This is perhaps the first time that any minister is being attacked physically. The reasons for the attack are perhaps politically motivated as the Health Minister, Ampareen Lyngdoh has reportedly been threatened by the same person during her election campaign too. This is an attack on Meghalaya’s matrilineal culture. The assumption that women are safe and respected has long dissipated. Matriliny was under assault when Agnes Kharshiing and Anita Sangma were viciously attacked for following the illegal coal mining and transportation trail. A matrilineal society is not necessarily safe for women judging from the number of cases of domestic violence, rape and molestations that do the rounds regularly. Also there is a societal expectation – a sort of paradigm that is well defined that women ought to behave in a certain way and if they stray from that defined path they are no longer the “donburom” or respectable – a term that immediately creates a societal rift.
The questions that many have raised is whether Health Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh was attacked on Tuesday on account of her stand on certain issues that happened in her constituency a few days ago. Also, Ampareen is one of the more vocal ministers of this Government who is not averse to talking to the media regularly while most of her colleagues prefer to maintain a studied silence on even the most pernicious issues afflicting society. If there are right wing fundamentalists in the rest of India who believe in a rigid ideology there are in this tribal society, similar right wingers that believe in purity of descent and who regularly thrive on ‘othering’ Indian citizens who have been born and brought up in Meghalaya; contribute to its economy and its social energy and bring diversity to its ecosystem. It is only through social interface with people of diverse thought processes that a society evolves from its ‘narrow domestic walls’ and learns to embrace a pluralist culture.
It is also observed that the right-wing section of tribal society does not appreciate women who have strong views especially on ‘political’ issues. Khasi society says this in so many words when it terms a woman who takes a political stance as a “hen that crows,” thereby implying that a woman can never engage in politics. In other words, a woman is only considered fit for unpaid domestic work. Although quite a few women have transcended these boundaries, they are still judged by yardsticks of tradition which will not permit women to hold office in the Dorbar Shnong, no matter how capable they are. The dichotomy of the Khasi matrilineal society is that its legislature has only 3 women legislators.Whether these sort of attacks on women who speak out and speak up become the order of the day is a troubling thought for a matrilineal society.
