Bawi system

Forced labour and slavery
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The Bawi system was an institution of slavery under Mizo tribes from the precolonial era until the Indian post-colonial era. It remained an integral part of Mizo chieftainship before being challenged by Christian missionaries in the 1910s and political institutions such as the Mizo Union in the 1940s.

The Bawi system was debated by British colonialists as a system of indentured labour. It was argued that the word bawi was translated as slave wrongly by the missionary James Herbert Lorrain when creating the Lushai (Mizo) dictionary. Both Thomas Herbert Lewin and John Shakespear corroborated the view that a bawi is a person who has lost the right of individual action but is too inappropriate to be termed a slave.

Peter Fraser, a medical missionary in the British Lushai Hills opposed the Bawi system and the local Mizo chiefs who kept bawis. Fraser ransomed 40 bawis with his own expenses; however, his campaign against the Bawi System led to pushback from the British administration, who feared it could aggravate the Mizo chiefs to rebellion. Fraser was recalled back to Wales due to his attempts to abolish the system.

Abolition of the Bawi system was gradual, and by 1927, it had withered and was de-facto abolished. However, the legacy of the Bawi System organised an anti-chieftainship attitude with issues of corruption, favouritism, reflecting similarly to the Lal Sawi event before the British. The Mizo Union deemed chieftainship to be an anachronistic institution that was repressive and needed to be abolished in its entirety. In 1954, the Mizo Union abolished chieftainship with various laws. The issues of the Bawi System continuing in practice such as serfdom and bonded labour also ceased with the end of chieftainship.