Zou People - Political Consciousness

Political Consciousness

Pu T. Gougin was the best known political leader who hailed form the Zou community. But this political entrepreneur soon transcended the narrow interests of his own 'tribe' to launched a pan-Zo or pan-Zomi solidarity movement to mobilise his co-ethnic members in Manipur, Mizoram and Myanmar. A recent piece published from Mumbai by the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) made the following observation about Pu T. Gougin:

"At a time when tribal leaders were vying for state recognition of their dialectal communities as “Scheduled Tribes,” Gougin began to conceive the idea of Zomi, i.e., “Zo people” in 1955 while serving as a clerk of the Tribal Development Office, Imphal. This prompted him to resign from his clerical job in 1958, and then pursued BA (honours) at St. Edmund’s College, Shillong. As a final year student, he founded the United Zomi Organisation (UZO) at Singtom village (Manipur) in 1961 to unite “all ethnic Zomi groups” (Gougin 1988: 3). When UZO was reduced to mere vote bank politics to the complete neglect of wider Zo solidarity, T. Gougin launched on 28 January 1972 a new organisation, Zomi National Congress (ZNC) at Daizang village (Manipur). He owned a printing press which helped him to propagate his nationalist vision through pamphlets, booklets and ephemeral literature. The Discovery of Zoland (1980) is perhaps Gougin’s most enduring political writing" (p. 61).