Zomi National Day Celebration: Origination Date, Frequency and Anniversary

Zomi National Day Celebration: Origination Date, Frequency and Anniversary

Table of Contents
Zomi National Day Celebration:
Origination Date, Frequency and Anniversary
By Taang Zomi
1. Written Presentation
1.1 Earlier Developments
1.2 Recent Developments
2. Tabulated Presentation
3. The Need for Terminological Accuracy and Uniformity
3.1 In Regularly Held Holidays
3.2 In Irregularly Held Holidays
3.3 67th Zomi National Day? 67th Anniversary Zomi National Day? 68th Zomi National Day?

A Guide to Correctly Counting, Exactly Enumerating, Carefully Calculating, and Rightly Reckoning the Frequency and Anniversary of Zomi National Day

1. Written Presentation

1.1 Earlier Developments

01. On 20 FEB 1948 FRI, Zomi National Day was not celebrated. On that day, there was no discussion as to whether we should have a national day. Even immediately before that day, sometime in late 1947 or in early 1948, no date was designated to be a national day.

02. On 20 FEB 1948 FRI, there was no such thing as Zomi National Day.

03. On 20 FEB 1949 SUN, there was no such thing as Zomi National Day.

04. On 20 FEB 1950 MON, there was no such thing as Zomi National Day.

05. On 09 OCT 1950 MON, Zomi Affairs Council (composed of 14 Members of Parliament) decided to have a national day, and to celebrate it on 20 FEB 1951 TUE for the first time.

06. Zomi National Day was celebrated for the first time on 20 FEB 1951 TUE in Mindat.

07. Celebration of Zomi National Day was not allowed in 1956, 1957 and 1958.

08. Celebration of Zomi National Day was allowed again in 1959.

09. Zomi Special Division was recognized as Zomi State on 03 JAN 1974 THU. Our State Day, if we ever had one, should fall on 03 JAN 1074 THU.

10. Zomi National Day in its pure essence and form was celebrated for the last time in 1974.

11. Zomi National Day in its pure, unadulterated essence and form was celebrated for 21 times from 20 FB 1951 TUE to 20 FEB 1974 WED.

12. Zomi National Day-cum-Zomi State Day was celebrated for the first time on 20 FEB 1975 THU.

13. Zomi National Day-cum-Zomi State Day was celebrated for the last time on 20 FEB 1980 WED.

14. Zomi National Day-cum-Zomi State Day was celebrated 6 times from 1975 to 1980.

15. Zomi National Day and its adulterated form Zomi National Day-cum-Zomi State Day were celebrated for a total of 27 times.

16. The celebration of both Zomi National Day and its adulterated form Zomi National Day-cum-Zomi State Day was prohibited from 1981 to 2006′

Adapted from:
Vung Lian Mang, Tg., “Zomi Nam Ni Leh I Tavuan”, Vahui Magazine 2006. ed. Taang Zomi, pp. 31-36

See Vahui Magazine 2006 at http://fuller.academia.edu/PauThang and go to [11] Vahui Magazine 2006 at https://www.academia.edu/6149362/_11_Vahui_Magazine_2006. You may need to sign in if you have already had an account or you may need to sign up if you have not yet had an account.

1.2 Recent Developments

17. The celebration of both Zomi National Day and its adulterated form Zomi National Day-cum-Zomi State Day was prohibted from 1981 to 2012. (See #16 above.)

18. The celebration of the adulterated form Zomi National Day-cum-Zomi State Day took place again on 20 FEB 2012 MON.

19. Zomi National Day-cum-Zomi State Day was celebrated for 6 times from 1975 to 1980, and 1 time on 20 FEB 2012 MON. So, altogether, that day was celebrated 7 times within the period 1975-1980, and in 2012. (See #14 and #18 above.)

20. The celebration of the unadulterated Zomi National Day was allowed on 20 FEB 2013 WED for the first time after a lengthy lapse of 38 years (1975-2012).

21. Zomi National Day in its pure, unadulterated essence and form was celebrated for 21 times from 20 FEB 1951 TUE to 20 FEB 1974 WED, and 1 time on 20 FEB 2013 WED. (See #11 and #17 above.) Therefore, Zomi National Day in its pure essence and form was celebrated 22 times in the period 1951-1974 and on 20 FEB 2013 WED.

22. If the celebration of Zomi National Day is allowed again on 20 FEB 2015 FRI, it would be celebrated 24 times from 1948 to 2015. (21 times in 1951-1974, 2 times in 2013-2014, and 1 time in 2015).

2. Tabulated Presentation

3. The Need for Terminological Accuracy and Uniformity

In 1966 or so, the Union Day Celebration Central Committee, under the chairmanship of Brigadier (later, General) San Yu, set a policy to count national holidays, not by how many times they were celebrated, but by how many anniversaries they were celebrated, so that there would be uniformity throughout the country.

3.1 In Regularly Held Holidays

How many times (n) [ ႀကိမ္ ။ Vei ] a holiday is celebrated is 1 more than how many anniversaries (a) [ ႏွစ္ ။ Kum ] that holiday is celebrated;

n = a + 1

Therefore, how many anniversaries (a) [ ႏွစ္ ။ Kum ] a holiday is celebrated is 1 less than how many times (n) [ ႀကိမ္ ။ Vei ] that holiday is celebrated.

∴ a = n – 1

For example, Myanmar’s Independence Day of this year (2015) was the 67th anniversary (a) [= n-1]. ၆၇ ႏွစ္ ေၿမာက္ ။ Kum 67 Cin’na. It was the 68th time (n) [ = a + 1]. ၆၈ ႀကိမ္ ေၿမာက္ ။ 68 Veina.

This method of counting [n = a + 1; a = n – 1] is true only with regularly held holidays.

3.2 In Irregularly Held Holidays

As you have seen above, Zomi National Day was not regularly held. Zomi National Day of this year (2015) would be the 67th Anniversary [၆၇ ႏွစ္ ေၿမာက္။ Kum 67 Cin’na ].

But it would not be the 68th Time [၆၈ ႀကိမ္ ေၿမာက္ ။ 68 Veina]. Actually it would be just the 24th Time [၂၄ ႀကိမ္ ေၿမာက္ ။ 24 Veina]. See #68 of the Tabulated Presentation.

The method of counting based on anniversaries ( ႏွစ္ ။ Kum ) is NOT conditional upon whether the national day was celebrated or not.

The method of counting based on frequency ( အ ႀကိမ္ ။ Vei ) is DEFINITELY conditional upon whether the day was celebrated or not.

3.3 67th Zomi National Day? 67th Anniversary Zomi National Day? 68th Zomi National Day?

I have written every year about the right way to count Zomi National Day celebrations for 9 years since 2005 (10 times). This is the 10th year and the 11th article that I wrote. It is sad that most of the organizers of those celebrations did not pay any attention to correct terminology, and therefore wrong counting persisted as late as 2014.

It is my hope that this may be the last time I wrote about the correct enumeration of Zomi National Day, and that everything about Zomi National Day (the day, the origin, the counting, and the story) will be correct as far as possible from 2015 onward.

The 67th Zomi National Day is the same as the 67th Time Zomi National Day (၆၇ ႀကိမ္ ေၿမာက္ ။ 67 Veina). This is equivalent to the 66th Anniversary Zomi National Day. (၆၆ ႏွစ္ ေၿမာက္ ။ Kum 66 Cin’na)

In case you need to check up this usage, you can read the Government newspapers: (1) The Global New Light of Myanmar Daily (in English) <http://www.moi.gov.mm/npe/nlm/>, and the Myanmar Alin Daily (The New Light of Myanmar in Burmese) <ttp://www.moi.gov.mm/npe/mal/> and the Kyemon Daily (The Mirror in Burmese) <http://www.moi.gov.mm/npe/km/>. You should read them during February 17 and 23, each year, for Zomi National Day.

The Independence Day of Myanmar is enumerated from January 4, 1948, and Zomi National Day from February 20, 1948. Therefore they have the same anniversary. This year (2015) their anniversary is the 67th. You should read the newspapers during January 1 and 7 for the Independence Day and February 17 and 23 for Zomi National Day, as mentioned in the paragraph above.

The Union Day is enumerated from February 12, 1947, and the Martyrs Day from July 19, 1947. Therefore they have the same anniversary. This year (2015) အ့နငမ ညအ့their anniversary is the 68th. You should read the newspapers during February 9 and 15 for the Union Day and July 16 and 22 for the Martyrs day.

Let us write correctly, accurately, diligently and meticulously from now on that 20 FEB 2015 FRI is the 67th Anniversary Zomi National Day (၆၇ ႏွစ္ ေၿမာက္ ။ Kum 67 Cin’na), and not the 67th Zomi National Day (၆၇ ႀကိမ္ ေၿမာက္ ။ 67 Veina), as many tended to write perfunctorily, flippantly, carelessly, and superficially in the past.

By Taang Zomi