H.H.Mohrmen
There is this good and promising trend in the colleges of the state these days that apart from textbook teaching, colleges now also organize workshops and panel discussions on pertinent issues that are widely debate in the community. Gone are the days when colleges are but portals for study and the teachers and the students had just one goal and that is to finish the prescribed syllabus by hook or by crook. The end of the jug and mug system of teaching is at hand. Now students question and even give suggestions and comments at the workshops and panel discussions organized at their respective colleges.
It was an honour to be invited to share my thoughts in two panel discussions last week organized by two prestigious colleges of Jowai and Shillong. The first panel discussion was organized by the Khasi department of the Thomas Jones College, Jowai on September 15. The theme of the discussion organized by this young but promising college of the town was on marriages in the Khasi –Pnar society. The topic had three sub-themes: early marriages, mixed marriages and the Adam’s rib variety (shyieng krung).
It is indeed true that in a community like ours where love marriage is practiced, early marriages or to be more precise, teenage pregnancy is a major problem. There are many reported cases of babies being found abandoned and meeting with untimely deaths. What is not being reported are stories of thousands of young mums who are denied their youth; whose studies had to be abandoned and whose future is jeopardized because of the unexpected pregnancies. Their families accept the unfortunate experience even if those involved are minors. They conclude that there is nothing else they can do. This is not good for the society and it is bad for the young mothers who are not mature enough to shoulder the big responsibility.
Dr N Nongpluh of Norman Tunnel KJP Assembly Hospital, Jowai shared the most alarming information in the panel discussion when she informed that the there are growing numbers of young women who seek medical help to abort unwanted babies. I am not trying to be moralistic and judgmental here. I don’t even know what I would do if faced with a similar situation in my life, but I believe there is a way out of this. And Dr Nongpluh further clarified that this happened despite the fact that young girls today are aware about i-pills and other contraceptives.
It is only natural to fall in love and in my opinion it is improper for elders to lecture young people and forbid them from falling in love. How can we stop something which is naturally ordained? How can we preach to young people not to start having affairs while they are in college? What about us? Did we not pass that same path while we were students? Even my college going children have boyfriends and girl friends so, trying to prevent our youths from having love affairs is not being realistic on our part. Denying the truth is not going to help either. Teenage pregnancy is a reality and a major problem, so what is the solution before us. The only solution is to introduce sex education in schools and colleges to teenage pregnancy. And whenever pregnancy occurs can we encourage young, pregnant women to offer their babies for adoption? Teenage pregnancy is not peculiar to our community only; it is a huge problem in the west as well. But in the area where adoption is culturally acceptable there is also a system in place that teenage mothers can offer the babies for adoption. But I have my doubts if this is going to happen here because culturally the Khasi-Pnar people don’t usually give their kids up for adoption. In fact it is matter of shame for the kith and kin if one of their own is offered for adoption. In such a situation the only recourse available is to introduce sex education.
The second sub-theme was mixed marriage. This is not unusual. The Khasis have since time immemorial had the practice of ‘tang- jait’ wherever a Khasi man married a non-Khasi woman. There are many ‘Kurs’ in the Khasi community which originated from ‘tang-jait.’ Note that I did not use the hyphenated Khasi-Pnar in this context because there is no practice of ‘tang-jait’ among the Pnar people, not that they do not enter into marriage with their neighbours, the plains people. The Pnar people did marry non-tribals and there are many instances of member of the royal family of the Jaintia kingdom marrying members of other royal families in the area. I therefore think that it is difficult if not impossible to find a true blooded Khasi-Pnar, if there is such a thing.
In fact I caused quite a stir in the discussion when I declared that I could very well be a dkhar or at least certain percentage of dkhar blood might be flowing in my vein. I said that ‘rmen’ in War Jaintia dialect means non-tribal or people from the plains ‘dkhar’ and my original surname ‘Myrmen’ mi-rmen (not Mohrmen) literarily means ‘maybe they are dkhar.’ Who can really claim that he or she is true Khasi-Pnar by blood or that only pure Khasi-Pnar blood flows through his or her veins?
Who are we to question mixed marriages? Do we really have the right to question a practice which has been a tradition since time immemorial? And since our ancestors were liberal enough to allow mixed marriages, how can we with all the education we have say that it is wrong? It confuses me sometimes to hear people shouting at the top of their voices trying to discourage mixed marriages when these same people quote scripture to say that marriages are made in heaven and what God has united let no man divide.
Then there is also a good chunk of the population in the State who claim that they love the jaitbynriew from the bottom of their hearts and vow to give their lives for it, but they don’t know which creation stories to believe. We all know that two creation stories are not the same, even in the Hynniewtrep Hynniewskum story. There is a variation between narrative of the Khasi people with that of the Pnar. In the Hynniewtrep Hynniewskum story there is no Adam and Eve so where does Adam’s rib come in?
The other panel discussion was organized by Department of Social Work of St. Edmunds College, Shillong on September 16. The topic of the discussion was the Importance of Indigenous Knowledge in tribal society. Well, study of the indigenous knowledge is getting popular in countries where there are autochthons like in Meghalaya. New studies like Agro-ecology, Nature Spirituality and other such studies are getting popular. In Meghalaya’s context there is a new interest in the study of tribal medicines and this can be seen from the mere fact that tribal medicine practitioners are no longer called quacks, but Traditional Medical Practitioners or Herbal Medicine Practitioners which indicates the growing acceptance, recognition and respect of the practice even by educated sections of the population.
But indigenous knowledge also includes knowledge about the community’s culture, farming or agricultural practices and other aspects of our society. We have our unique way of life in the way we eat, we live and even our attitudes towards the other communities and the environment around us. The Khasi-Pnar people are known to be hospitable and their relation with the environment is similar to that of a fish and water. They understand that one cannot live without the other. They live in the environment and are part of the environment. They also understand that the two are inseparable from each other because they are interconnected. Indigenous Khasi-Pnar knowledge is one which understands that the people have a deep connection with nature which they call home.
In farming and agricultural practices we notice that the farmers are gradually losing native seeds after the state government introduced genetically modified seeds of different vegetables and crops. But there is a new trend these days wherein farmers are beginning to develop native seed banks and in some cases, farmers have begun sharing local seeds among themselves instead of depending on seeds supplied from outside. For many decades the state government introduced and encouraged farmers to use chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, but the same government now encourages them to go back to organic farming.
To borrow from Dr S Lamare Principal, St. Edmund’s college’s statement, the study of indigenous knowledge is important because we need to be firm in our roots. We need to understand ourselves; where we stand as a community on various issues. Only then can we move forward!