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Concept
Zo people
Summary
The Zo people are an ethnic group which inhabit areas of India, Myanmar and the Chittagong hill tracts of Bangladesh. The word Zohnatlâk/Zo is used to describe an ethnic group, which is also known as the Chin, the Mizo, the Kuki, or a number of other names based on geographic distribution, that speaks the Kuki-Chin languages. They are from same origin which is known as Sinlung (also known as Chhinlung, Khur, Khul, etc,.). They spread throughout the northeastern states of India, northwestern Myanmar (mainly in Chin State, Sagaing Division and Arakan State) and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. In northeastern India, they are present in Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Assam.
The dispersal across international borders resulted from a British colonial policy that drew borders on political, rather than ethnic, grounds. They speak more than fifty dialects.
Various names have been used for the Zo peoples, but the individual groups generally acknowledge descent from ancestral Chin-Kuki. Among the more prominent names given to this group are "Chin" and "Zomi" generally in Myanmar, and "Mizo","Chin", "Kuki" and "Zomi", generally in India.
In the literature, the term Kuki first appeared in the writings of Rawlins when he wrote about the tribes of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. It referred to a "wild tribe" comprising numerous clans. These clans shared a common past, culture, customs and tradition. They spoke in dialects that had a common root language belonging to the Tibeto-Burman group.
The origin of the name "Chin" is unknown . Later the British used the compound term "Chin-Kuki-Mizo" to group the Chin Kuki language speaking people, and the Government of India inherited this. Missionaries chose to employ the term Chin to christen those on the Burmese side and the term Zomi on the Indian side of the border. Chin nationalist leaders in Burma's Chin State popularized the term "Chin" following Burma's independence from Britain.
Official source
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