By Janet Moore Hujon
However legitimate the demands of the KSU, the organisation is not likely to win any friends and will certainly lose some if they can’t shepherd their own flock. Gratuitous acts of violence do not make anyone believe your cause is genuine. How can any group seek to establish a pristine culture if they shed innocent blood in the process? But hey! if Meghalaya is happy enough to re-elect the very same people who have been draining the state dry (literally), then picking on outsiders is just a distraction is it not? So instead of just blaming the KSU how about looking ourselves hard in the face? What does the re-installation of the old regime say about the electorate? Did we suddenly lose our powers of discrimination? Did we think that these wolves would suddenly transform into lambs after all this time? Or were there not enough individuals who sought welcome change?
I have never really thought much about what it means to be a Khasi – I just am. Perhaps it is because despite being so undeniably foreign here in Britain, I have never suffered any racist taunts, and even when someone once remarked that I could not be Indian because I looked a man in the eye, I did not stop to think about the more specific culture that made me the woman I am, and whether it was my culture that has preserved me all these years. I have always been content just to be. But lately I have thought about it much more and of course I am immensely grateful to be a Khasi, to be relatively free of constant caste and gender questioning. Spurred on by a daughter who is now studying Sociology at University I have begun to articulate the complexities of my ‘growing up’ in order to explain the tangled world I left in order to make sense of the present.
Like so many in my generation I grew up in a society fractured along social, cultural and political lines, and we tried our best not to fall into the cracks. Handed-down memories of British times or of life left behind in remote villages when young men and women moved to Shillong to find a new life, composed the backdrop of my life. My father was born in Sohra (an acknowledged bastion of Khasi culture) and grew up in Allahabad, ‘city of Allah’, where the Kumbh Mela is celebrated. His knowledge of Urdu, Hindi and other North Indian languages endowed him with a broad enlightened view of their accompanying cultures. He always had the makings of a world citizen. I am also the great grandchild of a much loved, feisty South Indian. I went to a school where they taught in English, where Khasis were in the minority and where my mother tongue was labelled a second language thereby nicely introducing the subtle suggestion of second-rate. So for more years than I would have liked I did not consider the wealth that lay in the literature in my own language, and by privileging English language and literature I scarcely bothered with my own. I therefore have a deep respect for my Bengalee friends who went through the same education process as I did but never devalued the literature and music of their culture. There’s a thought for those of us seeking a cultural reawakening.
While at school I then felt I had to pit my wits against students from the plains whose academic prowess, we were told, was superior to that of the tribal. While a personal lack of confidence could be the reason for an easy acceptance of such a slur, another incident made me realise that this prejudice against the tribal was not totally unfounded. When I walked into Modern Book Depot to purchase my copy of Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ the salesman pointed me in the direction of shelves housing the annotated ‘Professor Banerjee Notes’ which he said were ‘very good for tribals’! Of course that just prompted me to prove him wrong. I think it is memories such as these that make me watch and read with interest and pride any accounts of blossoming Khasi creativity on both the national and international stage, or am I still tasting sweet revenge on the poor salesman in the Modern Book Depot.
When Meghalaya gained statehood I had hoped that this would at last give us a sense of being proud to be Khasi or Jaintia or Garo. That we would at last have a government expressing our shared belief in honesty and the welfare of all and thus successfully silence all prejudice. We who condemned the dkhar for being corrupt would surely not even think of deviating from the straight and narrow. We who felt looked down upon by a ‘sorkar dkhar’ (the outsider’s government) would surely not buy into fancy lifestyles to lord over the less fortunate and we would not bend over backwards to support a scam ridden central administration. But no that was asking for much too much as it would definitely dilute the comfort of that old philosophy: ‘you scratch my back and I will scratch yours’. The policy of mutual arse-licking is here to stay and statehood has only widened the gap between rural and urban, rich and not-so-rich, ‘educated’ and ‘unschooled’. Who is prejudiced and self-serving now? The Centre? Mainland India? The dkhar? Or ourselves?
The time for a re-think and serious introspection is now. What happened did not just come out of the blue and responsibility must be acknowledged by everyone concerned without one eye on political gain and without egotistical interference – the task is not easy as sensitivities are high and disillusionment is deep. The Government must realise that it is now dealing with a youth that is intelligent, disheartened and volatile and that the scope for opportunist mayhem is only too readily available. If the government refuses to admit that its own action and inaction is partly responsible for what happened then it will have no one to blame if once again people take to the streets and hold the rest of the weary population of Meghalaya to ransom. Similarly if the KSU is serious about bringing change then it must clean up its act and turn itself into a credible, trustworthy body of individuals who will win the hearts and minds of the local population. A dignified, rational approach is the mark of a culture built on strong moral foundations worthy of emulation and that culture will survive any quick macho display of force.
(The chunk of words below nestling in para 4 of the first part of this article published on April 10, 2013 is an explanation of ‘hostages in the[ir] homeland[s]’ which appears in paragraph 1.
“phrase borrowed from Naures Atto’s book Hostages in the Homeland, Orphans in the Diaspora in which she catalogues the travails of the Assyrian people who still speak Aramaic – the language spoken by Jesus. Driven by religious persecution they left their homeland to seek refuge in Europe where through peaceful means they are adopting measures to create an awareness of their culture whose demise they will not allow”
Some may have worked it out but in case the readers wonder why the article suddenly seems to read funny, this might help to explain why.)