By Patricia Mukhim

Parochialism seems to have gone over the top in Meghalaya. The objection to Mr AT Mondal’s appointment as Speaker of the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly by a particular pressure group to which a particular legislator once belonged is the height of paranoia. Meghalaya cannot be compared to Mizoram or Nagaland in terms of demographics. Shillong the state capital of Meghalaya was a British outpost and later the capital of undivided Assam which included almost all the seven states. Shillong has a sizeable non-tribal population and so does large sections of Garo Hills particularly areas bordering Goalpara in Assam. The people of Meghalaya cannot just forget history and pretend to write on a clean slate. In any case Mr AT Mondal is an elected legislator. We cannot discriminate between tribal and non-tribal MLAs once they are elected.

The politicization of ethnicity has been a vote-getting strategy for many since 1979. All the bloodshed and violence of that era can be traced to the desire of a few politicians to acquire political power by stressing on differences and by creating a fear psychosis that the non-tribal would walk away with all our land, our jobs and our women. There were periods when women and girls who were seen walking with non-tribals were shamed and the men were punched. This, even before finding out if there was any connection at all or if the girls and boys were class or college mates. It was a reign of terror and it was much hated by many but few dared to speak up for those who spoke up would have been bashed up as well. So we all kept silent and obeyed the diktat of organisations that acted like social policemen.

Then came those violent eighties and nineties when the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) prohibited girls from wearing salwar kameezes and those who dared to wear them were physically attacked and their clothes torn. The salwar kameez is a comfortable dress especially while traveling on trains etc. You would be hard put to climb a railway sleeper berth in your jainsem with strangers staring up at you. Surprisingly, no one had the guts to tell men that they were donning an alien dress and that women cannot be forced to be show-pieces of cultural symbols.

Meghalaya has a few open seats to the Legislative Assembly from where non-tribals can contest. Earlier in Shillong city, Mawprem, Laban and Pynthorumkhrah were designated as open seats. Since the last Lok Sabha elections when the constituencies were delimited candidates were posed with a fresh set of problems as the voting population is now interspersed in more than two constituencies. All these open seats have now gone to tribal legislators because the voters argue that they need ‘protection’ and the tribal MLAs are best placed to protect them in case another bout of violence such as the one in 1979, 1987 or 1992 were to revisit the State. The question that few dare to ask is, who are the people responsible for unleashing that ethnic cleansing program in 1979 and later. Are they not the very same people who today occupy seats of honour in the August House? Some of them tried to get elected but failed. They were known for their bullying tactics as youth leaders. But those habits die hard. In the recent elections too there were subtle threats and intimidation that voters should ensure that Candidate A wins or else they would face the rough end of the stick if that did not happen. So were the elections really fair? And could the non-tribals report such threats to anyone or to the ECI? No it would have been far too dangerous for they know very well what sort of violence would visit them if they did so. The non-tribals have therefore learnt to toe the line drawn by the tribals in Meghalaya. They have to survive and compliance is the only survival tactic.

I was privy to some of the speeches at election campaigns in the non-tribal dominated areas of the city. The only way to define the tone and tenor of the campaign is pure and simple ‘hate-speeches’ and personal vilification campaign with no discussion at all on issues. This is why I wonder what the election observers were doing. Why were they twiddling their thumbs in the face of such personal attacks against some candidates? Is that not part of the election code of conduct? What was election observation all about then? Many have captured these hate speeches on their mobile phones. They have a fit case for a public interest litigation (PIL) against the ECI. But these are not solitary instances of blindness on the part of the Commission. It practiced its “see no evil, hear no evil and do no evil,” bit even when candidates actually distributed hard cash on voting day and the top officials were informed about it. So, let’s just admit that the elections in Meghalaya were neither free nor fair. In fact, free and fair election is the biggest lie going around. When voters are intimidated and voters elect a candidate because they fear what harm might attend them if he lost, then surely that’s a far cry from democracy. Political bullying then was something that also decided the course of this election.

What we in Meghalaya forget very easily is that even the Hill State Movement was not an exclusive Movement by the three tribes. It was a shared history because the All Party Hill Leaders’ Conference (APHLC) under which banner the Movement was launched, also included non-tribals as members. The argument at the time was that genuine non-tribals whose antecedents date back to about three generations should be given a share of the fruits that accrue from a separate state. Alas! Today we neither respect history nor want to revisit it. And this is a dangerous precedence because history tends to repeat itself for those who refuse to learn from it.

I would think that mutual respect and a shared objective is likely to achieve more for Meghalaya than the constant bitching about losing out to non-tribals. And like I have said in the past our narratives which are built around fear need to be unbundled. What is it that we fear? Why do we fear? Who do we fear? It’s time to analyse this irrational fear on which politicians take a joyride. I am not suggesting that we entertain influx and permit a Lebensraum in Meghalaya. There should be mechanisms in place to check the menace of influx. But it is wrong to class even those who are born and brought up here and whose antecedents are known to us, as mynder shi sngi ( a roving alien). These are despicable terms because the world is not an island. Humans are as interdependent as other living creatures. If we forget this fundamental rule of nature then we are bound to pay the price sooner than later. Let’s look at the practical side of life. Can we claim to be completely self-reliant in our day to day transactions? Don’t we need other people to be of service to us? When we need a good doctor do we check his tribe, caste, class or do we repose our faith on his expertise and his credentials? The same is the case with a good teacher or lawyer! So if we are inter-dependent then is it not fair to share a slice of the cake with those who strive to build Meghalaya as much as the tribals do?

We also perhaps forget that the Indian Constitution guarantees certain fundamental rights to all citizens irrespective of their caste/creed/tribe. We the tribes already enjoy special protection under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. But if we want to stretch this beyond the reasonable limits imposed on us then we would be regressing. It’s good to learn from other countries where a shared citizenship based on affinities rather than differences defines human relationships. The more we stress on differences the sharper will be the contours for conflict. Amartya Sen has rightly stated in his book, “Violence, Identity and Poverty” that increasingly, human beings have to learn to co-exist with multiple identities and that any attempt to freeze identities can only have harmful consequences which is what ethnic conflicts are all about.