From Guerrilla Fighter to Chief Minister

India’s Northeast witnessed some of the biggest ethnic assertions in post-Independence India. One of them was the Mizo Nationalist Movement. Beginning as a civil society movement in present-day Mizoram, which was then part of undivided Assam, it evolved into an insurgency the ultimate aim of which was the establishment of a sovereign homeland for the Mizos. 

Reviewed by Abhinav Pankaj Borbora

The author, former Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga’s unique position in the movement allows him to offer unparalleled insights on the subject matter of the book. This becomes evident in the elaborate descriptive accounts that he provides about certain critical events that hardly have comparable references in the public domain. Starting out as a sympathizer of the MNF-led movement in his student days, he soon became one of its volunteers. After becoming the President’s Secretary, he steadily rose through the ranks of the Party and after the accord, became a Cabinet Minister and then Chief Minister for multiple terms. The material presented in the book is based on his memories, reflections in hindsight as well as notes taken from his personal diary. Despite knowing about the risk of maintaining written records by underground operatives, he first began maintaining a diary in 1975 and has been doing so uninterruptedly since 1980.

Zoramthanga dedicates the book ‘to the thousands of martyrs who sacrificed their lives for Mizoram’. The book is divided into ten sections and comprises eighty brief chapters. For the most part, the book proceeds in a linear sequence that begins from the early years of the author’s life and movement and runs till the formation of the MNF-led Interim Government in 1986.

In the opening sections, the author takes readers back to the reasons that spurred the growth of the Mizo movement and compelled its secessionary turn. The argument he makes locates part of the answer in a pre-existing disconnectedness that Mizos felt regarding their political association with the Indian state. The other part of the answer is attributed to two substantial apprehensions that began to subsequently bother them. The first was cultural and it stemmed from what many Mizos saw as the growing influence of Hindustani culture. This led Laldenga and his compatriots to constitute the Mizo Cultural Society (MCS), MNF’s first avatar. A much stronger catalyst was provided by the Assam Government’s mishandling of the 1959 Mautam famine. Zoramthanga argues that the apathetic response from the authorities greatly aggravated the crisis. The resulting trail of death and impoverishment further hardened the resolve in the Mizos to take matters into their own hands.

MNF is one of the most successful political parties in India. The book sketches the party’s evolution since its establishment as the MCS, through its metamorphosis first into the Mizo National Famine Front and eventually to its current form. The author shares backstories relating to the party symbol, flag, uniform as well as its early office premises. Rare details like the composition of its early executive committees, social profile of its members as well as efforts to expand the organizational base are also divulged. Even more importantly, Zoramthanga frankly discusses the factional conflicts that surfaced within the MNF and how they hampered the wider movement. In 1962, one faction broke away to set up a rival faction called Mizo National Council. Again, in the late 1970s, the author claims that forces opposed to Laldenga contributed to a lot of instability, partly with the connivance of the Indian Government.

The most notable contribution of this book however is the comprehensive account that it provides of the MNF-led insurgency (1966-1986) from a non-state perspective. Zoramthanga devotes five chapters to ‘Operation Jericho’, the MNF-led armed uprising which sought to liberate Mizoram from India. He sheds light on its planning and the major sites of conflict, besides making a realistic assessment of its successes and failures. He also dwells on the counter-insurgency operation of the Indian army. It was to suppress this very uprising that the Indian Air Force launched an attack within its own territory, the only such instance to date. The author mentions many of the places where the air force struck. The army’s strategy of grouping villages into guarded enclaves is also critically discussed. While its purported objective was to shield villagers from the conflict, according to him the real reason was to cut off supplies and information to the rebels. Whatever the actual reason, Zoramthanga’s estimate that it displaced nearly 80 per cent of Mizoram’s rural population instantly draws attention to the predicament of people caught in conflict, a theme that recurs at different points of the book.

The author highlights that insurgencies, despite their localized aims, often operate within a larger international context. He suggests that to a significant extent the fate of the MNF insurgency was determined by its relations with India’s neighbours, the changing tides of the latter’s domestic politics and the broader calculations of Cold War politics. This matrix on which the MNF operated crisscrossed through countries like Myanmar, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Afghanistan, Germany, Thailand and Switzerland. And moving in this shadowy landscape in true James Bond style was the author�"from illegally slipping into Kabul, holding secret discussions with Chou en Lai in Beijing to driving with a CIA operative in Islamabad to plan a dialogue with India.

In the closing sections, Zoramthanga focuses on MNF’s return to the mainstream. The book provides a realistic depiction of how peace talks between governments and insurgent groups actually take place. He captures the difficulty of reaching a consensus. And how it was further exacerbated by mutual distrust, political changes in India, internal discord and what he alleges to be the Centre’s insincerities. Following the signing of the Mizo Peace Accord in 1986, a MNF-led Government was formed and shortly thereafter Mizoram was recognized as the 23rd Indian State. Despite failing in its original objective�"secession from India, the author considers that the Mizo Nationalist Movement has been able to make important gains. Notably, he bases this assessment on the constitutional guarantees regarding autonomy and limited self-governance that Mizoram secured.

Zoramthanga’s book is a gripping narrative which would appeal to the casual reader and the academic alike. The only lament is that the author hardly covers his Chief Ministerial stints, including the first, despite naming the book From Guerrilla Fighter to Chief Minister.