Patricia Mukhim
We live in a world of transferred resentments where anger whether real or feigned, about the coming of the railway line to Byrnihat is transferred to government establishments, vehicles and on non-tribal (sorry about using this phrase) residents of Meghalaya. While the destruction of government property can be rationalized since the pressure group/groups hold the government accountable for the perceived misadventure of bringing the railway line to Byrnihat, it is difficult to comprehend why non-tribal properties are targets of petrol bombing? Non-tribals wonder why they are soft targets every time there is a social outrage about some issue or the other. During the Iiiner Line Permit (ILP) agitation some years ago some innocent small time non-tribal businessmen were burnt alive. Yet when such issues are raised to remind ourselves of our past acts of violence, there is a section of self-professed Khasi intellectuals who sneer and say that the youth of today don’t want to be reminded of that sordid past because they wish to get on with life. It’s like asking the Jews to forget the holocaust! This might be a strong metaphor but the point one wishes to drive home is that history cannot be deleted just because some people can’t face up to their dark, ominous deeds. And need I remind readers that those who choose to forget history are condemned to repeat it?
We are oft reminded of the age old philosophy that we emerged from the state of nature by binding ourselves together in a social contract (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau et al) to establish the institution of government. In doing so we also signed away some of our freedoms in order to bring order in society. But as Hume and Hegel point out, the ability to enter into a contract presupposes that the tribes (a) already know the use of language (b) have a sense of obligation towards the contract signed (c) recognizes and accepts the other. But the ‘other’ did not exist in that primeval state of nature. And then before we knew it we became part of a nation of diverse population and races who were all “other.” We were told that the goalposts have shifted. From implicitly trusting our tribal chieftains who had led us for years we were given a Constitution, in the crafting of which we had no hand. That confusion continues to confound us. And even today we swing dangerously on a pendulum, each time returning to a romanticised past and then coming back to a demanding present and imagining a challenging future.
French philosopher, Rene Girard says a society without settled law or the instruments of negotiations will be wracked by conflicts. This is so true of Meghalaya. Here the law is applied in the breach. We have never learnt the art of negotiation but move straight to confrontation. The sacrificial victim (non-tribal) is chosen because he is excluded from the social order: he is the one we are entitled to kill and whose death will not initiate the cycle of revenge since all of us converge on wanting it. Those who believe in non-violence either have no voice or don’t speak up because they are afraid of being ostracized by the community to which they belong. Girard calls this need to sacrifice the other as forced optimism which pushes the society to believe that the tribe’s survival depends on the scapegoat whose death will wash away the accumulated doubts. In this manner societies have given birth to the unscrupulous optimists whose outlook cannot be rectified by arguments because they surround themselves with impregnable defences against the truth and garner whatever sphere of influence available to them so that it becomes dangerous to question their ideas.
So what we have is a continued kind of existential despair and a longing to retreat from the complexities of the greater, inclusive society with its constitution and its laws, rules and regulations to the primordial simplicity of the undifferentiated, tribe. Even when those primordial institutions are failing we like to believe that they work for us. It’s like retreating to a safe cocoon where the outsider cannot enter and intimidate. Yet within that tribal cocoon there is an unnatural sense of unhealthy exclusivity where the mind is fed on the same old arguments; where fresh ideas are murdered even before they germinate and from this cocoon emerge the self-proclaimed leaders who claim to be the saviours of those inside the cocoon, protecting them from the “other,” who is caricatured as the bogeyman. For decades we have been led by people with no vision because this human cocoon (unlike the one which turns out a butterfly from a caterpillar) does not allow mental and intellectual growth. Inside this cocoon only vices such as greed and accumulation are allowed to grow.
From that cocooned position to evolve into our civil present is a wretched journey. No wonder a Maori chief who was so unsettled by the quick process of the white man’s civilisational march summed it up as “A thousand years in a lifetime.” The Maoris like the Khasis and other tribes never had the luxury of going through the evolutionary, civilisational processes to reach the present with its phenomenal challenges. That’s the reason for our million dilemmas.
From the primordial cocoon we are suddenly catapulted to the era of modern citizenship where law is made legitimate by the consent of those who must obey it. And how did this consent come? It came through a political process where each person participated in the making and in enacting that law. Adherence to this commonly agreed law is what citizenship implies. This is also the genesis of civil society which is distinct from a religious society where laws are imposed on human societies from some divine force and not from an aggregate of human agreements. The law derived from the political system does not tell us what to do, but what not to do, thereby leaving us free to pursue our goals provided we don’t violate that law.
And now before we know it, we have to deal with an uncertain future! How scary is that when we have not even processed our past and our present is assailed by constant doubts and fears! There dystopians in our midst envisage a future where the precious aspects of human nature, namely freedom, friendship, love, marriage, childhood will no longer be found and we will be left with a bleak landscape bereft of the known consolations. That we are entering the era of trans-humanists and artificial intelligence and that we will be replaced by cyborgs who fit seamlessly into the new environment where old fashioned virtues and emotions have no place, is no longer an impossibility.
So how does a small tribe numbering less than a million and surrounded by larger groups with supposedly higher intelligence grapple with these realities? Should we not sit together and sort out our dilemmas instead of sulking in our cocoons? Should we continue to blame the ‘other’ even when he is now an intrinsic part of our lives? Can we still keep that significant ‘other’ out of our collective consciousness and continue to label him an outsider? Outsider to what? Outsider to whom? The non-tribal born and brought up here has as much stake as any Khasi, Jaintia and Garo to see that Meghalaya develops in a manner where human dignity is given its due. To consider the non-tribal who has spent three generations here as the ‘other’ is a zero-sum fallacy. To punish the non-tribal for a system turned warped by erroneous political decisions is camouflage we have used for a long time to cover up our own failures on the civilisational journey.
It’s time for schools, colleges and universities to teach the basic lesson of acceptance of diversity and build capacities for engaging with people of all communities. This will drive out suspicion. Imagine if we were to live in a constant state of fear and are suspected of wrongdoing all the time! And if we are also punished for the fault of others! How would we live in that climate of fear and apprehension? That is the kind of climate that the non-tribal in Meghalaya experiences. If we expect sane Hindus to stand up against the current climate of oppressive violence then we too need to stand up and fight for the rights of our non-tribal brethren.