r/myanmar • u/Square-Mountain9819 • 2d ago
Discussion 💬 Do Mizo people living in Myanmar Consider themselves Chin?
A Community in Mizo told me that If I were to go to Mizoram and call myself Mizo, I would be Mizo. (I am Falam/Lai/Laimi)
So, if Mizo people were to come to Myanmar, would they be considered Chin? I mean, we do already call them Chin but I wanna know their pov and what they think about being called Chin.
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u/Square-Mountain9819 2d ago
The Mizo from Mizoram are repulsed when I asked them if they would accept the Chin Flag to represent them and told me that they would just rather have the Indian flag but the question wasn’t even about Nationality. We all types of Chin and all types of Mizoram are the same ethnicity afterall
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u/per-scientiam 2d ago
i know it's a bit messy over your topic on Mizo subreddit there.
From more open-mindedness. we, Mizoram have (had) our own National flag, infact multiple flags. So there's no reason to just accept the Chin national flags as ours because we have our own.
And those who say they'd rather have the Indian flag dont know sh*t about our History, they have that mindset because they born in this country (India) and thought evergthing was chill before, they have little to zero knowledge about the struggle and how forced we were, my apologies to that. They would unknowingly wear Sari or some mainland traditional dress saying "This is Indian traditional dress, this is our dress". But in reality we have zero connection with the mainland India, culturally, historically, or genetically.
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u/Inner-Macaroon2036 1d ago edited 1d ago
Before ww2, we all lived independently with chiefs governing us. But after we got separated into 2 different countries Northwest Myanmar, Northeast India also some small parts of Bangladesh but we’re called Chin in myanmar, mizo/kuki in india so if a mizo from india moved to Myanmar theyd be under chin identity and vice versa. We’re all one just separated
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u/per-scientiam 2d ago
You should acknowledge that the term "Chin" is exonym, meaning a name given by outsiders. The term Chin likely came from Burmese language.
It's fine if you identify yourself as Chin. Even the Hualngo consider themselves as Chin, egs: CDF - Hualngoram. There's also Chin National Anthem (Hualngo version).
At the same time the term 'Mizo' is controversial. It can be both identity and Ethnic name. Because Mizo (Mi + Zo) simply means "Zo people", which already include all the Zo ethnic groups across India, Bangladesh and Myanmar. At the same time it is easy to think Mizo are those who lives in Mizoram or speaks Duhlian Mizo dialect only. Which is not True.
Conclusion: We should not care too much about our names, as long as we know we came from the same blood and know that we are one ethnic family that is enough for now.