It is hard to imagine the rapidity with which Mizos reconstructed their post-1890s world. We have seen how readily they took advantage of new opportunities: many of them threw themselves into completely new religious and educational experiences and these transformed their worldviews and interpersonal relations. One consequence was that, for the first time, the world beyond the hills became an object of intense interest. The first Mizos to visit Kolkata, in the 1870s, had been decidedly uninterested and ‘the magnificence of the City of Palaces did not apparently impress them … on the whole, the balance of their minds inclined in favour of their own hill-tops’. Twenty years later, a missionary was just as puzzled by Mizo equanimity at experiencing new things: ‘Lushais are most disappointing to take to see things. They often exhibit no interest whatever in what we think they would be struck by’.

The great war

By the 1910s, such unconcern was gone for good. Eagerness for information about the outside world grew swiftly and it was not long before Mizos confidently entered that outside world. A very important episode was the First World War (then known as the Great War). This is how Sainghinga, a teenager in Theiriat village, heard about its outbreak: