When Family Becomes a System: The Story of Ziona Chana

Can you imagine calling a family meeting and 181 people show up?

Meet Ziona Chana a man from Mizoram, India, who married 39 wives, had 94 children, and lived under one roof with them all.

Their home A 4-storey mansion with 100 rooms, a giant kitchen that cooked 30 chickens & 220 pounds of rice per meal, and dormitory-style quarters for wives and kids. Ziona was no celebrity. Just a deeply organized patriarch of a religious sect that valued structure, unity, and hard work. Each wife had a role: cleaning, farming, cooking, child-rearing.

The first wife was the household manager. The children helped with duties too.
Despite the size, everything ran like clockwork. Ziona Chana said he married his first wife in 1959, when he was 15 and claimed to have once married 10 women in a single year. His most recent marriage came in 2004, when he wed a 25-year-old bride.

Though polygamy is illegal in India, Mizoram allows exceptions for some tribes in the state.
Chana and his family all lived together in what he called the "New Generation Home" — a four-story, 100-room building where his wives slept in a dormitory adjacent to his bedroom. Locals say he liked to have seven or eight of them by his side at all times. Ziona Chana was recognized by a number of sources as heading the world's largest existing family, with a total of 167 members, including grandchildren.

Though Winston Blackmore, the head of a polygamous Mormon sect in Canada, is said to have fathered roughly 150 children with 27 wives, for a total of 178.

And Chana's extraordinary life has grabbed several headlines over the years. The enormous family lives together in a four-storied house called "Chur Than Run" or New Generation House, with 100 rooms. His wives share a dormitory near Chana's private bedroom, according to local media. The sect, which allows polygamy for men, was founded by Chana's grandfather in 1942.

By Ryan Dickson