The discussions in this book arrives us to the understanding that the Nexus of Patriarchy in its desire to create an Ideal Zo Christian State in Mizoram plays the self-proclaimed role of cleansers and sanitizers of the Zo society and thus monitor the Zo community into a faith (Zo Christian) abiding, culture conscious, 'peoplehood' (mihringna). The book shows how the humorous popular aphorism: 'Mizoram-ah chuan Sawrkar a lalber a, Kohhran a thuber' ('In Mizoram the Government is the highest authority, and the Church has the final say') becomes a 'lived experience'. Religion, Politics and 'being Secular' thus converge into a complicated web to conjure a strange concoction of what I call: 'being Zo Christian in an Ideal Zo Christian State in a Secular India'. It is this 'problematic of entanglements, accommodations and circumvents' of Religion and Politics that this book attempts to elaborate.
Dr. Anup Shekhar Chakraborty (b. 1980) is currently a faculty in the Department of Political Science & Political Studies, Netaji Institute for Asian Studies (NIAS), Kolkata. Previously he was faculty at the Department of Political Science, St. Joseph's College (University of North Bengal), North Point, Darjeeling, West Bengal. He is an alumnus of St. Xavier's College, Kolkata and University of Calcutta. The thrust areas of his research interests includes Identity and Ethnicity in Northeast India, Gender and Spatial Politics, Migrations and Diaspora, Media and Culture Studies, Community & Policy Studies, Development Studies, HIV/Aids and Reproductive Health, Human Rights- Women and Child Rights, Refugee Issues etc. He represented India at the CODESRIA/SEPHIS 'Workshop For Young Historians' (Dakar, Senegal) 2006. He was awarded the 'India Social Science Research Award 2009' by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) and India Development Foundation for his research work 'Politics of Social 'Exclusions' and 'Inclusions' in Mizoram' in the 'social inclusion' category and judged 'one of the top ten best research efforts'. He received the prestigious C.R. Parekh Fellow (2011-2012) at Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics & Political Science for his post doctoral research initiative titled: 'Contested Landscape And Befuddled Public Sphere: Media, Democracy And Public Participation In Darjeeling Hills'. He has to his credits, several publications dealing with interesting aspects of North East India in renowned journals like Journal of International Women's Studies (JIWS), Indian Journal of Political Science (IJPS), Identity, Culture and Politics (CODESRIA) etc. He authored Politics of Autonomy & Ethnic Cocooning in Mizoram. (2015, New Delhi: Authorspress) and Hegemony To Hyphenation: Hybridization Of Identities And Politics In Mizoram. (2015, Darjeeling: St. Joseph's Publication). He also co-edited (with Padam Nepal) Politics of Culture, Identity and Protest in North-east India (2012, Vol. 1 & 2. New Delhi: Authorspress) and (with Padam Nepal) Politics of Exclusions and Inclusions in India: Construing Commonalities and Complexities. (2016, New Delhi: Authorspress).
