By Bhogtoram Mawroh
If one were to type Meghalaya on Google Earth, they will get an aerial view of the entire state. Most parts of the state will appear green except for the central part of Meghalaya, which has a brownish tinge stretching from West Khasi Hills to East Jaintia Hills. To the south is the War region, characterised by deep canyons carved into the plateau by water accompanied by the chemical weathering of limestone, giving rise to the many caves we find today. As for the north, the brown zone ends around Umiam: this is also the starting point of Bhoi. Unlike War, this region has gentle, undulating topography with shallow river valleys used for rice cultivation.
The War and Bhoi regions are particularly interesting, as they contain either the oldest known settlements—such as the Neolithic sites around Lumsohpetbneng—or the oldest identifiable Khasi group, the War-Amwi. Settlers appear to have arrived much later in the central brown zone, but today it is the most degraded of all. The brown colouration is an indication of the region having lost most of its tree cover and is now covered by grass. In many places, bare earth is visible year-round, with a sprinkling of grass. One of the best places to observe this is Sohra.
In 1831, the British declared Sohra as the headquarters of the British administration sending its officers and the first British Christian missionaries. As was typical during colonial rule, the British made detailed reports on the regions they sought to administer. These reports included sketches and three of them are very revealing of the landscape into which they had arrived.
One sketch by Henry Yule, dated to around 1841–42, depicts a cottage on top of the plateau with what appears to be goats or sheep grazing nearby. Although the colours have almost faded, the lack of vegetation in the picture is clearly visible. In the background, there is another cottage and an adjoining watershed, likely the Khat-ar Shnong area, which is also denuded of vegetation along its summit. An earlier sketch, dated 1832, of the sanatorium in Sohra by an unknown artist also depicts a grassland landscape. In this picture, there is a British officer riding a horse through a treeless landscape. Interestingly, there is a group of monoliths on the right-hand side with a few cottages in the background girdled by their stone walls. And finally, there is a sketch of Sohra, which appears in J.D. Hooker’s 1854 Himalayan journals. This sketch has a Khasi woman sitting on top of a monolith looking at the hills beyond the plains in the distance. She is at a higher elevation and one can see a War village along the slopes which are thickly forested. In the middle ground lies the tableland and what may have been a British outpost, with the landscape once again appearing treeless. Beyond this, the land descends toward the Sylhet plains, with the hills of Tripura visible in the distance.
Mawsynram, to the west and Mawkynrew, to the east also have similar landscapes. So, the grasslands that we find now in the middle of Meghalaya (the brownish tinge) are ancient and existed before the coming of the British. However, these are not climogenic, i.e., natural grasslands that result from specific climatic conditions, e.g., Savannah, Steppes, etc. They are, instead, anthropogenic, i.e., an effect of human intervention.
The process of degradation of these landscapes began around 2000 years ago when iron smelting was first discovered in Nongkrem. Even now, one can find iron smelting workshops in villages around Mylliem. In the past, these were likely widespread across regions where the Khasis had settled, and they used charcoal as fuel to fire the furnaces. This resulted in vast tracts of forest being cut down. Following deforestation, high rainfall (over 1000 cm) intensified soil erosion, washing away large amounts of exposed topsoil. This ultimately resulted in the degraded landscape seen today where the primary vegetation (sub-tropical to tropical evergreen forest) has given way to stress tolerant grasses.
The discovery of iron smelting changed the Khasis’ political economy. The shift to an export-oriented economy, emphasizing export of iron ore and tools to the plains, appears to have replaced the previous subsistence economy focused on local consumption. The Khasis were already trading with communities in the plains, exchanging agricultural produce like honey, oranges, wax, and cinnamon in return for rice, cloth, and salt. However, these commodities did not deplete the very resource base the community depended on for survival. In 1853, Colonel Frederick George Lister, a British military officer and political agent in the Khasi Hills, revealed the export of approximately 746 metric tonnes of finished iron products and pig iron to the Assam and Surma Valley. In 1864, the annual export of pig iron was almost 1700 metric tons. Now imagine this occurring for the last 2000 years, and one can clearly understand how the plateau lost its trees, replaced by grasslands.
With the import of cheap iron one, the traditional iron smelting industry declined. While local production of iron tools has continued, the export market has collapsed. This, however, did not stop the process of deforestation. Burning of charcoal is still an important activity, while quarrying and coal mining are already having similar impacts on the landscape. What is worrying is that the brown zone could expand and bring in areas that were previously out of it.
The discovery of iron smelting has been beneficial for the Khasi community. It allowed them to forge weapons that were more durable than those of the surrounding groups. These slave raids on the Garo and Naga villages were evidence of that advantage. It also must have been instrumental in the growth and formation of the Himas, two of which Hima Jaintiapura and Hima Khyrim (Shillong) became powerful and had diplomatic relations with the Ahoms. But it also led to large-scale landscape degradation, which destroyed the long-term prospects of the community.
In the past, the domains of Khasi polities such as Nongstoin, Shella and Rambrai extended deep into the plains. But the British decided to restrict the Khasis to the Hills and dispossessed them of these lands. The impact of colonisation on the Khasis has been devastating in terms of territorial losses both to the north (Brahmaputra Valley) and to the south (Sylhet). Without British intervention, the Khasis would likely have continued to control large areas of the plains, greatly facilitating trade and enhancing their prosperity. However, British colonial rule and the present Indian nation-state has largely confined the Khasis to modern-day Meghalaya. Therefore, we must manage our landscape wisely to ensure our people’s future. To achieve this, lessons from the past and actions in the present are both important.
While much of the area around Sohra is degraded, many villages still possess forestland of various types. An excellent example is the village of Laitryngew, where coal was first discovered and mined. Although much of the area is highly degraded, the village also possesses one of the largest and most well-managed Law Adong (protected forests) in the area. This is true of many villages that also have specific rules for managing their forests. Then there’s the Law Kyntang (sacred forests) that are still found in many locations. This shows the tension that has always existed between exploitation and conservation, driven by changes in the political economy of the region. This tension still exists.
Going through the district council website, one finds a lot of Acts and Rules dealing with general governance, but only a few on the natural environment. Many of these legislations cite customary norms, but they do not discuss how these norms govern environmental management. The question of the state of the natural environment has become even more pressing because of climate change. Sohra and the associated landscapes (including the areas ravaged by coal mining) are a testament of the destruction wrought by changes in the political economy (focus on export rather than creating a circular economy). Unlike in the past, except for the elites or the “Donburom Class,” the common Khasis now have nowhere to go. And unless we take earnest steps, that future will arrive very soon.
(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)