Patricia Mukhim
The inability to take stock of things is what allows the status quo to continue. Meghalaya Day should have been about stock-taking; about where we were in 1972 and where we are today. When we started off there would have been just a few landless households among the Khasis, Jaintias and Garos. We were warned during the statehood struggle that land is being alienated to non-tribals, mainly Assamese and Bengali settlers. That once we get our own state the journey to Utopia would begin. Alas! Today hard data tells us that 76 % of our own tribal people are landless. This should cause social disquiet for a society that started out as ‘egalitarian.’ We use words without paying attention to their etymology. Egalitarianism means having equal rights regardless of social, economic or other distinctions such as income, race or religious or political beliefs. Is Khasi society egalitarian?
One of the important characteristics of being tribal is the absence of class hegemony in society. Is that what we are today? It is important therefore to go back to the origin of Khasi society and see how it was structured. An egalitarian society cannot have a social arrangement where a single clan enjoys hegemony as the ruling clan although initially the jait ‘Syiem’ had a different connotation. Syiem does not translate to king. This is a western notion which the British rulers conferred on a chieftain who was appointed by the people to keep the peace in a conglomerate of Raids called the Hima. Being people who readily imbibe anything western unquestioningly the Syiems especially in recent memory have begun to act as monarchs. And they claim that as a part of tradition.
Onderson Mawrie’s book, “Ka Pyrkhat U Khasi” ( Khasi Philosophy) is perhaps one of the best narratives about the Khasis and their worldview or rather what that worldview should be. Needless to say that worldview has been diluted over the centuries. Mawrie says earlier there were only villages and the head of the village is called a Tymmen Shnong or Rangbah Shnong. Tymmen means old and Rangbah is an adult and Shnong is a village. When the number of shnongs increased people decided to club them together into a Raid. The Syiem according to Mawrie is a recent adaptation. When the Khasis saw that the non-tribals neighbours were ruled by a Raja who asserted dominance and protected the territories of his people and also kept the law and order within that territory, they decided to vest authority on a Syiem. However, Mawrie reiterates that the foundation of Khasi rule and authority rests with the people and not with the Syiem the Sordar/Dolloi or the Rangbah/Tymmen Shnong. He says it is the people who take ultimate decisions on key issues because the Khasis were very clear about the powers and responsibilities and worth of the Syiem and that of the polity. (Ha ka sain hima ka sain sima u Khasi u tip kumno ban buh dor ia u Syiem bad ban buh dor ia ka bor u paidbah)
It is precisely to curb the powers of the Syiem that the myntris, lyngskors, basans, lyngdohs and other office bearers from other clans were appointed. These appointees are mainly from clans that have superiority of numbers and have founded Raids and Himas. The above-named are to work alongside the Syiem in the task of administration over the hima (ban pyniaid ia ka hima) to govern (ha ka synshar) and in all other areas related to rule of law and politics (ha kiwei kiwei ki kam kiba iadei bad ka sain hima bad ka jingpyniaid pyrthei). I am unsure if we have the exact English interpretation for the words sain hima and jingpyniaid pyrthei) The word pyrthei could mean the larger world outside of the Khasi dominion and how the Khasis would interface with them. These Khasi administrators have been given the title’ Ki Bakhraw.’ Literally translated the word bakhraw in Khasi means noble or aristocratic. But Mawrie underlines that for the Khasis this does not mean that the above-named clans were superior to other Khasi clans. It was only to denote that they had higher responsibilities. The Syiem and the Bakhraw are subservient to the Dorbar Hima which is the foundation of Khasi polity and which actually includes every person under the Hima.
We have come a long way from this tradition because today the Khasi citizen (ki khun ki hajar) actually is not privy to many of the decisions taken by the Syiem and his associates. The Dorbar Hima today does not consult the people of the Hima. The process of societal consultation has broken down hence people are alienated from their institutions. It is a different matter that whenever there is a crisis at hand people are told that they should come out in support of their traditional institutions (meaning those who head them) or else they will become slaves in their homeland (kin sa kylla mraw ha ka ri lajong). The concept of slave (mraw) in Khasi suggests utter powerlessness. Any Khasi with no land to call her own is the most powerless citizen of her Hima. How did she lose this right over a single plot on which to build a home for herself and her family? Who has deprived of this land in the village of her origin and where her ancestresses took birth? Do we have answers to these questions today? Do the disempowered have the voice to ask these searching questions?
Today Khasi society is not a community comprising a compact, homogenous social group with similar aspirations, needs and of a single social class. It is a society divided by religion, wealth, status, occupation, politics and other socially and economically constructed divisions. Social scientists class a community by bringing together a number of elements such as solidarity, commitment, mutuality and trust. The question to ask is whether these elements exist in Khasi society to make us a community.
Sociologist Phile Bartle says, “Community is a ‘sociological construct’ involving a set of interactions or human behaviours that have meaning and expectations between its members. All actions are based on shared expectations, values, beliefs and meanings between individuals. We cannot assume that a community is a harmonious unity. It is full of factions, struggles and conflicts, based upon differences in gender, religion, access to wealth, ethnicity, class, educational level, income, ownership of capital, language and many other factors.
Hence the Khasi society cannot delude itself into believing that it is still a compact and coherent community. ‘Community workers’ who approach their clients from that perspective would get wrong outcomes. In a village there are different communities based on several indicators. While we can bring together least disparate groups and work with them, sometimes even those disparities are irreconcilable. Religion has been a great divisive factor in Khasi society. This has now come to the fore. Perhaps sharp ideological or theological viewpoints are now clashing and we can assume that politics has played its ugly role here as well. But this is nothing new. Appeals for votes along religious lines, has happened, often overtly. This was bound to create animosities in a society that deludes itself to be a community of those who ‘think alike.’ This is the great deception by ourselves to ourselves.
Khasi society today faces challenges from all directions. It has failed to integrate itself into the modern constitutional-legal framework of the Indian state. Some of those who claim to be leaders mislead instead of leading people to correctly understand the present demands of a modern state. This is evident from the clarion call given by the UDP supremo Bindo Lanong who tells the Rangbah Shnong that they should challenge the High Court ruling asking the State Government to come up with a legislative framework within which the Rangbah Shnong are to function. Are we saying here that the State Government is not a legal authority? And why are we misleading people by suggesting that the Sixth Schedule is far more powerful than the Indian Constitution? Can an instrument created by the Constitution override its authority?
We are in the horns of a dilemma but the only instrument used by self-styled leaders of our society is FEAR. Normally fear is an emotion directed at a specific threat but anxiety is an unfocussed, corrosive uneasiness. This anxiety induces a sense that the basic system of authority are not working. The ploy nearly always is to pull in the tribal walls and create distrust of the outsider. In this case even the state government is now seen as the outsider while the District Councils are seen as the custodians of our rights and privileges. In this larger debate about preserving (?) tradition we forget that the Councils have not been able to safeguard our access to land, to water and other assets that were ours and that the same Councils signed away our rights to give forest land to rich mine owners. If land is no longer with the people then what is the use of any other right?
These are issues we should be talking about on Meghalaya Day and not celebrating some obscure, amorphous largely glorified achievements. The truth is we have achieved nothing if the poor have become poorer, and now, landless.