Patricia Mukhim
The caption above shows the direction in which things are moving in Meghalaya. The only problem is that Debate on any issue of socio-political importance happens amongst “People like Us” (PLUs). This is usually referred to as a “like-minded group.” This group is mortally afraid of inviting anyone with a different viewpoint because they want a consensus. A consensus that allows them to proceed in a particular direction. Which direction? The direction of agitation, disruption of day to day lives and which in this instance has led to the death of at least three people and another one being stabbed on Thursday. The death of the other two in Shillong was a backlash against the death of a member of the Khasi Student’s Union in Ichamati at the hands of a non-tribal group that for once showed some spine to defend its interests. For a Khasi tribal to die at the hands of a non-tribal mob is a sacrilege. But non-tribals can be done to death without the killers ever being arrested. Why? Because Meghalaya is the homeland of the tribes while non-tribes are only settlers here! That’s the sociology and politics that is embedded in the hearts and minds of the Khasi youth here and groups like the Khasi Student’s Union (whose members do not necessarily include only students but even married men with children). The KSU has projected itself as the bulwark of Khasi society and its Protector-In-Chief. All of us adults believe it is easier to outsource all our problems to this group and watch from behind the scenes even when things go awry.
An organisation that claims to lead a society that is essentially built on the foundation of, “Ka Tip-briew, Tip-Blei must also be morally upright and transparent in its functioning, including its source/s of funding. The reason I am say this is because several non-tribals running businesses in Shillong city are regularly extorted by all the pressure groups, all of them with noble intentions projected for public consumption. The other day, I was in a conversation with Geoffrey Yaden a senior journalist and editor, Nagaland Post. He said something that nudged my troubled mind. He said, “In the rest of the world the Mafia is proud to be known by that name but in Nagaland the same group that is operating in mafia style and is extorting and bullying people wants to be known as “national workers.” This is such a bold statement and Geoffrey is perhaps voicing what most Nagas who are tired of the extortion by the underground groups of all hues, feel today.
The people of Meghalaya have not yet reached this point because up until now the soft targets are and have been the non-tribal business houses and shops. The moment the tribals begin to get extorted then the adults who are up until now acquiescing in the actions of the pressure groups will start to react. So in a sense the non-tribal community are enabling the tribal businesses to survive without paying
“Protection Money.” The HNLC did the same initially and extorted only from non-tribals but the organisation got greedy and started demanding money from tribal business persons as well. That’s when the resistance against this outfit started and so too its downfall. Most non-tribal business persons prefer to quietly pay the pressure groups and continue with their businesses. The argument of the ‘Jaitbynriew Tip Briew Tip Blei’ is that anyone earning their livelihoods here in “Our Land” must pay their taxes to “Us.”
When the very premise upon which the pressure groups are actually operating from is morally untenable how is it that the God-fearing, church-going society are silently complicit and allowing this moral depredation to carry on and to include all of us by association? I have never heard any preaching, anywhere on extortion. Why? Is the church afraid of confronting sin? Then what’s the basis for its existence? Is it just to pander to a group with dead consciences who are only happy to be paying their tithes as a compensation for sins? This societal hypocrisy is so nauseating that it leaves one depressed.
Non-tribals who claim Shillong as their home must realise that they must engage with social causes not just of their community but beyond it. Profit-making and business interests alone do not endear you to society. Barring very few exceptions, non-tribals don’t join any community project. But each time you meet them they bemoan their fates and say they are victimised by extortionists. Yet they pay because they fear the repercussions and because they say that the law refuses to protect them from these mercenaries. Ostensibly the law enforcers tell them to negotiate with the groups and not trouble them unnecessarily. But non-tribals must realise that the protection money they pay does not really protect them from miscreants each time there’s breakdown of law and order. At such times it is the unsuspecting small trader or student or a non-tribal labourer who happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time who is attacked. This is history repeating itself since 1979 and nothing has changed.
In Meghalaya, violence has become a form of communication. The protracted attacks that have happened since 1979 are a way of setting boundary markers from those that “don’t belong.” It’s a soap opera where the wounds are never allowed to heal because there has never been any sincere attempt within communities to bridge the distances and allay the fears and suspicions. Meghalaya has not produced leaders to walk this difficult path because ethno-centric politics is still the most cashed in currency in the political economy.
When trouble erupts in this city as it has especially after the MDA Government came to power, the first thing the hyper-ventilated police force does is to ban the internet and blame the cycle of violence on social media. Actually the problems are deep-seated and for this the police are largely to blame because they are never able to arrest the culprits leave alone make a fool-proof case against them that would lead to conviction. The internet is only a medium of communication. It allows ugly human passions to be vomited out. It’s a catharsis that the weak employ to fight back against perceived injustices.
Does the Meghalaya Police which considers the internet its prime enemy know how much loss has been incurred by people who rely on the world-wide-web for their businesses big and small and for bill payments? A curfew and internet ban is the last resort in the order of priority in the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). What would Meghalaya Police have done if they were in Delhi and 46 people died in a communal riot? What all would they ban?
And then there are politicians like Prestone Tynsong who appeal to us mortals to brave the curfew and internet ban and to be patient while, “Government restores normalcy.” Mr Tynsong your Government cannot restore “Normalcy.” It’s the people who live from hand to mouth that have a stake in peace. Such people face all arrows of adversity, unlike you who live in an ivory tower. And “normalcy” is a temporary band-aid. Some people have been living in fear as second class citizens here for decades. Does your government care to reassure them and also to give them an accurate picture of who is actually stealing our land from us? Is it not rich politicians, businesspersons and bureaucrats that have bought up all our land in rural areas? How can a non-tribal own land when the laws are stacked against him? Yet again and again they are seen as interlopers. This hypocrisy has got to end and you can do so by educating the pressure groups on this and not by cowering in fear before them. You make us sick with your cowardly stances.
And for those of us in the media who report events but don’t give voice to how people interpret those events, there are lessons we need to learn. There are serious power imbalances in this society and that power inequality shapes peoples’ lenses. What the non-tribal feels today is that successive governments in Meghalaya have failed to protect them. This has pushed them to embrace the ideology of a Party that seeks to give them a sense of meaning, purpose and dignity as well and promises to help them fight back against tribal fundamentalism. Make no mistake it is not just the BJP that is right wing extremist in its ideology. Tribal fundamentalism is alive and kicking too in the name of protecting the “jaitbynriew.” If the Khasi pressure groups care for the jaitbynriew then they should not retort when political parties like the BJP afford that same caring for their Hindu brethren in Meghalaya.
It always takes two hands to clap and victimhood is no longer a currency for victimising others. As Hannah Arendt says, there is a limit to asserting the moral superiority of victimhood.