Mal min sawm turin van khuaan ro a rel, is a lyric I have known since forever. We do sing it every year multiple times around November and December after all.
However, one Delhi December got me interested in the song in a new way. One of our leaders Pu Lalchuangliana gave a little sermon over how it was supposed to be read as: Mal min sawm turin van Khua-an ro a rel. Capital K for Khua. As in state. As in the royal We, a nosism, a pluralis magistatis. Khua here would mean the state as much as its monarch, each referring to and representing the other. I don’t know if it is true or not, but I found it interesting.
A majority of my interest was less spiritual than it was socio-historical. Perhaps anthropological. Or maybe linguistic. Or simply just inability to turn off the Sociology nerd in me.
In any case, it made me think about Emilé Durkheim saying how society is more than the sum of its parts. Simply put, when you abstract society to such high levels, it becomes bigger than the very people who comprise of it. It begins to become an Entity unto itself. (He argued society is basically god for a tribal society, abstracted as it is to idealized image, with the ability to penalize and reward its members. That’s also basically how you say Man created God in his own image, in a subversion of the Genesis statement. Perhaps also in a Nietzcschean POV, how God is dead, because we killed him. Possible, if we had indeed birthed him. Reminiscent also of American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Ah but I digress. That is a different topic.) Administratively, mob mentality.
In a charming American comedy-drama film called Flipped, a young girl is told by her father: some people could be more or less than the sum of their parts. I understood it as to mean that some people cannot simply be broken down to their parts, like their flesh, bones and sinew; they are more (as is the society); meanwhile and unfortunately, some people are so devoid of character and/or morality that they are not worth or do not even make up the sum of their physical selves broken down to their parts.
In any case, Pu Chuanga’s comment sparked my interest in nosism in the Mizo language. We do use it continually, which is not a surprise seeing as how absorbed into society as we are. Once I became employed, I realised that nosism also applied to the Office and the Head of it. Some of the best leaders I’ve served with have accepted credit with the plural We, but have often shouldered blame and responsibility on the singular I. I think that is commendable and encouraging. Leadership is a very difficult role. Not many get it right. Some people just end up very narcissistic and playing to ego and status in the end. Because inferiority complex just does not go away simply because you got money and status, does it? I don’t know. In my experience somehow some of the richest and most powerful people remain seriously under-confident. They constantly need to prove themselves. Must be exhausting. The lord knows it is exhausting to serve with or under them.
Or, you know, Pu Chuanga could be wrong. It could be that nosism plays no role in this song. It could be that the existing line: Mal min sawm turin van khuaan ro a rel, is perfectly correct. The English translation remains pretty much the same anyway. But I feel like if it is not the capital Khua that applies here, I am guessing ro a rel should be ro A rel? Because this pronoun a/A is referring to God. No? Or is that grammar just for English?
Genuinely asking.
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