By Banlam K Lyngdoh
This write-up is a simple and straight call for introspection, firstly, to all those who like to be thought of as ‘sons of the soil’ or ‘martyrs for the motherland’; secondly, to people at the helm of legislation and culture preservation; and thirdly to intellectuals and Khasi scholars, with a humble request that they allow some of their time to brood upon a subject long and often heard but till date ignored and ridiculed.
For a very long time, it seems, the Khasi concept of land has become something what we loosely call “ka Ri’. Till the Khasi and Jaiñtia Chiefs decided in majority to accede to the Indian Union, ka Ri had been only a general term for a conglomeration (only at times of political crises) of separately ruled provinces called ‘ki Hima’.
When ki Hima came together to defend the land or to oust the invaders, they displayed such vigour and heroism that our land became somewhat legendary as ‘ka Ri umsnam u Ñi – u Kong’ (land saved by blood of forebears).
For our ancestors, ka Ri as a connotation never got exhausted by political dimensions alone. It embodied all that they thought, believed and articulated. It was so much a matter of the spirit that loving it was almost a culture on its own. But on our part it is only fair to conclude that our ancestors cannot be so conceited as to convince themselves they were wiser than the rest of humanity. They formulated a system of life they thought best according to the needs of time. They never could envision that a world so drastically different from theirs would one day emerge. To give them the benefit of doubt, probably they did; but they never thought it necessary to erect long-lasting strongholds or lighthouses by which their posterity would be guided. They did what they thought best and left their children to fend for themselves.
Though our forefathers’ concept of land, and its varied implications, withstood the onslaught of their immediate enemies (generically represented or symbolised by u Sier Lapalang), the acid test for its sustainability and applicability in a larger arena came with the coming of the British. Within a sorry span of seven years the East India Company not only defeated some Syiems and imprisoned Tirot Singh but also managed to convert some of the strongest sons of the soil into mere sycophants. And, in a colossal stripping of all the native pride that a Khasi chief would command from his subjects and neighbouring chiefs, Tirot Singh was betrayed by the womb that carried him. Of course, this is not so aghast when compared with the crimes of ancient queens and empresses. But for the Khasis it was so horrendous that Tirot Singh never wished to see his motherland (“ka Ri i Mei” or “ka MeiRi”) again.
Since then the Khasi and Jaiñtia people have been losing their holdings and Khasi and Jaiñtia land has been subject to designedly random and perpetual erosion on all its fringes. At this juncture it is significant to wonder as to why the British – who taught Khasi-Christians all shades of their civility and social and economic conduct – did not bother to instil in the same lot the idea of regaining their sense of love for one’s own land.
If the missionaries were to touch the area of Khasi patriotism they knew they would have first to address the family structure of the Khasis. Family-centric as Christianity is, it shied away to intervene in the dynamics of/in a Khasi family.
It is only evident that the much wiser colonists and ruthless economic cronies had found an Achilles heel in the Khasi social and economic system devised by our forefathers. They termed it ‘native culture’, and left no rock unturned to sing paeans about the uniqueness of Khasi matrilineal society and of so-called Khasi nation-building. People like John Roberts composed heart-rending Khasi patriotic songs to be sung aloud by school children. And later, scholars like Gurdon and Keith Cantlie made sure that the world knows about this otherwise ordinary morsel in the back-waters of India. It is only too sure that the rulers had disdain and contempt for the way we managed our family, our property, our land and our lineage. But they also rejoiced because when it came to negotiations on grooves, fields and quarries, especially on occasions of a deadlock, they would ultimately have to deal with Khasi women and not with Khasi men.
Organisations formed to counteract the British onslaught became too parochial in their perception of the British tool. To them, the colonisers were villains only in the fact that they kept hijacking more and more Khasi brothers and sisters into paradise. Even as they launched their native spears and arrows at the “good Samaritans” in the shape of journals, pamphlets and secret debates, they thought that they were reviving the glories of u Ñi- u Kong and persisted in counting themselves the wisest and most unique tribe because there were none greater than the Khasi system-enshrining council of yore. The native intellectual movement was not anti-British as it was anti-Christian. It ignored the strategic situation whereby the missionaries never tried to bother about the Khasi land and lineage system and that they never made the converts follow their patrilineal family set up.
India’s Independence gave rise to a series of misunderstandings and mistrusts amongst the Khasi Chiefs in the course of carving the destiny of Ri Khasi-Jaiñtia, and the subsequent early tide of post-war Americanisation in the midst of Nehruvian socialistic fury, love and ardent emotions for ka Ri can be said to have been obliterated from the Khasi consciousness. We became a people swayed and ever-willing to imitate all kinds of economic, social and even political behaviour that appears hip and trendy and ruling the market.
What does a Khasi male have? Yes, he is intimately connected with ka Ri and he would like (rather he takes pride) to be identified by/with it. His pride even assumes pompous propensity when he announces himself as u khun ka Ri. But does he possess it? Does he belong to it? These questions illicit disturbing answers. What is ka Ri made of? Is it not the peak of a pyramid taking form out of smaller and smaller echelons which multiply as they descend to the base? Is not ka Ri a group of provinces which spring from clusters of villages which take shape from a mutual political understanding of a group of families?
What is the socio-economic dynamics that a Khasi male shares with his family that would entitle him to be a child of that family? This issue is not to be treated as archaic or outdated. Irrespective of whether after marriage he goes to his in-laws’ place or sets up his own nuclear family, the fact remains that a Khasi male (statistically speaking) is ever ready to leave his mother’s (or parental) house. A Khasi male’s love for a mother (and a father, of course) is from afar. If he is blessed with a good salary he sends what his mother might need. If he is extra rich or lives in the same locality, he visits her almost every day. But he then goes away. He does not really know the joys of the mother, nor does he share her pain. But he proudly calls himself ‘u khun i mei’ (a mother’s very own son). Do you think such a person will love his land, his motherland? Would a man who does not, out of sheer joy of service, go and sit near his mother’s bedside to massage her aching legs, or who is forced by the system not to be at the beck and call of the mother ever be ready to die for his land (Ka ri) A man who has to go bag and baggage to another village leaving his mother’s village to propagate another woman’s clan will finally end up as true son of neither village. As such a man detaches himself from the political day to day affairs of his mother’s village, so also most Khasi males detach themselves from their own family’s inner mechanism. A Khasi male is only too happy to leave his mother at the hands of a brother-in-law (u Kynum, who, the moment he consummates his marriage, metamorphoses so easily into u Ïing – the sole responsibility of the house). Of course, his participation is necessary and sought for as custom demands, but not his involvement.
I dare say many Khasi males find it intrinsically incapacitated to love their land and die for it since the Khasi social system cripples them. The Khasi matrilineal system cripples the stronger gender in the community by not giving him a sense of belonging. He is necessarily distanced from his mother and father – his source – and he sires those he cannot call his own. In an anthropological sense he is a creature that merely exists. He is a monarch of all that he surveys and, at times, a twelve-flagged stud, but crownless, nameless with no legacy to leave behind. In short he is a non-entity. The most illustrious title that he gets in his lifetime is “u kpa uta-uta” (the father of so and so).
Almost a decade before we got our hill state when there was a fervent sense of hope and dynamism because we were going to, at last, rule ourselves, manage our affairs and carve out our own future. Amidst the shouts and slogans and uncountable debates, a certain group of men came out with an idea that the attainment of a separate state would only lead to social and economic chaos if we, particularly the Khasis and the Jaiñtias, do not address the glaring lacunae in our family structure. Needless to say, such men became voices in the wilderness, vilified by all and sundry. We got a state but since the naming ceremony we have been losing our land.
Tribal wisdom is not the greatest wisdom. I am not saying it will not or cannot become so. In fact, all people in the world and those that have achieved greatness over the timeline of history had once been tribes. It is also fair to state that our forebears were certainly not the most visionary. They left the future to whom the future would capture and also to those who dare to catch the future. The future has captured us in this enchanting but also chaotic cauldron of corporatisation and ultra-globalisation where marginalized people and their land are being swallowed by the ever hungry and insatiable grinding wheel with cogs of power and wealth and more power and more wealth. Are we ready to catch the future? No one can save us unless we wake up, revise and edit the format (truly not a legacy) that our forefathers so naively and unsuspectingly handed down to us. Khasi family structure, along with all that it consciously and unconsciously involves, has to change. We will never produce a Lincoln or a Gandhi or a Marx or a Vivekananda, or a Joan of Arc, or a Mother Teresa in our world or in the world our grandchildren or great-grandchildren if we continue to sing and scream of and for our land and at the same time let our system drive away our best sons and daughters from a feeling of pure and unadulterated love for it.
(The writer teaches at RK Mission, Cherrapunjee and can be contacted at [email protected])