Editor,
It was interesting to read Elwin Teron’s two-part article published on two consecutive days of your esteemed Daily (ST Dec. 6-7, 2022) under the caption, “Revisiting the Historicity of Karbi Anglong District Formation – I & II.” The sum and substance of the article is that just before the British suddenly granted Independence to India in August 1947, the last two governors of Assam province, the highly placed bureaucrats and many enlightened people then had wished that a separate district for the Mikirs (now Karbis) could have been created. If the British could have accomplished what they had wished, the people of Jaintia Hills would not have suffered as they do during the last more than 75 years now. The British would not have transferred forcibly the areas under Blocks I & II of Jaintia Hills which they had earmarked and assigned for the Jaintias and which the Constituent Assembly of India had ratified for being protected under the Constitution of the new Republic of India.
The British knew full well the geography of all hilly regions occupied by the respective tribes in the northeast. They could have tagged the plains areas predominantly occupied by the Mikirs at the base of their hilly country as very clearly depicted by Sir Charles Lyall in his classic and notable book on ‘The Mikirs’ about which Teron has not spoken a single word. After all, geography is always behind any history of human settlement. Mr KS Terang the then MLA of Mikir Hills and member of the commission for creation of the new district of United Mikir and N C Hills refused to sign the commission report at the first instance as the said plains area was not included as demanded by the Mikirs. He signed it the next morning and kept the people guessing as to what had happened overnight. Since then the Karbis have ceased to raise their demands for tagging the fertile plains area predominantly occupied by them. They could have continued their demands in lieu of Blocks I & II (the so-called West Mikir Hills district) which belongs to Jaintia Hills as originally assigned by the British.
We need not use (or misuse) the word ‘truncated’ the way it was used by the geographers of the National Geographical Society of India when they decided to rename the Assam Central Range as ‘Meghalaya and Mikir Region’ in their book edited by R.L.Singh (1971). The accompanying Map in the book, clearly shows the chicken-neck that joins Mikir Hills at the end of the North Cachar Hills as the former hills protrude northwards to the river Brahmaputra while in the plains they have been separated by the extensive Kopili and Jamuna Valleys. As we consider their history, we would come across the most recent record in the books written by scholars and researchers of the Assam Tribal Research Institute that “During the reign of the Kachari kings, they (the Karbis) were driven to the hills and some of them entered the erstwhile Jaintia Kingdom and lived under the Jaintia suzerainty;” they were also ill-treated by the Ahom kings according to history. Thus the Mikirs were not the indigenous tribe in Jaintia Hills but had been living very peacefully with the Jaintias (and were even given high offices by the Jaintia Rajas and the Mikirs even adopted the latter’s custom of ‘Kur’ system and ‘Lyngdohship’), until 1951 when the then government of Assam had meddled with the ancestral home of the Jaintias. This was affirmed by E.H.Pakyntein (himself a Jaintia IAS officer) who was profusely quoted by Elwin.
Yours etc.,
Prof. P.M. Passah
Moosalyngkat, Jowai
Indian wisdom inspired many
Editor,
“I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal tolerance, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth.” These are the words that Swami Vivekananda spoke at the Chicago Conference in 1893. These words act as a mirror to highlight the worth of our ancient Indian wisdom.
In today’s time when we look up to the west for any kind of breakthrough discoveries, be it in the field of science, arts, literature or philosophy we should not forget that our Indian ancestors, too, were highly learned. They proposed many scientific and literary theories, be it from the invention of zero to Pythagoras from Geometry to medicine and philosophy. Ancient Indian sages were never less than others; rather they always had the upper hand in many such fields. Though their contribution is unforgettable but due to the lack of research, we are easily led into believing that everything western is correct and accurate and look at anything remotely associated to India with suspicion. The article “India’s mathematical prowess mesmerized Laplace, Einstein,” (ST Dec 19, 2022) by Salil Gewali is an eye opener in this regard as it talks about how mathematically advanced our Indian ancestors were at a time when the west was just beginning to evolve.
Similarly, in a recent event an Indian research scholar at Cambridge University by the name Rishi Rajpopat stunned the world by solving Panini’s 2500 year old grammatical puzzle which came as a breakthrough discovery for researchers and linguistics around the world. Panini, who is also considered as the father of linguistic, developed this code around 500 BC. This code can be used to construct or derive millions of grammatically accurate Sanskrit words with the usage of root elements like the base word and suffix but this system contained rule conflicts which have now been rectified by Rishi. It is said that this discovery can be used to teach Panini’s grammar to computers as well.
In addition to that, Siberian-American engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla, well known for his invention of AC current motor, was heavily inspired from the ideas and philosophy of Swami Vivekananda. There is another prominent figure of the west J.D. Salinger, one of the noted American writers of the 20th century who too was deeply influenced by Indian Philosophy. In his biography written by Kenneth Slawenski, he mentions how Salinger and his wife both were influenced by Paramahansa Yogananda’s – “The Autobiography of a Yogi.’ Interestingly this book was a big motivation in the life of Apple’s founder Steve Jobs.
Isn’t it a great moment of joy and, at the same time, a great moment to reflect on ourselves and how we are losing out on our rich history in an attempt to mimic the west? It’s high time that we start looking back at our rich literary books and understand their meanings in deeper ways so as to derive the hidden meanings from them which are relevant in the present context as well.
Yours etc.,
Bhanudaya Upadhaya
Shillong -2