Patricia Mukhim
Society is defined as the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community. The word ‘ordered’ here does not mean that individuals and groups within society have no differences or conflicts. Where there are two or more people, there is bound to be conflict. A family is a good place to start. None of us can say we never had family conflicts, fights and arguments. Married couples have split; some children have abandoned their parents. Gautam Singhania (the billionaire son of Vijaypat Singhania who was on Wednesday voted as the villain of the day by CNN-IBN) is a recent example. But we continue to engage because humans are inherently unhappy with conflict. It makes us restless and despondent and if we are to be true to ourselves, we want to get back to a normal relationship if that is at all possible. Very often it is the human ego that hinders conflict resolution. The ego can be coated in layers of semantics but at the end of it all it is a human predicament that bogs down our efforts at peace-building and prevents us from offering the other person the proverbial olive branch.
The recent event at Mylliem where the dead body of an elder of the Seng Khasi faith was not allowed to be cremated, for reasons that may have been legitmate, has raised many questions about our own tolerance levels in the Khasi-Pnar society today. That there was a protest against the cremation of a dead body is, in itself unprecedented. It means that Khasi society has reached a point where conversation has broken down. Normally, the Khasis are known to negotiate and carve out spaces where they can get their points across without coming to blows. But things have changed. Tempers flare up at the drop of a hat because we all live such busy and stressful lives. Social capital is diminishing. Let’s ask ourselves when did we last drop by at a friend’s without any agenda? These social visits are getting less and less frequent. Even families living within the same city of Shillong hardly meet unless they have set a time and date. While we cannot put back the clock it is important for us to sit and introspect as to what are the core values of our society that are embedded in our DNA and which we ought to transmit to our younger ones.
The reason I speak of intrinsic or core values is because those remain unchanged with time. It’s a different matter that we hardly convey or act out these values. The younger generation is completely out of depth with these core values that have guided the society for millennia. The Khasi adage of “Tip briew, Tip Blei,” does not lend itself to a simple literal translation. It is loaded with meaning and metaphor. It could mean that a person cannot claim to be God-loving yet be at constant conflict with fellow humans. For the Khasi of yore who coined this adage, the person we see and interact with every day is equivalent to the God who we believe to be an omnipotent creator but who none of us has seen. So is it easier to love God because he (a patriarchal notion) does not engage with us at a personal level, while it is difficult to love a fellow human being because we might have serious differences of opinions? Kamai ia ka hok for instance cannot be translated into “earn righteousness.” Righteousness has a religious and moral connotation. For the Khasis who had not been indoctrinated by organised religion, righteousness would convey a sense of justice, equity and fair play. Hence there was more sharing of resources than there is today. While it’s true that population growth brings with it the challenge of making do with scarce resources, land being one, it is also a fact that we are in the “grab it all” culture that pushes us towards greed and selfishness. The problem is that religion has failed to change our behavior. Hence we have nearly 76% of Khasis today who are landless and we might be the only tribal group in the North East to be so. I have never heard of a landless Naga or Mizo in their respective states. But of course we will not discuss these matters for they claw at our conscience. So we talk of mundane issues and pretend they are matters of life and death. The Khasi tendency to obfuscate is legendary. This is observed particularly in conversations at homes of the bereaved where political and social gossip is the flavour of the day. After that regurgitation all is forgotten. We go back home, nurse our conscience to sleep and wake up to a new day to say the same set of things with a different set of people at another funeral. This has become part of life for many of us.
But talk about a real societal conversation and there are few takers. Yet there are so many issues that are troubling the society today and which are alienating us from one another. We cannot pretend otherwise unless we are sleepwalking. Khasis used to believe that going to a court of law (kiew iing lieh iing saw) is the last resort. This means there were enough conflict resolution mechanisms within the society. And that is social capital. It is the ability to arrive at a decision that’s in the common interest of two or more warring parties and since there was a sense of fairness and equity, people accepted these decisions. Today this is no longer the case. Hence court cases have just piled up even in the district council courts where cases between tribals are gathering dust and remain unresolved for decades.
The last societal conversation happened at Khasi National Dorbar Hall some years ago around the issue of U Thlen (an equivalent of a serpent that sucks human blood and bestows wealth on its keepers)This happened after some people were lynched at Smit and elsewhere on the grounds that they were Thlen keepers. That discussion could not resolve the single contentious issue of whether the Thlen is a reality or a myth constructed to vilify people with wealth, whose sources they could not readily explain. That we have not heard of any lynching incident in the last five years or so makes me wonder what has happened to the Thlen. How can it be fed human blood without someone being kidnapped and then murdered so that the blood is sucked out of the human until he/she dies and the blood is fed to the Thlen. If the Thlen really existed then where is it now? We don’t know and we will not discuss these issues because we are a society that goes into a shell whenever we have a controversy at hand.
And this precisely is the problem. We need more societal conversations because we no longer speak to each other as we used to do around the hearth (sawdong ka lyngwiar dpei), Family conversation are staccato and revolve only around our selfish needs. Children are more educated than their parents hence they don’t accept age-old truths from their wise elders. Most elders are not clued in to the mental and psychological challenges that their children go through, what with social media bombardment and the pressure of studies. There is a disjuncture and it is not being bridged because no one knows how to do it. What we need is a peer support group for parents experiencing these pangs and for children who feel their parents don’t understand them. The twain needs to meet otherwise we will have dysfunctional families and more substance abuse and alcoholism.
Recently, I visited Bethany Society where I met a young mother with an autistic 14 year old son. She had to leave her job in a metro and return home because there is no support system outside. Sadly even here, she confided that there is no one to talk to and learn how to cope with an autistic kid. She looked exhausted. I asked Carmo Noronha, Director, Bethany Society, if we could have a peer support group for such parents and he willingly offered space. So parents with autistic kids please do make use of this space.
Granted that we have entered an era with challenges that exceed our capacities to handle, but sharing problems and societal conversations are still the best way to heal. This is a social capital we cannot lose!