‘The best part is everything is shared’: World’s biggest family living under one roof in India

You would think a pop-up restaurant was unfolding right before your eyes. A cavernous hall, until now a playground for toddlers, is quickly taken up by plastic chairs and wooden tables.

Stainless steel bowls filled with food are laid out. Soon enough, more than a hundred hungry adults troop in for a sumptuous meal of rice, dal, pork curry and blanched pumpkin vines.

But this is not a restaurant. It is the dining hall of a family. And not just any family, either, but one that is believed to be the world’s largest – with 199 members and counting.

Twice a day – around 9am and 5.30pm – the members of the family congregate in their five-storey mansion in the hilly village of Baktawng in India’s north-eastern state of Mizoram for their two square meals.

They do so under the watchful eyes of family patriarch and polygamist Ziona, whose lingering aura still binds his family members together more than a year after his death. He looks over them as they eat, through his many framed photos that adorn the white walls of the dining hall.

There is one of him with his brood – a family photo that resembles a shot of a large graduating class. Pu Ziona, as he is known respectfully with the local honorific prefix, stands next to them like an authoritative school principal.

In another photo, he is playing football in a stadium he helped to build for the village. In others, he is seen climbing rocks, working at a farm, and grilling food over a bonfire.

All of these are different, captivating facets of a man described reverentially by his wives and children as the “chosen one” or “man of god”, a divine attribute that enabled Mr Ziona to marry and sire children prolifically without facing opposition from his family members or locals in the village.

When Mr Ziona, who like many Mizo people used only his first name, died in June 2021 of hypertension and diabetes at the age of 76, he left behind a bereaved troop of 38 wives, 89 children and 36 grandchildren. One wife – a 39th – had died before him.

During his reign, the family attained global fame, having been inducted into a list of oddities mentioned in a special edition of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! in 2014. Even today, pesky tourists show up unannounced in this far-flung corner of India to peek into the lives of this unusual family.

Mr Ziona did not just head this king-sized family – he also headed a millenarian Christian sect known as Chhuan Thar Kohhran (Church of the New Generation) in the Christian-dominated Mizoram state.

Like members of other millenarian groups, who believe a utopia awaits them at the end of time, members of this Mizo sect envision a post-apocalyptic “golden age” in which its members will be spared divine wrath and accorded special privileges.

The sect endorses polygamy and has around 2,600 members, nearly all of them locals in Baktawng. Mr Ziona took over its reins from his father Chana after he died in 1997, who had, in turn, succeeded his elder brother Khuangtuahthanga in 1955.

Mr Khuangtuahthanga founded the breakaway sect after he was excommunicated from the Presbyterian church in 1942 for having an illegitimate child. Mr Chana and Mr Khuangtuahthanga were also polygamists, with seven and five wives respectively.

The line of succession now rests with Mr Ziona’s eldest son, Mr Nunparliana, who heads the family. Unlike his influential father, who was revered widely by the sect’s members, he has a relatively diminished status, with a more managerial role as chairman of the sect’s church.

Seated in a throne-like chair with lions serving as its arms, which Mr Ziona once occupied regally, the 60-year-old comes across as a pale shadow of his father.

“I will never measure up to my father’s legacy,” he acknowledges, chatting with The Straits Times in his living quarters within the 100-plus-room mansion that he shares with his two wives, 13 children and mother Zathiangi, Mr Ziona’s first wife.

We still miss him and find ourselves incomplete without him.

Mr Nunparliana, 60, on his father and former family patriarch Ziona

While the 83-year-old Ms Zathiangi and other elder women in the family oversee household operations, Mr Nunparliana’s key familial responsibilities involve running a farm that produces much of the vegetables consumed by the family, and taking charge of its weekly prayer service along with other family elders.

“My father taught me the value of loving and taking care of each family member,” he says, hacking banana leaves and feeding them to his three cows and a mithun, another domestic cattle species, on the farm. “It is the love and affection we have for one another that keeps us united.”

To an outsider, the family seems like a well-knit cohesive unit where everyone pitches in. And there is lots to do, whether it is looking after the five family piggeries with around 100 pigs, or managing the four carpentry workshops and an aluminium workshop that generate money for the family’s various needs.

It is gruelling work inside the house as well, feeding a family of nearly 200 twice daily, which involves preparing vat-loads of ingredients, including the 80kg of rice that is consumed each day, and washing oversized cauldrons.

“Cooking for so many in such large quantities took time to adjust to,” says Ms Thansangzeli, who is married to one of Mr Ziona’s grandsons, as she sorts mustard greens from the family farm in a large tub.

But working together with other women from the household makes it seem like a breeze.

The workload is shared... everything is shared, that’s the best part

Ms Thansangzeli, 29, who is married to one of Mr Ziona's grandsons

Across the sprawling dining space in the family granary, Ms Lalnunmawii, 43, one of Mr Ziona’s many daughters-in-law, sits amid sacks of rice and lentils, busy sorting small stones and weevils from the rice.

“As humans, we all face difficulties and hardships, but our family has a more positive side as we are a huge family supportive of one another,” she says. “When we fall sick, we support one another.”

After decades of growing and expanding through polygamy, the family is now bracing itself for change.

At the core of this transformation is its shift away from the practice. Today, Mr Nunparliana is the only man in the household with more than one wife. His two wives are sisters, and he has no plans to take a third.

“I don’t know if anyone will take a second wife in the future,” he says.

Things were radically different for his father. As he was seen as a “prophet” of God, eligible brides from the community would plead to marry him, with their parents at times even encouraging such matrimonial ties, wrote historian Vanlalpeka in a 2019 research paper for the Sociology and Anthropology journal.

Akin to a tribal chief who offers protection to those seeking refuge under him, Mr Ziona never turned away women who wanted to marry him. “He would accept them and love them in return,” Mr Vanlalpeka added.

While marrying Mr Ziona offered women from poorer families greater financial stability and security, the extensive marital links established through this polygamous arrangement – as well as his numerous daughters’ marriages with others in the village – helped bolster the leader’s hold over the community.

But other men in the family today feel differently about marriage. Mr Record, one of Mr Ziona’s younger sons, who works at the aluminium workshop, says he is happy to have one wife.

I am not like my father. He was chosen by God, but we are just normal human beings and can’t have multiple wives.

Mr Record, 23, Mr Ziona’s younger son

The new generation of women think their husbands do not want to perpetuate the sect’s polygamous traditions.

“I am confident that my husband will not take another wife,” says Ms Hriati, 33, who is married to one of Mr Ziona’s grandsons.

While many family members have stayed under one roof in Baktawng, taking up its traditional professions in farming or carpentry, expectations are starting to change for newer additions such as Ms Hriati’s son, who was born in June.

Standing under Mr Ziona’s many framed photos in the dining hall, Ms Hriati says that what he and her other children decide to do when they grow up will be entirely up to them, including whether they want to remain in the family home.

“I want only for my children to have a good future and be educated... Even if they want to go to big cities or abroad, that will be their choice,” she adds.

A new house is being built in the village for the growing family, taking away the novelty of one large family living under a single roof.

For now, the popularity of the sect that Mr Ziona led remains steadfast.

When The Straits Times visited in June, 200 uniformed children from the sect were being marshalled for a religious function in several pickup trucks in the forecourt of the family residence called “Chhuan Thar Run”, or “House of the New Generation”.

There, the sect’s new generation prayed together, affirming their allegiance to the church in a parade-like ceremony. It was followed by a large communal meal in the nearby church, for which three pigs were slaughtered and cooked in the family backyard.

The community does not celebrate Christian festivals; instead, it commemorates key dates associated with the lives of its three founding fathers, such as their birthdays.

Uncertainty had swirled in the days immediately after Mr Ziona’s death, but the leadership transition has so far proven to be smooth, with no signs of a split. Members continue to contribute a share of their earnings to keep the sect running.

“It’s the foundation of the church that is our belief,” said Mr Lalngaihsanga, 63, a drugstore owner and sect member in the village who, unlike many other locals, is not related to Mr Ziona’s family. “That foundation is the same. It is just the leader who has been replaced.”

A stone’s throw away from the residence is a memorial the family built for Mr Ziona over his grave to cement his legacy. A sculpted lion mounted on a soaring eagle keeps a watchful eye over the stadium, like when Mr Ziona would watch children from his family and sect playing football there.

“I can’t foresee the future,” says Mr Nunparliana, aware that the sect’s polygamous tradition may die with him, and the family will no longer live under one roof.

Yet, he does hope Mr Ziona’s descendants stick together and remain happy – “I hope, for a long time,” he adds.