A person born to two Khasi tribal parents who wishes to adopt the clan name of the father will now be derecognised as a Scheduled Tribe. The Khasi Hills District Council has cited Sections 3 and 12 of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Act, 1997 to buttress its case and to argue that in a matrilineal society all persons born of Khasi parents must necessarily adopt the clan name/surname of the mother of lose the Schedule Tribe status. In this contentious issue the clan heads are not consulted nor have their views been sought. These days in non-tribal societies, women continue to hold on to their maiden surname instead of affixing their husband’s surname. No one has any problem with this and certainly not any state institution. These are personal matters that are best left to individuals. In the Khasi society if a person born of Khasi parents applies for a Scheduled Tribe certificate which grants certain rights and privileges to that person, it is enough to establish the parentage. Whether that person takes the mother or father’s clan name should not be the concern of any state institution as that would mean that such institution is intruding into a personal space.
We have several instances of Khasi male civil servants and diplomats who have a problem explaining to people in foreign countries or even in states outside their own, why their wives and children carry a surname different to theirs. To get out of this predicament of having to explain themselves repeatedly they have decided to lend their own surnames to the wife and children. Those children cannot be deprived of the tribal status merely because they chose to take the father’s surname. In Khasi society it is considered a taboo to marry within the clan. It is for this reason that Khasis believe they should preserve the sanctity of this custom and if children carry the father’s instead of the mother’s surname then at some point there might be a possibility that such taboo occurs and persons of the same clan intermarry. But this presupposes that such families are ignorant of their family tree. This never happens in the Khasi accounting of lineage. The elders remember the ‘jait’ or clan name of all their ancestors and intermarriage amongst members of the same clan through ignorance does not happen.
It is therefore time to put this topic to rest and move on with the times. Personal matters such as whose surname the children of a particular Khasi couple wish to adopt is not a matter for any institution of the state to decide.