By Fabian Lyngdoh
There are five important things in the life of a person in any human community: First, the birth of a human being; second, the need to undertake economic activity to sustain life; third, the need to propagate the personal genetic identities of the individuals through sexual relationship; fourth, the need to propagate the cultural heritage of the community through socialization, and fifth, the need to dispose off the dead bodies of deceased persons properly and honourably. It is on the basis of these five realities of human life that the religious and socio-political culture and tradition of any human community are built upon.
There is a universal belief in all human societies that the spirit of a deceased person lives on in a spiritual realm even when the physical body is dead. There is also a universal practice to dispose the dead bodies of deceased persons properly and honourably through socially recognised religious rites. There are two main reasons on which the said belief and practices are based: The first reason is because it is thought that the dead need certain religious services to be performed by the living so that their spirits can safely enter eternal life in peace. Hence on this ground, religious rites are performed as an act of love for the departed relatives. The second reason is because it is thought that if the spirits of the dead are not entering eternal life in peace, they would become evil spirits and cause trouble in the lives of the living. Hence on this ground, religious rites are performed due to fear of troubles that might be caused by wandering and disgruntled human spirits conceived of as ‘ghosts’ who might sometimes manifest in the form of sight or sound. In this article we shall discuss how the Khasi traditional society coped with the need to dispose off the dead bodies of deceased persons properly and honourably.
When a number of clans decided to settle in a particular geographical area and formed a political community called ‘ka raid’ they usually selected a flat hilltop as a settlement area called ‘ka nongbah’ and built fortresses in the form of deep and wide trenches around it to protect themselves from possible enemies. There might also be a deep and long winding cave within the fortified nongbah, where women and children could hide in times of war. Then they demarcated a territory called ‘ka ri-raid’ around the settlement area, as large as they could acquire and protect. This was their political territory which also served as jhum fields which are the mainstay of their economic activity. A particular catchment area was selected, where cultivation or any form of destruction of natural vegetation was forbidden, and converted into a sacred grove to protect the water source for the community. The council of the chief maternal uncles of the founding clans called ‘ka dorbar-longsan’ was the highest political authority in the ‘raid’.
A little away from the fortified nongbah, a particular area was selected and demarcated as the community graveyard. All the clans in the political community could construct their ‘ki kpep’ (funeral places) anywhere within their own family or clan land, but ‘ki mawbah’ (bone repositories) as the final resting place of the dead of all the clans should be constructed within the community graveyard, and no clan was allowed to construct a final bone repository anywhere else in the ri-raid which was meant for community settlement and economic activities. Any new immigrant clan was allowed to settle in the territory of the political community. But when people of such an immigrant clan had to perform the funeral rites of their first deceased member, they had to take due permission from the ‘dorbar-longsan’ of the ‘raid’, an act which is called ‘thied blab’ in some of the ‘raids’ in the Ri Bhoi region. ‘Thied’ means ‘to buy’ and ‘blab’ means a ‘grave.’ So, ‘thied blab’ literally means to buy a burial place, but conceptually it means to obtain permission from the political authority of the ‘raid’ to dispose of the dead body and to construct bone repository within the community graveyard and for the spirit of the deceased person to find its spiritual abode within the territory of the ‘raid’.
Whenever any clan performs the ceremony of ‘ka thep mawbah’ (carrying and depositing the bones of the dead into their final resting place), the head of the ‘raid’, usually the ‘lyngdoh-raid’ (ruler priest) together with other ‘basans’ (founding clans’ political representatives) would stand at the entrance to the graveyard and inquire from the clan concerned whether bones of incestuous persons, condemned criminals and ostracised persons were included or not in the collection, and whether due religious rites to purify the bones of those who died of violent deaths were performed or not. All this was done to see that the community graveyard would not be defiled by the presence of disgruntled evil spirits. That was how the Khasi traditional society coped with the need to dispose of the dead bodies of deceased persons properly and honourably through socially established provisions and recognised religious rites.
Today, the Khasi traditional political community as described above is no more in existence. The ‘shnong’ (village) has taken over the place of the ‘raid’ as the basic political community. In every village today the community norms and practices on how to cope with the disposal of dead bodies of deceased persons properly and honourably through socially established provisions and uniformly recognised religious rites, no longer exists. It is a very unwholesome sight to see in a village or urban locality where there is a ‘khnap-thangbru’ (funeral place) for the believers of the indigenous faith on one side of the village or urban locality, and numerous graveyards belonging to various Christian denominations on the east, west, north and south, that a foreign tourist might think that the whole settlement is primarily a graveyard. A great number of such villages can be found in the Khasi society today due to the emerging compelling circumstances.
Each human person is highly apprehensive not only of how he or she would be treated by the society while living, but also how his/her body would be treated by the society when he/she dies. Practically speaking, a religious institution in today’s circumstances is able to bind its members not so much by hope of heaven as by its control over the facility of providing proper and honourable disposal of the bodies of its members after their deaths. There is currently a popular idea of ‘Christian lumjingtep’, that is, those who profess to be members of a Christian church not for saving their souls but for the honour of a formal religious service and a place for their bones to rest at death. Therefore, to establish a new religion or to start a new church, a graveyard as a necessary religious infrastructure is required so as to be able to convince and bind the believers to the faith. It is on this fact that the much talked about purchase of land for graveyards in the ‘law syiem’ at Mawpat took place. The intention to provide an honourable resting place for the bones of the dead is genuine in the present circumstances though the way in which the lands were acquired might be questionable.
The Khasi society today can no longer bind itself to only one form of religious faith, but needs to think of how to resurrect the basic idea of a traditional community graveyard where every inhabitant irrespective of religious faith, theist or atheist, can hope to find a resting place for the bones after death. An example that is commendable to some extent is found in Mawbri village where this writer lives. In Mawbri village there is only one graveyard under the regulation of the local Catholic Church in which the dead body of every human person irrespective of religious faith, including strangers or non-Khasis whose relatives can no more be traced, can find an honourable resting place. Though Catholic religious rites are not performed for non-Catholics, but social service and a resting place are not denied to anyone who happens to die in the village whether Khasi or non-Khasi, theist or atheist. In spite of the low population density, the Khasi society today might have become so unjust that many persons do not have even a square inch of land to call their own while still living; but besides heaven, at least let everyone also have a terrestrial location to rest after death.