By Our Reporter
Shillong: Love for the community is best expressed through a healthy respect for one’s language and literature, said retired deputy director of AIR Shillong and renowned poet, EW Dkhar.
“Merely confessing that we love our own community is meaningless if we fail to love and respect our language and literature,” Dkhar said. He was addressing a one-day symposium on Khasi Poetry Na thwei ka dohnud organised by the AIR Shillong at Don Bosco Youth Centre here on Thursday.
Defending his statement Dkhar said people profess their love for their own community but very few actually read Khasi novels, poetry, and the like.
Brushing aside people’s notion that the Khasi community is poor in its literature, the poet said, “We are a community which does not know how to love our own language”, adding that the Khasi literature is not poor, but it is the people who have failed to investigate and appreciate the reality and history of it.
“With time, Khasi literature has developed in many aspects when compared to the last 40 years and it is wrong to say that we are still lagging behind as far as literature is concerned,” Dkhar said.
Meanwhile, St. Edmund’s Principal, Dr S Lamare spoke at length on the meaning and history of Khasi poetry. “Traditional oral literature is well established in the Khasi society, especially in the pre literate days prior to 1841 and the Khasis had developed and evolved their own indigenous poetic creations called the Phawar or couplets,” he said.
The phawar which starts and ends with Hoi Kiw are sung on various subjects, in different situations, set to simple music. While some phawar cater to rituals and are lamentations for the dead, others are light-hearted, composed in happy situation such as dances, archery etc.
Unique in its form and amalgamation of words, Lamare said the Khasi community is the only community in the world having and still using phawar and it has been recognized by the Indian Poetics and has been accepted and read the world over.
“Unfortunately most of these phawar are lost because they had not been recorded on tape or in writing,” Lamare stated.
Lamare also said that the traditional oral form is becoming a lost art among the present generation and while many folk tales and stories, as well as the exhortations of elders, were later reduced to writing, many were also lost, before they could be written, when the tradition of story-telling died out in course of time.
With time, knowledgeable poets and thinkers like Jeebon Roy Mairom (1838-1903), Rabon Singh Kharsuka, Soso Tham and others had helped preserve these priceless poetries which dictated the history of the Khasis and their character and way of life.
Meanwhile, speaking as the chief guest on the occasion, Secretary, Education and State Project Director, SSA and RMSA FR Kharkongor said that with the advancement of science and mass-exposure to western culture, the usage of Khasi literature has started to lose ground among the young generation.
“Similar workshops should be held from time to time to create awareness among the youth about their roots and origins, so that our language is not short-listed as an endangered language as was done previously by the UNESCO,” Kharkongor said.
While pointing out that incorporating the Khasi language in the 8th Schedule is the biggest challenge, the education secretary said, “Since literature is a window to our culture and tradition, more should be incorporated in the Khasi literature.”