Patricia Mukhim
These days we are never short on titillation. Following the gross incident involving Julius Dorphang, the militant leader turned MLA and his reprehensible behaviour of raping a minor girl and also getting violent with her, a certain video of him attending a party hosted by unmistakably flirtatious young women who tried to make him dance to their tune, has gone viral, thanks to WhatsAap and SmartPhones which have stolen away our privacy. The other day an expert hacker says if you keep your SmartPhone on, anyone can hack pictures of what you do or don’t do in the most private spaces including your bedroom. So we might like to be careful about not taking the SmartPhone to the toilet, which I suspect most of us do because we need to return calls or to talk to people while we relax on the throne.
It seems like there’s a thriving carnival culture in Meghalaya which as David Brooks in an article says is raw, lascivious and disgraceful. This culture elevates a certain social type, the fool. Brook’s reference is probably to Donald Trump who has managed to trump every rule book on behavioural science. Brooks says, “There are many different kinds of fools: holy fools, hapless fools, vicious fools. Fools were rude and frequently unabashed liars. They were willing to make idiots of themselves. The point of the fool was not to be admirable in himself but to be the class clown who had the guts to talk back to the teacher. People enjoyed carnival culture, the feast of fools, as a way to take a whack at the status quo.” Don’t we have the same kind of fools in Meghalaya who also make fools of all of us?
Indeed, there are many amongst us today who scorn the genteel culture that the church and other faith –based institutions have imposed on us. There are those argue that the tribes had their own methods of revelry which the church pooh-poohed as being disgraceful or pagan. Many don’t fit into the cosy little church spaces where people with delicate consciences (only when inside the house of God) congregate to enable their souls to be purged of misdeeds. Churches have become the social club of the elite. It’s only natural that many would fall between the cracks and not fit in there today (a) because they don’t own the clothes that church attendance demands (b) because they do not wish to be judged and looked upon with disdain. These therefore prefer to mingle with a social group of their own where the likes of Julius Dorphang can fit in. As long as Dorphang dances his blues away with consenting adults, I guess we cannot knock at his frozen conscience and tell him to behave himself. Dorphang’s transgression is that he has had enough of admiration from women who have crossed the threshold of childhood and have entered adulthood. Perhaps they offer him no novelty. Dorphang is a pedophile (an adult who is sexually attracted to young children). A pedophile is a pervert. Someone like Dorphang who has spent his days in the jungle and lived by its law should actually not be allowed to cavort with civil society after his surrender. But our politicians, including the geriatrics, who are now defending Dorphang tooth and nail found him to be a sort of peacock with the same feathers as themselves. So they allowed him to preen his feathers ( read his gunmen who guard his wretched life) in the temple of government (the state secretariat) and later they even pampered him to the point of getting him elected to the temple of democracy – the legislature. And because we are a non-judgmental society we embraced Dorphang and called him a “leader.” He is invited to drinking and dancing parties to frolic and have his free share of adult pleasures. But the man could not get out of his pedophilic urges.
It is ironic that the entry of Dorphang into the Meghalaya legislature did not merit a single critique from the political scientists of our leading university here. Assam our neighbour is a shocking example of how surrendered militants have acquired political power through coercion and now have amassed wealth beyond their wildest dreams. Normally we learn from our neighbours and one would expect the scholars here to warn us of the fatal error of electing a former militant to become our lawmaker. But we heard nothing of the sort. I wonder often at what is the purpose of academics if it does not help transform our thinking and sharpen our political skills. David Brooks is right when he calls the universities the modern cathedrals, where social hierarchies are defined and reinforced. No university dares to tread the path less travelled. While the faculty earn their bread through pedantic lectures, the students/scholars lack the motivation to question and dissent. Hence we have people coming out of universities with no capacity for cerebral engagement on issues that impinge on the society and politics of Meghalaya and the North East.
In this sordid scenario and what Brooks would term as a Carnival culture of song and dance and trivia “lurks an ocean of sadism just below the surface.” This sadism is being manifested by the repeated rape of a minor girl and her petite, helpless body treated as a piece of rag and traded by her handlers. I hope that all those with daughters will cringe at this imagery. It is so sickening to even imagine it happening under the watch of an equally depraved state. What would you call a system of governance where a militant with a list of crimes to his name is allowed to lord it over us? And did the churches have anything to say about this depravity? Some of Julius’s patrons occupy the front rows of their churches and are even asked to preach on Sundays. In fact, the church or church-goers need to do some serious soul searching outside the church instead of aping western hymns and the so-called praise and worship songs where plain and simple ‘God’ becomes ‘gawd.’ This mimicry is nauseating to say the least! It has turned us into pretenders unable to see ourselves for what we really are. The gathering of the ‘faithful’ is therefore reduced to what Emile Durkheim calls the collective effervescence or an experience that is provoked by mental and emotional pressure in every participant to converge on some common prayer points. This experience alas, is short-lived and does not even remain until the worshipper reaches home. Perhaps this is what we call the surface level experience. It does not change us from within. It only creates a sense of belonging among those who meet Sundayafter Sunday to discuss the “word of God.” Since I am not a scholar of the Bible I wonder what the Holy Book has to say about rape and pedophiles. Are these being discussed among church youth groups? I am not so sure!
In October last year, I was invited by the Presbyterian Church, Nongthymmai to discuss sexual violence against women and girls with their youth group. The discussions were very free and frank and I must commend Rev Nathan Diengdoh for allowing such a free flow of ideas. But during the question and answer session, comments such as, “ why do girls wear provocative dresses and venture out late”….etc., still managed to be articulated by some young men despite the one-hour long session on women’s right to their own bodies irrespective of the clothes they wear or the time they are out. So we have a long way to go in terms of understanding why rape is a violation of the woman’s soul and not just her body and that she is not the one at fault. It is the rapist who sins by failing to control his sexual urges. How much more reprehensible is the rape of a defenceless girl-child!
More than the generic preaching inside churches where monologues dull the senses and questions and comments are disallowed, the churches would do well to get their youth groups to discuss these critical issues that outrage women all the time. These healthy interactions are what must create the collective effervescence of reason and not simply of rituals.
Coming to the Dorphangs of this world, it is pathetic that in a very complex socio-political order we have people with simplistic ideas and non-evolved humans making laws for us and calling themselves leaders. Clearly the word “leader” is the most misused word in Meghalaya today. And yes as someone said on social media that if a geriatric Meghalaya Pradesh Congress President stands in defence of Dorphang because of a simplistic reasoning – that he was not caught by the cops with his pants down but only based on the minor girl’s statement – then we also have a politically savvy chief minister making a similar dilettante statement. Why? We need answers to these troubling questions. And we need them now! Enough of rhetoric!