ABSTRACT
The chapter delves into the Zo hnahthlak’s (Zo people) collective engagement with death and shifts in rites of passage. Death among the Zo/Mizo people is marked by a call for community remembering, collective sorrow, and meeting death collectively by invoking the tlawmngaihna code, in contrast to many cultural customs. The term ‘Khawhar hla’ refers to a group of hymns written between 1919 and 1930 by the earliest converts among the Zo people, set to melancholy tunes, accompanied by lone wails and the pounding of Khuang (traditional drums). The discussion in the chapter attempts to understand the nuanced practice in the collective performances of ‘Khawhar zai’ (singing) of the ‘Khawhar hla’ (songs for the dead) in the ‘Khawhar in’ (home of the bereaved) with a gaze to locate the continuities, circumvents and changes in the ‘Zo Christian ways of life’ and the collective ethnonational code of tlawmngaihna in Mizoram.
