Baktawng, Mizoram: Many would consider it an achievement of epic proportions! With 39 wives and more than 120 children and grandchildren, all staying together, a tribal Christian cult leader in the northeastern state of Mizoram could perhaps claim to head the world's biggest family.
Not only that, Zionnghaka Chana, 67, is still keen to expand his family by marrying a few more women.
"I can travel beyond the borders of Mizoram... to marry as that would help me to expand my family," he said.
From a playground to a school and a church, the village of Baktawng resembles any other tribal village but for the fact that the community members belong to one single family of 181 members — 39 wives, 94 children, 14 daughters-in-law and 33 grandchildren.
"We are all happy and like any other church we believe in the existence of God but the only distinctive difference is that our denomination allows us to marry more than one wife," said Nunparliana, one of Zionnghaka's sons.
The family is part of a Christian cult called Channa, named after Zionnghaka's father Challianchana who died in 1997.
The cult, founded by Challianchana some time in the early 1930s, is now spread over four generations and boasts of having some 1,700 members.
Challianchana was believed to have had 50 wives, with Zionnghaka being the eldest of his many children — there is no count available of the number of children Challianchana had.
The circumstances leading to the establishment of the cult are as bizarre as the traditions and practices followed by the Channa sect, whose ancestors worshipped a traditional drum, until the arrival of the Welsh missionaries. But church leaders, Presbyterian being the dominant denomination, reject the cult's claims to be Christians.
"Christianity does not allow polygamy and hence accepting the cult as Christian does not arise at all. Polygamy is very rare in Mizoram," said a Presbyterian Synod leader in Mizoram capital Aizawl.
