By Bhogtoram Mawroh
I appreciate Fabian Lyngdoh for responding to my article by confirming some antecedents that I had discussed in it. He is highly knowledgeable about the various traditions and customs of the Khasi community and his insights into customary debates are highly useful. There are always people who have a tendency to declare themselves as being the protector of the community, but in actuality do not really have much knowledge about its customs and logic. Instead, they impose their own version of what they want and pretend that their personal desires are the ‘time immemorial’ wisdom of the community. Fabian Lyngdoh is not one of those. I would urge him to share his knowledge of the various customs and practices in an accessible book (perhaps an illustrated one) so that people can widely appreciate it. I, for one, would buy this book.
Of interest for me in such a book would be the actual practices and the terms used for them. Interpretation is something that is highly personal and depends on the training and the cultural lens through which one views any practice. When I say cultural, I do not mean the way of life of an ethnic group. By it I mean the value systems which come not only from the culture into which one is born into but also the influences from different ideas exposed to throughout one’s life which shape how one views oneself and others around them. For example, Fabian Lyngdoh is a devout Christian who has a deep belief in the Bible and its teachings. He would defend the text as a historical narrative and the value system it espouses. Therefore, I am not surprised that he rejected my argument in his article, which argued that patriarchal customs embedded in Christianity contribute to the broken families we see in the community. He side-stepped it by attributing the phenomenon of single motherhood to be a “super-imposition of the modern nuclear-family context, over the traditional clan (kur)-family context.” Does it mean that single motherhood is inevitable, irrespective of whether a tradition is matrilineal or patrilineal? He does hints towards there being “no possibility for turning back; if the Khasi society has to survive and prosper, it has to rediscover itself not on the clan-based tribal society, but to begin riding and moving forward on the vehicles of the nuclear family.” But that doesn’t solve the problem; it only reinforces the outcome.
A hint towards the influence of Christianity in Fabian Lyngdoh’s thoughts (my personal impression and he might very well deny it) is when he states that “as a Khasi man has been circumstantially relieved of his responsibility towards the clan, he has to learn to assume the role of a responsible father, and the woman too has to learn to re-look into clan priorities and adjust herself with the hard facts of the nuclear family.” There is an implicit recognition of the need for the Khasi man to move away from his responsibility as an uncle to being a father, which, as he already had discussed in his article, was not a traditional expectation. Why I am concerned with this is because I feel it attempts to justify, if not explicit, patrilineal customs but the inevitability of a patrilineal logic (man as the father and head of the household) linking it to the demands of a nuclear family. But patrilineal societies have also suffered from the breakdown of close knit community relations. The challenges of a nuclear family system impact both patrilineal and matrilineal societies, leaving families isolated and unsupported. My contention is that patrilineal logic, which exists in religions like Christianity or Hinduism, does not help this. Let me look at some passages about women in these two religions.
Hindu Sanskrit texts have identified wine, gambling, hunting and lust as the four vices that can bring ruin to a person. Lust here means desire for women. Manu-smriti (the Hindu law book equivalent to the Sharia among the Muslims) has some choicest passages for the women like “It is the nature of women to seduce men in this world; for that reason, the wise are never unguarded in the company of females” and “Women, true to their class character, are capable of leading astray men in this world, not only a fool but even a learned and wise man. Both become slaves of desire”. Christianity is not far behind in its assessment of women. It also has passages like “The women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church” and “Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife…”
The passage that talks about women not allowed to speak in the Church is very interesting as there is oft-repeated phrase preventing women from attending the Dorbar claiming their speaking in the Dorbar is akin to the hens crowing (it is the cock that crows not the hen), which will bring an end to the world. One wonders whether this phrase is a logic borrowed from Christianity and not Khasi tradition. If a woman becomes Syiem, people will hear her voice in the Dorbar. But according to the ‘modern’ logic, it would have been unnatural. It’s an intriguing puzzle. Incidentally, in one of his articles ‘When the Hens Crow,’ Fabian Lyngdoh argued that this phrase wasn’t directed at a woman specifically, but at her entire clan. He also mentioned that in the Dorbar-Kur (the authentic traditional institution and not the modern Dorbar Shnong), all clan members, male and female, can take part.
For full disclosure, I am an atheist and I feel religious traditions like Christianity and Hinduism, though based on some historical traditions, are still man-made traditions with the emphasis on being on the ‘man’ part. As a non-Christian (non-any religion in fact) it will be interesting to hear from Fabian Lyngdoh and others what the status of women in the Bible is. Is she an equal to a man and does she have similar rights to a man? Can we interpret the Bible to support women as heads of households and holding important social, religious and political positions? This is a very important discussion because in a nuclear family set-up, gender relations are going to be still important. Who is the weaker sex in this set-up will determine how the husband and the wife treat each other? Is the strength of the sex (man or woman) determined by the earning capability of a certain gender? That again depends on who may be allowed to go out and work.
Now there’s also same-sex relationship where partners will belong to the same gender, man-man or woman-woman. What happens in this situation? There will be those who will oppose, Fabian Lyngdoh, included but wouldn’t this undermine the logic of a march of modernity to which we have to adjust? If there’s an argument for going back to the traditional (?) logic of a marital union being between man and woman, why can’t there be an attempt to go back to the original matrilineal custom of walking marriages? Why give preference to Christianity over other traditions?
I am skeptical of going back completely or in the future blindly while ignoring the choices that are available to a community in how it wants its future to be. We need to move forward but unless we confront the patrilineal logic which treats one gender (man) as superior to another (woman), whether it’s the inevitability of a nuclear family or return to traditional (? Khasi or Christian) broken families are always going to be a big problem. Recently, there was news that a woman was set on fire by her husband in Jaintia Hills. I thought I was reading a story from the mainland. Would this tragic incident have happened if the woman was staying with her own family, surrounded by her brothers and other members of the family? Is modernity important in the lives of such women? Feeling sad after the fact will not bring justice to the countless women who suffer at the hands of patrilineal customs. Removing such customs is the only solution.
(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)