The Christian-majority state of Mizoram in northeast India has been rocked by a marriage leading to a religious conversion and granting of tribal status to an outsider.
At the center of the heated controversy is the scheduled tribe (ST) certificate issued by the Aizawal district administration in 2018 to Kamrul Islam Laskar, a non-tribal man who married a local Mizo woman. Laskar converted to Christianity and even adopted a local name – Kamlova Chhangte – but the nativist organizations who are dead against outsiders marrying into the predominantly Christian tribes want nothing of it.
The Mizo people are known to be inseparably knitted together by their strong ethnic, familial and religious bonds.
A coordination committee steered by the Young Mizo Association (YMA), arguably the most influential student body in the state, now wants state authorities to cancel the ST certificate issued to Laskar.
The YMA has long demanded a law to ensure that Mizo women who marry a non-tribal man should lose their ST status, robbing them of special privileges guaranteed in the Indian constitution including reservations in education and employment.
It has been joined by other influential student organizations like the Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP), known for administering an oath to school students across the state to not marry outside the Mizo tribes.