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Paper short abstract

At the Indo–Myanmar border in Mizoram, contested megaliths show heritage as affective and polarising. Through critical ethnography, I trace how Mizo claims to precolonial past, Hindutva narratives, and artistic interpretations intersect, revealing fractures and fragile possibilities of coexistence.

Paper long abstract

Located along the porous borders of India’s Northeast, Myanmar, and Bangladesh, Mizoram occupies both a geopolitical and cultural edge. This paper examines how heritage becomes a volatile site of belonging and polarisation through the contested interpretation of megalithic complexes in Champhai District (Mizoram) near the Indo–Myanmar border. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I analyse how these stones, marked by low-relief carvings of humans, animals, household items, and ceremonial figures, are mobilised within competing narratives of indigeneity and nationhood.

Approaching the megaliths as affective and material assemblages, the paper situates them within critical heritage studies. For Mizo people, they constitute rare material and visual evidence of precolonial presence, resonating with oral histories of 'Pasalṭha' (warriors) and the attainment of 'Thangchhuah' status, which promised entry into the afterlife ('Pialral'). In a context shaped by colonial misnaming and fragmented archives, these megaliths acquire heightened emotional and political force. Meanwhile, neo-nationalist actors seek to reframe them within broader Hindutva imaginaries of Indian antiquity, producing anxieties around cultural appropriation and epistemic erasure.

I situate this heritage struggle within wider processes of polarisation, including mistrust toward the Indian state, demographic pressures from displaced kindred communities, and internal tensions produced by claims to Mizo homogeneity. I further trace how artists and NGOs rework megalithic imagery into artworks and digital circulations, extending the site’s affective reach while complicating nationalist and indigenous claims. Read as heritage at the edge, these megaliths reveal how neo-nationalist nostalgia and indigenous resurgence intersect in heritage-making, foregrounding both fracture and fragile possibilities of coexistence.