By Janet Hujon
‘It was like stepping on a serpent’s tail’, the Khasi would cry out. ‘EJH church leases 25 ha of land for limestone mining’ – said the headline. I felt I was staring down into an endless void. What has possessed the church? I’d really like to know. Has the assertion in Genesis that man should have ‘dominion over every living thing’, been taken literally? It has been bad enough feeling powerless about the ongoing in-your-face exploitation of land-for-profit by nonchalant politicians, but to see the church also clambering onto the bandwagon is a betrayal par excellence – Et Tu Brute.
But leave aside the religious aspect, what further embitters my disillusionment is that Meghalaya is home to indigenous people who are so called because of their reverential understanding of Nature – a world-view that is now under constant threat. Until recently whenever an indigenous tribe anywhere in the world succeeded in their fight to preserve their ancestral lands against the avarice of mining and logging companies, I was ecstatic. I saw it as a victory for all indigenous people. But through no fault of my own, I can no longer claim membership of that moral alliance or share in their joy. How can I when a powerful coterie of people has hijacked our state and put it up for sale to mighty extractive giants?
Khasis refer to the legendary U Puh Shi Lum – he who with one mighty thrust of his spade was able to overturn an entire hill. He was a titan of such rare and unimaginable physical strength that he inspired awe. Meanwhile the cement companies with their hungry machines scurrying across our hills have horrifyingly caricatured this revered figure. They are flattening and hollowing out our hills not because of superhuman strength, but because of greed. Doubtless they will keep going while the going is good, aided and abetted by successive uncaring governments.
Whatever the argument for a clear separation between Church and State, hasn’t Meghalaya suffered enough for the rest of the Church not to make a principled stand, especially as the church in Jaiñtia hills has blurred the boundaries between the two? No matter what financial straits the church finds itself in, the solution adopted should not be a licence to kill the countryside.
Ironically the Bible abounds in natural imagery asking us to look and learn: consider the lilies of the field, behold the fowls of the air, and see how by the river upon the bank thereof shall all trees grow whose fruit thereof shall be for meat and the leaf thereof for medicine. If the last example is not community knowledge, then what is? The Cree Nation spoke as much for us as for themselves when they said: Only when the last tree has died and the last river poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise that we cannot eat money. Pay heed to this prophecy and be sorely afraid. Don’t just post it on social media – for God’s sake, protest.
It often frustrates me to see that the loud urban clamour to protect the Jaitbynriew does not call out as fervently for the protection of our hills, our forests, our rivers. The survival of the Jaitbynriew as a unique people can only be guaranteed by the protection of the living land which underpins that uniqueness. Tragically in the warped and narrow world we inhabit, ‘dominion’ means ownership not stewardship, while the word ‘jaitbynriew’ will be routinely trotted out to suit personal, populist, political or financial gains, robbing it of all sanctity and foundation. Our people thrived because they learnt through careful observation how to respect and not mistreat the land, rightly referred to as their mother – Ka Mei Ramew. And there we have another concept that increasingly rings hollow – literally.
As for the public hearing, it is as the editor points out a sham, a smoke screen – an empty exercise in box-ticking especially if those who oppose the project are barred entry. So much for the democratic process – does anyone smell a rat? Already in 2017 the Shillong Times posed the question: ‘Who will save Narpuh from imminent destruction’? https://theshillongtimes.com/2017/06/26/who-will-save-narpuh-from-imminent-destruction/?ak_action=reject_mobile Narpuh, our very own Black Forest (Ki Khloo Wa Iong), birthplace of the Lukha, the Kupli, the Apha and of poetry and legend waiting to blossom once we crossed the borders of the imagination. Obviously none of this matters anymore. It is just a story.
Then view again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19qX_GUhPS0 Kong Lato and Bah P S Nongbri, those guardians of our forests voiced the urgent need to protect our forests. If honest local experts have voiced their concerns, is that not enough? The public and the government are already in possession of the consequences of rabid mining – behold the lifeless Lunar and Lukha. So why do we need a farcical public hearing? Yet mining companies with their claims of limited environmental impact – really? – are repeatedly granted permission to reduce Jaiñtia Hills to a Martian landscape of craters and dust. All this points to a wilful ignorance of ecocide defined as the destruction of the natural environment by deliberate or negligent human action. Whoever began this process of allowing mining in the hills has a great deal to answer for.
East Jaiñtia Hills District has already borne the brunt of polluting coke and cement factories wrecking the environment and the health of its people – it should not be made to endure more. Perhaps the fact that those who authorise coke plants and limestone mining do not live anywhere near these factories and quarries, might explain why they can adopt such selfish policies. As ever ‘ki nongkyndong’, those who inhabit the corners, the marginalised villagers, are treated with contempt as if their lives are of no consequence. Let them eat dust…then choke to death. But the cruellest twist to the tale is that despite all the evidence, there is local support for a cement company. Unbelievable. The seeds of disunity have been successfully sown, and I don’t need to tell you who will benefit most from the harvest – not the locals.
But perhaps the opposition against limestone mining in East Jaiñtia Hills is cause for hope however fragile. The FKJGP-EJHDU, the KSU, YFC, the JWC, The Hynñiewtrep Youth Council, have registered their protest and the latter’s opposition ‘aligns with the concerns of residents of Wahiajer village as well as those from Narpuh Elaka and the broader district community’… (Shillong Times, October 15) Maybe there will be a stay of execution and we can call ourselves people who possess honour – kiba donburom. People who know that honour is not status based on material wealth but a recognition of commonwealth. The hills, the valleys, the rivers are part of our being – we belong to them, they are part of us but we do not own them.
I often think the Church in our hills resembles the British monarchy, constitutional in nature with little real power to affect the laws of the land, but nonetheless possessing almost unrivalled authority in shaping the foundations of moral thought and action. We can forgive the monarchy’s fall from grace for they are but human. But for the church to ‘err’ in this way is not being human, because it is to Faith Organisations we turn in our need to rise above the worldly. In that context the Church has to be superhuman. If the guiding light from that lodestar sputters and dies, won’t we all be plunged into the darkness of chaos.
Many years ago, an academic from the School of Oriental & African Studies made what I thought was an interesting comment. She said that Khasi has many words for sadness. I now ask myself is this because we have much to be sad about?