By Patricia Mukhim
Every once in a while one enters the portals of a University to witness young women scholars engage with the idea of matrilineality and its many layers; how it intersects with day to day lived experiences and how women here often hide the ugly scars they carry because society expects them to put their best foot forward when they are questioned as to what it is like to be a woman in a matrilineal society. I have long discarded the pretence of being privileged, simply because I come from this glorified society. Scholars from the West have come here to study us as specimens because they are so disillusioned with their brand of patriarchy that they want to portray us as an ideal society where women rule the roost.
Sorry, but nothing can be further from the truth. I chanced to walk into a closed door discussion between the students of Counselling Psychology, Martin Luther Christian University while they were deep in conversation with Prof Roy Moodley from the Department of Applied Psychology, University of Toronto, Canada. The students were all young women at the prime of their careers. There were drawings on the floor depicting what the students felt in every part of their bodies starting from the head which was shown as muddled – the stomach region where all the trauma of the day resides; the hands which were depicted as instruments of empowerment, I suppose because they could move to do something positive and the legs which were depicted as being chained. The drawings were put together not by those who felt the emotions but by other students who interpreted those emotions in art form. What a beautiful medley of reflection turned into thought interpreted in art. It takes a lot of deep diving to produce what I saw unfold as I stood there.
It takes intrinsic empathy for an artist to understand a counselling psychologist explaining how the emotions that play out in different parts of the human body and then to articulate the bundles of emotions into an art form. In our time we could never imagine such an opportunity being given to us in the schools and colleges we passed out from. In fact, it would be true to say that we went through most of college, not understanding what we were taught- leave alone life skills. Its not as if in those years women and girls were not molested or raped. They were, but we were taught that silence was the best way to deal with such trauma.
These days young women have mustered courage to call out molesters and call them by their real name, “predators.” There are Khasi families where the uncle had impregnated his own niece but society never considered the man an outcast. And as a society we are too busy putting up a show of respectability (donburom), that we have forgotten to teach our girls that they should not put up with sexual abuse of any kind beginning with those ugly bad touches when men would grope for a woman’s breast in a crowded bus or even in a shared taxi. Many women feel outraged by such indecencies and sexual innuendos that they resort to silence instead of shouting and drawing the attention of others to that act. We women feel ashamed when it is the man who should be shamed. But our upbringing has been so culturally tuned to put women always on the defensive that most of us have forgotten to speak up or are too scared to do so, especially if the man happens to be well placed and some sort of societal model in the day time and a predator in secret spaces.
Well, that age hopefully is now over because young women today don’t hesitate to use social media to name and shame such predators. Good for them! I realise that we women need to be badass rather than being diffident, and reticent even when we are harmed. Our upbringing has left so much to be desired. Whether we look at how religion defines women’s behaviours – the do’s and don’ts prescribed and the social diktat governing women we have always been the recipients of unsolicited advice; always told to behave in certain ways; to speak respectfully especially before men; in short to use tame language because to use any other language is to be uncultured.
Khasis are so obsessed with “respectability” (the donburom cult), that we women can never be ourselves or express our deepest angst. Men can use cuss words with gay abandon but if a woman does it she would be called a ‘khusbi’ (person with loose morals). And talking about prostitutes (sex workers as they are called today), if there were no men to solicit their services they would not be in the business. It takes two to tango so all those men roaming around Police Bazar to shame sex workers (rot is the new name given to them) stop shaming these women. They are earning their livelihoods in a world where no one cares for them. Yes you men who try to shame these women, you can do so only if you can provide them a decent livelihood. Else you have no right to police the streets.
One topic that seems to bother many young Khasi women today is the burden of being the “Khatduh.” One of the young scholars said that if you are the khatduh society has already brainwashed you into entering a role where you have to be responsible for your elder siblings, your parents and more. What’s interesting is that the role of the Khatduh in Khasi society has been scripted such that she is the heiress of her parent’s property – the ancestral home. This assumption is so cliched that it stinks. Not every ‘Khatduh’ comes from a moneyed family and not every Khasi family owns a home. There are thousands of families today that don’t own any property and live in rented homes. What happens to the Khatduh in such a family where parents incur debts that they leave behind after their demise? Has anyone ever spoken about them? Do researchers within society and outside it ever delved into the economic condition of such ‘Khatduhs?’ Why do we stereotype all Khatduhs to be heiresses and hence attractive propositions? And do we leave the poor Khatduh with any choice? Parents want her to marry, reproduce and carry on the legacy. Young women are today finding the spine to resist early marriages and are living their lives by their own rules. Good for them!
Matriliny is so glorified that people forget there are many single women parents out there whose lives are imperilled. In one of his write-ups, Nicholas Kristof quotes Daniel Patrick Moynihan who argued most presiently and powerfully that single parent households would make poverty more intractable. Moynihan says, “A community that allows large numbers of young men to grow up in broken families – never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future – that community asks for and gets chaos.” How very well spoken! A study by Sara Mclanahan of Princeton and Christopher Jeneks of Harvard shows that growing up with one biological parent reduces the chance that a child will graduate from high school by 40%. Do we have similar studies by any University here considering that single-parenthood is rampant? Sadly single-parenthood is taken as the norm and single mothers are expected to cope. But are they coping?
Unfortunately this society will discuss culture, tradition, religion and everything else under the Meghalaya sky except the real issues – single parenthood as the cause of poverty and landlessness among the Khasis. Is there any Government plan to acquire land and allot such land to the landless? Is the District Council, the custodian of all our land and resources thinking of such a scheme? When will they do it? It’s now or never. The Khasi society is hurting but those in politics can’t see the hurt and pain because they don’t come from poverty and don’t know what it is to walk a mile in a poor woman’s torn slippers. And sometimes barefoot!
We have deceived ourselves with all the niceties of culture, buried our agonies in the dances and songs but the real Khasi society is not what is portrayed for the outside world. The poor have no right to cultural expressions because they cannot afford the finery. These are bitter truths that we need to deal with! Lets not pretend they don’t impinge on our social character.
