AIZAWL: Mizoram Chief Minister Lalduhoma has hogged headlines, saying the Chin-Kuki-Zo people need a united nation of their own.
While speaking at Indianapolis in September, he said that "the elephant in the room" and worried that his religion would become the issue by which to divide rather than strengthen and unite the community, as it should.
Lalduhoma spoke on religion on September 4. Religion is important for the Zo people, who hail from several indigenous groups, mainly inhabitants of Mizoram, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. The Zo people belong to the larger Chin-Kuki-Mizo ethnic group, which generally shares common linguistic, cultural, and historical roots.
In conclusion, Lalduhoma explained that the trip to the U.S. was mainly to find an answer to unite everyone under one umbrella. "We are one people — brothers and sisters — and we cannot afford to be divided," he said. Hope for the future, Lalduhoma said "Through God's strength, we will rise as one under a single leadership to achieve our goal of nationhood."
Lalduhoma, a former IPS officer, said that though a country may have borders, a nation is something more than that. He said the Zo people had been divided in an unjust manner: they lived under three different governments in three different countries - something they could never accept.
During the interaction with question-and-answer at the event, the chief minister stated that the borders of today are unacceptable to the Zo people. He said that they would never accept being split into three countries. The boundaries imposed by the British government were termed boundaries; he said that these boundaries were never represented or consulted by the Zo people when they were formulated. He said that these are imposed and unacceptable boundaries.
The speech stirred a scandal: a separate Christian nation was being planned by another country, according to Lalduhoma's allegations issue which Sheikh Hasina allegedly discussed months before she was forced to resign and leave Bangladesh.
In May this year, before she was compelled to resign as Prime Minister, Hasina reportedly warned of a conspiracy to create a "Christian country" by taking parts of Bangladesh and Myanmar, with a base in the Bay of Bengal.
Writer and YouTuber Abhijit Chavda raise several questions from the chief minister's speech, summing it up as "Kukiland for Christ, from US soil!" He criticizes the present Mizoram chief minister for turning down the territorial integrity and sovereignty of India, cautioning that the "inaction of the Indian government could have serious consequences."
Months before the chaos started in Bangladesh, Dhaka-based ‘Daily Star’ reported that Hasina had mentioned an offer from a "white man" to place a naval base in Bangladeshi waters. She was quoted saying that while it might have been targeted at one place, she knew other places they planned on hitting. She revealed that she was offered a peaceful election if Bangladesh allowed the base within its borders, but she refused. By August, she was out of power.
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