By Patricia Mukhim
To say that Khasi society is a confused agglomeration of individuals is an understatement. Even as we speak there are Khasis who believe they are more original than others simply because they follow the religious tenets of yore and proudly claim that they have not been sullied by the scars of faiths coming in from the outside world. There are those who claim to be more indigenous than others. ‘Others’ here are those whose blood is an assorted mix of the ‘dkhars’ because their mothers looked beyond their own kind to procreate with. No matter how much you do, a non-pure-blooded Khasi will always be the underdog; not “Khasi paka” as the purists would call themselves. The question then is – Who is a Khasi paka? Are we sure that our great grand-parents and their ancestors actually descended straight from heaven through the mythical Diengiei? Was it God (U Trai Nongbuh Nongthaw as the perfectionists would call him) who actually gave us the name ‘Khasi’ and told us that we are made up of seven human species? I am not sure that we have a categorical answer to this one.
In Khasi society personal rights are subservient to tradition which carries with it the burden of the clan and its definitive say in all matters personal and political. Now with the contentious Lineage Bill passed by the Khasi Hills District Council, the clan which was a web of relationships outside the politics that now seeks to determine the purity of Khasi blood, we have politics entering our kitchens and bedrooms. The personal rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution don’t matter to the District Councils. They often forget that the Sixth Schedule is but an offshoot of the Constitution and not a stand-alone document that can determine what our personal rights are. The Lineage Bill should actually be tested in a court of law where it will once and for all be decided as to which is more sacrosanct – tradition or the Constitution.
The Indian Constitution is embedded in a pluralistic character because it legitimizes the compromises essential for keeping hundreds of jostling identities abroad the ship called INDIA. We Khasis however live within the multiple institutions that decide our choices namely the Clan, the Dorbar Shnong, the District Council and the State Government. All these institutions, but especially the first two, cast a shadow of uncertainty in the lives of many young women and men who want to carve out a future that is not circumscribed by the above institutions.
The reason for this article is my encounter with a bright young Khasi man at a tea shop. He was at first engaged with another person in a separate table and both were discussing something official. The young man had a laptop with him from which he was citing out some building plans. Having completed their meeting one of them left and the other decided to come to my table and introduce himself. He was in a bit of a quandary. He had studied and worked outside the country and had married a Malaysian woman. The couple have a son and the young man’s predicament was that he wanted his son to carry his clan name. When I asked him why he wasn’t willing to do a tang-jait, ( a Khasi ritual where the wife and children of a Khasi man marrying a non-Khasi, non-tribal woman would be given a new clan name), he vehemently answered, “I don’t want my son to have a clan different from mine.” I was flummoxed. The young man wanted his wife and son to live here now but because they are both Malaysian citizens, the son and spouse were facing visa problems. One could see the consternation in the young man’s face. Elsewhere in the country he would not have faced this problem.
While matriliny is indeed a rarity today and the Khasis are rightly proud of their lineage from the mother’s clan line, would it be the end of the world if a man who marries a non-Khasi decides that he does not want the tang-jait ritual and seeks to bestow his clan name on his wife and children? Is it sufficient reason for the children of that man to lose their Schedule Tribe status merely because of the non-fulfilment of what is a ritual tied to the indigenous faith?
The other question that boggles the mind is also that among the Jaintia people there is no such thing as a “tang-jait.” A Jaintia man married to a non-tribal woman asked the Jaintia Hills District Council if he needed to give a new clan name to his wife and children. The JHADC said there is no such thing among the Jaintias. So what does he do? There are no easy answers. It made me equate this seemingly unsolvable problem to what Horst Rittel, design theorist and professor of design methodology at the Ulm School of Design, Germany calls the “Wicked Problems.” Rittel defines wicked problems as problems with many interdependent factors making them seem impossible to solve. Because the factors are often incomplete, in flux, and difficult to define, solving wicked problems require a deep understanding of the stakeholders involved, and an innovative approach provided by design thinking. Complex issues such as healthcare and education are cited as examples of wicked problems. Rittel had probably not heard of the Khasi society which continues to define and redefine itself to ostensibly retain the purity of the race.
Rittel describes ten characteristics of wicked problems. They are (1) There is no definitive formula for a wicked problem. (2) Wicked problems have no stopping rule, as in there’s no way to know your solution is final. (3) Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false; they can only be good-or-bad. (4) There is no immediate test of a solution to a wicked problem. (5) Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation”; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly. (6) Wicked problems do not have a set number of potential solutions. (7) Every wicked problem is essentially unique. (8) Every wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem. (9) There is always more than one explanation for a wicked problem because the explanations vary greatly depending on the individual perspective. (10) Planners/designers have no right to be wrong and must be fully responsible for their actions.
In the case of the Khasis one wonders what really is the right way forward and how to extricate ourselves from the daily existential dilemmas we find ourselves in as we struggle to prove our racial purity. Finally, all that is aimed at one and only one thing – that of being a tribal and a Schedule Tribe which grants special status to a Khasi (there is no mention of pure Khasi) and privileges him/her with reservation in education and jobs within Meghalaya.
Things have now changed so much that most Khasis live and work outside and men give their clan names to their spouses and children without blinking an eyelid and no one really considers that a ‘wicked’ problem as long as the man continues to live and work outside and lays no claim to the ST status for his wife and children. No one really keeps track of how many Khasi men have married non-Khasi women. As long as they live outside Meghalaya that Lineage Bill is not a wicked problem for them. But, we Khasis have really managed to complicate our lives and relationships.
So Khasis living here have a wicked problem at hand. And as Rittel points out categorically, wicked problems lack clarity in both their aims and solutions, and are subject to real-world constraints which hinder risk-free attempts to find a solution. As a society we need to gain much deeper insights into the nature of the problem and learn to reframe the problem entirely if we sincerely wish to have any chance at coming up with a valuable solution. Wicked problems are often social and cultural problems and what makes them worse is the way they are intertwined with one another.
If we try to address an element of one problem, we are likely to cause unexpected consequences in another. No wonder they’re wicked! It’s clear to see that standard problem-solving techniques just aren’t going to cut it when we have a wicked problem on our hands.
Finally, what can help us address wicked problems is if we stop the othering; sit together and have the empathy needed to discuss these interminable obstacles we have created for ourselves because of our need to assert our ‘pure’ Khasi genes! There is no pure blood in this world and there is no pure Khasi. Period!