By Fabian Lyngdoh
In the Khasi traditional matrilineal system, the statuses of men and women were not defined in terms of sex or gender, but in terms man’s role as maternal uncle and leader of the clan, and woman’s role as mother and resource of the continuity of the clan. Hence, the statuses of maternal uncle and his sister or niece were positively correlated and complementary to each other. A rise in a woman’s status was supposed to correspondingly give rise to the status of the maternal uncle, and a rise in the social status of the maternal uncle was supposed to give rise to the social status of the mother, sister and niece as well.
However, the status of the Khasi man as father and husband, and the status of the Khasi woman as wife played very little significance, and divorce was taken lightly because a father was not an institutionalized provider for the family, but he was only a friend, a co-procreator, and an honourable ambassador of his clan to his wife’s clan in the marriage transaction. In the strictest sense, the father’s presence or absence has little to do with the honour and security of the family and its legitimacy, culturally and legally.
In this kind of social set up, not only divorce, but also rape was taken lightly. There were two forms of rape in Khasi society. The first is called ‘batbor’ that is, when a man forcefully and violently has sex with a woman against her will. In the past, the usual remedy for this kind of rape was to force the rapist ‘ban ri’, that is, to take the victim as his wife and maintain her if he is unmarried, or to beat him severely and impose a fine if he is married. But in both cases there was no observable social stigma attached to the victims of rape. Many rape victims were outwardly living normal lives as time dimmed their pain though they might be inwardly tormented by persistent distress. The second form of rape that was not conceived of as rape was called ‘pynbor kurim’, when either, a minor girl was allured to marry an elderly man without her informed consent, or when an adult woman was forced by the maternal uncles or mother to marry a man of their choice against her will on reasons best known only to them. There are many cases where a young woman had to desperately flee from village to village to escape a forced marriage, but ultimately she had to submit because the society had no remedy against the overwhelming control of the family.
The Khasi woman’s role was to provide for the continuity of the social membership of the clan by giving birth to new members as a breeding cow. Her honour depended mainly on the number of children she could bear especially daughters, irrespective of whether she had a regular husband or no regular husband, and irrespective of whether she had married on her own will or had been forced to marry as a consequence of rape. But victims of rape in the Khasi traditional society very rarely committed suicide because according to the Khasi thought it is better to live somehow than to die at all. By the birth of children, the victim of rape became reconciled to her fate and accepted the status of motherhood with cold comfort. But such a forced marriage usually ended up in adultery, divorce and remarriage, or in the early death of the woman due to ‘ka jem rngiew’ (sheer ill luck) or due to illness induced by persistent distress.
The gravity of the evil of rape can be seen only when the rich and the powerful become the victims. The rape of Lucretia, the beautiful wife of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, by Sextus the wicked son of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (the Proud), the King of Rome, and her suicide thereafter, brought about the end of the monarchy and the establishment of the Roman Republic under the authority of the Senate in 510 B.C. On the other hand, the rapes of thousands of the poor and the lowly were set aside as negligible collateral casualties of the male sex instinct. Leave aside the theory of the rebirth of the ‘atman’, every human person has been given an opportunity to come into this world only once. So how can the society allow any human beast to shatter into pieces that only one opportunity of the poor and lowly human beings to live honourably and contentedly?
The fault is not in the stars, nor does it lie only with the individual criminals, but lies deeply with the kind of society that breeds such human beasts. In primitive conditions, rape seems to be a natural and instinctive phenomenon. The hens fertilized their eggs through some form of rape. When a bitch is in heat, a phenomenon akin to forced polyandry seems to occur; and when the cow is on the heat, a phenomenon similar to gang rape always takes place. Likewise, every human being would be a potential rapist, thief, robber or murderer in the absence of adequate social controls. The problem of rape is elusive to reason, to law, or to any human authority because there is no means by which reason can be instantly infused into everybody’s mind. Not even divine grace would miraculously infuse involuntary and instantaneous mass conversion however intensely we may cry or pray.
As a preventive measure, modern society has to keep watch whether the current system of education only breeds self-centred individuals with a sense of unrestrained freedom and bereft of conscience. We have also to be mindful of the new set of corporate patriarchy which subtly degrades and victimizes womanhood in the guise of empowerment and freedom. On the other hand, the curative measure is embroiled in a faulty legal system, in which, to the perception of the professional lawyers, cases of rape and murder might appear not as social problems to be solved, but only as normal occupational opportunities, in the same way as the taxi drivers may view human beings as mere passengers whose value is worth less than the carrying charge of a quintal of potatoes in a sack.
Every human being is a combination of three natures: he is basically an animal manifested through his instincts; he is a social being manifested through his rationality, and he is a spiritual being manifested through his morality. When any man becomes a serious and persistent enemy to the society, he deserves capital punishment as a social being. But as he is also a spiritual being, there is a contention that capital punishment should be abolished, and life imprisonment should be given in its stead. Criminals convicted of rape and culpable homicide should be sentenced to life imprisonment if not to death, regardless of the logic of defence lawyers. Most of the crimes, including rape and murder, were committed by persistent criminals who had been released several times from jail on the plea of repentance and reformed life. How long would the society be fooled by such bluff and put the lives of innocent people in danger?
As far as the Khasi society is concerned, a convicted criminal who had become a serious enemy to the society, should be disowned by the kur and handed over as a slave to the power of the State. That was the Khasi tradition. There are instances in the history of the Khasi tribe when the kur had handed over its own member who had become a hardened criminal to the power of the ‘raid’ or ‘hima’, to be tied hands and feet and thrown over the cliff. That was also one the main reasons why the syiemship was instituted in the political community to take charge of ‘u tangon u lymban’ (punitive instrument). But what we ordinarily observe today is that the kur itself would stand as the defence lawyer to a criminal member, or to arbitrate for hushing up the matter even if that criminal had raped and murdered his own sister or niece, on the plea of saving the kur’s honour. It is a foolish idea of honour that the Khasi ancestors could have never thought of. Jennifer War and Glenn C. Kharkongor had rightly said that it is our continued silence that could be one of the factors contributing to the increasing sexual violence against women and minors in our society (ST. May 25th, 2016). Let us break the silence and do away with the false sense of kur’s honour to save the society from further havoc.