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Pioneer Missionaries to Mara people had left many treasures of their writings about Maraland and artefacts of Mara people at The British Library in London, UK. Two days ago, a Mara guy visited and made record of what he’d seen in the library and posted the list at Maraland.net.

What are there in the Library?

There are over 2000 photographs, mainly snapshots of the Lorrain and Lorrain-Foxall families, but including several boxes of slides collected for lecturing purposes and illustrating Mara culture and the life of the Mission. Also apparently used for lectures and fund-raising events was a collection of Mara artefacts which has been transferred to the Museum of Mankind (British Museum Department of Ethnography). Source: Mundus

The Lakher Pioneer Mission was established by Reginald Lorrain and his wife Maud at Serkawr (Saikao) in the South Lushai Hills, Assam, in 1907 to evangelise the tribes of the Chin, Arakan and Lushai Hills.

At that time the people of this area were known to outsiders as Lakhers, but now describe themselves as Maras. Source: Mundus

The mission was named ‘Lakher Pioneer Mission’. The word Lakher was introduced to them by outsiders. The first Church was named ‘Mara Independent Evangelical Church’ later rechristened as Independent Church of Maraland and finally Evangelical Church of Maraland (ECM) and Congregational Church of India (Maraland).

Maraland.net users have commented that these collections will be very useful for Mara people to look back at their history and rich culture there were preserved by their wise missionaries.

Dr. Sasa, a Mara medical student in Armenia is on his a month long and 5th visit to UK to attend Global Youth Congress in Liverpool and also to highlight the devastating ‘mautam’ (mawtah) famine in Mizoram and its neighbouring Chin state. A UK delegation will visit Mizoram soon to assess the damage caused by mautam and to know what steps they must take up to help the victims. He is likely to accompany them to the state. According to Maraland.net he is scheduled to meet the Royal family too. A lucky guy! He is the one who went and copied some of the important documents of the missionaries from the library. His full report is posted at the said website.

Click here to see the collection of missionaries at the British Library, London, United Kingdom.