By Mankular Lamin Gashnga
In this era of a woke culture (whether it’s about politics, religion or race), most of us are often afraid of speaking out lest we offend someone, somehow by what we have to say or what we have in our minds. We always want to be politically correct. However, to be politically correct is sometimes intellectual suicide. Such is the case now with what I will term the false dichotomy of Khasi and Jaintia, Khasi-Jaintia, Khasi Jaintia, and Khasi-Pnar or Khasi Pnar. The question is, is Pnar not Khasi? If we were to be honest, we should examine the claim and close the case for the sake of our intellectual health as a community. The division is more ideological and not real. It is like the case of the Berlin wall and it needs to be broken down as soon as possible. I therefore laud the Meghalaya Government for taking the first step by not including Pnar in the State Anthem (because doing so would have been injustice to other regional groups as the Waar, the Bhoi and others.) The question now arises whether NGOs and politicians who do not understand this false division are fit to lead us as the Khasi society into a brighter future. I hope my following arguments that Pnar is Khasi will clear any intellectual conundrum and give our thinkers and scholars and more importantly the youth some guiding light on how to think in a critical manner about this false woke.
The body: If we were to look closely at the physical features of the regional groups Pnar, Waar, Khynriam, Maram, Bhoi, Lyngngam, the lines of differences would overlap so much or blur so much that it would be impossible to tell. In other words, we would imagine that we see the difference, but it would not be for the required characteristics. To illustrate my point, I would like to take for example the display at the Don Bosco Museum of the tribes of Northeast India. There we see the busts of the so-called Khasi and the so-called Jaintia separately as though they are two different tribes. I know it is not the intention of the museum as such, but it is a point overlooked in order to follow the trend of political correctness and not for any anthropological reasons. It gives the impression that there are two tribes and that they look different, when in fact there is no such tribe as a Jaintia tribe. It is not the fault only of the museum but of so many intellectuals in our state to the point where if you were to bring up this point of discussion at an intellectual discussion, they would almost immediately not know what to say and everyone would lose the point of the conversation. That is how low we have reached in our education levels here in Shillong; and that should not come as a surprise given how low we have ranked at the national level.
As a corollary, I humbly request the museum, if not too difficult, to correct this point by either displaying all the other Khasi regional groups or to display Khasi as one tribe. Otherwise, it will only support a false dichotomy and a false woke and a false alienation within the Khasi community.
The language: How different is ïung from ïing, bru from briew, bei from mei, deiñ from dieng, chkur from shkor, lai from leit, cheinu/cheiwon from shano? Only a fool would say they are different languages. In fact, there should be around 95-98% lexical similarity between Pnar and standard Khasi. In other words, Pnar falls under Khasi language. In fact, there is much more difference between Waar-Amlarem and Pnar than between Pnar and standard Khasi. To each of the above words, the Waar-Amlarem dialect would be sni, jeprew, ma, tvia, terang, lia/kap, tiñiah. Waar-Amalarem would easily have only 20-30% lexical compatibility with either Pnar or standard Khasi. Should we conclude then that Waar-Amlarem is a different language and a different tribe from Khasi? Should we conclude the same for the Lyngngam? Only a fool would come to such a conclusion.
Again, as an example, I see it is useless for the AIR to translate from Khasi to Pnar because it does not reflect reality as there are other more difficult dialects within the Khasi language than Pnar. It would make more sense to translate from Khasi to Lyngngam or Waar-Amlarem than to Pnar on any given day. However, because of our intellectual failure, we also waste public time and resources on unnecessary exercises. I want to give one example to this case which has involved me personally. Because I had started a small publication in Waar-Amlarem dialect since 2009. In 2016, I was co-opted as a member of the Pnar Alphabet Committee by the JHADC. I did not know Pnar, but I was curious and surprised, and I obliged. After two or three sittings, the Chairman of the committee (who I shall not name here) showed his true colours. He started ranting about the ‘Jaintia race’ in some of his speeches. I could then start to see the true intention of the members of the Committee which was to divide Khasi society in half through the alphabet formation. I was alone in my ability to understand their intention. I started to frantically explain to the members about how Pnar is Khasi and it will be reinventing the wheel and is foolishness, but they would not listen to me because they thought they knew better. However, the straw that broke the camel’s back for me was when in the sub-committee, the same Chairman started distributing a newspaper clip that clearly had a statement that the Jaintias do not want to be called Khasi and wish the state to be named Jaintialand. I decided there and then to write to the CEM my resignation from the Committee and to demand never to include Waar-Amlarem dialect in such insidious endeavours of the JHADC.
In fact, when I informed the Khasi Authors Society of the same, they sent me a letter to thank me for the step I took that would help in not fragmenting the Khasi society. I take this opportunity also to correct here one Professor, Omarlin Kyndiah, who at least twice in his articles to The Shillong Times had cited my name as a researcher of the Pnar so-called language, perhaps with good intentions, but I have to clearly state here that his information about me is wrong and academically misleading. It only emphasises the fact that our professors and academicians have failed to lead us in how to think intellectually and it sounds more like that they have picked up their intellectual prowess from tourists and politicians rather than doing any original thinking. No wonder most of the PhD theses in our universities have no academic value to contribute anything for the betterment of our Khasi society. (For the readers’ information, I write and research the Waar-Amlarem dialect, but I will nowhere state that it is not Khasi. In fact, I can submit a thesis right here and state that Pnar and Waar-Amlarem are mutually unintelligible, and that there is not such a thing as a Jaintia language.) Only a qualified professor can assess me on this one.
The hills and the name ‘Jaintia’: The British left one seed of division and that was by using the name of the abominable goddess ‘Jaintia.’ The failure of the Pnar rulers then and the failure of the intellectual community today to critique that word ‘Jaintia’ have proven to be our undoing. We would gladly maintain the name of the hills and the region as ‘Jaintia’ as though it is a legacy to be proud of. I have seen some professor even writing a book called, ‘The Jaintias’ as though it means a people. Such books are not honest and are a ‘click bait’ in modern terms. They are more for creating a niche in the intellectual community for the authors rather than for pure scholarship (just trying to cheaply imitate PRT Gurdon and to gain leverage). The truth is that the name Jaintia still stinks of human sacrifice to this day. If you do not believe me, read the following from the The Northeast Encyclopaedia: ‘Till the advent of the British, the Jaintia Rajas used to make human sacrifices at the Hindu temple at Nartiang, and earlier to Kupli River and to Jayanteshwari or Kali deity. Many a time, a person volunteered for such a sacrifice, convinced himself or was at times forced to believe that it was the Deity’s wish. Such persons were known as “Bhoge-Khaore”.’ The Bhoge-Khaore were the brainwashed subjects of the Jaintia rulers, to the point where they willingly submitted and segregated themselves and their children as sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered at the beck and call of their rulers. The intellectual community are the Bhoge-Khaore of today because we have never learned to think freely let alone condemn the abominable deeds of the Sutnga Rulers (so-called Jaintia Rulers) who had let themselves to be converted to an abominable and ghastly form of Hinduism. I take this opportunity to condemn their evil and inhumane practices. I also advocate that the name of the Jaintia Hills be named Sutnga Hills instead, to rid once and for all that evil and demonic name ‘Jaintia’ and to let that name forever go down in infamy.
The two Autonomous District Councils: The creation of a separate autonomous district council in 1964 does not mean that it was because there are two separate tribes. When the Jowai Autonomous District was created in 1964 (which later became Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council), the attempt to create a separate scheduled tribe was not successful because the Pnar were not different from the Khasi. In fact, at that time, it was two political giants from the Pnar region, Bah Edwingson Bareh and Bah Gilbert Lytan who argued against the creation of a separate district because it would be a false division. They had gone so far as to have appealed the case against the Government of Assam in the High Court and in the Supreme Court in 1964.
Late Mr LG Shullai wrote that Bah Edwington Bareh in his Petition to the High Court (Civil Rule No. 216 of 1964) and his Appeal Petition to the Supreme Court (Civil Rule No. 968 of 1965) submitted that we are one community, “That the people inhabiting the territory comprised within the United Khasi Jaiñtia Hills District are ethnically, racially, culturally, economically and by tradition are one and the same people. When the British subjugated and annexed the territory, they divided it into different units for administrative conveniences, but the people of the said area continued to remain united and maintained the existing closest relationship.” (L. G. Shullai (U Nongsaiñ Hima, 1981, as quoted UNH 9/10/2017)). Bah Hoover Hynniewta argued before the Jarman Commission on the same grounds. Ultimately, the autonomous district was created for administrative convenience and not to indicate the difference in tribe or community. The Supreme Court only used the words, Jowai Sub-Division or ‘people of Jowai sub-division’ and did not even once use the word ‘Jaintias’ or ‘Jaintia’ people. This is made clearer if one would read the list of scheduled tribes in India where there is no such tribe as a Jaintia tribe (In the list, number six, Khasi means Khasi, Jaintia, Synteng, Pnar, War, Bhoi, Lyngngam. Only number fourteen is listed Synteng, but that can be nullified because the same is already in the number Six in Khasi). This means that people under the JHADC are Khasi by definition, and I hope ST certificates reflect that.
Yet many books today wrongly educate students and give wrong information that there are three tribes in Meghalaya instead of just the Khasi and the Garo. This is because of this intellectual failure on the part of the intellectual community to address the fallacy. Are we still wondering why education in Meghalaya is going down with every passing year? How sad that we do not even know what our identity is! And we boast of being the educational hub of the North East. What a farce!
I have to say that till last year, (October 25, 2023), people still feel sad about how some Pnar people had initiated the division of the autonomous district council, and this is evidenced with the publication of an article from 1963 by U Nongsaiñ Hima called ‘Ka Jingkwah Thlieh iing’ or ‘The Wish to Divide Family’, which is clearly a reference to the words of Jesus, ‘And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand’ and applied to the article about the false division between the so-called Jaintia and Khasi. Jesus was right.
Identity and family relations: If we are to name one clan among the Garo related to Khasi, the answer would be none. However, if we were to name how many clans are related among the Pnar and the rest of Khasi, the answer would be a long and boring list. This is because everyone knows the relations are so interwoven that it would be very difficult to tell which clan or which individual belongs to which tribe if there were two tribes as some would wish it to be. In fact, the whole Khasi tribe is made up of the interrelations of the clans within the tribe. To say that the Pnar are a different tribe on the basis of clans and clan relations would be an attempt of an idiot. The Khasi Lineage Act definition clearly states, ‘“Khasi” means a person belonging to Khasi tribe who may be a Khasi, Jaintia, Pnar, Synteng, War, Bhoi or Lyngngam. The same cannot be said of our Garo neighbours because they are a different tribe by all definitions. Therefore, there is no such thing as a Pnar/Jaintia tribe as separate from the tribe Khasi because it is proven by family relations. Let each kur testify to that and elaborate here to help me, I don’t need to speak any further on this point.
Semantics: I can go on and on with my arguments ad nauseam but I have to stop here. However, I would like to end with one encouragement here to our intellectuals and academicians to please take words very seriously, for words have the power to make and break our lives. As a writer, I take words very seriously. For example, the word Hynniewtrep has been misused so much by the public that even scholars, academicians and writers have fallen trap to the suggestion that Hynniewtrep means Khasi (or as a way to avoid the false dichotomy Khasi-Jaintia that I mentioned above). Falling into such fallacies as intellectuals should not be easily forgiven for it shows how far away we have strayed from our roots and our own culture. Hynniewtrep means the entire human race and it will be an insult to Khasi religious traditions to misuse this word because it belittles the weight and the depth of the tradition. We the Khasi are only a section of the entire population of the human race and cannot claim the name to signify only our community. Those who claim a separate divine origin of the Sutnga Rulers apart from the rest of the Khasi tradition should look at the story of the Lumshadklew to see how wrong they are and that Pnar is Khasi tradition. Neither is the so-called Niamtre religion different from Khasi religion. The only difference with the Pnar is that their form of practice is a false-Hinduism, because at the core of their religion, it is Khasi by definition.
The name Khasi is an exonym and a secular term that encompasses a meaning ‘hills’ that is not derogatory or evil. The strength of organisations such as the KSU lies in that one single word ‘Khasi’. The word Khasi does not need a prop ‘Jaintia’ or ‘Pnar’ or it will mean nothing. Let us not play with words for we are playing with our own sanity.