Tributary Hill Polity: chiefs and Overlords in Northern Chin Hills circa 1800-1948

This book sheds light on a century old history of a hill-based polity in the borderland between the Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur with Burma (Myanmar). It traces the ruling Sukte lineage of the northern Chin Hills from pre-colonial through colonial eras, and narrates the fortuitous process of how a single-village chiefdom transformed into multi-village tributary Ukpi. This happened well before the advent of British overlords and their ‘indirect rule’. The enduring achievement of the Ukpi polity, among others, includes the codification of orally transmitted ancestral norms into written Kam Hau Customary Law, which is still in vogue today. During the heady days of the transfer of power from the British to Republican Burma, the old-style Ukpi lordship became a much maligned institution, especially in the electoral rhetoric of post-Independence local politicians. In retrospect, open-minded historians as well as citizens of the Chin State of Burma today are in a better position to come to terms with part of their historical past informed, in many ways, by Ukpi rule. Arguably this tradition of limited political centralization in the Chin Hills prepared them better than many marginal hill groups to stake a claim for a place (however humble) in modern Myanmar (Burma). The book will be immensely useful and prove to be a treatise to the historians, sociologists, research scholars and layman for better understanding the history and people of the area.