By Fabian Lyngdoh
The recently released Meghalaya State Anthem has stirred up some suffocating dust and smoke in the Khasi society because the Pnar dialect was not included in the State Anthem. But the dormant cause is a deeper intellectual rift brewing in the minds of the social leaders and academics. Silence in this matter, would be the best policy for safeguarding one’s personal dignity and self-interests. But, since the culture of silence, deeply entrenched in our collective psyche has kept the people in general, in woeful ignorance of facts, which in turn brewed chaos and confusions in the society, I feel the urge to contribute some ideas on this contentious issue. For proper understanding of the nature of any indigenous tribal community, sufficient knowledge of oral traditions, and affective experience of the cultural spirit of the tribe is necessary besides literary information.
Before the British had established modern political and administrative systems in these hills, there was no operational concepts of Jaintia hills, Khasi hills, Ri Bhoi, Maram, etc. The whole land, from east to west, north to south was one piece under dynamic human migrations and socio-political formations around the operational concepts of the raid and the hima with the preponderance of the raid over the hima. The raids which are the permanent territorial and political entities had existed for hundreds, or perhaps thousands of years before any hima was formed or any syiemship was instituted. The structure of the hima, on the other hand, was fragile. A new hima might be formed at any point of time in history, or an existing one might be dismantled in the dynamics of socio-political changes.
In 1859 when the British had already been the colonial rulers in the region, hima Shyllong was dismantled by the dispute of the founding clan elders, and new himas: Mylliem and Khyrim came into being. But the constituent raids along with their established political territories remained intact in the two respective himas. Hima Jaintia was dismantled, but the raids as its permanent constituents remain to this day, and assumed the status of Elakas under the Act of the District Council. The people’s basic territorial and political identifications were based not on the tribe or the hima, but on the raids, as u Jwai, u Raliang, u Sutnga; or as u Thaiang, u Nongtham, u Nongtluh; or as u Nongkrem, u Mylliem, u Nongkseh, etc.
The ancestress of the syiem (chief) of hima Shyllong and the ancestress of the syiem of hima Jaintia were non-Khasi women brought from the plains and adopted in the community, and their offsprings were consecrated as the jait syiem. It is from the lineages of these two syiem families that the jait syiem in most of the lesser Khasi himas originated. In the wisdom of the ancestors, this process of adoption was clothed in stories narrating that the syiem ancestress emerged from the cave or from the fish. Similarly, the syiem family of raid Umsaw-Nongbri is related to a young woman carried by storm from outside the raid and hidden in a cave. The ancestress of one of the leading basan clan in raid Ïapngar is also said to have originated from a fish that a man caught from the Umïam River.
The ancestors clothed this process of adoption in stories to establish political covenant, as well as to justify or rationalize the adoption of a person from outside the community. That is our ancestors’ wisdom that we should respect, even if we have to view and understand it rationally and intellectually. ‘Syiem’ and ‘Rajah’ are political titles, but the syiem family has a clan name as any other clan. That is not part of this article to deliberate, but let it be a suggestion to young scholars to find out what clan name the existing family members of the erstwhile Jaintia Raja maintain today in the plains of Jaintiapur. The clan name of the syiems of hima Shyllong is quite obvious.
Unlike the syiems of hima Shyllong who had severed connection with the non-Khasi community of its ancestress and became fully integrated with the Khasi society, the syiems of hima Sutnga maintained connection with the non-Khasi community of their ancestress who perhaps belonged to the Hindu royal family of the previous Jaintia kingdom in the plains. When the syiems of hima Sutnga were able to integrate the hills and the plains into one kingdom, the whole territory became the Jaintia kingdom with the capital at Jaintiapur in the plains. The ruler became the Rajah with absolute power with regards to the plains, but remained the syiem with limited powers with regards to the Pnar and War people in the hills. That was how the name Jaintia was also applied to the Pnar and the War in the hills, though the name Jaintia simply refers to the headquarters of the Rajah in Jaintiapur.
Everyone living in Khasi Hills and in Jaintia Hill, has conscious knowledge and feeling of belonging to the same Tribe. Clan relations cut across all through the present Khasi and Jaintia Hills. There are no genealogical sub-divisions, but only territorial and political identifications separating people living in the Khasi Hills and those living in Jaintia Hills. There are hundreds of pieces of evidence to prove this fact.
The British had contact with the people of Jynteeah (Jaintia) since 1774. From 1826 onwards, they had encounters with the people of hima Nongkhlaw, Sohra, and Shella, and called the inhabitants of the areas as ‘Cosseyas’ (Khasis). The British later realized that the people in the Khasi Hills and people in the Jaintia Hills belong to the same tribe, and so they described the Jaintia kingdom as “being one of the most considerable of the Cosseya States.” But the Pnar in Jaintia Hills called the inhabitants of other Khasi himas lying in the west, as ‘Khynriam’. The inhabitants of the Ri Bhoi area, called the inhabitants of the Shillong plateau as ‘Nongkhasi’, and the people of the present Jaintia hills, as ‘Pnar’ or ‘Syntiang’. On the other hand, the Mikirs (Karbis) who live in Ri Bhoi called the Khasis, ‘Chumang’, and not ‘Khasi’.
Truly speaking, we do not know what is the original name of the Austro-asiatic-speaking people who migrated and settled in the present areas of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills. The question is whether the British had created the collective name ‘Khasi’ for the people living in both the Khasi and Jaintia Hills. That is possible since the British perceived the Jaintia kingdom as ‘one of the Cosseya States”. The colonial rulers combined the hill portion of the Jaintia kingdom with other Khasi States under one administrative unit called the Khasi and Jaintia Hills, under the Political Agent of the Government. The rulers together with the missionaries created the Khasi alphabets and established the Sohra dialect as the common written and spoken language for the whole Khasi and Jaintia Hills. So, we have the common name ‘Khasi’ for the whole tribe, and the Sohra dialect as the ‘Khasi language’.
So far, the name and the language had been instrumental for establishing the unity of the tribe. If ‘ki parakur ki parakha’ (kith and kin) living in Jaintia Hills today accept these new instruments of unity, then we have no problem. But if they are unhappy with it, then there is a problem. Presently, in all official documents of the government, and writings of the academics, the name ‘Jaintia’ is mentioned as one of the three major tribes of Meghalaya, which is factually false. Moreover, the establishment of the Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council legally implies that there is a tribe called the ‘Jaintia, which is also false. There from, arose the problem.
In the past, when human societies naturally evolved and developed through dynamic migrations and social change, and when the social narrative is carried forward through oral traditions, there was little problem of human integration. People who migrated from one place to the other, naturally identified themselves with their new place of habitation. But from the advent of British rule when the social narrative began to be recorded and transmitted through written form, the cultural dynamics became frozen. As oral traditions are alive and self-editing, people who migrated from hima Jaintia to hima Nongkhlaw before British rule became ‘Khynriam’ after twenty to thirty years. But as written narratives are frozen and dead, people who migrated from Jaintia Hills or from Ri Bhoi to Shillong during the British rule, failed to be identified as Khynriam after a hundred years of colonial rule, and even till today, seventy-five years after Independence. That is the freezing effect of written narratives!
As Kong Patricia Mukhim pointed out in her article (ST, 26/1/2024), discussions and debates are still important in Khasi society today. It would be most convenient, and conducive to the unity of the tribe if we all accept the common name ‘Khasi’, and the Sohra dialect as the Khasi written language. Argument against this is only a matter of sentiment. But sentiment is also very important if it is really a collective sentiment of a large section of people, and not merely a personal academic interest of the few.
The name, ‘Hynñiewtrep’ in the Khasi origin myth applies to the whole human race, not only to the Khasis. Elders differentiated between the concepts of ‘u khunbynriew’ which means the human race, and ‘ka jaidbynriew’ which means a particular race or tribe. The Seven Huts myth always refers to ‘u khunbynriew’, and not to ‘ka jaidbynriew’. So, the Seven Huts were conceived of as the forefathers of the human race, and not only of the Khasis. However, if the name ‘Khasi’ is not acceptable to the collective sentiment of the whole population of Jaintia Hills, then the name ‘Hynñiewtrep’ would be the only alternative, as it refers to the people of a tribe who believe in the Hynniewtrep origin story. The debate is still open…