By H H Mohrmen
The country is celebrating Independence Day tomorrow, but the questions that begs for an answer is: Are we really free or how free are we? Is every section of the society in the country really free? The one section of the society that is not free and constantly lives in the shadow of fear is the equal half of the population of the community. The female members of the society which constitute more than half of the state’s population are not free because they live in constant fear.
Women are not free to walk alone in the dark; there is imminent threat to their own being because of what they are. They are not free to dress as they like and they are expected to wear their traditional jainsem or the jain kyrshah although men can dress as they wishes. It is mandatory for women to wear their traditional dress but men are free to wear their two pieces western costume. We feel proud that recently the jainsem received so much limelight albeit for the wrong reason, but the pertinent question is; are women in the matrilineal society really free?
Traditionally; women were held in high esteem in the culture of the people in the area, and this goes back to the genesis of the clan itself. Every clan in the community is believed to have originated from the (Iawbei) or the progenitors who are (chitein i bru chitein i blai) half-human half-divine and in their respective narratives, all the progenitors have immense superpowers. The story about ka Iawchibidi the progenitor of the Laloo, Lamin and Diengdoh clan is believed to have a superpower which helped her survived the constant attack of the enemy who followed her from Iapngar in the Ribhoi district (from where she fled) to Nongbareh and Nongtalang in the War Jaintia area. The four sisters ka Wet, ka Bon, ka Tein and ka Doh the progenitors of the first four clans to settle in Jowai are also half-human half-divine, Ka Bor of the Passah clan, ka Chyrkiang Talang of the Talang Nongtdu clan and ka Rymbai bahkhla of the Rymbai clan all have divine origin and possessed superpowers. They not only have divine origin and superpower, but till now the descendants of these progenitors (in the traditional religion) still worship them as deities.
Therefore it is not wrong to say that since all Khasi-Pnar women are children of these divine progenitors they should also have inherited some semblance of this godly features in them. It is in this context that the Pnars called every woman ‘ka blai iung’ because she is like a deity of the house but now women do not hold that same status anymore. Women are not only molested and raped but the community in general and the male’s attitude towards women has changed drastically in the so called matrilineal society.
A case of a young lady who tried to prevent the youths of certain locality in Shillong from attacking a non tribal man in the city is one example of this male dominated attitude towards the fairer sex. According to the video uploaded, the woman is only doing her duty as a citizen of the country and as a good Christian when she saw that a fellow human was attacked. As a good citizen, she reached out and request the bystanders to call the police, which should give others the idea that nobody can take the law in their own hands. But the bystanders on the pretext that they are ‘khynnah shnong’ give us the implication that since the young lady is an outsider and not from the locality she has no right and has no business in what has happened in the area.
Now this is a very dangerous proposition because if a crime is committed, the law does not differentiate one citizen from the other. Everybody is equal in the eyes of the law. It does not matter if you are khynnah shnong or not; your duty is prevent the crime from happening and to report the same to the police and that was exactly what the young lady did. It so happened that the accused in the crime was a non tribal and in almost all social media platforms the lady was called protector of the non tribal or one who sympathise with the outsiders. The keyboard warriors (as many would like to call them) were quick to call her turncoat or somebody who is ready to sell her country for doing what a good citizen should do.
We even have a similar situation in the Bible in which the mob were about to stone the lady who they condemned to be a prostitute. The lady was lucky that Jesus arrived just in the nick of time and saved her from imminent death. Jesus looked around and simply said, ‘’He who has no sin cast the first stone,” and all the stones fell from the hands of the mob one after the other. What the young lady did was legally and morally right, but she unfortunately was the one who was stoned by the Khasi-Pnar who are mostly Christians just because the victim happened to be a non tribal.
After this incident, I doubt if any young woman would dare to repeat what this young lady has done on that fateful day. The situation came to such a pass because the lady is an outsider and more importantly because she is a woman. Khasi-Pnar men cannot accept that a woman would have the guts to challenge them especially in matters related to administration of the village (kam synshar shnong). Woman should only wear her jain kyrshah and her rightful place is in the kitchen and to procreate. She should not to mess in affairs which are the domain of the male members of the society was the message behind the entire fiasco.
This same attitude was obvious when the community where the incident occurred clarified on what has happened. The Rangbah Shnong no doubt made it clear that the community always inculcate in the youth that they should not take the law in their own hands (which was also what the lady was trying to do) but he also said that it was the lady who created the scene as was obvious from the video. But it was the statement of the gentleman who spoke after the RS which raises more questions than answers. He tried to give a character certificate to the young man who was involved in the mess and was also seen touching the young lady. He also claimed that he arrived later and even ordered the traffic warden who was recording the video to do her job.
I think it is the duty of the guardians of the law to at least record the crime she witnessed even if she is not able to stop it. What makes the gentleman think that he can order the traffic warden what to do? Even if he is the assistant Rangbah Shnong of the area, he has no right to order the traffic warder because she is not under his command anyway. Besides that, when people collect around any place it will certainly affect the flow of traffic and that is her job by the way.
Again this is because the traffic warden who filmed the incident was a woman. Had it been a male warden, it would have been a different story altogether. In a matrilineal society, even a woman in uniform is not expected to challenge a male member of the society especially if he happens to be a member of the Dorbar Shnong. We talk about being gender sensitive but the entire team of the Dorbar Shnong which met the press comprised of male members only. Even the channel which did the story took the statements of male members of the community only and not a singles female was interviewed. Where have all the females gone?
The crux of the matter is because the people involved in the entanglement are female and women are not free to say what they want and do what they think is right in the matrilineal society. Are women really free in the contemporary matrilineal society? The majority would like you to think that they are, but are they? Join any Dorbar Shnong where women are also allowed to attend the meeting, see how many women speak or take part in the meeting? This is first lesson on equality in matrilineal society.
How and when did women fall from grace? How did women who were once considered divine lose their equal status with men in the matrilineal society? This is a million rupee question because when there is no equality, there is no freedom.