By Patricia Mukhim
“The fact that Tirot Syiem the Syiem of Nongkhlaw put up a spirited fight against the British is sought to be buried. So too the fact that U Kiang Nangbah was betrayed by one of his own! In fact one writer is trying to conjure an origin myth that is different from that of U Lum Sohpet Bneng but is suggesting that the Jaintias came to where they are settled today from a route different from that of the Khasis. In short the Austro-Asiatic migration route
is now under contestation.”
Meghalaya actually comprises two tribes – the Khasi-Jaintia tribe and the Garo tribe. The Khasi-Jaintia cannot be two communities because they have the same origin myths of Hynniewtrep -Hynniewskum and above all the Jaintia clans are connected to the same natal roots as the Khasis. There are those of the Laloo clan in Sohra as much as there are Laloo in Jaintia Hills. We find Blah clan that are Jaintia and some that are Khasi. Each clan is co-related to at least two or three other clans and must have originated from a common umbilical cord or natal root. It is therefore disconcerting to see a group called the Sein Jaintia felicitate so-called Jaintia women achievers. Are we to presume that these women administrators or writers or poets are no longer Khasi and that the Khasi people will not consider them as part of the community?
Of late some writers/intellectuals have conflated the history of Kiang Nangbah and his resistance against the British might as something that sets the Jaintia people out because the Khasi chieftains had ostensibly meekly submitted to British rule suzerainty. The fact that Tirot Syiem the Syiem of Nongkhlaw put up a spirited fight against the British is sought to be buried. So too the fact that U Kiang Nangbah was betrayed by one of his own! In fact one writer is trying to conjure an origin myth that is different from that of U Lum Sohpet Bneng but is suggesting that the Jaintias came to where they are settled today from a route different from that of the Khasis. In short the Austro-Asiatic migration route is now under contestation.
It’s not very clear what the writers/intellectuals want to achieve by these controversial claims. The other day at a discussion organised by Sankardev College on the theme “Meghalaya at 50 – Vision, Achievements and Challenges, former Minister and the present Executive Member of the Khasi Hills District Council spoke at length on the indivisible nature of the Khasi-Jaintia community because both communities have settled in areas originally claimed by the particular community through intermarriage. To separate the two communities for political opportunism or for any other reason is short-sighted to say the least. In fact, Paul Lyngdoh stated upfront that the very creation of the Jaintia Hills District Council was a short-sighted one since both communities are matrilineal and follow the same societal values and customary practices. Some may disagree with Paul Lyngdoh but I believe he has hit the nail where it ought to, instead of floundering and missing the mark.
Now the above is one contentious issue that has emerged but for which we have not as yet had an academic discussion. Perhaps the subject will mature into a research paper for a PhD aspirant. But meanwhile there are several other issues that the Khasi-Jaintia community has to contend with as these are whittling away at our cherished values and our sense of “uniqueness.” Even while we speak with pride about our unique culture let’s not forget that some of the events that have happened such as a father killing his own two kids and a man of 41 raping a 20-month old baby should shock us out of our complacence and false sense of utopia for those are visages that mislead our society. The ills are creeping out like worms from under the woodwork. Sometimes the need to portray Khasi society as undefiled and pristine can be a prison whose bars are orthodoxy and disrespect for dissent. While we seem to have moved ahead in terms of material progress (at least a section of Khasi society has) we have not engaged with the psycho-social issues that confront us. Times are changing rapidly and our youth need to be trained to live in a mercurial society and face an unpredictable future.
Mental health and the baggage of childhood trauma and the unspoken adolescent distresses such as undisclosed sexual violence that had visited us but that we try and hide in the deepest crevices of our emotional caskets can surface in adulthood and push us to do the unpardonable. As a society we are hardly ready to discuss mental health as an issue that besets a large section in our society. A person with a sane mind cannot kill his own flesh and blood. Nor can a man well past his middle age violate a baby. The very thought is abominable. But both actions have happened and will perhaps continue to happen if we don’t bite the bullet and discuss these issues at the level of the shnong, dong and faith-based institutions. Platforms have to be created where people can express their angst. The very act of being listened to, is it itself, a healing process. Too many young people live lonely lives with only the smartphone for company. The person becomes an anti-social in that he/she prefers the virtual world because the real world is difficult to deal with. Most adolescents do not have the store of emotional quotient needed to process complex feelings that arise from a break-up resulting in a heart-break that takes a long time to heal. To ‘move-on’ is good advice from someone who has not walked the path, but tough on the person facing an emotional ordeal.
In the Khasi-Jaintia society an open discussion on sex is still taboo. The male and female genitals are cuss words (which I think is common in this country) and yet pornography is available to every smartphone user at the touch of the screen. Even attempts to speak on family planning, spacing and use of condoms are considered “unpalatable social discourse” and yet it is what’s needed the most in this day and age. The more we push these human proclivities under the carpet the more is the likelihood of the cumulative mental garbage blowing up on our faces.
What we need to be questioning are the guardians/parents/mother of the 20-month old baby. How is it possible for any man, unless he is a relative, to be able to inflict that savagery on a child? Who was the child left with? Does the child have both parents? Were the child’s elder siblings looking after her and did they leave her alone while they were playing? These questions are important to get at the root of the matter because if we don’t do so now, such instances will repeat themselves.
There are those who blame the matrilineal tradition for all the ills that have befallen the Khasi-Jaintia society such as the large number of unwed, teenaged, single mothers and the phenomenal numbers of abandoned or divorced women in this society. I am not sure of any research that has been done on this so-called causal factor (matriliny) for the degeneration of Khasi society or if its an easy scapegoat for the issues we have not dealt with over the centuries.
We are a society that’s in the middle of a great churning and we cannot hope to cope with these complex threats and challenges if we put ourselves inside carefully constructed and vigorously defended walls where we want to be showcased as “kiba donburom” (respectable, dignified people). And those “donburom” types have been carefully constructed by society to mean the conventional, conformist types that do not step out of the lines drawn by the patriarchs of Khasi society.
It is not enough to produce brilliant scholars, scientists, lawyers and doctors if these are not going to press the envelope of their respective disciplines or professions to engage in the larger issues of our day in the ferment of our times and our society.
Let’s hope someone presses the panic button and we start talking about our collective problems instead of dividing society along sub-ethnic nationalism.
“Even while we speak with pride about our unique culture let’s not forget that some of the events that have happened such as a father killing his own two kids and a man of 41 raping a 20-month old baby should shock us out of our complacence and false sense of utopia for those are visages that mislead our society. The ills are creeping out like worms from under the woodwork.”