Sixty years after he graduated, former Mizoram chief minister Zoramthanga on Thursday finally received the degree certificate he thought he might never see — a document held by Gauhati University since 1966, through his two decades underground as a Mizo insurgent and decades in active politics.
I thank all the professors and the vice-chancellor and am grateful for this gesture as I had already lost all hope of ever getting it,” said Zoramthanga. “I feel really elated and happy. It’s very unusual and extraordinary. But as he has joined a secessionist movement, he was not able to collect his certificate.
I was very surprised and amazed that I got the certificate after a lapse of 60 years. “He had passed the BA exam in second class in 1966 itself. The university had carefully kept the document, which was handed over to him on Thursday after a gap of 60 years,” director of Gauhati University Institute of North East India Studies (GUINEIS) Akhil Ranjan Dutta said.
Earlier this year, Zoramthanga released his autobiography, ‘From Guerilla Fighter to Chief Minister’, where he documents his long journey from a student from an underprivileged background to becoming a rebel and then a politician for four decades. A minister in Laldenga’s government, Zoramthanga became head of the MNF after the party president’s death. He holds the post to date.
He was also closely associated with the peace talks that led to the signing of the Mizo Accord in 1986.
