Patricia Mukhim
Our plight as a Khasi community is that we claim to live in a democracy but our inherent responses and reactions to any situation date back to the days when we were an oligarchy; where women who speak up are called, “hens that crow,” an aphorism cleverly constructed by the male to get women to shut up and mind the hearth and home because they are considered too dim-witted, to understand what constitutes, “ka synshar ka khadar” (governance). Traditional governance even today is the remit of men. At an unknown past it was reserved for men who had grown moustaches. The world and indeed this country has travelled a long way since then but our atavistic nature has not. Hence women who have publicly expressed their dissent on the Khasi Lineage Amendment Bill, 2018, are termed by no less than the CEM, KHADC as ‘elitist’ and as people who are “international” in their thought processes hence divorced from the ground realities in their cultural backyards. The few women who have spoken up are singled out and publicly defamed. Their pictures are culled out from social media and made public mockery of. The pictures of the children of a well known activist who happens to be married to a non-Khasi man by mutual consent, are circulated on social media with taunts that they don’t look “Khasi.” So now even the Khasi look must meet with certain facial features decided by the male gang of trolls. But these trolls have only drawn blood from HS Shylla himself who has, publicly slandered this writer and saying she has four non-tribal husbands which is a blatant lie. Can there be defamation worse than this? And this man calls himself the saviour of the Khasi jaidbynriew? Which jaidbynriew is he talking about? Before we arrive at the conclusion it is important to define what aspects of our DNA can be called Khasi.
Of all the assumptions about the etymology of the word Khasi, I came across this definition by E Brektis R Wanswett. He says the Khasi, as a race has a very unique and rather mysterious origin. The origin is shrouded in mystery due to lack of recorded history and all we know about their history is derived from legends and folklore.” Oral narratives lend themselves to subjective constructions and modern writers and historians cull their information from such constructs. The origin of the Khasis too is uncertain. Hence it is easier to attribute that origin to divine ancestry and put an end to all doubts. Hence to try and define the facial feature of a “Khasi,” is to me a desperate attempt by some who are hell bent on “protecting” this Khasi community from disappearing from the face of the earth. And that disappearance, according to this social and moral police will happen (a) because Khasi women are marrying non-Khasi, non-tribals and thereby ‘diluting’ the pristine Khasi bloodline (b) the scheming non-Khasi, non-tribal is marrying a Khasi women purely with the selfish motive of exploiting her tribal status. There is no research whatsoever about how many such non-tribal rakes have taken away our land and how many have added value to our social fabric and our intellectual gene pool. Women who have married non-Khasis, non-tribals are therefore now sought to be caricatured as the “enemies within.” They are assumed to be “unpatriotic” (ba die tad ia ka jaidbynriew) and not Khasi enough to stand by whatever is being dictated to them and therefore transgressing the constructed norm of Khasi behaviour which is (a) women don’t speak and least of all argue (b) dissent is unacceptable because whatever the “Rangbah” (male elders) say is indisputable.
What has happened over the years therefore is that Khasi society has existed in an echo-chamber where only a few who stomp into the political space have the right to speak loudly. Rhetoric is considered logic even when the speechifying is devoid of evidence and is built on a series of carefully assembled assumptions. But education has now made its mark. Those who have managed to get out of this echo chamber and have studied or are studying in leading universities outside the state, have, most of them, returned with their blinkers discarded in the dustbin of time. They are now taking on the elders with a no-nonsense posture and a remarkable ability to write unambiguously about what they feel strongly about. They dare to dissent; to take the path less travelled. They are not guarded in their comments and do not fear “what others will say” (which is what keeps most Khasi from expressing their views publicly), thereby making funeral homes the most favourite adda for cheap political gossip.
This is the generation that will not be intimidated by societal frameworks and archaic customs that have not adapted to the changing times. They will marry a person who is mentally and intellectually compatible and with whom they can spend their lives with. Or they will choose not to marry at all. It’s their life after all. In fact, the contentious Khasi Lineage Bill, 2018 has brought out the best of Khasi contemporary thought but mostly from those who are against the Bill. Elders and the political class can ignore those thoughts at their peril. And how many dissenters can you defame and demonise? They will continue to come out and voice their thoughts, like it or not, because these young thinkers are not there to confirm anyone’s biases. They think through, analyse and present their views coherently. It is a pleasure to read them and you also realise the huge intellectual gap between this generation and the one before them. We as elders too have to refocus our lenses to accommodate these outstanding pieces of intellectual brilliance.
Change indeed is the basic law of nature and changes wrought by the passage of time affects individuals and institutions in different ways. According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; the species that survives is the one that is best able to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. In the context of Khasi society one might say that of all the tribes we have been the most exposed to outside influences yet we have managed to hold our own. Applying Darwin’s theoretical concept to us as individuals, we can say that the civilization that is able to survive is the one that is able to adapt to the changing physical, social, political, moral, and spiritual environment in which it finds itself. Hence fear-mongering about the survival of the Khasi race might work to our detriment.
The problems with the arguments on culture and its conservation (not preservation) that surround the Khasi Lineage Bill, 2018 is that they see Khasi culture as a homogenous attribute thereby forgetting that there can be great variations even within the same general cultural milieu. This was very succinctly pointed out by Bhogtoram Mawroh in his article, “How Many Types Of Khasis Are There? (Raiot.in, August 22, 2018). This article is very instructive as it looks at the Khasi-Karbi interface in Ri Bhoi district and shows how some Karbis have assimilated into the Khasi culture and others haven’t, while still others choose to straddle both identities. Sadly, as Amartya Sen says, cultural determinists often underestimate the extent of heterogeneity even in what is taken to be “one” distinct culture. Sen says it is disastrously deceptive to imagine culture to be stationary, explicit or implicit. Indeed, the temptation to use cultural determinism often takes the hopeless form of trying to fix the cultural anchor on a rapidly moving boat.
In closing I wish to clarify to those who have been fed the rhetoric that the Khasi Lineage Bill was recalled by the District Council that, that is not a fact. The Bill was returned by the District Council Affairs Department because it is not legally and constitutionally tenable. To use the word “recall” is to give the KHADC a face saving exit out of the controversy.
In a democracy there will always be different views on an issue and those who are trying to build a consensus around the Lineage Bill should understand that the majority is not always right. And having differences of opinion does not make us enemies of one another. Only insecure people indulge in personal mudslinging instead of focussing on the issue at hand. And without dissent there can be no democracy!