By Bhogtoram Mawroh
Academia has often been derided as an “ivory tower,” the residents of which neither understand everyday reality nor wants to engage with it. From their balconies situated under hallowed minarets, academics pontificate, pointing out what is wrong with the world and offering prescriptions that are resisted by common people—people who are bewildered by ideas that have no connection to their lived realities and fail to capture how they view the world. There is an element of truth to this criticism, but it would be naïve to conclude that academia is therefore worthless. Consider the most dominant economic framework under which political parties of all hues operate today: neo-liberalism.
The beginning of this school of thought can be traced back to the “Chicago Boys,” a group of Chilean economists, the majority of whom were trained in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago under Larry Sjaastad, Milton Friedman, and Arnold Harberger. After completing their studies, they became part of numerous South American governments, including the Chilean military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who was the first to implement neoliberal reforms. These reforms were later adopted by Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom. To recap: Pinochet—the first to experiment with neoliberalism—was responsible for the murder of 1,200 to 3,200 people, the imprisonment of as many as 80,000, and the torture of tens of thousands. When countries in the Global South complain about neo-colonialism being imposed upon them, neoliberalism is the accompanying economic system. What happens in academia is therefore deeply important, as those who operate in that space can have an outsized impact on society—especially when there is no pushback from ordinary people who may choose to remain silent, saying, “Oh ngi ki nongkyndong, ngin tip aiu. I Babu i tip bha.”
I was struck by these thoughts when I participated in the one-day national seminar on “Land, Development and Livelihood in Meghalaya,” organized by the Department of Political Science, North-Eastern Hill University, and sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research, North Eastern Regional Centre, and the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council. The sessions were lively, and I also presented a paper questioning whether landless people exist in Meghalaya and the processes of dispossession that have produced such a condition. One presentation, in particular, caught my attention. The speaker declared that a certain community had improved its socio-economic condition because it had been able to maintain community ownership of land. This is something I also advocate—strengthening community ownership and restricting the conversion of Ri Raid lands (commons) into Ri Kynti lands (individual ownership). But what intrigued me was the speaker’s suggestion that it was community ownership, not clan ownership that constituted traditional Khasi practice. This is a misunderstanding of Khasi traditional polity and social formation.
A Khasi is not simply an individual who is part of a political unit but a person embedded in society through the Kur to which he or she belongs. The identity of a Khasi cannot be separated from the Kur, which is matrilineal and rooted in a particular locality. In that locality, only a few Kur are considered Bakhraw, and they traditionally monopolized political offices such as the Basan and the Lyngdoh in a particular Raid (a collection of villages). These political functionaries then elect the Syiem, who governs the Hima, an amalgamation of different Raids. The Basans and Lyngdohs thus become the Myntri clans of the Hima, a territorial entity covering many villages. Hima Shillong (also known as Hima Khyrim) reportedly governed more than 200 villages during the Ahom invasion of Hima Jaintiapur, as documented by E. Gait in his 1905 book A History of Assam. The history and political structure of Hima Shillong offer a clear illustration of how Khasi polity is organized, and one can refer to the section on Shillong Syiemship – its origin and antiquity in the book ‘History and Culture of the Khasi people’ by Hamlet Bareh Ngap Kynta.
The role of the Bakhraws in governing the Raid has spilled into the contemporary Dorbar Shnong, where in many places only individuals from a particular Kur may contest the position of Rangbah Shnong. For instance, only someone from the Thangkiew Kur can become the Rangbah Shnong in Nongkseh. Reading the history of Hima Khyrim, one finds that the Thangkiew Kur were indeed the Basans of Nongkseh. This is a remnant from the days when decision-making was the domain of the Dorbar Kur and Dorbar Raid, the original indigenous institutions, rather than the present-day Dorbar Shnong. The fact that the Basans held real power—not the Syiem—is evident in the historical episode where the three Basans attempted to exterminate the Syiem family by burning their settlement. It was U Basan Nongkseh who saved a little girl, Ka Jatkiri, and took her to a sanctuary in the west.
To suggest, therefore, that the present model of community land—where villages with multiple clans enjoy usufructuary rights—is the primordial system, and that Ri Kur is a recent innovation, is to fundamentally misunderstand Khasi culture and history. This misunderstanding has important implications.
At the moment, there is a case in the High Court challenging the matrilineal system, and the judge has asked the KHADC to submit its views. The last report I read stated that the KHADC had sought more time. If a judgment eventually recognizes patrilineal customs as legitimate Khasi practice, it would mark the end of the Khasi Kur, which has strict rules of endogamy and is central to the distinction between Kur and Kha, encapsulated in the phrase “Tip Kur Tip Kha”. Without this, the taboo against incest collapses, and the mixing of related bloodlines becomes normalized.
Although the majority of Khasis have become Christians, they remain deeply connected to their tradition. But with such a judgment, this connection would be severed, and Khasis would lose their unique identity and history, becoming just another ethnic group. What then would distinguish a Khasi from a Karbi or a Bihari? The most affected would be the Niam Khasi and Niam Tre practitioners, for whom the idea of the Kur, derived from the mother, is sacrosanct. This change would resemble the imposition of a Uniform Civil Code, since the opposition—on the grounds of unique identity—would lose its cultural legitimacy. Also lost would be the link to ancestors who fought to preserve the tradition. It is important to remember that groups like the Karbi, who once lived under Khasi Himas, such as Hima Jaitiapur, left to live under the Ahoms precisely because they complained that the Khasis were imposing matriliny on them. There are stories of Jait Syiem of non-Khasi origin who had to adopt matriliny to hold office. Would we still be able to call such stories our own?
While the Kur as an economic institution (control of land and resources) may no longer be as potent as before, its social role remains crucial. My suspicion is that those looking to undermine it and push for change are influenced by a form of Evangelical Christianity in which being Christian is more important than being Khasi—a view not shared by other Khasi Christians. For this group, it is not Khasi culture or history that should shape the future but their own vision of who a Khasi “should be.”
And that vision is of a Khasi society structured around the framework of a patrilineal, patriarchal, conservative nuclear Christian family, one that opposes gender rights, women’s empowerment, and views nature merely as a commodity to be exploited and sold for profit. In this vision, when the Kur is no longer important, the nuclear family becomes the primary unit—mirroring Margaret Thatcher’s famous statement, “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” We would, therefore, no longer be bound by solidarity, but would relate to each other through individual competition, where the guiding slogan would be ‘no free lunch.’
What happens in academia, therefore, is a valuable indication of what the Don Burom or high level people are thinking and what plans they may have for ordinary Khasis. We should not ignore academia but engage with it, for those who are part of it want to tell us who we are—and who we should be. Are we going to allow that?
(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)
