By Bhogtoram Mawroh
A couple of weeks ago, I cycled to Umsning to eat lunch at a local food shop known for serving indigenous dishes. This particular shop, run by a Catholic family, is well-known for offering a variety of vegetarian and non-vegetarian Khasi meals. I feel that many of our Kong shops could benefit from increasing the diversity of the dishes they prepare. One simple way to do this would be to include more wild vegetables that can be either collected from their backyards or purchased from local farmers. This would not only increase the variety of dishes but also cater to vegetarians who find their options in Kong shops too limited. I love pork, but in the last few weeks, I have begun to appreciate pashor (mashed banana flower), and it was one of the first items I ordered for lunch. After finishing my meal, I started my journey back to Shillong. While passing through the market, I saw an elderly Nepali woman sitting on the footpath. This reminded me of an old film shot in Shillong in the 1930s, which also featured a Nepali woman in a similar position. The history of the Nepali community in Meghalaya is indeed very long.
Initially, the Nepalis came as soldiers in the British army (then the East India Company) as part of the Sylhet Light Infantry during the 19th century. Later, they settled as graziers and herdsmen in the hills. The last time I visited my village, Rana, which is on the way to Nongjri, I was told that there used to be Nepali herders in the past. They would graze their cows, which sometimes entered the fields and destroyed the crops. In those days, farmers were still growing their own food, which included millet, unlike today, when the entire hill is covered with broom. The Nepali community was thus not limited to only the areas around Shillong but was quite widespread. In fact, there were many of them in Ri Bhoi, where they grew, among other things, buckwheat. This particular crop has gained importance in recent years due to the agricultural department’s efforts to promote its cultivation for export to Japan, where it is used to make soba noodles, known for being quite healthy. I learned from some researchers that the crop was cultivated in the past by Nepali families in the area around Bhoirymbong. The domesticated variety is not known to the Khasis, who are only familiar with jarain, the wild species that is a most common wild edible consumed by the community. Thus, the attempt to cultivate buckwheat represents a revival of a crop that was once significant for the Nepalis. But that’s not the only contribution the Nepalis made to the Khasi landscape.
When the Khasis first arrived in the subcontinent from their original homeland in southern China, they were a Neolithic people, i.e., farmers. In fact, they were among the first, as part of the movement of Austroasiatic peoples, to bring farming to mainland Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Burma), including rice cultivation. Later, they reached the subcontinent and are now found in the Northeast, with the Munda being their closest relatives in Central India. While the Khasis were always farmers, cattle do not appear to have been very important for farming operations, as their farming system was most likely a form of shifting cultivation. The slaughter of cattle for ritual purposes (e.g., funerals) was practiced, but with milk being a taboo, cattle did not seem to hold much value beyond meat, which people would probably consume only once a week after returning from the weekly market. Large-scale cattle herding, which is now found in many parts of the Khasi region, must have been introduced by the Nepalis, who are known to be expert herders (a trait carried over from their original pastoral lifestyle in Central Asia). While there is mention of the slaughter of cattle for ritual purposes among the Khasis, no one does it on a larger scale than the Nepalis.
Having grown up in Nongmynsong, I remember the Nepali community as a very vibrant one. One prominent occasion that brought the entire community together was the celebration of Durga Puja, especially the day of the animal sacrifices. The main attraction was, of course, the beheading of the buffalo, but goats and ducks were also sacrificed in droves. The slaughter of animals for ritual purposes was, in fact, a very important element of early Vedic life. The Brahmanic texts explicitly state that five creatures were suitable for sacrifice, in descending order: ox, horse, cattle, sheep, and goat. The texts of the Rigveda and other Vedas provide detailed descriptions of how sacrifices were to be performed. If one wants to imagine what life during the Vedic period (3,500–2,400 years ago) was like in northern India, there’s no better way to experience it than by being present at the Durga Puja celebrations of the Nepalis. In fact, the Gorkha Durga Puja Committee of Shillong is the oldest Durga Puja committee in the state, and this year it completed 129 years.
While it is widely accepted that the Nepalis first arrived in the hills only during the 19th century, the link with the Khasis may go back much earlier. There is a misconception that the Khasis are limited to the hills. Until the arrival of the British, the Khasis occupied many lowland areas in both the Sylhet and Brahmaputra valleys. It was only in the late 18th century, after facing numerous attacks by the Khasis, that the British declared the base of the hills as the boundary and prohibited the Khasis from owning lands in the plains. For more details on how colonial processes dispossessed the Khasis of their lands and broke their links with their kin and subjects, one can read the 2023 book ‘Placing the Frontier in British North East India: Law, Custom and Knowledge’ by Reeju Ray. While the book focuses on the boundary with Sylhet, there is an interesting site in the Brahmaputra valley that provides evidence of how widespread the Khasis were and of their connection with the Nepalis. There is a legend that the present Kamakhaya temple was originally a sacred Khasi site called “Ka Mei Kha,” which was appropriated by Hindus over time and transformed into Kamakhya. Notably, the first iteration of the Kamakhya temple was funded by a king in western Nepal, which could represent one of the first contacts between the Khasis and the Nepalis.
Genetically, the Khasis are known to be very diverse, with only 30% or less of the present-day Khasi population able to trace their origins to the Austroasiatic-speaking population that left South China around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. The practice of tang-jait is therefore very important in this regard, as it gives ritual legitimacy to the process of including non-Khasi members into the fold. Even now, many Khasis are marrying Nepalis, and in the past, such matrimonial alliances, if they involved a Khasi man and a Nepali woman, must have led to the creation of a new clan. One wonders how many of the clans that emerged from the process of tang-jait had a Nepali ancestress.
While evidence of that first contact between Khasis and Nepalis may have been lost in time or can be revealed only through DNA testing, their ‘second’ arrival into the hills has become part of the local folklore. Going back to Ri Bhoi, there is a bat cave (krem lymbit) at Pnah Kdeng, which is around an hour’s walk from Pahambir village. In 2017, Bah Rani Maring, a resident of the village and a well-known traditional musician, took us to the cave through a trek. Along the way, we passed through an area with an underground river flowing under the boulders. He pointed to a rock formation that looked like the breast of a woman. He told us that this was actually a beautiful Nepali woman who had committed suicide at the site, and the formation represented her form. One of the breasts was broken when a Khasi man (possibly her jilted lover) threw a stone at it out of jealousy. Like most Khasi stories, it is a tragic one, but the protagonist here was a Nepali woman who likely arrived in the area only in the last 100 years. Yet, in the process, she has become part of the local folklore and symbolizes the link between the Khasis and the Nepalis. Hopefully, this link will endure for many years to come.
(The views expressed in the article are those of the author and do not reflect in any way his affiliation to any organisation or institution)