Deepa Majumdar
To answer this basic question – why the Khasi people made the choices they did (favoring the Caucasian west, while xenophobic towards mainland India) – one must be nuanced and objective. One must first understand Khasi history, identifying those aspects of western culture they embraced – especially religion, arts (especially music), and the great progressive political movements of the west.Moreover, one must understand the history of the west. Finally, one must understand the impact of modernity on the fate of indigenous communities worldwide. In the end, one must understand our universal human condition of existential exile.
It is true that colonialism decimated indigenous communities worldwide – especially their native religions. In the words of James Rachels, “Europeans and their cultural descendants in America have a shabby history of destroying native cultures in the name of Christianity and Enlightenment, not to mention self-interest.” But Rachels’ words represents a repentant secular progressive west. From a more objective standpoint, colonialism was perhaps a historically necessitated coat of many colors that included benevolent white men and women who sacrificed their lives to serve the native. Not all religious missionaries destroyed native religions. Moreover, Christ Himself perhaps spoke to at least some sincere souls, which is why Christian devotion is sometimes more alive in the former colonies than in the west. Adding to this, we have, in the context of Shillong, great medical missionaries like Dr. Arthur Hughes, the Schweitzer of Assam.Stalwarts like Dr. Hughes have enriched the colonial legacy of Western Europe and America upon Khasi society. This background should help us understand Khasi admiration for the west. But it does not. Many brown Indian Dkhars have also given up their lives to serve the Khasi people. The venerable monks of the Ramakrishna order have served Meghalaya for decades. Have they received the same accolades as Dr. Hughes?
But more mystifying than this is the fact that Khasis have welcomed something as culturally corrosive and morally dangerous as the decadent aspects of the modern west, which are foreign, not only to Khasi indigenous culture, but to the human condition itself. For the deracinating passions the west worships make foreigners of us all. For a people so afraid of demographic and cultural extinction, why have Khasis embraced, almost suicidally, modern western culture – an insidious pecuniary-concupiscent force that can extinguish their culture in a matter of a few years? I can understand admiring great western philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, or Neoplatonic masters like Plotinus, or medieval Christian saints like St. Francis of Assisi and others. I can understand admiring British virtues or the great good side of modern America – its democratic principles, philanthropic tradition, rare sensitivity to ethics, generosity, and legalism. But I cannot understand emulating western religious bigotry, or the more sensuous expressions of western art, music, and culture. Nor can I understand Khasi complacency before the culturally corrosive west –a far greater threat to their existence than the mainland Indian, or even the illegal refugee. Armed with pecuniary might, the modern west is formidable, compared to the helpless refugee. From the stand point of justice or even survival, who or what is the real enemy? The Indian Dkhar, or the cultural hegemony of the west?
Having grown up in the Shillong-of-the-sixties, I recall my own attraction to the west. At least part of our fascination was ethical and aesthetic – hence, genuine and universal. We admired the discipline, moral awareness, industriousness, and justice in the west. We admired their scientific temperament. We admired their savants and saints. Yet, even back then, there was something humiliating about our enthrallment with Enid Blyton. That we sought to recreate Blyton’s Five Find-Outers in the hills of Shillong – thus recreating British fiction in post-independent India – exposed the powerful displacement caused by our neo-colonial homelessness. I can understand admiring Blyton’s wisdom, relative innocence, and high moral standards for children – but not her racism or sexism. To look for elves and fairies amidst the stalwart pines of Shillong may sound innocent. But is it?
So my questions linger… Why does the culturally corrosive modern west fascinate the Khasi people, although it is the greatest threat to their existence? Why does modern India repel them, although they benefit at the cost of the Indian taxpayer?
The modern west is a spiritual desert, as is China. Bereft of all soothing waters of wisdom – except, in a snatch of a song here and there – the west has become a shopping mall, a therapy hub, and a drug den all rolled into one. Since the schizoid historical separation of science and religion in the history of Europe, western civilization has progressively fallen away from the spiritual heart of religion, thus losing its foothold in the life-saving ascetic norms that enliven all religions. Having replaced the true Christian Trinity with a new unholy trinity – capitalism, the so-called sexual revolution, and the hi-tech war–the west has lost its soul. There is therefore little to admire about this west – except the lingering light of western savants that continues to illumine western civilization. The spiritual crisis endemic to modernity (an offspring of western culture) reveals itself especially in philosophy and the arts. What else can it be but a crisis, when philosophy lacks wisdom, poetry loses rhythm, and music becomes noise – when a whole civilization loses sight of the supreme virtues of chastity and renunciation – when blind utilitarianism replaces contemplation? So why emulate this version of the west, instead of its aforementioned virtues? Why emulate its blinding materialism that desecrates the environment and denudes this beautiful earth? Instead, why not emulate thoughtful westerners who seek refuge in philanthropy? The answer lies in our own worldliness and concupiscent-materialistic aspirations. We admire that which we ourselves long for.
Modernity threatens indigenous communities worldwide. Any community, whether indigenous or not, has the right to self-defense, when threatened with extinction. So I more than understand Khasis resisting racist Indians, or voyeuristic Indian tourists seeking human zoos, or Hindu fundamentalists threatening the rights of Christians and other minorities, or the sensual culture of Bollywood. I also understand fears of demographic extinction, which, however, should never override the human rights of others.While indigenous communities deserve self-actualization, the surge to sovereignty must have reasonable limits, without which, it destroys justice.
Like every nation, India has its ugly stereotype. But Khasi xenophobia does not aim at the ugly Indian. Instead it aims at the helpless Indian who has lived and served in Meghalaya for generations. Moreover, like indigenous black communities in Africa, Khasis have borrowed western racism (secular and Christian) to deliver a vicarious (more lethal) secondary racism against the hapless mainland Indian Dkhar. Khasi racism and xenophobia therefore have two layers. The first is indigenous, but the second is borrowed from the west – a vicarious prejudice sometimes more evident in Khasi Christian rejections of other Indian religions. Both are to be distinguished from the understandable Khasi rejection of noxious Indian condescension and racism.
What then is the ultimate solution to xenophobia? The answer, which must be spiritual, existential, and therefore collective, defies politics altogether. How does an identity-laden traditional community ventilate itself with the fresh air of universality? By recognizing our shared human condition of existential exile, which turns us all into perennial outsiders or existential Dkhars. Religious savants have always urged us to let go of the world, even as we celebrate it. If the Psalmist sings “… the earth is filled with Thy riches” (Ps. 103: 24), then St. Bonaventure celebrates the traces of God in this world:
“Open your eyes therefore, prick up your spiritual ears, open your lips, and apply your heart, that you may see your God in all creatures, may hear Him, praise Him, love and adore Him, magnify and honor Him, lest the whole world rise against you.”
But a still higher teaching tells us that despite these celestial traces, we must let go of the world. Our earthly lives therefore are subject to a twofold exile. First, the fall of man – whether through Vedantic maya, the Judeo-Christian idea of original sin, or the Plotinian idea of tolma (audacity) – puts him in a perennial state of passive exile from his true home in God. But second, he must consciously practice detachment, so he can experience active exile, by letting go of the world. Or, as Thomas a Kempis says:
“If you would stand surely in grace, and profit much in virtue, consider yourself as an exile and a pilgrim here in this life…”
Given our twofold state of exile – the first intrinsic, the second, potential – why persecute those in a state of literal political exile? Why exile others through xenophobia? Why add to our inner alienation and exile, by imbibing the hatred endemic in racism and xenophobia?
The physical clouds that enshroud the majestic hills of Meghalaya are ethereal in their beauty. But the moral clouds of racism and xenophobia are toxins of the heart that can only boomerang back to hurt the Khasi people.
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