By Bhogtoram Mawroh
The recent conflict between the Khasi-Jaintia and the Karbi people is not the first to have occurred in recent times. Although I am forgetting the exact year, tensions between the two groups flared up when I was doing my PhD at NEHU as well. At the time I was staying in the hostel, and one evening all the residents were asked to come to the hostel parlour. A policeman asked if there were any Karbi students. They were concerned that, given the tensions between the two communities, there might be an attempt to target Karbi students on campus. To the relief of the police, there were no Karbi students in our hostel, and we were sent back to our rooms.
The conflict abated soon after, and I did meet some Karbi students later on. In fact, some were my juniors in the PhD programme, and there were some whom I taught during my stint as a guest lecturer in my department. One of the students whose Masters’ thesis I was supervising happened to be a half-Karbi student from Ri Bhoi. The topic was how language change was taking place in a particular village in Ri Bhoi, which, though initially founded by a Karbi man, had switched to speaking Bhoi (a dialect different from the more commonly used Sohra dialect) as the main language in the village. As a matter of fact, I met a Karbi lady who first identified herself as a Bhoi; when prodded further, she revealed that she was a Karbi who had been married to a Bhoi. In her sixties, she told me that “a Bhoi is someone who takes the mother’s surname, while a Karbi is someone who takes the father’s surname”. This particular Karbi lady had married a Bhoi man, and her children now have a Khasi surname. Though she still has a Karbi surname, she hardly communicates in Karbi anymore. With the Karbi people from other villages also, she converses in Bhoi, and she was not the only one.
Then I came across the book ‘People of the Margins’ by Philippe Ramirez. In this book, there was an interesting phenomenon of equivalence of surnames, which was quite common in Bhoi. In other words, a surname among the Bhoi is found to have an equivalent among the Karbi as well. For example, Ingti, Ronghang, Hanse, Be, Ingleng, Timung, and Teron were Karbi surnames that were considered to be the same as Bhoi surnames, Muktieh, Markhap, Khymdeit, Muker, Lamare, Syngkli, Umbah, and Mynsong, respectively. This meant that following the rules of endogamy, marriages cannot take place within the equivalent clan across the ethnic categories. Therefore, an Ingti cannot marry a Muktieh, and vice versa, because they, by logic of the equivalence of surname, belong to the same clan. The same is true with the other mentioned surnames as well. Following from this, the other important function of this system is that new members of a group can only be admitted into clans that already have established inter-ethnic affiliations. Similarly, when a Karbi decides to become a Khasi or the other way around, they can only do so by joining the surname that belongs to the same clan across the two ethnic groups. Therefore, if a Teron were to become a Bhoi, he or she could only join the Mynsong clan and no other. This works the other way around as well, i.e., if an Umbah were to become a Karbi, they could only join the Timung clan and no other. Essentially, this means that there are Karbi who are actually Khasi, and there are Khasi who are actually Karbi.
This close connection between the Khasi-Jaintia and Karbi is again seen in many cultural aspects as well. Again, among the Bhoi, there is the tradition of the were-tiger or the tiger-man. Desmond L. Kharmawphlang, Professor of Cultural and Creative Studies at NEHU, has done excellent work on this topic. According to his paper, ‘In Search of Tigermen: The Were-Tiger Tradition of the Khasis,” there are men and women who are known as Khla Phuli, or tigers transforming from human to were-tiger. Sometimes these creatures were referred to as San Saram, meaning five claws,” to differentiate them from the Ryngkew tigers, or the real tigers, which were known as Saw Saram,” or the four-clawed ones.
I myself met a Bhoi man who told me of a story where the Karbi had killed a tiger in the jungle with a bullet piercing one of the animal’s ears. In another village, a Bhoi man dropped dead suddenly in his home. While inspecting the body, people found that the dead man had the exact same bullet wound on the same ear as that of the tiger, proving that the tiger killed was actually a were-tiger, with the man who had died being the one who had transformed into the animal.
Similar stories are there in Jaintia Hills as well. The 2011 article ‘The Legend of the Tiger-Man” by HH Mohrmen tells about the folklore of the Pnar/Jaintia about men who change themselves into tigers (ki bru kylla khla). According to the article, the Karbi also have a legend of a man who can transform himself into a tiger, and he is known as Killing Chongkret. In fact, in 2007, Dhaniram Tisso, a Karbi film maker, brought out the movie Kanghon Killing Chongkret, which translates to ‘My Dear Tiger-Man’.
Similarities or shared cultural features between the Khasi-Jaintia and the Karbi are seen in the traditional dresses as well. When I was passing through Dokmoka, a Karbi town on the way to Nagaland, I saw many Karbi women walking on the streets wearing what looked like the jainkyrshah. It is a piece of clothing worn by Khasi-Jaintia women as a drape over their traditional jainsem or even a shirt and skirt. This is usually worn by women during household work or when they go to the market. If it weren’t for the colour and the patterns (which are quite bold and vibrant in the Karbi version), I would have mistaken the dress worn by the Karbi women for the jainkyrshah. The similarity, however, does not end with the women’s dress.
Under the section ‘Dress’ in PRT Gurdon’s 1914 seminal work ‘The Khasis,” there is a sketch of a Synteng (another name for the Pnar/Jaintia) man whose dress reminded me so much of the Karbi dress I have seen on the internet. It was not the black waistcoat that we see today worn by Jaintia men during the traditional events, but a stripped waistcoat very similar to the one found among the Karbi even today. The only thing that could identify the man as being a Jaintia was the cap, which is often depicted as being worn by Kiang Nongbah in the portraits made of him. Karbi men, on the other hand, have a piece of cloth wrapped around their heads as a headband.
There is no doubt that the Khasi-Jaintia and the Karbi are distinct communities. The Khasi-Jaintia are matrilineal and speak an Austro-Asiatic language. Karbi, on the other hand, follow patrilineal custom, and their language belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family. However, as can be seen from the above discussion, both groups share many cultural features, which include extended kinship relations among the two communities and similar folklore and beliefs. There is, however, also a history of hostility between the two communities, which resurfaces from time to time. However, what will not change is the living history of the shared bond among the Khasi-Jaintia and the Karbi, not just culturally but geographically as well.
Both communities have lived side-by-side with each other for many generations, and they will continue to do so in the future as well. There will definitely be anger at what both communities perceive to be injustice done to them, especially when someone’s hut is burned down or someone is admitted to the hospital after being injured in the clash. It is difficult to reconcile, especially when there is much anger and frustration. That is completely understandable. But violence is not the solution. I, therefore, request that both communities come together and find common ground. No doubt, the border areas are sensitive zones. But that must have been the case in the past as well. Despite that, history has shown that both communities, the Khasi-Jaintia and Karbi, have been able to build connections with each other and thrive while living among and close to each other. The shared cultural features are a testament to that. It is that shared bond that, I hope, will characterise the relationship between the Khasi-Jaintia and Karbi, now and in the future as well. That is my sincere hope and request.
(The views expressed in the article are those of the author and do not reflect in any way his affiliation to any organization or institution)