By Fabian Lyngdoh
The British had conquered the indigenous peoples of the North East along with the rest of India and created a unified ‘British Raj’ under the British Empire. There is none to blame because it is vicissitudes of history that had made us subjects of British colonial rule. It is an undeniable fact that as indigenous communities we had also benefitted in many ways through association with British civilisation. But, a cost to our own traditions and cultures has also come along with the benefits of Western civilisation.
The British had left India more than seventy years ago, but we are still under the spell of the ghost of colonialism. We have come under the grip of Western cultural values and ideals, manifesting in our dress, behaviour, manners, attitudes and opinions. Speaking particularly of my own Khasi society, most of us have become uprooted from our own culture and traditions and alienated from our own land, from our own people and society. Sometimes we behave like foreign tourists when we go to the rural areas of our own land, wondering with extreme strangeness at every piece of stone, every landscape, and at every aspect of rural life which are but common phenomena to our tribesmen living there. Sometimes we also behave with strange detachment in our dealings with our less fortunate fellow tribesmen as if we are in a caste or class-stratified society, while we enter into intimate social relationships with people in the higher-ups with ease and grace, even with those not belonging to our own communities, because Western culture and etiquette are the marks of class distinction.
The colonists and Western missionaries had perceived us as primitive, backward, wretched, nasty and brutish in contrast to their own civilization and culture. Likewise, many of us who have earned some status in modern living have also imbibed that same Western attitude towards our own culture and society. Hence, we are apt to hold the same derogatory attitude and opinion towards our less fortunate tribesmen. We see them as backward, nasty and wretched beings, and think that they are poor and wretched because they are mentally backward; they refuse to grow and learn the modern art of living, they procreate too many children, and so on. The reality is that our fellow tribesmen are not backward, nasty or wretched; they seem so only to the perception of our own Westernised mind-set. They are free from diseases of the market society and are much happier than we are. ‘That aging grandmother over there, surrounded by her thirty grandchildren is extremely happy beyond the reach of our comprehension!’
In specially staged programmes we heartily applaud and express agreement with the taste and nourishment of indigenous food prepared by the rural folks; but do we really eat such food sold at the small ‘jadoh’ stalls in the markets and highways to support the livelihood of the small indigenous entrepreneurs? Of course many of us who think that we are higher up in the social scale would not. We would probably enter into a high-class restaurant where branded food, like Kentucky Fried Chicken is served, even though a piece of it would cost a day’s wage of the poor, and even our own economy cannot comfortably cope with the class identity we are trying to emulate.
We display these attitudes and behaviours because consciously or unconsciously, we feel inferior with our own cultural identity. The British colonial administrators as well as the missionaries from the West had come to our midst with an assured sense of racial and cultural superiority. This Western superiority had been indoctrinated into our collective consciousness through various processes. We have internalized the superiority of Western culture, and hence, we feel inferior with our own. This influence can be observed even in the general attitude and mannerisms of Church leaders such as priests and pastors, not because they are spiritually or ecclesiastically superior, but because by virtue of their office they were to some extent considered equal with the Western missionaries even during colonial period. So, our Church leaders even today exhibit these behaviourisms because they might have directly inherited this sense of superiority from Western missionaries. A small example: in Church services the leaders would raise their heels and stretch their necks to hold their heads higher and deepen their voice while singing hymns. Probably this behaviour was displayed by the Western missionaries during colonial time, either in a religious sentiment to raise their souls up to God, or to emphasize their superior height and patriarchal commanding voice among the diminutive men and women of indigenous tribes.
This influence is observable also among some senior elders in the villages. A certain elder who had some education during the British period and lived comfortably on some sort of pension, always wore a Western hat which he called ‘ka plahat’. One of his less fortunate contemporary asked him whether he would go fishing the next day. “Yes!” he replied in commanding voice, and standing erect to his full height, he continued, “Kaba mut ‘hooid!’ ha ka ktien phareng” to the admiration of his companion. The admiration of the Western people as superior beings had entered even into some of the tribes’ mythologies. According to an Idu Mishmi myth, the god Nuyu-Anjaru took a third wife, Uini Arru who bore him three sons. Aja, the third son, a tall figure with full cheeks, was majestic in his personality and behaviour, and it was from him the Sahib (Europeans, Americans) originated.
We fondly romanticise our cultural traditions and are apprehensive of losing our collective identity, while at the individual level we all try to build our personal identities on the residue of Western colonialism away from our own cultural roots that are planted on our land. But, we cannot shake off our basic traditional identity without becoming aliens in our own land and culture; and, the world would not really accept us wearing the mask of borrowed identity. This mask of borrowed identity that we are so keen to wear could be one of the reasons why our fellow citizens from other parts of India failed to appreciate and recognise who we truly are.
At the time when we needed most to free ourselves from the colonial mindset, the era of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation came to strengthen the superiority of Western culture and Western influence in every sphere, and at the same time to validate our imitative behaviour. It is Western values, ideals and lifestyle, Western superiority and Western influence that are globalised through trade and commerce. Whatever belongs to the West is international! Publications done in Europe and America are considered international publications, while publications done in India are not! Even our scholars and academics are being fooled by this idea. Now we are in a serious identity crisis because we want to fly away to Western civilisation, while our feet are merged deeply with our natural and cultural identity. It is this identity crisis that brews psychological and social unrest among the masses, leading even to deadly conflicts and violence when ethnic identity and autonomy are perceived to be at stake.
The British colonial rule in India had come to an end, and there are no European settlers to rule the nation as in the Americas. Hence, Indian Independence is the independence of all the indigenous peoples of India separately and collectively from British Imperial Rule. On the basis of the erstwhile British Raj, all the independent indigenous peoples came together to form the modern Indian Republic we have today. Unlike the American native tribes, indigenous peoples of North East India were not pushed into “Reservation Areas” or allotted lands by the mercy and kindness of some superior race, but they live in their own homelands which they do not consider as the gifts of the Indian Constitution, but as rightful inheritance from their ancestors.
But, indigenous peoples of the North East feel that they are in danger of another ghost of colonialism which seeks to assimilate them into the caste-ridden social structure, falsely called ‘Indian mainstream.’ This apprehension is not without grounds, as history tells us that all the tribes of the plains were absorbed into the stratified caste structure, including the powerful Ahoms, who not only lost their coherent identity, but also lost their own language forever. This amounts to cultural invasion. Genuine post-colonial democratic Indian mainstream would materialise only when the insignia of the caste system is stricken off from all pillars and posts of public institutions, and its ideals, stricken off from the mind-set of all Indians. I hope all sensible Indians would endeavour to work towards that “heaven of freedom where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit” (Tagore), and only then, we can all say that we live in a post-colonial era.