By Fabian Lyngdoh
Understanding the problems in a society only in the context of the cultural narrative of the past, is not sufficient; but what is more importantly required is to see it in the dynamics of the present. It is good to appreciate the present in the context of the past, but it is misleading to recreate the imaginary past in the context of the present. Many changes had taken place in the Khasi society. The ‘kur’ (matrilineal clan with avuncular leadership) is no longer an institution that drives the economic, political and socio-religious life of the people, but it now remains only a name, referring to a loose concept of matrilineal relatives. The kñi’s traditional authority had vanished, and he remained only a decorative cultural figure because he is no longer the main earner of the kur economy. The society today survives on the economic conditions of the nuclear families, andthe father’s presence or absence has become the most important factor determining the wellbeing and security of the family. But ironically, the feeling that the Khasi society survives today on the kur system is still ruling the general mind.
The de-institutionalization of the kur system has led the Khasi society to a cultural chaos, and women and children are thrown more miserably into it. Very few women today inherit ancestral property, hence, the responsibility for maintaining the kur has become basically a ‘woman’s burden.’ In the past, it was the institutional responsibility of the kur to see to the maintenance and security of a woman and her children whether there is a father or no father. But today, single motherhood has mostly become a curse to the Khasi society, as the kur has nothing to do with her daily struggle for a living. And, for being a woman, she is also imposed with the moral responsibility to take care of a sick brother or uncle even if he had not contributed anything to her family. Is this not an injustice that tradition has imposed upon Khasi women?
In this cultural chaos, the blame for the families’ social and economic wretchedness is usually put on the deteriorating responsibility of Khasi men as fathers, instead of seeing it in the context of the deteriorating responsibility of Khasi men as ‘kñi’s’. In fact, the Khasi society today is saved to some extent by the emerging responsibility of Khasi men as fathers. However, the Khasi father still has no definite responsibility whether cultural or legal towards his wife and children and it is easy for him to leave the family and marry another woman with no prick of conscience at all. Many Khasi husbands today do take full responsibility for their families owing to new emerging sense of moral responsibility, but not because of any traditional position as heads of their families. The residue of traditional view of the father as an outsider can still be observed in many aspects of family relationship. When the father buys a plot of land and builds a house therein, he does so, not for himself, but for his wife and children. If a husband dies, his wife is permitted to bring a new husband to live in the same house and sleep with on the same bed built by the deceased husband. Her youngest daughter from the new husband would have more hereditary right to take over the wealth and business provided by her first husband.
On the other hand, if the wife dies, the husband cannot bring a new wife into the house he had built and lived with the deceased wife, but he is expected to start a new family from scratch somewhere else. The new wife too would not accept his previous children into her house, while she expects him to allow her maternal uncles and brothers to come and stay in the house even if they had not contributed anything to the family. In the past, a man had the right to stay in his sister’s house (leit sah ïing-kur) because he had been the main contributor to the family’s economic wellbeing. But today, when it is the father who purchased the land and built the house, is there any justification for a sick and exhausted kñi to say that he would go and stay in his ïing-kur? Is it the ïing-kur or brother-in-law’s house?
If a man marries a woman who has children from previous husbands, he is expected to maintain and treat all her children equally as his own. But if a woman marries a man who has children from a deceased wife, the woman is not expected to treat and care for his previous children as her own. Indeed, she would expect him to forget and neglect them even in poverty and distress, and to start a new life with her as a free man. Are not all his children from the first wife and second wife equally his own? Is he not responsible for their maintenance equally? This cultural chaos says no, even among those who have professed the Christian faith.
Disorder in any society is primarily due to disorder in the family structure and family relationships. The society should move out of this cultural chaos, and all of us, in whichever religious faith we are in, have a responsibility to eradicate this cultural chaos. Christians have a greater responsibility as they constitute a majority in the tribe. There is a feeling among the men that the husband should emerge as the proprietor and head of the family, and the wife should bow down to his rule and command. But this feeling is only a reaction to the loss of the kñi’s authority in a matrilineal system and the inability to achieve the father’s authority as in patrilineal society. For the Christians, the Gospel clearly says that husband and wife should submit to one another in reverence for Christ (Eph. 5:21). So, it is not the husband or the wife, but Jesus Christ should be the head of the family. The deadly competition on who should be the head of the family in this cultural chaos would only tear the family apart. Jesus had confirmed what is written in Genesis, 2: 24, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife, and the two will become one” (Mt 19: 5). The Gospel here speaks in the context of patrilineal and patriarchal societies, where it is the wife who actually leaves her father and mother and becomes united to the husband’s clan. But the words in the Bible mean that in patrilineal society, though the husband is the owner of the clan, he should love his wife and be attached to her more than to his clan. In a matrilineal society like ours, the context should be rephrased as, “For this reason a woman will leave her mother, brothers and sisters and become united with her husband.” That implies that though the Khasi woman is the owner of the kur, she must love her husband and be attached to him more than to her kur. In the past, a Khasi man was attached to his kur more than to his wife and children but a Khasi man today has already left his kur and became attached to his wife and children. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the woman also to do likewise.
What destroys the Khasi families today is the excessive and baseless feeling of attachment to the kur. Unless husbands and wives love and trust each other more than their kurs, the Khasi society would never come out of the cultural chaos. The Khasi society can no longer return to the kur system of the past. All have lost the institutional character of the kur. What we have today is only a circle of relatives from the mother side and the father side in which we have to live in honour and respect. We have to rebuild the Khasi society on the basis of the family of the father, mother and children, in economy, in religious faith and in all other aspects of life. If the husband is willing to love and care the woman’s children from other husbands, the wife too should be ready to love and care his children from his deceased wife, and she should not expect him to leave them miserably in the streets because by the collapse of the kur economy there are many orphans in the Khasi society today. The suggestions might be hard to digest, but it is the demand of the situation to free the tribe from the grip of a cultural chaos.