Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:27:49.514Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Possessing Christianity in Northeast India: Kelkang, 1937

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2020

KYLE JACKSON
KYLE JACKSON*
Affiliation:
Kwantlen Polytechnic University Email: kyle.jackson1@kpu.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1937, a spirit moved in the mountains of Northeast India. It presented local villagers with a visceral anticolonial vision, laicized religious practices, and offered alternative definitions of expertise and literacy that sidelined colonial and missionary authorities. Its message pulled together a complex range of clans, pilgrims, and roadworkers, and reconciled them according to contemporary local logics. This article uses the ‘Kelkang incident’ of the Lushai Hills District (today: Mizoram) to reverse the polarity of conventional writings on prophetic rebellion in two ways. First, it asks not how the colonial state dealt with a prophetic rebellion, but how a prophetic rebellion dealt with the state. Second, it asks not what the moving spirit of Kelkang symbolized, but what it did and how people interacted with it. Placing upland spirits, humans, terminology, and concepts at the centre of the analysis, the article argues that a more open-minded approach to the history of religion can better reveal processes of mediumship and rapidly indigenizing Christianities as well as the much broader malleability of concepts like ‘conversion’, ‘revival’, and ‘Christianity’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , March 2021 , pp. 468 - 513
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I wish to thank the people of modern-day Kelkang for their guidance and hospitality, in particular Pi Tuahthangi, Upa Papianga, Upa Lalsapa, and Rev. Lalrammawia. I am grateful to H. Vanlalhruaia and Kima Khawlhring for their assistance and to David Hardiman, Roberta Bivins, and Luke Clossey for comments on an earlier draft. This article also benefitted from the criticisms, encouragement, and suggestions offered by editor Norbert Peabody and two anonymous readers at Modern Asian Studies. I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and to the International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden) for supporting this research.

References

1 What colonial officials labelled the ‘Kelkang incident’ or ‘Kelkang disturbance’ can be reconstructed from several archival collections. The J. M. Lloyd Archive in Durtlang, Mizoram, holds several key Mizo-language sources, including ‘Tunlai chanchin (Mizo ram chhung)’ (‘The latest news [from within Mizoram]’), Mizo leh Vai Chanchin, September 1937, pp. 130–1; A. G. McCall, ‘Kelkang khuaa mi (thlarau thiang-hlim changa lan duh avanga lam leh thlarau ruih a tule titu kristian) te hnena thu sawi’ (‘Announcement Made to the People of Kelkang Village [the Christians Who Want to Appear as though They Have Attained a Higher Level of Revival by Dancing in the Spirit]’), Mizo leh Vai Chanchin, October 1937, pp. 146–50; and A. G. McCall, ‘Kelkang khaw harhna buai hremna’ (‘The Punishment of the Leaders of the Revival at Kelkang’), Mizo leh Vai Chanchin, October 1937, pp. 150–2. The Mizoram State Archives (hereafter MSA) and the Mizoram Presbyterian Church Synod Centenary Archive (herafter MPCSCA), both in Aizawl, contain two uncatalogued bound files of A. G. McCall's 1937 trial notes, official depositions, and related documents, the latter collection being a comprehensive fascimile of the first. At MPCSCA, the two files are both entitled ‘Mizoram Harhna Chungchang’ (hereafter MHC and MHCII). The Calvinistic Methodist Archives at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (hereafter CMA) preserves several related files, particularly CMA HZ/1/3/39, CMA HZ/1/10/1, CMA HZ/3/53, and CMA 27,366; extensive documentation on A. G. McCall is available in the Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections of the British Library (hereafter BL), London, catalogued as BL Mss Eur E361. The two main Mizo-language treatments are Chhawntluanga's Kelkang Hlimpui 1937 (Harhna ropui tak chanchin) (Aizawl: Synod Publication Board, 1985) and the commemorative booklet Kelkang Hlimpui Diamond Jubilee Documentary Souvenir: 1937–1997 (Kelkang: Prebyterian Church Kelkang, 1997). I am grateful to Upa Papianga of Kelkang for sharing these latter sources with me.

2 ‘The Deposition of Sina Ralte’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Thankiauva Haohul Pawi’, MHC, p. 2; A. G. McCall, ‘Judgment in Case No. 35 of 1937’, MHC, p. 8.

3 See, for example, McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, esp. pp. 1, 3, 5; ‘The Deposition of Kaphranga Tlao Pawi’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Laiawara Pawi’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Hrangbawia Kaltang Pawi’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Rosavunga Chhongthu’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Thangchhima Lushei’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Dothuama’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Thankhuma Chhongthu’, MHC, pp. 1, 2; ‘The Deposition of Kapchhingvunga’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Kapdaii Lusheii’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Lianhranga’, MHC, p. 2.

4 McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 6; ‘The Deposition of Lianbuka Lushai’, MHC, p. 1; McCall, A. G., Lushai Chrysalis (London: Luzac & Co., 1949), p. 221Google Scholar.

5 McCall, Lushai, p. 222; McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC.

6 Clossey, Luke, Jackson, Kyle, Marriott, Brandon, Redden, Andrew, and Vélez, Karin, ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part I: A Challenge’, History Compass, vol. 14, no. 12, 2016, p. 594CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 This is a vast literature. Stephen Fuchs provides a brief but now dated overview of several such movements in his Rebellious Prophets: A Study of Messianic Movements in Indian Religions (London: Asia Publishing House, 1965); Ghanshyam Shah compiles a useful bibliography in his Social Movements in India: Review of the Literature (London: Sage, 2004), pp. 92–117. Ranajit Guha's classic treatment examines several spirit movements in wider context: Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). See also Datta, Kalinkar, The Santal Insurrection of 1855–57 (Calcutta: University of Calcutta Press, reprint 1988)Google Scholar; Singh, K. S., Birsa Munda and His Movement, 1874–1901: A Study of a Millenarian Movement in Chotanagpur (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Singh, K. S., Tribal Movements in India, vol. 2 (New Delhi: Manohar, 1983)Google Scholar; Jha, J. C., The Kol Insurrection of Chotanagpur (Calcutta: Thacker Spink & Co., 1964)Google Scholar; Hardiman, David, ‘Assertion, Conversion and Indian Nationalism: Govind's Movement amongst the Bhils’, in Religious Conversion in India: Modes, Motivations, and Meanings, (eds) Robinson, Rowena and Clarke, Sathianathan (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 255–84Google Scholar; Chaturvedi, Vinayak, ‘The Making of a Peasant King in Colonial Western India: The Case of Ranchod Vira’, Past & Present, vol. 192, 2006, pp. 185–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sinha, Shashank Shekhar, ‘Adivasi Movements and the Politics of the Supernatural in Colonial Chotanagpur’, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Occasional Paper: History and Society, vol. 53, 2014, pp. 1–40Google Scholar.

8 On Jadonang and Gaidinliu, see Longkumer, Arkotong, ‘Religious and Economic Reform: The Gaidinliu Movement and the Heraka in the North Cachar Hills’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 2007, pp. 499–515CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Longkumer, Arkotong, Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging: The Heraka Movement of Northeast India (London: Contiuum, 2010)Google Scholar. Also see McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 6; A. I. Bowman to A. G. McCall, 25 August 1971, draft of Bowman's ‘Accounts of Lushai, 1931–43’, BL Mss Eur E361/91, p. 66. Here, Bowman notes that the contemporary Congress Party attempted to capitalize on the suppression of some of these hill movements, for instance portraying Gaidinliu as ‘a Hill equivalent of the Rani of Jhansi [Lakshmibai]’. On Gaidinliu in the Aijal jail, see the draft manuscript attached to the letter Ian to Tony, 25 August 1971, BL Mss Eur E361/91.

9 Chaturvedi, ‘Making’, pp. 159–60; the terms ‘inchoate’ and ‘naïve’ appear in Guha, Elementary, p. 11.

10 This idea is inspired by the work of Janet Gyatso in another context; see Gyatso, Janet, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), p. 18Google Scholar.

11 Worsley, Peter, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of ‘Cargo’ Cults in Melanesia (New York: Schocken Books, 1968)Google Scholar; Burridge, Kenelm, New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities (New York: Schocken Books, 1969)Google Scholar; Peckham, Howard, Pontiac and the Indian Uprising (Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1961), p. 98Google Scholar.

12 Wallace, Anthony and Steen, Sheila C., The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Knopf, 1970), p. 50Google Scholar.

13 Lambek, Michael, ‘Afterword: Spirits and Their Histories’, in Spirits in Culture, History, and Mind, (eds) Mageo, Jeanette Marie and Howard, Alan (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 238Google Scholar; Guthrie, Stewart, Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

14 Lanternari, Vittorio, The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults, (trans.) Sergio, Lisa (London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1963)Google Scholar; and Hobsbawm, Eric J., Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959)Google Scholar.

15 Eaton, Richard M., ‘Conversion to Christianity among the Nagas, 1876–1971’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 21, no. 1, 1984, pp. 1–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horton, Robin, ‘African Conversion’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, vol. 41, no. 2, 1971, pp. 85–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘rational adaptation’ in Robin Horton, ‘On the Rationality of Conversion: Part I’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute vol. 45, no. 3, 1975, p. 234.

16 Fuchs, Rebellious, p. 145; Peckham, Pontiac, p. 116.

17 Burridge, New Heaven, pp. 11–2.

18 Friedman, Norman L., ‘Nativism’, Phylon, vol. 28, no. 4, 1967, pp. 408–15Google Scholar.

19 Worsley, Trumpet.

20 Longkumer, ‘Religious’. See also Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millenium (London: Secker & Warburg, 1957)Google Scholar.

21 See Gordon, David M., Invisible Agents: Spirits in a Central African History (Athens, OH: Ohio Univeristy Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 James C. Scott makes a similar attempt to ‘“deexoticize” [Southeast Asian] prophetic movements’ in his The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 311–5 (‘deexoticize’, p. 311.)

23 Chapman, Alister, Coffey, John, and Gregory, Brad S. (eds) Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Chapman, Coffey, and Gregory borrow the phrase from Skinner, Quentin, Visions of Politics, vol. 1, Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 1–8, 47Google Scholar.

24 The basis for such a methodology is articulated and expanded upon in Clossey et al., ‘Unbelieved, Part I’; Clossey, Luke, Jackson, Kyle, Marriott, Brandon, Redden, Andrew, and Vélez, Karin, ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part II: Proposals and Solutions’, History Compass, vol. 15, no. 1, 2017, e12370CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Clark, Roland, Clossey, Luke, Ditchfield, Simon, Gordon, David M., Wiesenthal, Arlen, and Zaman, Taymiya R., ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part III: Responses and Elaborations’, History Compass, vol. 15, no. 12, 2017, e12430CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a case study experimenting with such an approach, see Redden, Andrew and Jackson, Kyle, ‘Gods, Spirits, People’, in Using Primary Sources: A Practical Guide for Students, (ed.) Hogg, Jonathan (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017)Google Scholar, available at https://liverpooluniversitypress.manifoldapp.org/read/untitled-493687ea-d192-4880-b61e-19bd082917ba/section/0b9435bf-9209-45e7-bf35-81be5a2c3da3 [accessed 1 May 2020].

25 Lalsangmuana, ‘A Historical Evaluation of 1937 Kelkang Revival Movement’ (B. Div. dissertation, Aizawl Theological College, 2003), p. 27.

26 ‘Demonical’ in McCall, Lushai, p. 222; ‘dangerous possibilities’ in Reid, Robert, History of the Frontier Areas Bordering on Assam (Shillong: Assam Government Press, 1942), p. 42Google Scholar. On archivability, see Scott, Art, pp. 292, 295, 312. Other similarly ‘archivable’ movements in neighbouring administrative regions have attracted attention from scholars of Northeast India and Northwest Burma. On the early twentieth-century visions of the prophet Pau Cin Hau in neighbouring Burma's Chin Hills, see Pau's, Pum Khan ‘Rethinking Religious Conversion: Missionary Endeavor and Indigenous Response among the Zo (Chin) of the India-Burma Borderland’, Journal of Religion and Society, vol. 14, 2012, pp. 1–17Google Scholar. On the Gaidinliu movement in Assam's North Cachar Hills, see Longkumer, ‘Religious’. Revivalism in the mid-1930s did not stop at the border of the Lushai Hills District: in the neighbouring district of Chin Hills in Burma, one Thawng Khaw Zam led a movement from 1935 onwards before being excommunicated from the ruling American Baptist Misison. On this, see Zaichhawna Hlawndo, ‘A Study of the Cultural Factors in the Foreign Missions’ Thinking of the Mizoram Presbyterian Church’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2011), p. 120.

27 ‘Examination of Accused Person: Thanghnuaia Ralte’, MHC, 17 September 1937, p. 3.

28 Similar experiences recurred amongst the earliest Mizo Christian converts in various locales from 1906 onwards; see Lalsawma, , Revivals: The Mizo Way (Aizawl: Lalsawma, 1994)Google Scholar.

29 ‘The Deposition of Thanvela’, MHC, p. 2.

30 See Liannawla's interjection during ‘The Deposition of Kapdaii Lusheii’, MHC, p. 1.

31 Attempts to plug these evidentiary gaps have been exploited where possible, particularly through the author's interviews in modern-day Kelkang and by revisiting interviews conducted by the Mizo pastor Lalsangmuana in Kelkang in the late 1990s; see Lalsangmuana, ‘Historical Evaluation’.

32 This point borrows from Richter, Daniel K., Facing East from Indian Country (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 110–1Google Scholar.

33 By 1937, McCall was already the longest-serving superintendent in the district, with some seven years of experience.

34 For instance, McCall, Lushai, p. 220. The trope is common in private missionary correspondence as well; see, for instance, Gwenllian Mendus to ‘My dear’, 2 January 1938, CMA, HZ/1/3/39, p. 4 (‘The Lushai Church is after all very young and inexperienced, and in the far off districts especially very ignorant still’).

35 ‘Examination of Accused Person: Thanghnuaia Ralte’, MHC, p. 3.

36 ‘Examination of Accused Person: Pasina Chhonghlut Pawi’, MHC, p. 4.

37 Ibid.

38 ‘Deposition of Tlangbawia Tlao Pawi’, MHC, p. 1. Tlangbawia was an upa (‘elder’) in the Kelkang church.

39 Scott, Art; Guite, Jangkhomang, ‘Colonialism and Its Unruly? The Colonial State and Kuki Raids in Nineteenth Century Northeast India’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 48, no. 5, 2014, pp. 1188–232CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Cederlöf, Gunnel, Founding an Empire on India's North-Eastern Frontiers, 1790–1840: Climate, Commerce, Polity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

41 Chatterjee, Indrani, Forgotten Friends: Monks, Marriages, and Memories of Northeast India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Simpson, Thomas, ‘“Clean Out of the Map”: Knowing and Doubting Space at India's High Imperial Frontiers’, History of Science, vol. 55, no. 1, 2017, pp. 3–26CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

43 Kyle Jackson, ‘Colonial Conquest and Religious Entanglement: A Mizo History from Northeast India (c. 1890–1920)’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Warwick, 2017), Chapter 3.

44 Ibid.

45 Mackenzie, Alexander, ‘Bengal File No. L/20 of 1889’, quoted in Reid, Robert, The Lushai Hills: Culled from History of the Frontier Areas Bordering on Assam (1942; repr. Aizawl: Tribal Research Institute, 1978), p. 9Google Scholar. On aspects of British conceptions of the ‘frontier’, see Lalruatkima, , ‘“Frontiers of Imagination”: Reading over Thomas Lewin's Shoulders’, Studies in History, vol. 32, no. 1, 2016, pp. 21–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 For instance, ‘a warlike race like the Lushais’ in ‘Annual Administration Report of the Manipur Agency for the Year 1878–79’, in Selections from the Records of the Government of India, Foreign Department, No. CIX (Calcutta: Government of India, 1874), p. 19.

47 Guite, ‘Colonialism’.

48 Ibid., p. 1219; on the case of wider Assam, see Sharma, Jayeeta, Empire's Garden: Assam and the Making of India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

49 Carey, Bertram Sausmarez and Tuck, Henry Newman, The Chin Hills: A History of the People, Our Dealings with them, Their Customs and Manners, and a Gazetteer of Their Country, vol. 1 (Rangoon: Government Printing, 1896; repr. Aizawl: Tribal Research Institute, 1976), p. 1Google Scholar.

50 G. H. Loch, ‘Diary’, 19 September to 7 November 1892, BL Mss Eur Photo Eur 108, p. 2.

51 On early colonial administration in the region, see Pau, Pum Khan, ‘Administrative Rivalries on a Frontier: Problem of the Chin- Lushai Hills’, Indian Historical Review, vol. 34, no. 1, 2007, pp. 187–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pachuau, Joy L. K. and Schendel, Willem van, The Camera as Witness: A Social History of Mizoram (Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Chapter 6.

52 Jackson, Kyle, ‘Globalizing an Indian Borderland Environment: Aijal, Mizoram, 1890–1919’, Studies in History, vol. 32, no. 1, 2016, pp. 39–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Chakraborty, P., The Inner-Line Regulation of the Northeast India (Titagarh: Linkman Publications, 1995)Google Scholar.

54 Jackson, ‘Colonial Conquest’, pp. 74–80; Schendel, Willem van, ‘Beyond Labor History's Comfort Zone? Labor Regimes in Northeast India, from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century’, in The Lifework of a Labor Historian: Essays in Honor of Marcel van der Linden, (eds) Bosma, Ulbe and Hofmeester, Karin (The Hague: Brill, 2018), pp. 189–92Google Scholar. For a discussion of forced-labour regimes in neighbouring Naga Hills, see Dzüvichü, Lipokmar, ‘Empire on Their Backs: Coolies in the Eastern Borderlands of the British Raj’, International Review of Social History, vol. 59, no. S22, 2014, pp. 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Jackson, ‘Globalizing’.

56 Jackson, ‘Colonial Conquest’.

57 I borrow the term from Vélez, Karin, The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto: Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 8Google Scholar.

58 See, for instance, Pachuau and van Schendel, Camera, Chapter 4.

59 See Lalsawma, Revivals.

60 Joanna Heath, ‘Khawhar Zai: Voices of Hope in the Bereavement Singing of Mizo Christians in Northeast India’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Durham University, 2016); and Jackson, Kyle, ‘Hearing Images, Tasting Pictures: Making Sense of Christian Mission Photography in the Lushai Hills District, Northeast India (1870–1920)’, in From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme, (ed.) Kominko, Maya (Cambridge: OpenBook Publishers, 2015), p. 453Google Scholar.

61 Jackson, ‘Colonial Conquest’, pp. 204–13; and Pachuau, Joy, Being Mizo: Identity and Belonging in Northeast India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014), Chapter 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Pachuau, Joy L. K., ‘Chhinlung: Myth and History in the Formation of an Identity’, in Chin History, Culture and Identity, (ed.) Robin, K. (Delhi: Dominant Publishers, 2009), pp. 150–2Google Scholar.

63 Such contestations tend to group in several identifiable directions over the twentieth century: several minority groups came to define themselves as Christian but not Mizo (for example, the Lai, Mara, or Hmar peoples), others as Mizo but not Christian (for example, those who continued to reject the overtures of both foreign and hill missionaries), or those who identified as neither Mizo nor Christian (for example, the Bru, Chakma, Indic Indian, or Gorkha peoples).

64 David Edwards to E. L. Mendus, 25 May 1934, CMA HZ/1/3/39, p. 2.

65 Mendus, E. L., The Diary of a Jungle Missionary (Liverpool: Foreign Mission Office, 1956), pp. 58, 88Google Scholar; also see Hminga, C. L., The Life and Witness of the Churches in Mizoram (Lunglei, Mizoram: Baptist Church of Mizoram, 1987), pp. 161–2Google Scholar.

66 Mendus, Diary, p. 58.

67 Lloyd, J. M., History of the Church in Mizoram (Aizawl: Synod Publication Board, 1991), p. 298Google Scholar.

68 On the rise and uses of print media in the Lushai Hills, see David Vumlallian Zou, ‘The Interaction of Print Culture, Identity and Language in Northeast India’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Queen's University, Belfast, 2007).

69 A. G. McCall to the Welsh Mission, Aijal, 20 February 1937, CMA 27,353, p. 1; Lloyd, History, p. 296. Census records suggest that public literacy in mid-1930s Lushai Hills had reached nearly 20 per cent—a crude measure that flattens extreme gender disparities and how uneven the on-the-ground reality was. Such statistics better approximate male literacy in the colonial centres than in far-flung villages; see Hluna, J. V., Education and Missionaries in Mizoram (Delhi: Spectrum Publications, 1992), p. 225Google Scholar.

70 Gwenllian Mendus to [friend(?)], [no day given] October 1936, CMA HZ/1/3/39, p. 5.

71 Ibid.

72 Missionary E. L. Mendus writes: ‘I asked the students to sing for me, and straight away they sang for me [Revelation] Chapter iii, verses 7-13’, Mendus, Diary, p. 58.

73 For a discussion of the Mizo historical and phenomenological experience of ‘revival’ (harhna), see Jackson, ‘Hearing’, pp. 475–7. Also see Lalsawma, Revivals.

74 See, for instance, Pasena to Mendus, 19 October 1934, CMA HZ1/3/39, p. 2, 5.

75 A. I. Bowman, ‘Major A. G. McCall’, unpublished manuscript, BL Mss F180/5, p. 13 (‘hysterical’); David Edwards to Pu Mena [E. L. Mendus], 25 May 1934, CMA HZ/1/3/39, p. 2 (‘menace’); ‘crude’ and ‘superstition’ in David Edwards, ‘North Lushai Hills’, in Reports of the Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church of Wales on Mizoram, 1894–1957, (ed.) K. Thanzauva (Aizawl: The Synod Literature and Publication Boards, 1997), p. 145; and Gwenllian Mendus to ‘My dear’, 2 January 1938, CMA HZ/1/3/39, p. 4 (‘waves’). On hymns, see Gwenllian Mendus, diary book ‘X’, 30 August 1936, CMA HZ1/3/10, p. 9. Anthropologist Fenella Cannell points out the potential for leaders to deliberately ‘routinize’ church services in the interest of ‘member control’; see Cannell, Fenella, introduction to The Anthropology of Christianity, (ed.) Cannell, Fenella (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quoted in Barkataki-Ruscheweyh, Meenaxi, ‘Fractured Christianity amongst the Tangsa in Northeast India—Bible Language Politics and the Charm of Ecstatic Experiences’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 41, no. 1, 2018, p. 223CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76 Gwenllian Mendus to ‘My dear’, 2 January 1938, CMA HZ/1/3/39, p. 3.

77 On Vandawt in earlier times, also see the diary of A. W. Davis, 18 February to 14 March 1893, BL Mss Eur Photo Eur 108. On the colonial infrastructure travelled by Thanghnuaia, see ‘Report on Roads in the Lushai Hills ending 31st March 1933’, BL Mss Eur E361/19, p. 2.

78 ‘Examination of Accused Person: Thanghnuaia Ralte’, MHC, 1; McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 9.

79 ‘Examination of Accused Person: Thanghnuaia Ralte’, MHC, p. 4.

80 A traveller walking roughly 200 kilometres eastward from Aijal would have encountered five bridges in 1933; walking the same distance southward from Aijal towards Lungleh, she would encounter none. Thanghnuaia would perhaps have noted that the five bridges he crossed—two permanent wire bridges and three temporary suspension bridges—were all strong enough to support the sial he planned to return with; see ‘Report on Roads’, Mss Eur E361/19, p. 2.

81 ‘Examination of Accused Person: Thanghnuaia Ralte’, MHC, p. 4; also see the ‘Warrant of Commitment on a Sentence of Imprisonment: Thanghnuaia of Vandawt’, 18 September 1937, MHC, p. 2 (‘Prisoner's Property Taken Over by Jailer’).

82 On this theme, see Scott, Art, esp. pp. 302–35 (‘High-Alititude Prophetism’).

83 I am grateful to the family of C. S. Zawna in Serkawn for sharing their historical rainfall records with me. These have now been made available via the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme (EAP), ‘Record of the Rainfall of Serkawn Station from 1912 to 1946’, BL EAP454/8/25.

84 ‘The Deposition of Sena’, MHC, p. 1; McCall, Lushai, pp. 220–1.

85 ‘Examination of Accused Person: Pasina Chhonghlut Pawi’, MHC, p. 1.

86 McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 5.

87 McCall, Lushai, p. 220.

88 McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 5.

89 Rappaport, Joanne and Cummins, Tom, Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), p. xCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 See Zou, ‘Interaction’, pp. 217, 219; and Longkumer, Arkotong, ‘“Lines that Speak”: The Gaidinliu Notebooks as Language, Prophecy, and Textuality, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, vol. 6, no. 2, 2016, pp. 123–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The touring Mizo pastor P. D. Sena, trained and authorized by the dominant Welsh mission of Aijal (and today remembered in village lore as a thoroughly Europeanized man, complete with felted hat and leashed dog), made five visits to the village from January to September. From April onwards, he became exasperated with the increasingly unorthodox uses of the written word, exclaiming that the Bible ‘was not for use as a fortune telling book’. Books and literacy became a battleground: Rulkhama Tultim Pawi, an elderly cultivator at Kelkang, recalled that P. D. Sena even ‘threw away [some of the village's] books’; ‘The Deposition of Sena’, MHC, p. 1 (‘fortune telling’); ‘The Deposition of Rulkhama Tultim Pawi’, MHC, p. 1 (‘threw away’). For a comparative case on the creative use of missionary books by indigenous people in North America, see Round, Phillip H., Removable Type: Histories of the Book in Indian Country, 1663–1880 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 See Peterson, Derek K., ‘The Politics of Transcendence in Colonial Uganda’, Past and Present, vol. 230, 2016, p. 198CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 Ibid.

93 On related themes of peasants’ cooption or destruction of apparatuses and symbols of authority, see, for example, Guha, Elementary, pp. 28, 51–5, 248–9; Chaturvedi, Vinayak, Peasant Pasts: History and Memory in Western India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), p. 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hardiman, David, Feeding the Baniya: Peasants and Usurers in Western India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 218Google Scholar; Scott, Art, p. 229; Bayly, C. A., Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 39–42Google Scholar; and Chaturvedi, ‘Making’, p. 158. For a comparative perspective on related themes in Southeast Asia, see Scott, Art, pp. 305–11. For a useful discussion of the productive power of writing through the introduction of foreign bureaucracy and surveillance, see McKeown, Adam M., Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), pp. 10, 12, 269Google Scholar.

94 ‘The Deposition of Liannawla Zahao’, MHC, p. 2. See also ‘The Deposition of Kapchhingvunga’, MHC, p. 2.

95 ‘The Deposition of Taibawnga Zahao’, MHC, p. 1.

96 ‘The Deposition of Chaldaia Fanai’, MHC, p. 1.

97 ‘The Deposition of Chawntluanga Zahao’, MHC, p. 1.

98 ‘Examination of Accused Person: Thanghnuaia Ralte’, MHC, p. 4; McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 8.

99 ‘The Deposition of Thankiauva Haohul Pawi’, MHC, p. 1.

100 See, for example, ‘The Deposition of Hrangbawia’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Thankhuma Chhongthu’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Chhawngthiauva Sasem Pawi’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Taibawnga Zahao’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Lianhranga’, MHC, p. 1.

101 ‘Deposition of Taibawnga Zahao’, MHC, p. 1.

102 ‘The Deposition of Lianhranga’, MHC, p. 3.

103 ‘The Deposition of Chaldaia Fanai’, MHC, p. 1. Also see McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 1.

104 Gwenllian Mendus to friends, 2 January 1938, CMA HZ1/3/39, p. 3.

105 On the appropriation of ‘signs of authority’, see Guha, Elementary, especially his chapter on ‘Negation’, pp. 18–76.

106 Gwenllian Mendus to friends, 2 January 1938, CMA HZ1/3/39, p. 3.

107 On the sensory experience of Christianity and the Chrisitian missions in the Lushai Hills District, see Jackson, ‘Hearing’.

108 Lalsangmuana's interviews with Upa Santhawnga (29 December 2002) and Sengliani (5 May 1997), Kelkang, in Lalsangmuana, ‘Historical Evaluation’, p. 35; author's interview with Pi Tuahthangi, Kelkang, 19 June 2014, (trans.) H. Vanlalhruaia.

109 ‘The Deposition of Thankhuma Chhongthu’, MHC, p. 1.

110 ‘The Deposition of Liannawla’, MHC, p. 2.

111 ‘The Deposition of Liannawla’, MHC, p. 4; for Mizo cures for ruhseh, see Lorrain, J. H., Dictionary of the Lushai Language (Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1940), p. 404Google Scholar; H. Buanga, ‘Old Lushai Remedies’, 13 June 1940, BL Mss Eur E361/24, p. 5.

112 McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Kaphranga Tlao Pawi’, MHC, p. 2. The villager Tlangbawia Tlao Pawi was one of many who sought and expected physical healing through participation in the communal feasts; see ‘The Deposition of Tlangbawia Tlao Pawi’, MHC, p. 1.

113 ‘The Deposition of Liannawla’, MHC, p. 3.

114 Archaeologist Matthew H. Johnson argues that scholars must move beyond vague pronouncements on the ‘meanings’ or ‘typologies’ of space to focus instead on what he calls the more ‘direct’, ‘real’, and ‘empirical’ realm of everyday human movement through built spaces and environments; see Johnson, Matthew H., ‘What Do Medieval Buildings Mean?’, History & Theory, vol. 52, 2013, p. 383CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

115 Author's interview with Upa Papianga, Kelkang, 19 June 2014, (trans.) H. Vanlalhruaia. The correlation between altitude, prominence, and social standing is still very much evident in Mizoram's modern capital city of Aizawl, where the city's well-to-do families can afford to live at higher elevations along the city's central ridge. The city's contour lines thus approximate a hierarchy of socio-economic status. The phenomenon has some basis in practical considerations, too; for instance, in the rainy season (fur), human and animal waste, as well as the runoff from erosion, drains downwards.

116 Ahuja, Ravi, Pathways of Empire: Circulation, Public Works and Social Space in Colonial Orissa, c. 1780–1914 (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2009), p. 9Google Scholar.

117 The historical villages of Kawnpui, Durtlang, and Lungleng are good examples in which the impressive, colonial-era houses of chiefs remain in prominent positions largely above the houses of villagers, and in which one can still experience some of the ‘feel’ of walking to a chief's house.

118 Throughout the history of Christianity in the region, prominent hills have been held as special sites for accessing spiritual power through prayer and these continue to be popular with the faithful, for instance, in South Vanlaiphai, Theiriat, Reiek, and Durtlang. Today, Kelkang's ‘prayer mountain’ (Hmun Thianghlim, or ‘Holy Place’) attracts its own pilgrims. Interview with Upa Papianga; Upa Lalsapa, sermon, Kelkang Presbyterian Church, (trans.) H. Vanlalhruaia, 20 June 2014.

119 Villagers today count 14 incarnations of the Kelkang church building, from 1912 to the present; interview with Upa Papianga.

120 ‘The Deposition of Sina Ralte’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Thankiauva Haohul Pawi’, MHC, p. 2; A. G. McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 8.

121 See, for example, McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, esp. pp. 1, 3, 5; ‘The Deposition of Kaphranga Tlao Pawi’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Laiawara Pawi’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Hrangbawia’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Rosavunga Chhongthu’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Thangchhima Lushei’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Dothuama’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Thankhuma Chhongthu’, MHC, pp. 1, 2; ‘The Deposition of Kapchhingvunga’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Kapdaii Lusheii’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of Lianhranga’, MHC, p. 2.

122 Lalsangmuana's interview with Neihthiauva, 27 December 1996, in Lalsangmuana, ‘Historical Evaluation’, p. 45; ‘The Deposition of Chaldaia Fanai’, MHC, p. 1; ‘The Deposition of [P. D.] Sena’, MHC, p. 2.

123 ‘The Deposition of Dothuama’, MHC, p. 2.

124 P. D. Sena, ‘Kelkang Harhna’, Kristian Tlangau, August 1964, p. 27; Lalsangmuana, ‘Historical Evaluation’, p. 33.

125 McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 1; Lalsangmuana, ‘Historical Evaluation’, p. 49.

126 No doubt, Liannawla also considered his local reputation—something crucial to the region's chiefs. Today, towering memorial stones from the period can be found aggregated on the Champhai plain and modern travellers to Kelkang can pause to look over the amassed handiwork of the region's first literate stonemasons, who recorded in sandstone slabs (lungphun) the names of regional chiefs alongside tallies of their rice-wealth and great deeds.

127 McCall, Lushai, p. 221.

128 McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 6.

129 McCall, Lushai, p. 221.

130 ‘Deputation of Thankhuma Chhongthu’, MHC, p. 1.

131 ‘Deposition of Lianbuka Lushai’, p. 1. Also see Hrangdawla's interjected testimony recorded on the same deposition.

132 Zou, ‘Interaction’, p. 217.

133 McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 2.

134 Interview with Tuahthangi.

135 Beatrix M. Scott, ‘Indian Panorama’, unpublished manuscript, The Cambridge South Asian Archive, United Kingdom, Lady B. M. Scott Papers, box 1, pp. 166–7.

136 McCall, ‘Judgment’, p. 5.

137 Longkumer, Arkotong, ‘Freedom and Frustrated Hopes: Assessing the Jadonang Movement, 1917–1932’, in Northeast India: A Place of Relations, (eds) Baishya, Amit and Saikia, Yasmin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 181–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

138 Ibid., pp. 183, 182.

139 Geertz, Clifford, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 59Google Scholar, quoted in Smith, Frederick M., The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), p. 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

140 Ibid.

141 Chatterjee, Forgotten, p. 318.

142 Smith, Self Possessed, p. 66.

143 All other records suggest that the thlarau had indeed given out the rice prophecy; here, Pasina may be escaping personal culpability or signalling that a human medium other than himself vocalized the words; see ‘The Deposition of Thankhuma Chhongthu’, MHC, p. 2, emphasis added.

144 ‘Examination of Accused Person: Pasina Chhonghlut Pawi’, MHC, p. 4.

145 On other indigenous precedents for, and influences on, Boas's thought, see Wilner, Isaiah Lorado, ‘A Global Potlatch: Identifying the Indigenous Influence on Western Thought’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, vol. 37, no. 2, 2013, pp. 87–114Google Scholar.

146 ‘Examination of Accused Person: Pasina Chhonghlut Pawi’, MHC, p. 3.

147 ‘The Deposition of Raltawnga Chhonghlut Pawi’, MHC, p. 1.

148 ‘The Deposition of Chhawngthiauva Sasem Pawi’, MHC, p. 1.

149 ‘The Deposition of Raltawnga’, MHC, p. 2.

150 See ‘DW44’ on ‘The Deposition of Nunkulha Zahao’, MHC, p. 2.

151 ‘The Deposition of Thangchhima Lushei’, MHC, p. 1.

152 ‘The Deposition of Kamthanga Pawi’, MHC.

153 Scott, James C., Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

154 McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 6; McCall, Lushai, pp. 221–2.

155 ‘Political Case’, 27 January 1898, MSA CB-5, Pol-46, p. 1; also see R. Sneyd-Hutchinson, ‘Summary of Events for 18 Jan. to 31 Jan.’, 1898, MSA CB-5, G-52. For another communal murder shortly after the Darbilli case, see the ‘Statement of Chonga, Son of Puchinga, of Khuangtin’ and the ‘Statement of Saiklira, Son of Dartunga of Kuatin’, MSA CB-5, Pol-46.

156 Chapman, E. and Clark, M., Mizo Miracle (Madras: The Christian Literature Society, 1968), p. 12Google Scholar. For another account of the communal hunting of tigers, see Shakespear, John, The Lushei Kuki Clans (London: Macmillan and Co., 1912), pp. 34–5Google Scholar.

157 The quotation is from an article extracted in the lecture notes of R. G. Woodthorpe, ‘The Lushai Country’, 1889, The Royal Geographical Society Manuscript Archive, London, mgX.291.1, p. 36.

158 Vanlalchhuanawma, Christianity and Subaltern Culture: Revival Movement as a Cultural Response to Westernisation in Mizoram (Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2006), p. 100.

159 Jackson, ‘Globalizing’.

160 ‘The Deposition of Runa Pawi’, MHC, p. 1.

161 McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC, p. 1.

162 ‘The Deposition of Chhawngthiauva Sasem Pawi’, MHC, p. 1.

163 ‘The Deposition of Zadala Fanai’, MHC, p. 1.

164 ‘The Deposition of Lianhranga’, MHC, p. 1.

165 ‘The Deposition of Kaphranga Tlao Pawi’, p. 1.

166 ‘The Deposition of Liannawla’, MHC, p. 2. Also see ‘Tunlai chanchin’, Mizo leh Vai, September 1937, p. 130.

167 Interview with Tuahthangi.

168 ‘The Deposition of Hrangbawia’, MHC, p. 1; McCall, ‘Judgment’, p. 1 (‘on pain of’). Also see ‘The Deposition of Liannawla’, MHC, p. 2.

169 McCall, Lushai, p. 220; also see McCall, ‘Judgment’. The human leaders of the movement do not seem to have benefitted materially: each had only two items of clothing to their name when they were taken into custody (khaki shirts and Lushai chadr, or wraps); see the warrants of commitment preserved in MHC.

170 See McCall, ‘Kelkang khuaa mi’.

171 Fuchs, Rebellious, p. 145.

172 Makthanga, ‘Tui leh ram’ (‘Water and Land’), Mizo leh Vai, January 1926, pp. 17–24, quoted in Being Mizo (trans.) Pachuau, p. 180.

173 See Pachuau, Being Mizo, pp. 179–82; and Pachuau and van Schendel, Camera, p. 83.

174 Shakespear, Lushei Kuki, pp. 48, 54.

175 Ibid., p. 54.

176 McCall, ‘Kelkang khuaa mi’.

177 ‘The Deposition of Liannawla’, MHC, p. 1.

178 Pachuau, Being Mizo, pp. 180–1.

179 See McCall, ‘Judgment’, MHC.

180 J. P. Mills, ‘Orders of the Governor of Assam’, 28 July 1938, MHC, p. 1. Reid's personal diary shows that he also summoned to Shillong missionary representatives from Cherrapunji, Sylhet, and Aijal for comment on McCall's action (‘all spoke highly of McCall’) and the possession trancers (‘and condemned the revivalists’); ‘Personal Diary of Robert Reid’, 28 September 1937, BL Mss Eur E278/52, p. 271.

181 McCall, ‘Kelkang khaw’, pp. 150–2; Lalsangmuana, ‘Historical Evaluation’, pp. 52–6. A ‘List of punitive labour of Kelkang village’ is contained in MHCII. The list records the names of all 96 male villagers and the dates on which they fulfilled their corvée obligations. At least two men were exempted from hard labour thanks to medical certicates provided by Pika, a medical officer stationed at the Champhai dispensary.

182 McCall, ‘Kelkang khaw’, pp. 150–2; McCall, ‘Kelkang khuaa mi’, pp. 146–50.

183 McCall, ‘Kelkang khaw’, p. 150.

184 McCall's letter is referred to in Hughes to Thomas, 25 September 1937, CMA 27,366, p. 1. Also see E. L. Mendus to A. G. McCall, 6 March 1937, CMA 27,353; and Eirlys Williams to Thomas, 8 October 1937, CMA 27,399, pp. 1, 2. In the latter, Williams complains that the superintendent ‘says very cruel things and is very unfair in his accusations’ and she cancels her holidays ‘in view of what is happening’.

185 Hughes to Thomas, 25 September 1937, CMA 27,366, p. 1; also see A. G. McCall, ‘Order on Khamlova Lushai’, 29 April 1938, MHCII.

186 See, for example, Tlanglianchhuma to the Superintendent Lushai Hills, 11 October 1937; Lalzuala to the Assistant Superintendent Lushai Hills, 12 October 1937; and Vanhnuaithanga to the Superintedent Lushai Hills, 14 October 1937, MHCII. The aggregated surveillance list is ‘Hmawng Kawng Khua Harh na Chang Hming ziak na Lis’, October 1937–38, MHCII.

187 Marginal note by McCall on the letter Lalluaia Sailo to A. G. McCall, 4 January 1938, p. 1 (‘if he goes over to Manipur state [W(?)]e should keep a look out [on] his activities’).

188 Hughes to Thomas, 2 October 1937, CMA 27,366, p. 2.

189 A. G. McCall, ‘Order’, 6 May 1938, MHCII. When confronted by McCall for allowing ‘gabbling’ in his home, Zakamlova responded by sending two imported pamphlets entitled ‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit’ to McCall and wrote that ‘there are a number of Englishmen, Conquerors of the World, who subscribe to this belief regarding “gabbling”’. Kamlova to Supt; 2 May 1938, MCHII. Zakamlova was a compounder and an elder in the dominant Welsh Presbyterian Church until he left in 1938; his contact with Assemblies of God missionaries in Bihar and Calcutta worried Welsh missionaries in Aijal. Later, he would be instrumental in founding a formal Pentecostal presence in Mizoram. See, for example, Gwen Mendus to Thomas, 9 September 1937, CMA 27,353; and Hughes to Thomas, 2 October 1937, CMA 27,366, pp. 1–2.

190 See MHCII.

191 Thakthing, Aijal. A. G. McCall, ‘Order on Khamlova Lushai’, 29 April 1938, MHCII.

192 McCall, untitled note, 27 September 1937, MHCII.

193 John Meirion Lloyd, ‘The Life of the People of North Mizoram Prior to and Subsequent to the Advent of Christianity, up to the Year of the Mizo Church's Jubilee in 1944’ (M. Th. dissertation, United Theological College, University of Wales, 1986), pp. 314–5.

194 Gwenllian Mendus, diary entry for 11 April 1937, CMA HZ1/3/1-30 (the entry can be found on p. 41 of the journal beginning ‘23 August 1936’).

195 Harhna Hruaina (‘Revival Handbook’) (Aijal: The North Lushai Assembly Standing Committee, 1949), cited in Pachuau and van Schendel, Camera, p. 275 (also see pp. 275–9).

196 Hughes to Thomas, 25 September 1937, CMA 27,366, p. 2.

197 Hussain, Imdad, ‘Resistance, Pacification, and Exclusion: The Hill People and the National Upsurge’, in Nationalist Upsurge in Assam, (ed.) Bhuyan, Arun (Guwahati: Government of Assam, 2000), p. 290Google Scholar, cited in Lalfakzuala, Joseph K., ‘Encounter with the British: The Legacy of Autonomy in the Mizo Hills’, Social Change, vol. 47, no. 4, 2017, p. 589CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

198 Bauman, Chad M., ‘Does the Divine Physician Have an Unfair Advantage? Healing and the Politics of Conversion in Twentieth-Century India’, in Asia in the Making of Christianity: Conversion, Agency, and Indigeneity, 1600s to the Present, (eds) Young, Richard Fox and Seitz, Jonathan A. (Leiden: Brill, 2013), p. 320Google Scholar.

199 Zou, David Vumlallian, ‘Vai Phobia to Raj Nostalgia: Sahibs, Chiefs and Commoners in Colonial Lushai Hills’, in Modern Practices in North East India: History, Culture, Representation, (eds) Dzüvichü, Lipokmar and Baruah, Manjeet (New York: Routledge, 2018), p. 135Google Scholar. The political party was later renamed the Mizo Union.

200 Mosse, David, ‘Accommodation, Reconciliation and Rebellion in the History of Tamil Catholicism’, in Christianity in Indian History: Issues of Culture, Power and Knowledge, (eds) Malekandathil, Pius, Pachuau, Joy L. K., and Sarkar, Tanika (Delhi: Primus Books, 2016), p. 186Google Scholar.

201 For example, Alberts, Tara, Conflict and Conversion: Catholicism in Southeast Asia, 1500–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, ‘Preaching (傳 chuan), Worshipping (拜 bai), and Believing (信 xin): Recasting the Conversionary Process in South China’, in Young and Seitz, Asia, pp. 81–107; and Vélez, The Miraculous Flying House.

202 Also see Rappaport and Cummins, Beyond.

203 For two recent studies approaching the concept critically, see Lindenfield, David and Richardson, Miles (eds), Beyond Conversion and Syncretism: Indigenous Encounters with Missionary Christianity, 1800–2000 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012)Google Scholar; and Young and Seitz, Asia. The phrasing borrows from Alberts, Conflict, preface, p. xvii.

204 Pachuau and van Schendel, Camera, p. 83–4.

205 Clossey et al., ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part II’; and Polanco, Edward Anthony, ‘“I Am Just a Tiçitl”: Decolonizing Central Mexican Nahua Female Healers, 1535–1635’, Ethnohistory, vol. 65, no. 3, 2018, pp. 441–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

206 See Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd edn (New York: Zed Books, 2012)Google Scholar, quoted in Polanco, ‘I am’, p. 444; ‘near immersion’ in Mills, Kenneth, ‘Mission and Narrative in the Early Modern Spanish World: Diego de Ocaña's Desert in Passing’, in Faithful Narratives: Historians, Religion, and the Challenge of Objectivity, (eds) Sterk, Andrea and Caputo, Nina (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), pp. 115–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

207 Clark et al., ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part III’, p. 7.

208 Brook, Timothy, The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quoted in Clossey et al., ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part II’, p. 2, emphasis added.

209 Brown, Bernardo and Feener, R. Michael, ‘Configuring Catholicism in the Anthropology of Christianity’, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol. 28, 2017, p. 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

210 Clossey, Luke, ‘The Geographies and Methodologies of Religion in the Journal of Early Modern History’, Journal of Early Modern History, vol. 20, 2016, p. 549CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

211 Clossey et al., ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part II’, p. 4.

212 Clark et al., ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part III’, p. 8; and Clossey et al., ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part II’, pp. 2–4.

213 Longkumer, ‘Lines that Speak’, p. 131.

214 Ibid.

215 Clark et al., ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part III’, p. 3.

216 Zaman, Taymiya R., ‘Cities, Time, and the Backward Glance’, American Historical Review, vol. 123, no. 3, 2018, p. 702CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

217 ‘Post-secular’ and ‘this-worldly’ in Gordon, Invisible, pp. 22, 5.

218 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), p. 106Google Scholar, quoted in Clark et al., ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part III’, p. 9.

219 Clark et al., ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part III’, p. 8.

220 Also see Redden and Jackson, ‘Gods, Spirits, People’.

221 The 2015 events at Kelkang are outside the scope and aims of this article. For social-media posts, see the Twitter hashtag ‘#Kelkang’, www.twitter.com/hashtag/kelkang?lang=en [accessed 6 April 2020]; for newspaper reports, see archived articles in Vangliani at www.vanglaini.org [accessed 6 April 2020]; also see Heath, ‘Khawhar Zai’, pp. 282–3. A related YouTube video produced by the modern-day church choir at Kelkang concludes with a visual reference to the events of 1937: see ‘Kelkang Kohhran Zaipawl 2015—Harhna Ropui’ (‘Kelkang Church Choir 2015—The Great Revival’), performance, 18 December 2015, video, https://youtu.be/my417bPcDio?t=280 [accessed 6 April 2020].

222 Smith, Self Possessed, pp. 17, 83–4, n. 58. Also see Chapman et al., Seeing Things Their Way.