Pu Zoramthanga

We all came overground. Laldenga became the chief minister of Mizoram. He died in 1990. I then became the MNF president and have remained in the post for the last 28 years.

In 1969, I became secretary to MNF president Laldenga. I was then 25 years old. We were all in Chittagong. During the war, we escaped to Arakan hills (in Myanmar) before reaching West Pakistan. It was a James Bond-type escape. The directorgeneral of the ISI later told us in Islamabad that they couldn’t imagine how we had managed to escape. Many Pakistani army personnel were killed, caught and imprisoned. We joined a group of refugees and somehow reached the Akyab (now called Sittwe, a famous port in Myanmar). We were there for a month or so. Finally, we took a Pakistani flight from Rangoon to Karachi. Between 1972 and 1975, we were based out of Islamabad.

Going to China and getting arms training turned out to be difficult. We sent two batches of MNF boys – about 150 boys in total – to China through Kachin (Myanmar) for training. But the journey itself, from Chittagong to China, was strenuous. It took about three months, one way.

While in Pakistan, between 1972 and 1975, we held a number of secret talks with R&AW; officials. We came back to Delhi in 1976. Then the formal peace talks began, which concluded in 1986 when the Mizo Accord was signed.

I became a party member in 1965. I was then a student of DM College, Imphal. The next year, I went underground and remained so for 20 years. Initially, I was handling the affairs of the northern part of Mizoram. Till the beginning of 1969, I was roaming around in the forests of Mizoram. Then we shifted our base to East Pakistan.

Earlier in 1970, I accompanied party president Laldenga to China. It was a secret mission from Dhaka to Beijing. We first reached Canton (Guangzhou) before landing in Beijing. We then visited Shanghai before returning to Dhaka. During our stay in China, we had a talk with the then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai and other important functionaries. Mr Zhou Enlai asked me: ‘You look very young, how old are you?’ I said I was 26 sir. He laughed and said, ‘You are younger to me by almost 50 years.’