By Patricia Mukhim
There are some areas that the Khasi Hills District Council finds easy game. One is the ubiquitous, ‘Trading by Non-Tribals Issue’ or what is commonly called the ‘trading licence’ issue and the other is of Khasi women marrying non-tribal men. Both fall in the realm of constitutional rights. If one follows the deliberations in the Supreme Court where the abrogation of Article 370 is being challenged before a Constitutional Bench one would see that the apex court is inclined to doing away with special provisions for different states which tend towards violation of the rights of any Indian citizen. For instance Article 35A granted special rights to permanent residents of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir but took away a bundle of fundamental rights of the people of India, the Supreme Court observed on August 28 while hearing the matter. The Supreme Court further observed that Article 35A deprived those who were not permanent citizens of erstwhile J&K of the right to employment, equality of opportunity and right to acquire property. Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud had stated that he is inclined to agree with the Centre that the Indian Constitution is a document that is “on a higher platform than the J&K Constitution.”
Article 35A which was scrapped in 2019 along with Article 370 allowed the J&K legislature to define, “permanent residents” and provide them with special rights and privileges in terms of public employment, immovable property and settlement. Article 35A in fact violates Article 16 (1) of the Constitution which says – There shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to employment or appointment to any office under the State. The Solicitor General pointed out that any amendment to the Indian Constitution would not apply to J&K until it was invoked through Article 370. Hence the Right to Education was not implemented in J&K until 2019 when Article 370 was revoked. Other important amendments to the Constitution such as adding the world “secular and socialist” were never adopted in J&K.
The manner in which the arguments on Aricle 370 are currently being presented and debated in the apex court should tell us that claiming rights under the old constitutional order which subsequently became weaponised against other Indian citizens is fraught. It is important to apply the brakes on the ambit of the Sixth Schedule too which is not above the Constitution of India.
For instance, using the Sixth Schedule to intrude into the rights of Khasi women to choose who they marry and to deprive them and their offsprings of the Scheduled Tribe status is not going to be taken too kindly by Khasi women in general. The right to choose one’s marriage partner cannot be the domain of the state. By virtue of this being a matrilineal society a Khasi woman marrying anyone of any race, community, nationality cannot forfeit her right to be a Khasi tribal and so too her children. It is a fact of law that is well established in the case of Mr JJM Nichols Roy the father of the Sixth Schedule that if one parent is a Khasi the children born of that wedlock are also Khasis. So why is this contentious and very personal matter being raked up again and again?
And who is going to decide the date as to when a person ceases to be a Khasi considering that there is an overwhelming number of Khasi women who have married into every race under the sky? Is there going to be a cut-off year from whence a person who is of mixed blood will be delegitimised? How will the KHADC achieve this? What methods will it use? Will it use instruments like those applied by the Government of Assam using the NRC in identifying citizens from non-citizens and then ending up putting many citizens in jail?
There are a plethora of issues that afflict Khasi society but these don’t seem to give sleepless nights to the KHADC. Instead they nitpick on issues that they believe will win them brownie points before the elections scheduled in February- March next year. The District Council should concern itself with the growing poverty in Khasi society; of the numerous households headed by single-women because they have been abandoned. Should the KHADC pretend to be blind to the fact that Meghalaya has the highest total fertility rate (TFR) in the country and hence there is population explosion beyond which families can cope with? Should the KHADC continue to drum its culture and tradition bogey when the very culture and tradition has failed to retain children in school and most of them are looking after cows and sheep? Should the KHADC not concern itself with pushing for better healthcare facilities? Should it not be what the Gram Panchayats are in the rest of the country? If all that the ADCs do is just collecting tolls from vehicles passing through their illegitimately constructed gates; if their only activity is to tax timber and other forest products and also to tax markets etc., then may we ask how much of that taxation is being ploughed back to society? The ADCs lost the plot many decades ago when they failed to successfully run primary schools in the state.
As of today we see the KHADC constructing all kinds of resorts in different parts of the Khasi Hills. Is that the brief of the ADCs? Does that not replicate what the Tourism Department of the State Government is doing? The problem with the ADCs is that they have lost their moorings and every once in a while they try to make news on the same old issues without making headway and by antagonising a section of their own people. Remember that women make up half the world and any attempt to restrict their personal choices is a violation of their constitutional rights. They are not going to remain silent. The Courts are there to redress any of these violations by any institution in the country; especially violations that infringe on the constitutional rights of women.
It is also ironic that every problem in this state is attributed to women as if men have no role at all in the creation of such problems. Ask any woman who has been abandoned by a man and who has been left high and dry with at least 3-4 children to look after, what they are going through? Were those women abandoned by non-tribal men? How many local tribal men have abandoned their wives/partners? Does the KHADC have case studies and statistics of the number of such women? It is high time that KHADC spend some of its funds to engage in studies of the predilections Khasi society which is now facing some of the most severe deprivations whether it is in terms of nutritional status of children and women in the child bearing years or anemia among women which is as high as 52% and also access to basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing.
Its time to get real. There is a substantial number of educated, well-employed Khasi women who today prefer to remain single than to marry someone who is below their station and who they cannot to relate to on the intellectual plane. This is not about being snooty but about being pragmatic. Marriage is a lifelong journey and Khasi women see enough suffering among their own who get into teenage pregnancy and suffer lifelong consequences, to want to jeopardise their lives. If some of them choose to marry a man of their choice and one they can relate to at all levels why grudge them that and seek to deprive them of their tribal status? Progress cannot be a slave of tradition. The KHADC ought to know that neither culture nor tradition are static and humans cannot be bound to something that is past the shelf life. The ADCs should address the current problems and give up their penchant for attributing all the societal pains to women.