Zo nationalism

Zo nationalism is an ethnic nationalist movement among the Zo people – a broad umbrella of interrelated tribes broadly comprising Zomi, Mizo Chin, and Kuki, whose traditional homelands span Northeast India (Mizoram, Manipur and Tripura states), Western Myanmar (Chin State) and Bangladesh (Chittagong Hill Tracts). These Zo tribes share a common Tibeto-Burman linguistic and cultural ancestry. As one study notes: "a majority of the Zo population lives in Manipur and Mizoram in Northeast India, Bangladesh, and Chin State of Myanmar". Major Zo subgroups include the Chin of Myanmar, the Mizos (Lushai) of Mizoram, the Zomi of Manipur and Chin State, the various Kuki clans of Manipur and Bangladesh, and numerous clans (Hmar, Gangte, Zou, Paite, etc.)

Although divided by modern frontiers, the Zo people have many common traits: for example, most Zo were traditional animists who were converted to Protestant Christianity by 19th-century missionaries. Many families today still emphasize a shared ancestry. Anthropologists even note that some Chittagong-Hill tribes in Bangladesh (e.g. Bawm, Pangkhu, Khumi, Mro-Khimi) are "descendants of the Mizo–Chin–Kuki (Zo) groups" underlining that these communities are culturally and linguistically closer to the Zo of India and Myanmar than to neighboring people.

Because the Zo people straddle the borders of India, Myanmar and Bangladesh, Zo nationalism advocates an emotional (if not territorial) unity of this cross-border community. Zo activists often use the term Zogam or Zoram ("Zo land") to describe the idea of a contiguous homeland. Historically, British administrators alternated between notions of uniting the Chin and Lushai hills and deliberate "divide-and-rule" policies. For example, colonial records show a late-19th-century Chin-Lushai conference (1892) that envisioned joint administration of the hill peoples, and Zo leaders today cite this as a precedent. In practice, however, the British mostly kept the Chin Hills (in Burma) and Lushai Hills (in India) as separate provinces. Indeed, historians observe that until 1947 "the Zo people never had social and political unity"; as one scholar comments, colonial rule was marked by the convenient segregation of these "rebellious tribes". After decolonization (India and Burma in 1947–48, Bangladesh in 1971), the Zo communities found themselves scattered across three countries with no autonomous Zo-majority region. As another commentary notes, the Zo "straddle domestic and international borders, which were erected rather arbitrarily by the British". Thus Zo nationalists see modern national boundaries – and state policies – as disruptive inheritances of the colonial era. This is driven by organisations such as the Zomi Re-Unification Organisation (ZRO) in India, and Zomi National Congress (ZNC) in Myanmar.