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On May 23, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's accusation that "foreign forces" attempted to create a "Christian country" on the border between Bangladesh, Myanmar and India caused a lot of geopolitical concerns in South Asia as soon as it was reported. Indian media quoted Indian and Bangladeshi officials as saying that the "Christian country" refers to the country "Zogam" (Zogam means Zo homeland) that the Zo people living in northeastern India, western Myanmar and the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh want to establish, and the American Baptist Church is the instigator and is closely related to the US Central Intelligence Agency. To evaluate the above statement, we need to first look at the reality of this ethnic group.

During the British colonial era, the ethnic group loosely referred to as "Chin" on the Burmese side and "Kuki" and "Lushe" on the Indian side included several smaller identity groups speaking branches and sub-branches of the Tibeto-Burman language family (which are classified as "tribes" in India). Compared with the "Naga" who also live in the mountains of northeastern India and western Myanmar and are more heterogeneous internally, they share a common mythological origin and are more closely connected in language, cultural customs, but groups speaking different dialects are usually unable to communicate. They mainly live in Mizoram, India (Mi State) and Chin State, Myanmar. In addition, they are also distributed in Sagaing, Myanmar, Manipur, India (Man State) and Nagaland, Assam Mountain, and Chittagong, Bangladesh. There is a lack of accurate official statistics on the population of this ethnic group, but in 1986, a Mizo scholar estimated its total population to be 2.5 million, half of which are in India and about 50,000 in Bangladesh.

Unlike the Naga people, whose unified identity was successfully constructed in the last century, the Chin-Kuki ethnic group was embroiled in controversy in the process of unifying its name. In the Chin Mountains of Myanmar, the dispute was whether to name it "Chin" or "Zomi", and in the Indian state of Mbang, the dispute was whether to name it "Kuki" or "Zomi". Only in the former Lushe Mountain area, later known as Mibang, did the tribes adopt a unified name, "Mizo". But the Mizo people could not get their ethnic brothers outside the state to accept "Mizo" as a unified name.

In a specific regional society, the name of an ethnic group that transcends tribal identity cannot be unified. The reason behind this is the struggle for leadership among different tribes, which also highlights the lack of social and political integration within the ethnic group. In fact, from 1997 to 1998, in Chorachandpur District, Manbang, the tribal groups that identified with "Zomi" and "Kuki" had an armed conflict that lasted for more than a year, resulting in more than 300 deaths, and the difference in ethnic name was the main cause of the conflict.

Since the late 1980s, some Mizo scholars have begun to use "Zo" as a generic name in historical and cultural works. As it transcends the previous associations with specific tribes and languages, the name is a neutral alternative and is more easily accepted by people who identify with "Mizo" and "Zomi".

The Chin-Kuki-Zo ethnic groups do not have a unified political goal. In Myanmar, the Chin were one of the four ethnic groups that signed the Panglong Agreement in 1947 to establish a federal system. However, the federal system was not truly implemented, and the military government came to power, resulting in ethnic minority rebellions in many places. Influential political and armed organizations have emerged in Chin State since 1988, with their main goals being "self-determination, restoration of democracy, and establishment of a federal system."

In India, the political movement of the Kuki-Zo people began in the 1960s. In 1966, due to the Indian government's inaction on the Mizo famine, the Mizo National Front (MNF), which was transformed from a disaster relief organization, declared Mizo independence and subsequently launched an underground armed rebellion. In 1972, the "Zomi National Congress" was established in Manipur. Its goal was to integrate the Zo-inhabited areas in India into a state. For this reason, the organization supported the MNF's movement. In 1986, the MNF signed the "Mizo Treaty" with the Indian government, abandoned its separatist goals and violent actions, and resumed its status as a political party. In 1987, the Indian state of Mizo was established, but its jurisdiction only included the previous Mizo Union Territory. After the "Zomi National Congress" failed to achieve its goals, it began to demand the separation of the Zomi Union Territory from the Manipur state. Some Kuki people who were also disappointed with the treaty established the "Kuki National Organization" and the "Kuki National Army" in Maan State in 1988. The former had a two-fold goal: one was to integrate the historical Kuki areas in northeastern India and northwestern Myanmar, especially Myanmar's Kapo Valley (located in Myanmar's Sagaing Region) and the mountains of India's Maan State into one administrative unit, while the other more realistic goal was to establish separate states in the two places.

In the late 1980s, a large number of ethnic armed forces emerged in the valley and mountains of Manipur. Their goal was to protect the areas occupied by specific ethnic groups, and armed conflicts occurred from time to time. The violent conflicts between the Naga armed groups and the Kuki armed groups from 1992 to 1993, and between the Kuki armed groups and the Zomi armed groups from 1997 to 1998 were prominent events. The "Kuki National Army", which aims to establish a Kuki state, is also in hostile relations with other Kuki and Zomi armed groups. Since 2016, more than 20 Kuki and Zomi armed groups have merged into two major organizations and started peace talks with the Indian central and state governments, hoping to achieve the goal of achieving greater autonomy in Manipur. However, after a large-scale riot broke out between the Kuki-Zomi and Metai people in Manipur in May 2023, all Kuki-Zomi organizations and parliamentarians strongly demanded that the mountains (tribal settlements) be separated from the valley (mainly inhabited by Metai people) to form a separate administrative region. In addition, in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, a political and armed organization of the Kuki-Chin ethnic group was established in 2017, aiming at their autonomy as a minority group.

Since its establishment, Mizo has been peaceful and stable, becoming an exception in northeastern India, which is plagued by ethnic conflicts and rebellions. The "Zo Reunification Organization" in the state was established in 1988 with the goal of unifying the Zo people who were divided by the border imposed by the British colonists into one administrative unit: Zoram in the Mizo language; the Zomi people in Mizo called it Zogam. The organization became a non-governmental organization in the 1990s and began to participate in UN activities in 1999, positioning itself as an indigenous peoples organization. Recently, their most important action was to organize protest marches against the Indian central government's announcement in March this year that it was considering abandoning the free movement system on the India-Myanmar border and building a border wall on the India-Myanmar border. Their legitimacy was based on the clause in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that advocates the right of indigenous peoples to maintain and develop relations with their members and other peoples across international borders. The Kuki-Zo Organization in Mizo, as well as the governments of Mizo and Nagaland, all opposed the central government's decision. The Home Minister of Mizo also hopes that the central government will take steps to unify the Zo people who are divided by the border under one administrative unit. It can be said that Satoshi’s “dream of unification” has not been abandoned, but it is only a dream that is sometimes mentioned.

Today, the majority of the Chin-Kuki-Zo are Christians. Since the colonial era, the greatest contribution that the Christian Church has brought to the mountain tribes, including them, is modern education, and Christian identity has become part of their cultural identity. As they are regarded as backward mountain tribes or ethnic groups, the connection between Christianity and modernity has helped them establish a more dignified sense of identity.

Christian Puritans, especially the American Baptists, are the main denominations that preach among the Chin-Kuki-Zomi and Naga peoples outside of the Mekong. Christian identity plays an important role in the formation of the Naga nation against "Hindu or Muslim India", but this is not the design of the church. Similarly, the Baptists cannot prevent the division and conflict between the Kuki and Zomi peoples. The inability to deal with conflicts and political differences within and outside the ethnic group is related to the decentralized nature of the Baptist church: their actual operation and influence are at the level of individual tribes, encouraging the autonomy of tribal identity and culture.

In fact, the geopolitical benefits that the establishment of a Christian-majority country in South Asia would bring to the United States exist only in theory. But for the Hindu right, the imaginary threat to the integrity and security of the country provides new fuel for their inherent prejudice and hostility towards Christian minority communities. This may lead to the Indian central government taking a tougher stance against the Kuki-Zo people, leading to more conflicts.

(The author is an associate researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)