By H H Mohrmen
The state is all set to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary next year and the Chief Minister has announced that the Government has invited the Prime Minister to be the chief guest on the occasion. The Government is also expected to organize a host of programmes to celebrate the grand occasion, but some incidents which occurred in the last few weeks raise one very important question and that is – Is Meghalaya at fifty experiencing a midlife crisis of sorts?
What’s in the name?
The birth of the twelfth district of the state was welcomed by many, but it was the name of the district which has drawn unnecessary attention and criticism. This column has in the past written about the people’s penchant for giving their children English names which are sometimes funny. And much to the embarrassment of the individual, there were cases where a person was even named toilet. Similarly, the name of the new district draws more attention than the new district itself. It has become the subject of ridicule and social media platforms are abuzz with memes and jokes about the name of the district. It is now obvious that the Khasi Pnar people not only have the propensity to come up with embarrassingly funny names for their kids but they are capable of giving funny names to the district too. People raised many questions with regards to the naming the blocks, the district or even the state. Some asked why should a district always be named according to its geographical location as East, West, North or South? What can’t it be any name at all?
Can’t leave them ministers alone
In the entire embarrassing situation one meme that did the rounds in the different social media platforms says, ‘We don’t need a minister for education; we need education for ministers.’ The geographical misnomer which came out of naming the twelfth district of the state has indeed given a clarion call that this Government should consider providing education to its ministers. Otherwise, how else would a cabinet minister in the present government brag about his own academic failure? One of the cabinet ministers in the MDA government has in the last bye-election made it public that he had appeared for his Class 12 examination several times but failed every time he appeared. The question that parents ask is – what message does the minister want to communicate to the youths of the state? The most important question is, can such a person be a role model for our children?
Higher education in the state has once again failed because in making important decisions, the minister is considering only his constituency’s interest. Considering that in West Jañtia hills two new ‘so called’ public colleges one in Nongtalang and another in Shangpung were recently institutionalized[p1] by the government yet, there were more than one hundred students in the district who failed to get college admission in Jowai. What is the purpose of providing funds to these colleges from the government treasury when they can’t even cater to the needs of the students in the district? The government did not plan this carefully hence the pressure groups in the district have to protest so that the students get their college admission. Every decision that this Government makes is not properly thought out but was made to please some of their constituents only. The famous Pink Floyd song says, ‘we don’t need no education…hey teacher leave the kids alone,’ our children do need education but it is them ministers that we can’t leave alone.
The dilemma called matrilineal system and women’s empowerment
The people of the state in general and the Executive Committee of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council in particular are in a dilemma when it comes to women’s issues. The Chief Executive Member of the KHADC stated that the council cannot accept the idea of women becoming the Headman or even taking part in the Dorbar Shnong yet he maintained a mute silent on the fact that a woman can be a Chief Secretary of the state, a Deputy Commissioner of a District, a judge in the court, Editor of a newspaper or even a minister in the state government. It defies logic that the same people who cannot accept a woman to be the headman of the village, said nothing about women occupying high ranking offices in the government or the court. The question is – what is it about Dorbar Shnong that it is considered to be so sacrosanct that it is beyond the reach of half of the population of the state?
The Dorbar Shnong were praised as traditional institutions, but is that even true? The real tradition is that village administration in the past went hand in hand with the running of the traditional religion. Villages were governed by the Raid which was represented by the maternal uncles of the major clans in the area and it was headed by the Lyngdoh who is also the priest of the village (Mohrmen 2021). Till very recently many villages in the Jañtia hills followed this tradition and it is also the reason that till date the headman in some villages can only be from a certain clan. Therefore, blaming tradition for the male chauvinistic attitude towards women in the society is unfounded and for that matter even the term ‘raid/raij’ and ‘dorbar/durbar’ are borrowed from our neighbours.
The Council mandate and gender discrimination
The Council which is being mandated by the Constitution to protect and promote tribal culture and customary practices has instead started doing away with the tradition one after the other. The bill which is related to family property which was introduced in the house recently, not only contradicts the tradition it is supposed to protect but it is not even required in the first place. The question is how many families in the district have enough property to distribute to all their children? What is the population of the district which are well off and have enough wealth and property to distribute to all their children? Isn’t it true that much of the population in the state lives in a hand to mouth existence? What is the point of tabling the bill when much of the state’s population is landless in the first place? Isn’t this a case of wasting public time and the Council’s meagre resources?
The same Executive Committee in the same bill targeted women who enter into inter-race marriage and bars them from inheriting family property, yet maintains a mute silence on men who married women from another community. In spite of the bill’s thrust on equal distribution of wealth to both male and female children of the family, it is silent on males who marry outside the community. Only females were discriminated against in the bill. Why this double standard where there is one rule for male population of the society and another for the female? Isn’t this a clear case of gender bias perpetrated by this Council? Gender discrimination is obviously prevalent in the country’s only matrilineal state and it looks like the males of the community are fighting hard to protect the last bastion of male dominance.
It is now obvious that in the event of its attaining fifty years of existence, it is not just the state which is experiencing midlife crisis but the institutions like the ADC and even the general population are in a dilemma. The KHADC is in a state of utter confusion where on one hand it is trying to protect tradition and on the other it is dismantling the time-tested tradition which people have been practicing since time immemorial. In the process it discriminates against the fairer sex. Time will come when people will lobby for doing away with the matrilineal family system that people follow now and in such eventuality the members of the KHADC will ask if there are any more traditions to protect and promote. However, the larger question for the people then to ask is, if the ADCs are even relevant today.
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