Mizoram

Mizoram's statistics sketch an outlier: among India's most literate states, overwhelmingly Christian since the missionary decades a century ago, its society organised less by caste or class than by church, neighbourhood and the mighty YMA, the Young Mizo Association, a voluntary body with branches in virtually every locality and membership that approaches the adult population itself. Aizawl's texture follows: church spires punctuating every ridge, choir practice audible on evening walks the way traffic is audible elsewhere, Sunday observed so completely that the city effectively closes and sings. I attended a service at a big Presbyterian church on Zothana's invitation, understanding nothing of the Mizo sermon and everything of the four-part harmony, congregational singing at a standard most countries would ticket, and afterwards was fed, interrogated kindly, and adopted for the week by his extended family, which is the state's standard processing procedure for strangers. The old pre-Christian culture, far from erased, runs underneath like a water table: the Cheraw, the bamboo dance, women stepping in flashing patterns between clapped bamboo staves, among the oldest Mizo traditions, opens every festival; the great Chapchar Kut spring festival fills the streets in traditional dress each March; and the weave of the puan, the Mizo textile worn by all generations, carries its patterns forward with the same documentary seriousness I had learned to read in Nagaland.