin people who migrated from Chin State of Burma. But information of their patterns of westward migration are based on oral history and archaeological inferences, hence nothing definite can be said. The recorded history started relatively recently around the mid-19th century when the adjoining regions were occupied by the British monarchy. Following religious, political and cultural revolutions in the mid-20th century majority of the people agglomerated into a super tribe, Mizo. Hence the officially recognised settlement of the Mizos became Mizoram.
The Kuki people, or Kuki-Zo people, are an ethnic group in the Northeastern Indian states of Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, as well as the neighbouring countries of Bangladesh and Myanmar. The Kukis form one of the largest hill tribe communities in this region. In Northeast India, they are present in all states except Arunachal Pradesh. The Chin people of Myanmar and the Mizo people of Mizoram are kindred tribes of the Kukis. Collectively, they are termed the Zo people.
Tedim (Burmese: တီးတိန်မြို့; MLCTS: ti: tin mrui., pronounced[títeɪ̀ɰ̃mjo̰], (Zo: Tedim Khuapi, pronounced ; is a town and the administrative seat of Tedim Township in Chin State, Myanmar. It is the second largest town in Chin State, after Hakha. The town's four major boroughs are: Sakollam, Myoma, Lawibual and Leilum.
The Zou people are an ethnic group, that is an indigenous community living along the frontier of India and Burma, they are a sub-group of the Kuki people/Zo people. In India, they live with and are similar in language and habits to the Thadou people and Paite and the Simte peoples. In Burma, the Zou are counted among the Chin people. They are a hill people, "Zou" may plainly means "Hills" denoting the Zous are "people of the hills" or "of the hills", and "Zou" has also a different meaning in Zou language that is "complete" or another word for it is "finish". But, the Zou people believed that they incepted the name 'Zou' from their forefather 'Zou' or 'Zo', believed to be the progenitor of the broad Chin-Kuki-Mizo people.
Zo is a Northern Kuki-Chin-Mizo language originating in western Burma and spoken also in Mizoram and Manipur in northeastern India.
Guite is the progenitor clan of Zomi people, also called Chin in Myanmar, Mizo, or Paite, or sometimes Kuki in India. According to Zam, Nigui Guite is the elder brother of the ancestral fathers of the Thadou people, namely Thangpi, Sattawng, and Neirawng. This genealogy was recently inscribed on the tribal memorial stone at Bungmual, Lamka in the presence of each family-head of the three major clans, Doungel, Kipgen, and Haokip, on August 7, 2011. Some historians, like Shakespeare, assumed Lamlei was the Nigui Guite himself but the Guites themselves recounted Tuahciang, the father of Lamlei, as the son of Nigui Guite instead, in their social-religious rites. Regarding Guite as the born son of Songthu and his sister, Nemnep, it was the practice of ancient royalty to issue royal heir and also to keep their bloodline pure instead. Depending on local pronunciation, the clan was also called by different names such as Nguite or Vuite, Gwite, Nwite, Paihte by the Lushei. In accord with the claim of their solar origin, the Guite clan has been called nampi, meaning noble or major or even dominant people, of the region in local dialect in the past.
The Lai people mainly inhabit the southern parts of Chin Hills in Myanmar's Chin State, in the townships of Falam, Thantlang and Hakha. They are also found in the Lawngtlai district of Mizoram, India, where they have been granted the Lai Autonomous District Council. Outside this area they are scattered in Mizoram and in Manipur. Their languages "Lai holh" and "Hakha holh" are classified as Central Kuki-Chin languages.
The Tedim people, also called Tedim Chins and Tiddim (Hai-Dim) people, are a Zomi ethnic group, part of the Chin people, primarily inhabiting the Tedim Township in the Chin State of Myanmar. They speak the Tedim language, a northern Kuki-Chin language.
The Chin-Kuki-Mizo,are a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family spoken in northeastern India, western Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh. Most notable Chin-Kuki-Mizo speaking ethnic groups are referred to collectively as the Zo people which includes: the Kuki of Manipur and the Mizo of Mizoram, Assam, Manipur, Tripura and Bangladesh and the Chin of Chin state,Myanmar.
The Bom, Bawm or Bawmzo, are an ethnic community inhabiting the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. According to the 2022 Bangladeshi census the population of Bawms in Bangladesh is 13,193. In 2004, around 10,000 Bawm inhabited India. 2,500 Bawms reside in Myanmar. They speak the Sino-Tibetan Bawm language.
The Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA) is an armed Zomi nationalist militant group formed in 1997, following an increase in ethnic tensions between the Kuki people and the Paite people in Churachandpur district of Manipur, India. Its parent organisation, the Zomi Re-unification Organisation, was founded in April 1993.
The Zo people is a term to denote the ethnolinguistically related speakers of the Kuki-Chin languages who primarily inhabit northeastern India, western Myanmar, and southeastern Bangladesh.
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.
Zomi nationalism is an independence movement in Chin State, Myanmar.
Northern Kuki-Chin is a branch of Kuki-Chin languages. It is called Northeastern Kuki-Chin by Peterson (2017) to distinguish it from the Northwestern Kuki-Chin languages. VanBik (2009:31) also calls the branch Northern Chin or Zo.