ZOTON: Cultural or Social?

By: M. Mangkholun Zou

By Social we meant to express a ‘Pattern of Life’ or living or tendering to live in communities, intended for convivial activities. It has no territorial or cultural boundary. It is a long behaviour to be fit for companionship with others and adaptation as an attitude or manners, for life in society. The learn behavioral pattern that are transmitted socially in the form of arts, beliefs, tradition and custom and all other products of human work and thought characteristic of a community or population constitute culture. It is an attribute to human behaviour.

Culture gives us identity, our uniqueness and similarities with relation to other members who practice the same culture. Its membership may or may not be restricted.

Custom and tradition are units that make up a culture. It is a practice followed as a matter of course among people or society in a conventional mode of actions. The recently ‘construct-controversial’ ZOTON is a customary practice before it can be assumed in a culture. Zoton is an event, celebrated largely by doyen member of the Zou community since time immemorial. This event symbolize an ostentation of coronation of a leadership or chieftainship, who have acquired profound competence in the filed of bravery, huge accrued of grains or agricultural products that overflow his buffer stock beyond his family domestic consumption etc. prevalence among Zou society.

He made an arrangement for a great feast where the entire village members are repleted with exotic delicacies including drinks (Zuu), tobacco (dum) and roasted meat (sa-gep/sa-gaw) grinded with ginger to mark his achievement that continued for one whole week. All costs and expenses are borne by the accredited chief. (I am using the second person gender ‘He’ because the Zou community is known for its paternal character.) This exuberant event marked an aggrandizement of his status, power and territory. Perhaps, this celebration can be rightly dubbed as ‘Feast of Coronation’ rather than ‘Feast of Boasting’ as speculated by Mk in the previous issue of ZKT. This tribal society all over the world including the Zou are well known for their egalitarian characteristics and has no concourse for any individual to boast-around in such strait-laced patrilineal society.

Thus, ZOTON is unequivocally a sacrosanct cultural pageantry and therefore it may be impractical to align with ZSP fresher social meet, which is distinctively a social function that is a repertoire of the Zou’s student in Delhi.