The Sukte Paramountcy in Northern Chin Hills confined to Dr Pum Khan PauThe State as an college emerged at a clear organize of documented enlargement in divers parts of the fabulous. In the hunt down record of the maturation of benefactor fellowship, the stages of enlargement began with the Band-a arrange formed as a advice to hunting and almost identical untrained activities. There were no association ties. The next organize was that of the gens. Here association ties were more crucial. Finally we embrace a official based on lands based fellowship. An crucial enlargement of gens was unmistakeable confined to a organize of tribal chiefdom.
In primordial era the process of a gens living subservient to a chief from period to period aided confined to a body of elders was largely prevailing. The chief owed dispose either to dear abilities or descent from a elder persist about. At a later organize, chiefship became handed down when gifts to chiefs became handed down and lapse from the chiefs infrequent, and when the interest of the chiefs boodle increased and that of the kinsman reduced considerably, conditions were created as a advice to the snowball arise of a ungrudging and dominant chiefs. The brilliant chief came to be surrounded confined to retainers (slaves free or captured/debt bonded men and women) maintained at the bring in of tribal pastoralists and peasantry.
This enlargement in power and arrange is called chiefdom. The feel something in one’s bones of territoriality linked with cultivation and fixed habits became stronger. Rituals became considerably more decorated and tended to be monopolized confined to a lands of specialists. The egalitarian ethos typified confined to the purely tribal execute, suffered weathering and assets differentiation became perceivable.
The example of a official points to a assorted benevolent of fellowship.[i] It is from this dispose that this dissertation analyses the review and enlargement of the Sukte chiefs in the Pre-Colonial era and the changes in their dispose during the Colonial era. This organize of sexually transmitted enlargement can hence be called the protostate organize or proto lands. The dissertation comprises four parts other than the introduction. The before all partition gives a fleeting all-embracing drawing of the ethnic olla podrida of the Chin Hills. The tick partition discusses the bumping of Sukte paramountcy on the bounds exposed affairs. In the absolute dissertation the lines of the colonial power has on all occasions been analysed.
An critique of the Colonial intervention in the relationship between the Sukte/Kamhau and Manipur is facts in fact in the partition three of the dissertation and the fourth is in the behaviour of the immutable figuring of the absolute change. The dissertation is changed on the underpinning of pre-eminent and auxiliary sources on the Chin Hills and the nearby areas. IThe paramountcy of tribes of Indo-Burma brim has on all occasions been impacted confined to the waves of migration of people and other socio-political formations. It was customarily such current of migrations which greatly feigned the societal conditions of the Chin Hills preceding to colonial annexation.
Colonial reports and accepted correspondences, from the too when all is said decades of the nineteenth century, gave contrariwise a unfinished account of this cast doubt, citing that migrants customarily came from the south. What in point of fact impelled such waves of innards was not correctly known and youthful embrace has neither been made to it until more recently. The documented value of “the south” has too customarily been overlooked.
This dissertation seeks to hazard beyond the closest national demarcation in statute to be effective requital on a entertain the idea twice discernment of the nineteenth century hunt down record of the ethnic arrange who are today arrange up on both sides of the global brim. The Chin Hills, today Chin State of Burma, is located between 24o 10′ north to considerably 20o 30′ north and between longitude 92o 50′ east and 94o 10′ east. The Sukte, Sihzang and Kamhaus[ii] who are known today as Zomi inhabited the northern hill booklet, the Pawi or the Lai occupied the medial hill booklet and in the southern hills the Chinme, Welaung, Chinbok, Yindu, Chinbon, Khyang, Khami and the like are scattered.
It was bounded on the east confined to Sagaing and Magwe divisions of Upper Burma, on the north confined to Manipur, on the west confined to the Lushai Hills, today the official of Mizoram, and on the south confined to Arakan. Apart from Chin hills they are also spread down in the Hkamti, Somra Tract and Kale-Kabaw-Myittha plains in Upper Burma; a sprinkling districts in Mizoram, Tripura, Assam, Cachar, Manipur and Nagaland in India; and, in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. This overlay of the ostensible Chin-Kuki-Mizo ethnic groups down such a limitless booklet of surroundings occurred in great as a dividend in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
On the underpinning of linguistic bent G. Grierson placed the “Chins” in the Kuki-Chin arrange of Tibeto-Burman progenitors. A. He, anyhow, correctly states that the people do not themselves recognise the outshoot “Chin”,[iii] but call themselves Zo, after the outshoot of the principle.[iv] Zo has that being the case immeasurable variations such as Zo, Zhou, Sho, Asho, Hiou, Cho, Dzo, Yo, Jo, Yaw and the like. The ethnological commonality of the Chin-Kuki-Mizo groups has without a doubt been shown confined to the incidence that they belonged to a collective herald which is called Zo. In this dissertation I licence the generic arrange Zo inclusively as a advice to the people of Chin Hills referred to as Chin confined to colonial writers.
to refer to the Northern Zos as a advice to convenience objectives. I would, anyhow, with to make elsewhere a head for licence of colonial terms such as Sukte, Kamhau, Sihzang, etc. According to convention the Northern Zos had as a advice to some era of period lived together in a village called Ciimnuai,[v] purposes from the too when all is said sixteenth century[vi] where the Guite affiliation was believed to embrace served as the village abbВ or Tulpi (Siampi) as a advice to four generations.[vii] In incidence, too when all is said Zo fellowship was chiefly dominated confined to divers rites which required the advice of the clan/village abbВ. For event, the founding of a imaginative decision had to be effective into honorarium divers aspects such as the outstanding of the slit, location up of the communal altar and column, top-grade creator etc.
all of which demanded the fulfilment of some benevolent of ceremonies.[viii] The priests, hence, played a choice lines when a arrange of families, all things considered of the until now affiliation, had dispersed from Ciimnuai, purposes because of citizens boom or cost-effective compressing, and founded clan-based villages in the next to spaces. Each village was independently administered confined to the village headman or chief locally known as Hausa. In the too when all is said days a village had no unfluctuating territorial bounds and the “area of a imaginative decision was ritually defined”.[ix] “A village”, wrote Vumson, “was an amuck constituent, claiming acquire considerably seven miles or eleven kilometers in radius as a advice to its cultivation.”[x] Later on village patch was defined on the underpinning of velvety boundaries. It is not understandably when and how did Hausa evolved in the Northern Zo fellowship.
One habitual position was that after the the power arrange of clan-based villages following the dispersal of citizens from Ciimnuai, they had been every now at feuds with each other as a advice to greater effects of acquire, procurement of slaves and as a advice to other national and cost-effective reasons. In such a locale villagers felt the desideratum to embrace a long-standing and insightful ruler who would gear up them, keep them from any insulting and pre-eminence them in battle against enemies. W.W.Hunter that being the case wrote: “He shall grapple with in battle, he is the final in the beat the drum for and rear-most in the decamp.”[xi] This does not ungenerous that the chief remained contrariwise a military commander. The long-standing hold as a advice to military influence, peradventure, led to the example of townsman leaders as village chiefs or Hausa. He also had sexually transmitted, cost-effective, national and drawn precise connoisseur within his influence. Winifred Creamer and Jonathan Haas embrace facts in fact that being the case:chiefs or leaders emerged as ‘information processors” in the eye to eye of citizens wart and increased sexually transmitted hurdle.
They are the managers of internal interaction between components of the sexually transmitted constituent, adjudicators of internal at odds, and managers of exotic affairs. He owned the acquire and leave together taxes such as fulminate exhaust, stimulation exhaust, kernel exhaust, bee exhaust etc. With continued wart in the process, a decision-making red spool coalesces all about the chief.At the superb of this hierarchy, the chief exercises a behaviour of managerial power based ab initio on controlling communication coming in from assorted parts of the process.[xii]The Hausa is, hence, the genius of the village.
and other dues from the people within his influence. The college was all things considered handed down. The pre-eminent position of the people was shifting cultivation. The chief was assisted confined to members of the village body called Upa. However, there were also records of infrequent trading activities, chiefly with the evident of Upper Burma.
Besides, the Siksek (Blacksmith), Tangko (village crier), Tulpi/Siampi (village priest) were also closely associated with the chief.[xiii] The earliest Sukte Hausa was Cin Thang at Lunmual village.[xiv]During this era the more dynamic chiefs of a village were prepared to utilize impact on weaker ones and leave together taxes[xv] from them from beyond their influence and succeeded to contrive a department of dominance. Such chiefs referred to themselves as Mang, a lordly arrange facts in fact to individualize them from a contrariwise village chief.[xvi] They are as a make a difference of incidence what F.K.Lehman calls the “supralocal chieftaincies”.[xvii] The eminence of a Mang at bottom stems from “tribute relations”[xviii] where the vanquished would give up exhaust or dues to the conqueror as a advice to a stipulated era of period, if not constantly. Thus, confined to the wind-up of the eighteenth century a issue of Mangs such as Sukte Mang, Guite Mang, Thawmte Mang etc. They were every now fighting with each other as a advice to greater national dominance and cost-effective note.
had already emerged from the eminence of a contrariwise affiliation chief or village headman. In incidence, actual backbone, boldness and aptness to a individual side from one’s abstract value had on all occasions been an crucial hitch to mellow into a dynamic chief. The earliest Sukte Mang was Kaih Mang of Mualbem. In the belated eighteenth century Khan Thuam, the son of Mang Kim, emerged as a what it takes contender to the reigning Sukte Mang.
Khan Thuam’s beginning good, hence, provoked a aggregation of Mang-kua (nine Mangs of assorted clans)[xix] against him, and he was when all is said beholden to decamp to Falam surroundings and took dwelling subservient to the preservation of Rallang Chief Khuang Ceu confined to giving dues to him. His snowball arise also posed of consequence Damoclean sword to the dispose of other Mangs of Tedim jurisdiction. With the assist of Khuang Ceu Khan Thuam and his eldest son Kam Hau were prepared to thong all at daggers drawn. After his dispose became more closed he returned to Mualbem, the unequalled of the Sukte affiliation, where he presumed all the trappings of a Chief. After he consolidated his dispose at Mualbem he avenged all those who had conspired upon his modus operandi of life, and also embarked upon territorial stretching in the today brim over known Tedim and Tonzang regions, pushing in the change a sprinkling tribes toward the northern fringes.
According to convention during this era the Poi-gal, as it was customarily referred to as a advice to the Falam infraction, was so feared in the north that villages not legally recognised confined to the Sukte were without a doubt to be invaded confined to the Falams. Bertram Carey and Henry Newman Tuck, two officers who obtained a firsthand dexterity of the jurisdiction after the British annexation in 1896, choice described the bumping of the Sukte stretching:The Thados offered a disinterested stubbornness to Kantum and most of their villages were committed to the flames flippant of they submitted; the Yos either migrated north elsewhere of the Soktes’ reach or peaceably submitted, and the Nwites did not hatch any stubbornness whatever.[xx]Being prepared to spread elsewhere his waggle down a ungrudging booklet Khan Thuam that being the case became Sukte Ukpi (paramount ruler) at Mualbem.[xxi] He levied all forms of trite dues and tributes from villages subservient to his dial which span from Manipur in the north to Falam booklet in the south. Here is a kerfuffle b evasion composed confined to Khan Thuam which succinctly described the limitation of his dominance:Siahtaang kaihna sak ciang Teimei, ka hialna Lamtui hi e. Sak ciang Teimei sang ciang Lamtui, a lai ah kamkei hi’ng e.
(What I direction extends to Manipur in the north, and ends at Falam in the south;Manipur to the north and Falam to the south, I am the tiger in the mid-section.)[xxii]In 1801, Kam Hau, the eldest son of Khan Thuam, became the chief of Lamzang village with his father’s sufferance. Initially he encountered some stubbornness from the Thados and Zous, anyhow, inspite of all these reverses, Kam Hau regained Tedim in 1810.[xxiii] The village when all is said attracted a ungrudging issue of tribes from nearby areas and in a dumpy bridge of period it was turned into a acutely ungrudging and dynamic village and became the bench of Kam Hau’s power. Five years later he established the village of Tedim after defeating the Guite families who had settled there. So Kam Hau had already mellow into Ukpi at Tedim when his youngest fellow-citizen Za Pau succeeded his clergyman Khan Thuam at Mualbem, according to the Sukte convention of ultimogeniture, in 1848. Kam Hau instantaneous reproach was to avenge those tribes who had resisted him and then to spread elsewhere his waggle toward the Manipur brim.
He successfully subjugated the Thados, Zous, Guites and other smaller tribes and sub-tribes of the northern hills and became ruler of the booklet east of the Manipur river, which comprised down 135 villages.[xxiv] He consolidated his father’s territorial conquests and also, as a advice to the before all period, unified the absolute tribes of the northern hills, except the Sihzangs. It was Kam Hau who led his tribesmen to victories down those coolness from tribes and made himself known to his victims as a feared outshoot. A new bookman that being the case aptly remarked:What is wonderful is that the Kamhaus took the pre-eminence of the Sukte tribes to battle and pacific.
He was the genuine sketch which made the Tedims (Sukte, Sihzang, Guite and Kamhau) reknown to the Chin Hills bounds as Kamhaus.[xxv]Although Kam Hau was confined to out of impost subordinate to his fellow-citizen Za Pau, whose dominance when all is said dim into insignificance, he ruled his villages so all elsewhere that the Sukte gens became known, if erroneously, as two classify communities. Colonial writers, hence, noteworthy the villages which belonged to Kam Hau from the existing Sukte booklet as the Kamhau booklet and the people were customarily referred to Kamhau people. Since then the outshoot “Kamhau” itself became a “terror” to Manipur, Lushai Hills and Burma.
The rulers were, anyhow, belonged to the Sukte affiliation. Thenceforth the arrange Kamhau and Sukte began to be effective requital on there tug off nigh interchangeably in accepted records. Sir Alexander Mackenzie rightly observed the bumping of the Kamhau-Sukte in 1883:The Manipuris down this gens to be a much more terrific a individual than the Lushai. They are a never-ending creator of irk to them, and embrace at times rendered the southern partition of Manipur uninhabitable..[xxvi]The bumping of Kam Hau’s power was staggering. It was felt heavily in the nearby territories, chiefly in southern Manipur, because of the largescale innards of tribes toward that brim and the never-ending Damoclean sword of raids and depredations. These people were believed to embrace tug off nigh from the south.[xxviii] No dubiety immeasurable other colonial records also referred to almost identical events occurring on that bounds.[xxix]During this era as Kam Hau was consolidating his dispose all about Tedim, the Lushais subservient to Vanhnuailiana was establishing his upon at Champhai, on the western brim of the Sukte surroundings driving elsewhere the Thados from there. One of the earliest records of this was arrange up in Captain Robert Boileau Pemberton’s “Reports on the Eastern Frontier of India” in 1835.[xxvii] In the 1840s Colonel William McCulloch, Political Agent of Manipur, who intentional those tribes migrated to Manipur’s southern bounds, arrange up what he called the “Khongjais” were scattered all about the valley of Manipur.
In the ensuing Sukte and Lushai belligerencies on assorted occasions a sprinkling villages of the latter such as Champhai, Lenkam and Thathlangkhua had been destroyed.[xxx]There were reports of Kam Hau raids into the villages in Kabaw-Kale valley, some of which had been customarily directed toward Yazagyo, the dominant buy as a advice to the Kamhau people. This official of affairs had considerably stiff the relations between the Kamhaus and the Shans of the valley. IIFor some years the Kamhaus and the Sukte kept Manipur’s southern bounds in a official of portend.
In 1844 McCulloch, with the assist of Raja Nur Singh of Manipur, carried elsewhere the decision of what he called the “Khongjais”.[xxxi] Large tracts were made available to them as a advice to cultivation. This had led to the idea at bottom of the Thado Kuki clans who occupied the fringes, which like the despoiling of the Suktes, equally threatened the pacific of the valley. Some of them were tempered to as irregulars; arms were unrestrainedly supplied to them and these settlements customarily came to be called “sepoy village”.[xxxii]The decision of the Khongsais, anyhow, did not block Kam Hau danger on Manipur’s southern bounds. Disturbances continued. In the 1850s drawn more of consequence outrages occurred. In January 1857, he led 1500 long-standing hustle, supported confined to the Khongsais, against Kam Hau of Tedim.[xxxiii] The Manipuri contingent suffered tubby cold man to man in the hands of the combined in working of the Kamhau, Sukte, and Sihzang.
An exasperated Chandrakirti Singh who had in the in the intervening period succeeded to the Manipur Raja unswerving upon long-standing military vim. They bygone immeasurable of its soldiers and in all respects 287 guns on that grounds.[xxxiv] The superiority down the Manipuris beyond revealed that the northern tribes could discourage together man to man to man to man in times of any at first glance insulting. I am greatly obligated to Dr. A. Thakur, Department of History, NEHU, Shillong as a advice to his insightful suggestions and some unpublished inspect which embrace helped me in the preparation of this dissertation. K. [i] For details, over L.
Kader, Formation of the State, OUP, 1968; Romila Thapar, From Lineage to State: Social Formation in the mid-First Millennium BC in the Ganga Valley, OUP, Delhi, 1984; R. S. X, Nos. Sharma, “Material Background of the Genesis of the State and Complex Society in mid-section Gangetic Plains”, Social Science Probings, Vol.
1-4, March to December, 1993; and A. K. Thakur, “State Formation in Arunachal Pradesh”, NEHU Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol.1, No. [ii] They are aid divided into divers tribes and sub-tribes such as Dim, Khuano, Hualngo, Sihzang, Tedim, Thado, Teizang, Vangteh, Guite, Vaiphei, Zou and the like. 1, 1998. They had notable variations in their oral dialects. [iii] G.A.Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India Vol.
III, Part III, Calcutta, Government Printing Press 1904, p.1[iv] For a entertain the idea twice discernment of the Zo genealogy, over K.A.Khup Za Thang, Zo Suanh Khang Simna Laibu, Rangoon, 1974. It lies nine miles from Tedim on the eastern bank of the Manipur river. [v] Ciimnuai was believed to be the before all decision of the Northern Zos.
It is said that a arrange of Ciim trees was arrange up in the north overlooking the village. Nuai implies decrease down or south. People who domicile harp on decrease down the Ciim trees are that being the case honestly called Ciimnuai people after the outshoot of the village.
Any misinterpretation based on this hand down contrariwise be a misnomer. Carey and Tuck misspell the arrange as “Chin Nwe”. [vi] Sing Khaw Khai, Zo People and their Culture, Churachandpur, 1995, p.73. For catalogue communication, over, Carey and Tuck, p.
118, 127 “The History of the Sokte Tribe’ and “The History of the Siyin Tribe”. [viii] Sing Khaw Khai, p.141. [vii] Sing Khaw Khai, p.16. [ix] Sing Khaw Khai, p.143. [x] Vumson, Zo History, Aizawl, 1986, p.8. [xi] W.W.Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, vol.VI, Delhi, 1973, p.30.
[xiii] See Chinkholian Guite, Politico-Economic Development of the Tribals of Manipur: A library of the Zomis, Anmol Publications, New Delhi, 1999. [xii] Winnifred Creamer and Jonathan Haas, “Tribe versus Chiefdom in Lower Central America,” American Antiquity, Vol.50, No.4, 1985, p.740. [xiv] Sukte Laibu Bawl Committee, Sukte Beh leh Tedim Gam Tangthu, Chin State 1996, p.13. [xv] Taxes unruffled confined to such chiefs at bottom comprised: Mim siah/tang siah, sial lampi lifeblood, tuikuang tui siah, in saliang, gam saliang, tuk tha khal tha, inn zangsial lamsa, tuk an khal an. [xvi] According to Sing Khaw Khai, “The high sign succinctly Mang is a Northern Zo subtitle conferred on tribal chiefs, purposes of a man to regent, or ruler.” See, Sing Khaw Khai, p.26. [xviii] For aid enquiry, over Abraham I.
[xvii] F.K.Lehman, The Structure of Chin Society, University of Illinois, USA, 1963, Reprint confined to Tribal Research Institute, Aizawl, 1980, p.26. Pershits, “Tribute Relations”, in S. Lee Seaton and HJM Claessen (eds.) Political Anthropology, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, 1979. [xix] Sukte Beh leh Tedim Gam Tangthu, p.30. [xxi] Administrative titles of rulers of the northern hill booklet may be at bottom categorised into three: Hausa or Tulpi is a affiliation chief or village chief or priest; Mang refers to supra-local chief or chief who exerted impact down more than a individual village confined to dint of his power to leave together taxes; Ukpi/Ukpipa/Innpipa is a individual who is first and whose waggle extends to a ungrudging booklet comprising numerous village chiefs and tributary-tribes. [xx] Carey & Tuck, p.119. He is an autocratic ruler who enjoys terrific power and dial down a ungrudging booklet.
Each village headman or chief within his influence owed allegiance to him and paid all fringe benefit dues. The arrange per se is believed to be of a man to the Indian subtitle Raja. [xxiii] Kham Khaw Mang, “Khamtung Gam Tangthu leh Ki-ukna thu”, Sukte Chronicles, Vol.
[xxii] Sing Khaw Khai, p.26. III,No.3, March 2004, p.19. [xxiv] Sukte Beh leh Tedim Gam Tangthu, p.44[xxv] Sing Khaw Khai, p.30. [xxvi] Alexander Mackenzie, History of the Relations of the Government with the Hill Tribes of the North East Frontier of Bengal, Calcutta 1884, Reprint as The North East Frontier of India, New Delhi 2001, p.163. “.the Kookies embrace been bit by bit advancing as a advice to years in a northerly supervision, and embrace hitherto established themselves on the ranges which were in the first slit occupied confined to more northern tribes.”[xxviii] William McCulloch, Account of the Valley of Munnipore and the Hill Tribes, Calcutta 1859, p.55.
[xxvii] Robert Boileau Pemberton, Reports on the Eastern Frontier of India, Calcutta 1835, Reprint as the Eastern Frontier of India, New Delhi 2000, p.16. [xxix] See, Lt. Col. J.
Liangkhaia, Mizo Chanchin, Aizawl, Reprint 2002, p.113. Shakeapear, The Lushei Kuki Clans; William Shaw, Notes on the Thadou Kukis (Government of Assm, 1929) Reprint Spectrum, Guwahati, 1997; Mackenzie, The Northeast Frontier of India,[xxx] Vumson, p.94; also over Rev. [xxxi] James Johnstone in his My Experience in Manipur and the Naga Hills, London, 1896, Reprint New Delhi 2002, p.45 writes: “Colonel McCulloch’s code of planting Kuki settlements on exposed frontiers, induced the Government of Bengal to seek a almost identical enquiry, and a ungrudging colony of Kukis were settled in 1855 in the confines approximately of Langting, to grapple with as a railing as a advice to North Cachar against the raids of the Angami Nagas.”[xxxii] Mackenzie, pp.157-164; For aid enquiry, over Pum Khan Pau, The Chins and the British, 1835-1935, unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of History, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, 2006. [xxxiii] Mackenzie, pp.157-164.
Also refer to William Shaw, Notes on the Thadou Kukis, pp.48-49.