Alumna Update: Lalchhanhimi Bungsut — Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation Blog

Lalchhanhimi Bungsut is a 2022 Inlaks scholar. She is currently completing her MSc in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

For two weeks in August 2023, she was offered a chance to intern at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. During her internship, she conducted research for the museum’s learning programme on Lushai Hills of North East India.

Read about how she developed a better relationship with her ancestors in the blog below.

Talking to my Ancestors

This past summer, I had the privilege of working at the Pitt Rivers Museum as a research intern. Working with the museum’s learning team, I helped develop teaching material with a focus on colonial harm in South Asia, particularly in the Lushai Hills where Mizoram - my home state - currently stands. I began my work with an objective lens, carrying a desire for focused research and a reproduction of facts for young students to learn from. But soon I had to deal with the emotional baggage that came with my travels to the past, my research glazed with a sheen of partiality towards my ancestors hidden away in the folds of the museum’s archives.

I first began by wandering through the displays on the three levels of Oxford’s only museum dedicated to anthropological material. The levels are stuffed with artifacts from all over the world – some stolen by colonial officers, anthropologists, and the more recent artifacts gifted to the museum. As I couldn’t find objects that closely related to the project of uncovering colonial harm in a familiar context, I requested to scavenge through the archives. Thanks to the wonderful staff working behind the scenes in the museum, I gained access to albums of photography and sketches done by Colonel H.G. Woodthorpe, a colonial officer with the Lushai Expedition of 1871-1872 which eventually led to the annexation of the Lushai Hills. Sifting through sketches and plastic-covered photos with gloved hands, I spent several days marvelling, photographing, and categorising the material. I finally settled on two pieces that I wanted to further analyse – a sketch called Lushai Implements by Woodthorpe (Figure 1) and a photograph called Vonoler’s Tomb, taken by the same (Figure 2).

To give a brief glimpse of my learnings, let us take Figure 1, Lushai Implements as an example. ‘Lushai Implements’ is an astounding sketch that not only gives us a historical glimpse into the Lushai’s material culture, but also provides intricate details and descriptions that may help us understand their use and relevance. While the sketch realistically depicts the materiality of the objects and what they may be good for, the lives of these materials and their contemporary relevance reveal the changes brought by colonisation and the modern-day Mizo’s agentive engagements with colonial rule. For example, the contemporary rejection of warfare, enmity, and anything that involved violence is represented through the dismissal of objects such as the shield and spear (only relegated to glass cases in museums) or the discontinuation of some uses such as with the ‘dhao,’ the big knife, or as it is called in the local vernacular – chempui. Once also used for inter-tribal warfare, the chempui is now only used for its utility in slash and burn agriculture – which is also currently in decline as traditional farming methods are replaced by profit-oriented settled plantations encouraged by the state’s economic developmentalist model.

Much of the shift from ‘tribal’ lifestyle to a British-approved modernity happened through the emphasis on an evolutionary model of societal development that rendered tribal populations, such as the Lushai, on the back end of the developmental spectrum. Due to the frequent wars and raids carried out by hill tribes, colonial officers and anthropologists wrote them off as ‘fierce tribes’ who were ‘uncivilized,’ positing the British, Western social construct as the pinnacle of civilization (Woodthorpe 1873: 5). While the pacification of Lushai society is seen as a positive influence of colonisation today, it opened the discourse of the ‘backwards’ tribal that allowed for the subjugation and control of tribes like the Lushai, a model that remains relevant even in the post-colonial Indian state’s imagination of its hill-states where economic development is pushed on a model that denies local agency.

Throughout my research, I worked on providing details about each object in the sketch where I could find information. Analysing the material allowed me to retrace the rich history of the Lushai Hills that is so rarely taught in schools even within Mizoram. Beyond a casual nod to our history of head-hunting and a limited understanding of materials that have been passed down, there is a lack of interest and knowledge of what pre-colonial Mizoram looked like and the tremendous harm to tradition that colonisation and its sister mission of Christianisation brought to the state. By reading historical documents and interviewing older generations about what I encountered in the sketches and photographs, I created documents that highlighted the stories that material culture depicted and also traced their contemporary relevance or lack therof. The documents I produced will be used in the Pitt Rivers’ learning programme, which invites students from schools and universities to learn about culture and history through the museums’ material. The lessons will introduce not only the objects and their significance, but also introduce the unfamiliar history of Mizoram to the numerous students that come through the museum.

Taking part in this project has been enriching and challenging. I have learned of losses and changes that have taken place throughout our ignored history but have also played my part in bringing the objects and my ancestors back to life. The project also contributed to my training as an aspiring anthropologist, allowing me to engage with new avenues such as material culture, archival documents, and offering practice in talking and listening to people. I am now more confident about my relationship with objects of material culture and am excited to continue research on a similar trajectory of historicising objects, places, and analysing the role that colonialisation plays in shaping everyday relations today. More importantly, I now find myself more rooted in my identity, with a better relationship with my ancestors, my community’s history, and the possibilities of the future in the traditions that remain.