By Patricia Mukhim
In Meghalaya we must be having the largest variety of classifications for forest. They range from clan owned (Law Kur) to Village owned (Law Shnong) to those owned by Lyngdohs (Law Lyngdoh), sacred forests (Law Kyntang and Law Blei) and even forest for graves (Law Lum jingtep) to name a few. How each of these forests is managed is a conundrum. But what is objectionable is when those engaged in the social sciences term them as “community managed forests.” First of all there is no equivalent of the term community in the Khasi language. If there is one it would be good for linguists to tell us what that word is. Words are powerful because they give expression to an abstract idea; words awaken our imagination and give meaning to our lives. We can relate to circumstances when we understand the meaning of the word or words used.
Francis Bacon said, “Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason. A bad and unapt formation of words is a wonderful obstruction to the mind. Nor can the definitions and explanations with which learned men guard themselves in some instances afford a complete remedy – words still manifestly force the understanding, throw everything into confusion and lead humankind into vain and innumerable controversies and fallacies.” Perhaps the most basic understanding of community comes from Phil Bartle who says, ‘Community is not just as a collection of houses but a social and cultural organisation of humans. Community has a life of its own which goes beyond the sum of all the lives of its residents. A community is a system of systems and is composed of things that are learned rather than transmitted by genes or chromosomes. All the social or cultural elements of a community, from its technology to its shared beliefs are transmitted and shared by symbols.” I would conclude therefore that a community is envisaged to be having shared beliefs, shared goals and a shared idea of how to achieve these goals.
Having said that let us look at what constitutes community in our own context. Take the example of a village with a hundred households. This village would have a Dorbar Shnong whose members are selected by the male members of that village. Women have no role in that selection. Hence they are not stakeholders. And neither do the poor have any voice. To me Voice is the greatest agency. It helps amplify people’s grievances, their needs and aspirations etc. Without voice we merely exist; we don’t live and cannot contribute or are not allowed to contribute to the organism called community. Hence when decisions are taken about setting aside a forest for the purpose of mining in an area that is ostensibly said to be ‘managed’ by the community, which section of that community actually takes the decisions? That forest land is also a catchment that stores water for our collective needs; it is a repository of medicinal herbs that can heal minor and major ailments; it has mushrooms which provide proteins; it has all kinds of edible herbs and roots that provide vital iron and vitamins and therefore provide nutrition. Women see the entire forest eco-system as a vital part of their food chain. Men see the forests as the woods and the trees therein and are more interested in what can be gouged from beneath the earth after the wood id cleared. Does the community therefore have any role in deciding what activities are taken up inside a forest that is their life-blood?
The word community – a borrowed word – has deceived us for generations. International funding bodies like the World Bank etc come into our socially fragmented societies and talk about ‘community-led forest management projects’ etc. There isn’t any community with a shared vision in the Khasi society. If there were, then hectares of forest land would not have been destructed for the sake of timber. Nor would forests be leased or sold to coal or limestone mine owners to exploit everything from inside the earth without caring about the consequences that such action would have on the larger eco-system on which the larger society relies on for its oxygen; its food and its medicines. This lazy acceptance by our governments and universities of foreign words and terms and implanting them into our consciousness does not really work. We cannot relate to the word ‘community’ because of the absence of critical characteristics that define a community.
Khasi society is not without hierarchy. Hence it is not egalitarian. But the society was not always so. The chieftain was called the Syiem and was not royalty. But later a whole clan came to be known as the Syiem clan and therefore assumed the right to govern over a number of Raids or conglomeration of villages. How the Syiemship then became a hereditary right of one family within the clan (example is the Nongkrem syiemship) requires honest, robust research. A society with a clear hierarchy which then assumes that those at the head of the pyramid have the divine wisdom to take decisions on behalf of the hoi-polloi at the bottom cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called a democracy. The voice of the weakest and the poor are excluded. So who is community here?
Each time someone speaks about ‘consultation with the community’ before implementing a project, I am confused because when I ask people in that same village if they are aware of such and such project all they do is smile shyly and say, “We don’t make decisions; the Rangbah (men) and Ki nongialam (leaders) do. What do we know about these fancy projects (skim).” Now tell me then where is that stakeholdership we talk about? In the village today, it’s the more educated, the more empowered, the more affluent that push their agenda and which benefit from manifold government and non-government schemes.
At the moment the Khasi society is confused and in a state of flux because our written word does not go back even two hundred years. Oral tradition is weak and anecdotal. It lacks the rigour of written recorded history. Add to this confusion the infusion of Christian ideas into our worldviews and we have a complex concoction of words and ideas that we now lay claim to be part of our culture and history.
I was non-plussed when at a conference organised by INTACH recently, a college professor said that the black Dhara (a ceremonial dress) used to be worn by Khasi aristocracy when a member of the family dies. Khasi aristocracy? Black as a sign of bereavement? But aren’t those very British and Christian concepts/symbols connected to sorrow and bereavement. The Khasis are colourful and this is evident from their ‘Ryndia thoh-rew stem (a shawl/stole made of the eri silk worm) which is woven of in checks of bright yellow and maroon threads coloured with plant dyes. Black is therefore borrowed and so is the idea of Khasi aristocracy. That this concept has entered our academia makes me worried as to how much of history and memory we are able to retain and how much the present generation knows of its past. In fact the very idea of the Dhara which was a topic of research by a scholar of Ambedkar University did not throw up too many insights.
Hence, words like aristocracy, community and many more indeed need to be translated both literally and metaphorically so that we don’t use them lazily without delving into their etymology. Perhaps the reason why projects fail to take off and community mobilisation is such a slow process in Meghalaya is because the implementers come with their own assumed ideas of ‘community’ and development goals when the people they are about to work with in the villages do not even have a shared value system; leave alone a shared vision and objective of how they want their village to look like; what are the development priorities and how people could be taken to the next economic level by being part of this shared vision. It’s also a clash of worldviews. Our worldview is the sum and substance of our own belief systems which then influence how we see the world. But worldviews within the same society can differ. Today the worldview of the mine owners is to profit from a system of ‘tribal rights’ (Sixth Schedule) that allows free exploitation of the land and what is inside that land. It is an individualistic and selfish worldview. Such individuals cannot be considered part of the same society which suffers on account of the cruel exploitation of the environment by these profiteers/capitalists. Can the twain then ever meet? So what is community then?