By Rasputin Bismarck Manners
It is very depressing to read every now and then about the lamentations on the seeming aimlessness of the Khasi society .As I look back at the brief history of the society, to me there is a definite and specific reason on why things are what they are today. Briefly I want to project them here:
Selective Amnesia:
There are many groups of people or ethnic tribes in this part of India like the Bodos, Garos, Mizos etc. At one time they were all animists as accepted by scholars and anthropologists, similar to the Khasis. But when I read Khasi writers and scholars writing about their own society all of them seem to knowingly or unknowingly proclaim Khasis as having their own religion (niam),or that they don’t want to be known as animists like other tribes. In other words, they develop selective intellectual amnesia on certain areas of their history which they don’t like. This amounts to being dishonest in the eyes of the world. A very serious flaw indeed!
Anti-Christian?
It is an accepted fact of history that the society has transformed itself only after it was given its own script(1841) through the missionaries. Most of Khasi literature scholars like RS Lyngdoh and others admit that till the year 1895 writing of books was mostly done by missionaries, so the Khasi literature was “almost exclusively Christian and moralistic in character””
And here was the smoking gun. Suddenly in 1888,SM Amjad Ali published his Khasi poems’ Ka Myntoi” and in 1897 Rabon Kharsuka published “Ka Kitab Niam Khein ki Khasi”(an out and out religious book on some aspects of animism).And then what happens? RS Lyngdoh, a so called priest of Khasi literature proclaimed these events as “the great cultural revival at the turn of the century…a purposeful challenge to the influence of Christianity and the missionaries monopoly over intellectual and cultural affairs”. Another scholar (still living) calls it “the circle of secular Khasi literature” as opposed to the religious ones by missionaries. And herein lies the crux of the matter. Rabon Khasuka was a church leader who turned against it due to some ‘moral issues’. He wrote his book “Kitab niam ki Khasi” after he disagreed with missionaries on how to approach God through the blood of pigs etc. So the basis of the great “Khasi secular literature” and cultural and intellectual reformation as proposed by these scholars was actually about protesting the moral teachings of an outside Book (Bible) and maybe supplanting it by another (later Jingsneng Tymmen?) The question they raise is not about the quality of the ‘new, old religion’ but that it belongs to the soil (ka jong te la ka jong- lieh ne iong).What is a purely moral and religious issue now becomes cultural and intellectual!
If 1841 is accepted as the coming of the Bible into these hills, the other period(1888 onwards) seems to be the beginning of a counter mission against the Bible, hidden under the garb of culture.
Other factors:
Late 19th century in India saw the rise of many groups in the Hindu pantheon like the Ramkrishna Mission, Brahmo Samaj etc., which rebelled against Hindu pantheism and developed their own church-like monotheism. It was the Brahmo Samaj that helped the followers of the new philosophy (Seng Khasi) to set up their organisation in 1890. Just like the RSS of the Hindutva, the Seng Khasi became the church-like, alternate morality group. The leaders of the so-called, ‘secular literature’ indirectly linked it to propagate their own ideas. The church at that time too helped them unknowingly or knowingly by not challenging their ideas but hiding behind church or synod walls.
Lastly:
The leaders of this new Khasi literature (post-missionary) especially RS Lyngdoh, went up in rank as political leaders and even the Head of Khasi Department in the North Eastern Hill University. His books and those of Kharsuka became textbooks for children from school to university. Through the decades, the brainwashing did take place. For most people today,’ sons of the soil’ and anti-western (or Christian) seems to be boiling just below the surface. The same groups is also anti-outsiders. Today we are so confused because while on the one hand we hear that religion is separate from culture (which is true for Nagas and Mizos),but for Khasis, long ago Kharsuka and his cohorts set the definition that ‘religion is indeed culture’. Even the Presbyterian church seems to have fallen in line when it took up the learning of Christian songs through ‘animistic’ tunes!
I heard a top church leader in one of his sermons condemn people who speak too much English and not their mother tongue (wonder where is the sin).Another church leader cum singer (Skendrowell) once sang over the radio about ‘diengphna-sohpetbneng’. Where is history? Where is mythology? Khasitva has indeed influenced our durbars, politics, civil groups, student unions and even sacraments!
Most countries with Taliban elements or communist ideology first attack thinkers, writers or anyone with spectacles (Columbia)because they think they are intellectuals. It is only then that they can brainwash others with no opposition. I applaud Kharsuka, RS Lyngdoh and their ilk (negatively) for doing better than Talibans.
A society of just a few lakhs population just three decades after it progressed from oblivion to the light of civilization was injected with a very high dose of an apparent palliative that does not require physical killing but leads to the death of reason or inability to think beyond its immediate four walls. It leads only to fear and aimlessness. To me that is the reason why it seems we are being killed softly and gently with Khasitva.
(The author can be reached at [email protected])