15 June 2024
Mizoram Regional holiday | Saturday |
YMA Day is a regional public holiday in the Indian state of Mizoram on June 15th each year. This holiday commemorates the establishment of an important voluntary association in the state on this day in 1935.
The Young Mizo Association (YMA) is the largest non-profit, secular and non-governmental organisation of the Mizo people. There are over 250,000 members of the YMA, with over 700 branches all over Mizoram and beyond to the states of Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura. The YMA was formed on June 15th 1935, by the Welsh Christian missionaries based on similar organisations in the UK. The original name was the Young Lushai Association. The name was changed to the "Young Mizo Association" in 1947.
The YMA has three aims and objectives, Good use of leisure, Development of the Mizo society, and Revere Christian ethics.
It also has ten commitments, Self-discipline and righteousness, Good management of a family, Just and truthfulness, Tolerance, Politeness, Chivalry and usefulness, Social commitment, Respect for religion, Preservation of culture, Abstinence from liquor and drugs.
YMA members in every locality and village undertake their priorities as in some places planting of tree saplings, cleaning their villages, constructing poor peoples houses and distribution of money to poor people and patients in the hospitals were taken up. YLA was unveiled on 5 June 1935 at the grand public meeting at Nepali School, Sikulpuikawn, with a candle lighting ceremony and the election of the officials. Branches were soon created in every village, and all Mizo of age were soon registered members. The advent of Indian Independence incited new political and ethnic identity revivals in Mizoram (Lushai Hills, as it was called). For a democratic administrative system, a political party was needed.