Heaven in Hell: a paradox

Author(s): Mona Zote

Reviewed work(s):
Source: India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 2/3, Where the Sun Rises When
Shadows Fall: The North-east (MONSOON-WINTER 2005), pp. 203-212
Published by: India International Centre
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23006028 .
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 Mona Zote

Heaven in Hell: a paradox

is a truth universally acknowledged that an eccentric British

millionaire in possession of a large stock of evangelistic zeal must
It be in need of a people to reform. Richard Arthington was one
such man and the Arthington
Aborigines Mission was the fateful

agency which, in 1894, brought two youngish Baptist missionaries to

a region in Further India known as the Lushai Hills, now Mizoram—
a scrap of land so wild and barren that only the indefatigable imperial
machine could have cared about
occupying it.
In four years of somewhat thankless but unflagging labour, the
two men achieved the impressive total of one probable convert. They
also reduced the native language to written form and compiled a
voluminous dictionary. Shortly thereafter, the Baptist Mission in
Aizawl gave way to the Welsh Presbyterian Mission. The church has
roots in both Calvinist theology and the Methodist Revivals of

England, a formidable combination

by any standard, the sum of it

bearing the indelible and flinty legacy of John Calvin, sixteenth century
Protestant reformer. The new mission did in fact succeed beyond the
wildest dreams of all the Arthingtons of the world. After 1910, some
ten years later, conversions steadily multiplied until Christians actually
began to outnumber the unconverted heathen in a few places. This
can be proved by statistics. In his history of the Mizo Church, the

missionary J.M. Lloyd writes:

In 1921 the third government census was undertaken. In answer

ing this each person was expected to note down his religious faith.
The figures for Mizoram caused some astonishment when they
were examined.. .because of the enormous increase they showed
204 / Heaven in Hell during
census-
in the number of Christians among the Mizos. (The statistician) majority of
mizos
asked that they should be checked once more in case of fraud. identified as
christians-
There was By the early 1920s the hostility encountered
no fraud.
church melted with the mist, as it were. Christianity in this
by the budding context-
became very much the 'in' thing. While all this was probably carried people
out in sincere and earnest there can be no doubt that a number hostile to
fashion,
christianity
of the growing flock saw practical attractions in a change of alliance. had
You escaped the long arm of the chiefs and the burden of giving tithe embraced it

out of your meagre food store. You received education and the security
of paid employment, preferably in the government. You learned to be

hygienic. For a people used to wresting out a brief and brutish

existence in a hard environment, these were not insignificant
considerations.

They never are. Every successful evangelistic mission is a

variation on this theme. But none of this detracts from the fact that,

given the short time it took to work the change, the Christian mission
in Mizoram was and is an unparalleled success. The triumphant

transplantation of the Cross has reached a point where religion and

culture are now entangled and undistinguishable, one from the other.

Religion is an unavoidable ingredient in the curry called culture; but

it should not be confused for culture, as a type of blinkered
fundamentalism is wont to do.
Here then are a people who have grown in John Calvin's gaunt
shadow, far from where Calvinism was born, inheriting certain
characteristics of this humourless branch of Christianity such as its

spartan moral norms—and we might add, its want of an aesthetics of

religious architecture—even while nothing in their own past suggests

a similar rigidity of outlook. Hardly surprising then that Mizos are

just as furiously perplexed over the question of their identity as they

are aggressively proud of it. The recent flutter over the Jewish Bnei
Menashe question—are Mizos descendants of the lost tribe of Israel?—
can be viewed as one more indication of an internal dislocation, itself
the backwash of religious obsession. The Bnei Menashe movement

began in 1950, in an obscure hamlet called Buallawn where a spiritual

revival had gone astray, as revivals often do in Mizoram. It has
achieved the status of firm conviction among thousands of Mizos and
is now trimmed with scientific plausibility. Questions of racial roots
aside, the Bnei Menashe serve as an example and metaphor of
subterranean crisis of identity.
 Mona Zote 1205

Sen

Geeti

credit:

Photo

Christ the Redeemer

Signboard along the road to Shillong, Meghalaya

Religion is of course the crux of the matter in these unhappy

times when civilisations appear to be drifting toward a collision; but
nowhere is it a more immediate pulsating reality than in our country.
Christianity operates on a system of exclusion and compartmentalisa
tion; it naturally induces a pronounced sense of 'us' and 'them', of
the redeemed and the unredeemed. The Mizos are an island minority
of barely one million redeemed. Set in multicultural, all-assimilating,
Hindu-dominated India, this forced equation of religion with culture
becomes a way of defining and magnifying their difference from a
vast and alien Other. Distrust of the 'mainlander' is also partly a legacy
of twenty insurgent years. Besides the brutality of military
countermeasures, the capital city of Aizawl holds the distinction of

being the only spot of Indian soil to have been generously strafed by
its own government.
206 / Heaven in Hell

II

does the untrained eye distinguish the Mizos from the

lumpen mass of vaguely look-alike people in India's very

How own Far East?
Any attempt at description must toil through
a jungle of paradoxes, machete in hand. We are in topsy-turvy land,
making our way over splintered ground. This is a genuinely classless

society with an inbuilt capacity for liberal acceptance—here, among

other things, you can be glad to be gay without necessarily running
the risk of being ostracised as well. Yet there exists intolerance of
dissent and idiosyncratic thought. The cult of masculinity runs high;
yet women have traditionally enjoyed a standard of social, economic
and sexual freedom which might well be envied in other parts of the

country. Teenagers swoon over homegrown pop idols, and then give
vent to mechanical hymns expressing a fervent desire to leave this
world of misery behind. This 'oasis
of peace' harbours an emergent
movie industry which displays a dubious taste for gory violence. It

possesses a culture which venerates its poets and makes stars out of
mountebanks. It is populated by a gregarious people with a congenital
antipathy toward solitude—'a Mizo alone' is sheer contradiction in
terms—who have elevated the introverted quality of melancholy,

lunglenna, to lyrical superstatus.

Yet these are trifling observations, liable to muddy the waters of

understanding. Perhaps nothing can explain the mechanism of Mizo

society better than the fact that it is regimented down to the level of
the individual. The vast majority of Mizos live within the parametres
of one or other organisation—there are organisations for the young,

organisations for the middle-aged, organisations for the elderly. There

are religious organisations and semi-secular organisations, and it is
taken for granted that one belongs to both kinds from the moment of
birth. Life is, quite simply, a predetermined passage from one

organisation to the next. This means that a Mizo is typically a person

habituated to obedience, discipline and loyalty particularly toward

extra-governmental bodies. It also means there are few Mizos who

can call their lives and minds their own.
Over all, is the dominance of the Church. "But this is a Christian

country!" exclaimed a visitor in 1922, and he arrived at his conclusion

without help of the wooden signs emblazoned with lines from the

Scriptures. "The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom", is now

as ubiquitous as those cautionary plaques in notorious English, "Drink
 Mona Zote/ 207

and Drive Do Not Mix". Religion saturates all imaginable space and
every aspect of life. Five days of the week are spent going to evening
church service. Prayer and sin and God pepper snatches of conversation
overheard in the streets, shops and homes. Young people are
assimilated early into the ways and habits of the church. Newspapers
and magazines publish sermons and theological squabbles. Literature
is coloured by the obligation to moralise.
Crusades and revivals happen on an annual basis, clustering
thickly toward the year's end when Christmas looms around the
corner. Charismatic speakers explode on the scene, plunging the land
into a state of spiritual passion. Official functions, school programmes,
book launches and picnics are incomplete without 'prayer service'.

Religion is living breath and flourishing industry, monopolising minds

in much the way a certain Redmond company monopolises the
software market. Mizoram resembles Calvin's vision of an ideal
Geneva: the state obedient to the church, the taverns closed, an

unchallenged moral code universally applied.

Thus the issue of Prohibition raises its ambiguous head.
Prohibition has been blamed for a number of ailments,
including the

depressing condition revenue, with

of the state's tax losses running
into crores; an uninspiring tourism industry but plenty of church

sponsored jitneys to and fro; public and private corruption, the Act

being observed more in the breach; the introduction of a class mentality

between the haves who have IMFL andthe refuge of power and

money, and the have-nots who do not and are additionally harassed
in various creative ways by law-enforcers. Gravest of all, there has
been an escalation in drug abuse: statistics hover above a hundred

drug-related deaths every year for the last ten years, a conservative
number since a serious attempt at survey-and-research has yet to be
undertaken. [This has brought the state to the brink of an

unacknowledged AIDS problem.]

Prohibition is not the cure for society's ailments, as the case of
America's own 'noble experiment' in the 1920s plainly demonstrates.

Nor, within the context of Mizoram, is prohibition the cause of disease

but a symptom. Much heat and many words have been exchanged
over its necessity and effectiveness. Public opinion, when culled with
an impartial hand,
regularly shows that it enjoys a high rate of
dissatisfaction among the people. Yet it stands as firm as ever. There
is every possibility that in this matter of imposing morality upon space
properly occupied by personal choice, Mizoram might succeed where
208 / Heaven in Hell

America failed—though without any of the projected improvement

in overall levels of virtue, because the mutually reinforcing forces of
church and organisation have replaced the concept of individual

liberty.
In ratio to her population, the state sends more missionaries out
'to the field' than any other nation. The evangelical bent of mind is
fuelled by a subconscious sense of manifest destiny, of being a second
Chosen People—the proof being the miraculous ease with which the
new faith swallowed up and absorbed the old. Everything in the pre
Christian society seemed to have been primed for the arrival of

Christianity. The Mizos—a generic term covering a small sea of tribes,

clans and sub-clans—followed a common form of animistic worship
whose practice boiled down to the frequent appeasement, through
sacrifice, of a variety of malicious spirits. Somewhere in the remote
heavens was a hierarchy of superior spirits, governed by a deity called the existing
Pathian, benevolent but standing aloof from the affairs of the world belief in the
supernatural
and therefore conspicuous by his absence from their mythopoeic
aided the
imagination. To the missionaries, the existence of this quasi-pantheon transition
from the old
must have seemed an extraordinary piece of fortune. It could not have to the new
been difficult
to substitute the old Pathian, essentially an apathetic religion- new
higher power
observer, with a new and virile Pathian, one who was not only benign interested in
but also favoured a policy of active interference in human affairs. On the human
life
this level, the transition was painless. It was also facilitated by the
fact that these were a people who had never been under the control of
a powerful and united priestly class.
There were of course
spasmodic efforts at resistance, neither

systematic nor organised on lines resembling planned action. To

anyone familiar with the musical proclivity of the Mizos, it should

come as no surprise that the biggest menace faced by the evangelical
mission arrived in the form of song. Lloyd makes particular note of
the phenomenon:

... a totally new feature suddenly appeared in the form of a very

popular anti-Christian song. It was at first called Puma Zai, the
Song of Puma.. .Puma Zai was catchy. It was easy to add new verses
until it swelledup into a very potent anti-Christian song.. .It was
not a song sung in houses, but in the open air on the level place in
the centre of the villages. It echoed everywhere. The name was
changed and it was called Tlanglam Zai—The Communal Dance.
Later the tune too was modified and at least one very prominent
Mizo poet added his own verses to it.. .While the movement lasted
many Christians felt stunned.
 Mona Zote/ 209

But the famine of 1911 put an end to this spontaneous and

powerful reaction. Meanwhile the young church also underwent a

wave of equally powerful revivals. The last of these made the use of
the traditional drum or khuang in church acceptable, thereby causing they were allowed
to use the drum-
the church's appeal to rise vertically. It is an event undeservedly symbno of old
relegated to the footnotes of Mizo history. Here is Lloyd again: tradition- people
were bale to
The presence of the drum affected meetings profoundly and had identify with the
new religion- imp
a mesmerising influence on many.. .it was an overpowering expe part of their
rience which penetrated their subconscious mind. Men and women socio-cultural life
would fall into trances; others would dance and sing for hours.... incorporated in the
new religion -
made them more
Destiny lies in the small details. A religion once successfully open to christianity
indigenised is an irresistible force, establishing a point of intimate
connection for the people. It begins to speak their language. The khuang
was an integral part of the old culture and is an integral part of the
new: worship in church is unthinkable without it. In short, had there
been no drum there would have been fewer Christians. The course of

history might have taken a very different turn.

Moreover the new religion had a magical weapon at its disposal:
education. Mizos en masse and practically overnight were filled with
an unquenchable desire to learn the alphabet, and did in fact learn to
read. The most readily available book was the 'Jehovah Book', the
Bible. Literacy and the Gospel walked hand in hand. The outcome of
the
this lopsided conflict was inevitable. The old faith died an unmourned
missionaries
death, beyond hope of resuscitation. allowed certain
traditions-
While the contribution of these elements cannot be
incorporation of
underestimated, it remains an incomplete explanation for the speed indigenous
traditions into
with which the Mizos took to the baptismal waters of Christianity. the christian life
The truth is there was no real religion to supplant; and on the whole,
it is far more appealing to worship an energetic God deeply interested
the animistic
in your welfare than to spend your life in an endless cycle of placating religion -
spirits who never do you a good turn anyway. Lloyd also
appeasement-
capricious
but new religion-
singles out two factors that sped the mission's work: the strength of well being of the
the intertribal bond and the intensely democratic nature of Mizo people

community: "The relationship of the Mizos to each other was easy,

even with their chiefs, simple and informal. There is a total absence
of class distinction that is hard to imagine in Britain". The bulk of the

opposition to the mission by the chiefs, who, in the

was spearheaded
best spirit of instinctive democracy, depended upon the goodwill of
their subjects if they wanted to continue in their position of leadership.
210 / Heaven in Hell

Once the people began to be won over in droves by the Church, they
could not keep up their persecution, such as it was, for the simple
reason that there was no one left to carry out the persecuting. The
transformation was completed in a relatively bloodless manner and
more significantly, it was a transformation from the grassroots level

upward—from commoner to chief, the inverse of how religions usually the mission
Within of making beachhead, the era of in mizoram
spread. fifty years started from
evangelisation was over. The story of Mizoram, however, had just the common
people-
begun. grassroots

III

he story in fact began from the arrival of the mission and

instantly identified itself as the classic altercation between

JL sacred and secular; the tension between the call to harvest souls
and the duty to maintain civil order, between the necessity of

fermenting 'primitive' minds and the necessity of instilling in them a

healthy respect for law. It was a pattern that followed the imperial

flag everywhere it went. In short, the Christian mission often found

itself at odds with the local administrative body.
The missionaries came with a sympathetic approach toward

indigenous culture that would have been quite unfamiliar to their

eighteenth-century counterparts in, say, Mississippi. They took pains

to unravel as little as possible the skein of traditional life. They

encouraged traditional crafts. The form of village government, with a

chief and advisory council of upa—village elders—readily lent itself
to the internal administrative structure of the Presbyterian Church
with its Synod of elders. The primary goal was to secure souls, not to

preserve the continuity of ethnic customs and traditions. The writings

of Lloyd reveal awareness of these fragile cultural issues on which
the Christian mission exerted its influence and in virtually the same
breath, put them in their place. He says:

No 'primitive' people, can be permanently protected against

the powerful acids and influences of the modern western
world.. .The tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is difficult to fence
off.

The same concerns, are voiced but with a different perspective.

Major A.G.McCall, who served as Superintendent of the Lushai Hills

 Mona Zote 1211

District between 1932 and 1944, wrote a lengthy account of his years
there in which he is heard grumbling about the effect of religion on
the 'natives'. The revivals he regarded as "an indigenous and clearly

unhealthy manifestation of wild Lushai within a Christian

framework". And he frames a pertinent question:
A second generation of Lushais is growing up... under the cultural
aegis of a Christianity practiced by four or more organisations. In
what kind of shape can Lushai emerge from such a chrysalis stage?
Has the ordinary man in the street any responsibility for its shape?
Is its shape rather to be left to the tempers of chance breezes? Is
the most effective theological organisation to have the last say in
the shape of the final Lushai?

Is it indeed? These are not the sentiments of the anthropological

conservationist, such as those who consider the territory of the
Amazon Indians as a kind of natural reserve for the "noble savage".
But McCall's misgivings, however infected with the tone of the white
man's burden, were heartfelt. Viewed in the tumultuous frame of
recent occurrences, the last question acquires the doleful basso profondo
of a Mizo death-gong.
The area where the missionaries appear to have imposed their
will with fervour worthy of a zealot was in the matter of abstinence
from the traditional rice beer, zu, the sweetest cup of which was the
privilege of warriors and hunters. It must have seemed an innocuous

price to exact—much less psychologically traumatic than giving up

the traditional goat's hair amulet worn by the young men, or the
sacrifice of their long hair. Yet it was an equally profound symbolic
gesture because zu was an intrinsic part of the pre-Christian culture,
present wherever there was a ceremony to be performed and a festival
to celebrate. In each case, the motive
obviously a break from the
was
old way of life and unlike the amulets and the long hair, it was

something everyone—old and young, women and men—could be

told to comply with. Amulets and the custom of wearing long hair
soon vanished into distant
memory. The original diktat against
drinking has passed from the realm of reasonable injunction into the
theatre of bizarre tragi-comedy.
Abstinence formed a kinship among the first Christian Mizos,
setting them
apart from their unconverted fellows. It was their

identifying mark. From being a bond of fraternity it rapidly crystallised

into the unshakeable conviction that alcohol per se is sinful, and that a
Mizo Christian, above all other Christians, does not drink. On February
212 / Heaven in Hell
christian morality- abstinence from "sin"

20,1997, under the concertedpressure of the different churches, the

last and most total of a cumulative series of laws was enacted by the

legislative body, prohibiting the sale and consumption of liquor within

the state—with the exclusion of autonomous districts. The date is a
mere formality because prohibition has existed, to some degree or
other since 1992 and earlier, buttressed by an unwritten consensus

against the demon drink. Nevertheless the impact on the populace

was akin to that of Moses descending upon the unsuspecting revellers
in the valley, armed with a set of commandments that must have struck
the dumbfounded Israelites as irrationally severe. Here the strongest
case for the 'Lost Tribe' theorists presents itself: the Israelites Obeyed.
And the Mizos Obeyed.
Such obedience has steadily diverted their energy and resources
into a self-destructive war. It is a crusade that sees the state relinquish
its authority to self-appointed social guardians. It represents a real
and profound crisis in the ranks of a society that outwardly displays
a harmonious front; separating, as it were, the sheep from the goats.
More to the point perhaps, the arena of culture serves as a
recurrent battleground for debates The two camps are
on prohibition.

unevenly matched. Those against prohibition argue that zu has always

been a part of Mizo culture and it is a distortion of facts to claim
otherwise. Apologists for prohibition have a more overwhelming line
of argument: that Christianity is our culture.
So it is.
The Mizos have now colonised themselves far more efficiently
with religion. Their capabilities are squandered in debating the

acceptable alcoholic content of locally produced grape wine or the

propriety of singing love songs, when not forming vigilante groups
to cleanse society of its self-inflicted sores. This country of paradoxes
throws up one more bone to gnaw on: how her artists paint over and
over the same theme of traditional life, a long-vanished bucolic
world—as though the past is the only refuge from an amorphous
present lacking the power to inspire.

References
Lloyd. I. Meirion, History of the Church in Mizoram, Aizawl: Synod Publication

Board, 1991.

McCall, A.G., Lushai Chrysalis,Aizawl: Tribal Research Institute, 2003.