By Avner Pariat
When one looks at the relative prosperity of the Khasi people (relative to the national average) over the past 50 years, it is truly remarkable. Over the past century, the Khasis have managed to carve a special niche for themselves not just in India but internationally too. How many Indigenous Communities can boast of having such pre-eminence? Are the Iroquois or Apache or Ainu dominant like we are? Is there a capital city anywhere in the world which has such a vibrant society of Indigenous people? There may be a handful but Shillong surely stands apart. Our rise as a community is a testament to the vision and perseverance of our forerunners. We leveraged our strengths in the turbulent political age of the early 20th century and have reaped the harvest of that success ever since.
That said, there has always been a dark side to this shiny exterior. There were always rumblings underneath the surface. From the very beginnings of our political awakening and mobilization there was a growing discordance between Khasis and non-Khasis, particularly non-tribals. This might have its origins in the mutual distrust that the communities had for one another especially in the ancient tussle for resources, land and assets. But that is not unusual.
Perhaps the tensions escalated when the British created Shillong. Yes, Shillong was a British creation despite what our Khasi uber right wingers want to believe. The creation of Shillong must be seen as standard operating procedure in their city planning without the nostalgia hiding it. Similarly, for every other city built from scratch, immigration was a prerequisite. Hence the British brought in immigrants and encouraged immigration into Shillong. Many Khasis might find that hard to digest nowadays but that is the objective truth. One can safely assume that this did not sit well with a lot of Khasis even at the time. I recall reading a rather revealing essay penned by my granduncle, SJ Duncan, in a souvenir celebrating 100 years of Shillong. He wrote about how as a child he had witnessed tribal farmers being forced to dump their wares because a non-tribal businessman would not agree to their prices. SJ Duncan was born in 1897! They felt it was an insult to take a low offer and instead threw their vegetables angrily into the gutter. So, the rumblings amongst the communities were definitely there. Add to this the propensity of immigrants to not engage and interact with the host community and you can see where this was headed towards.
Here I would like to compare this particular story of tribal and non-tribal conflict with that which was possibly the norm prior to the arrival of the British. As the NEHU historian Binayak Dutta has observed in his paper “Predicament of a Partitioned Homeland”, most times the sites of transgression between Khasis and other groups were at the borders demarcating their’s and British held territories. Hence the violence of the raids carried out against the British were usually directed at the villages along these borders and most targets were – in all probability – non-tribals.
This “ideal situation” however, changed completely when the Jaintia and then the Khasi kingdoms were conquered and brought directly under British dominion. Suddenly the non-tribal was no longer a distant target in terms of physical proximity nor even in imagination; he was no longer at the borderlands but became part of our lives within the civil stations of Cherrapunji, Jowai and eventually, Shillong. And despite the desire to expel the outsiders, British guns and swords kept the people in check. With time, it must have dawned on the local Khasi activists and intellectuals that a new type of non-tribal was now imminent. This was no longer the villager nor farmer they encountered along the borderlands. The new settlers had skills that made them invaluable to the ‘new lords of the land.’ Skills that were part and parcel of a new capitalist and imperialist system. These skills involved jobs like clerical and peon services, food and civil supplies, construction, urban maintenance and of course, to ensure everything ran smoothly – through the threat of violence. Hence the system also created a number of military and paramilitary jobs. If one looks at the list of jobs one would notice a pattern. Each job type might be seen as compartments for particular ethnicities or communities to serve in under British rule.
The history of Shillong is viewed in this manner because for the British, it was the standard operating procedure for their settlements. For peons and clerks they needed Assamese and Bengalis; for food supplies and logistical support the Marwaris and Sindhis; for urban maintenance, Mazhabi Sikhs. For military and paramilitary support? Nepalis. Actually, Shillong residential localities reveal this sharp compartmentalization. Marwaris, Sindhis lived closer to the bazaars which were their sites of interests, Bengalis resided closer to the court, jail and sites of government, Mazhabi Sikhs were accommodated between Iewduh and Police Bazar. Till date a majority of Nepalis reside close to military and paramilitary settlements. Now where did the Khasi fit into this new scheme of things and more importantly how did he feel? For the first 50 years or so of its existence as a settlement, precious little autonomy was given to the people of Shillong (tribal or non-tribal) but the Government of India Act 1919 changed all that. A great Khasi awakening at that time ignited by modern educational systems instituted by the British ignited the spark the aspirations of political self-determination which had been rumbling for a long time. The Khasi now felt that he could become master of his own domain, again through the instruments of politics. The reforms of 1919 brought Indigenous voices upfront and the resounding chorus was for economic and social mobility. The way ahead was clear. The educational system set up by the British gave Khasis the same advantages granted to the Bengalis and Assamese.
As earlier mentioned, clerical work was crucial to the functioning of the Imperialist Capitalist system and it was in this field that the Khasi middle class’s fortune were forged. It was also the source of much contention. The desire for “Kam Sorkar” (government jobs) was the seed for the Khasi’s liberation from the drudgery of back-breaking labour and the hardships of farm work but it would also lead to conflict with those who had preceded us in those positions. It was this desire for a better and more comfortable life that would lead to direct conflict with the Bengalis and Assamese who had earlier dominated government offices.
Previously, Khasi participation in government was limited to minor roles such as caterers and meal providers in the numerous offices and departments in Shillong as narrated in Dienjat Ki Longshuwa by Joseph Bacchiarello. The story is from the early 20th century and was written by an Italian Catholic priest who went on to help establish Khasi literature! On a side-note, I have to remark how multicultural and diverse the urban landscape of Shillong has always been. This era also saw the meteoric rise of Joy Mohon also known as JJM Nichols Roy. Now many people might have their grouses against Bah Joy Mohan but when one reads his memoirs, edited by Rev O L Snaitang, the man was a nationalist and an “integrationist.” He might be seen as a bulwark (albeit temporary) against the otherwise destructive forces of parochialism and communalism which existed back then. Bah Joy Mohan was believed in empowering tribal groups in the NER but he did not believe that empowerment should come at the cost of others. He declared his love for his own people in his writings but nowhere did he state that he hated non-tribals. That is the difference between his brand of politics and the contemporary situation we find ourselves in.
So the Khasis were now on the ascendancy. Once the iota of autonomy was granted historical records state that people were galvanised by the possibilities of self-determination. Politicians like JJM Nichols Roy, AS Khongphai Macdonald Khar-kongor (sometimes mentioned as Macdonald Kongor in SK Chaube’s Hill Politics in Northeast India but not in the 1999 edition) rushed to grab this golden opportunity. Khar-kongor was a very interesting figure. He was pivotal in establishing the Congress party in Shillong after Subhash Chandra Bose’s 1938 visit. Bose was then President of the INC and had urged Khar-kongor to galvanise the party within Shillong city. For nearly a decade, Khar-kongor toiled away for the INC only to have his well-earned ticket given to JJM Nichols Roy in the Provincial elections of 1945-46! This angered him but he was convinced that he would succeed in mobilising voters due to his years of work at the grassroots level. Alas Khar-kongor secured very few votes. He blamed the Bengalis for his defeat. He had thought they would support him as he had been active with and known to them. He thought they would vote for him based on his personality and not party affiliations. Thereafter he wrote a now forgotten but important pamphlet on why the tribals (not just Khasis) needed their own (hill) state: A Case of the Hill Tribes of the North East Frontier of India (June 1946).
Interestingly the genesis of this now well-known demand for “a hills’ state” which was effectively uses by multiple parties and individuals in subsequent years emerged out of one man’s personal disappointment. One can dismiss this narrative as a mere anecdote but it illustrates how powerful certain personal narratives are in shaping collective political reality over time. We must now retrieve the amber from the past few decades. It will be a painful but crucial task.
To politically mobilize and galvanize populist sentiment (a situation I have become intimately acquainted with!) an over-simplified narrative is sold to the people. Eventually the quest for self-determination led the masses to consider the Bengalis and the Assamese as rivals that needed to be countered and removed from the discourse. These two groups prevented the Khasi from becoming a Middle Class being and that was unacceptable! This was perhaps a major underlying raison d’etre for conflicts between the Khasis and different groups.
Presumably this was not purely a case of “politics as an end in itself” but as a means to and end and that end was for social and economic uplift comparable to anything a non-tribal might attain. Instead of framing these legitimate desires for social mobility and self-determination as something that could be achieved over time and with patience, many politicians and activists of the late 1970s and 80s sought to create bogeymen instead and stoked violence in the state.
The Bangladesh Liberation War and its subsequent refugee crisis accelerated the process but by then this narrative had found a strong footing within Khasi society 50 years earlier. According to Chaube, after the 1936-37 Indian provincial elections, when a coalition government was formed with Mohammed Saadullah as leader and JJM Nichols Roy as a minister- a minor Khasi Bengali riot broke out. What triggered this is unsure as it appeared that both sides had got what they wanted for their own respective camps. Perhaps back-grounding the religious angle might be useful to understand this rather simplistic assertion of SK Chaube. Over the decades however, especially after the death of JJM Nichols Roy, the fear of being outmaneuvered by non-tribals was surely insignificant compared to the fear of being overwhelmed, by which I mean the refugee crisis of two events – Partition and the War of Bangladeshi Independence. Suddenly the threat must have seemed to the average Khasi as no longer merely political but downright existential! This political manipulation started back then continues to exacerbate ethnic divisions. Leaders and parties have used ethnic identities to maintain control, sometimes stoking ethnic divisions to distract the public from the real economic issues and to prevent a unified opposition to nepotism and kleptocracy. Perhaps the easiest group that can be co-pted in this project is the middle-class, as they are by definition in the middle – between rich and poor. They have the most to lose out of any group and the most fear to extract.