By Patricia Mukhim
Some of us love the past so much that we spend much of our waking hours romanticising that past. We love our ‘traditional’ dances although I wonder if women at one point in history knew style as it is displayed today. Did the Khasis have a concept of gold ornaments much before the British came here? Who decided that the red corals interspersed with gold were to become our Khasi trademark? I have tried time and again to find out how we developed the art of the tying the jainsem and how did we accept the jainsem dhara woven in Sualkuchi, Assam as our traditional wear? I guess these came about through the process of adaptation. And that’s the beauty of culture. It adapts and makes something its own. So let’s not fool ourselves that everything we wear today evolved from the indigenous. Certainly, shirts and pants are adapted from the western world. Khasi men wore the jainboh (dhoti) which I believe is adapted from the plains people of Assam and erstwhile East Bengal. The past is always presented in a romantic, cartographic worldview.
Fast forward to today and we are still obsessed with the past but seem to have no appetite to discuss the future of the people of Meghalaya especially the young folks who are groping in the dark. Life is not getting better for too many people in this State. We know it when we use our social lenses to view the world. Unfortunately, too many people obsess only about politics. They see everything through political lenses and that too from partisan lenses.
I am not suggesting that it is wrong to focus on the past because memory, history, and reflection are essential for identity and learning. But when the past becomes something we cling to just to assert our identity then we are on the wrong track. That’s when the past starts to distort our judgment, our relationships within the community and those outside it and ultimately even our public discourses take a wrong turn. Constantly revisiting the past and focussing on past glories is what has got the Khasi society in a trap we seem unable to escape from. We create narratives that sound good such as that, “Khasi society has a strong clan and community system hence we never had beggars.” Well, the reality is that we have several beggars today and they come in different forms.
Two days ago I walked the streets of Police Bazar and was shocked to see a young lady who was blind and had a white cane next to her, sitting and singing by the roadside to entertain strangers so that they put money into her little bucket. Until a few months ago only two men would sit and beg for alms. Now a lady has joined them. So, what happened to our clan and kinship ties? We used to believe that the clan would be there for its members and that none among the clan members would be so poor as to have to beg. Well, that bubble has burst. The clan is broken. The poorer clan members have to fend for themselves and their numbers are growing. Hence for good measure, I would request the Chief Minister to kindly walk down the Police Bazar Lane so that he can also see for himself the growing poverty in Meghalaya which he would not see from the confines of the Secretariat. Perhaps he can then include these poor souls in the Meghalaya Grassroots Music Project (MGMP) since they are also singing for a livelihood. And because they are blind that makes them more deserving of the monthly stipend.
The question to the Khasi society is – how long are we going to be trapped in a romanticised past? Psychology tells us that constantly revisiting past glories can trap us in a fixed narrative. Hence, we stop responding to what is actually happening now. This is our congenital disorder as a society. Our conversations revolve around the same issues like a broken record and we stop short of taking the conversation further to find solutions to the issues confronting us. Do we need someone from Delhi to tell us that our education system right from the primary level in the distant rural hamlets have failed and there are more kids outside the school than inside? Have we tried to engage seriously with this issue or do we just wash our hands off because we have learnt to believe that every issue must be dealt with by the Government.
True the Government has the resources but such resources are too thinly spread to be able to make a difference. Unless society with a growing number of affluent among us think beyond ourselves and engage in philanthropy we will see Meghalaya fail on all fronts because without education we will have a generation that is incapable of facing a technologically run world. Sadly, our state is extremely poor in philanthropy. Look at the number of millionaires who have made their wealth from the coal mines. Has anyone of them set up a school where education is truly free right from the uniform to books to school fees? Not a single one thus far! Has any coal mine owner started a health care facility to serve those living close to the mines? Here too the answer is in the negative. And we still call ourselves a close knit “community?” Sorry we are already loose-knit and tearing apart. So let’s drop the pretence.
What we are doing today is to keep replaying events without any resolution. Growth requires some degree of movement forward, not just backward reflection. Many writers look back at history and point to a glorious past. But there are subtle distortions in the narratives. The past is rarely remembered as it truly was. Memory is selective and often reshaped by present circumstances. Much of the past that we harp on are simplistic notions and some are in the realm of mythology. Such simplistic notions of the past can and does make the present seem worse or more unjust than it actually is while past traditions appear purer, more humane than they really were.
The point of this article is to dwell at least on one aspect of the past which the Khasis are proud of and to see if we can revive that. It’s about our tradition of discussing an issue for days together until we arrive at a consensus. The British were impatient when the Syiem and his dorbar took several days to decide on an issue (Tirot Sing and the discussion about whether to allow construction of a road through Nongkhlaw to Sylhet). However, the British noted this and that’s how we have come to know that the Khasis had a participatory form of governance. It was precisely to unite all the Syiems and their myntri, basan etc., that the purpose of the Khasi National Dorbar (KND) Hall was envisioned. The KND itself was formed in 1923 to discover the best way possible to ensure unity and cooperation among the Khasi States to chalk out their future under the new constitutional set-up post-Independence. The first meeting carried on for three days and the attendees were told to bring their own food. This so that no one would be burdened with having to provide food. The KND was the first ever attempt to unite all the Khasi states under one organisation to discuss and document important socio-cultural and political issues relevant at the time such as land rights, residency rights and right to ancestral property, amongst other issues.
The question is – why is the Khasi National Dorbar Hall not being used today to discuss the plethora of issues plaguing the society? Since the state was created in 1972, Meghalaya has not spent time to chart out an economic vision using its natural resources, not exploiting them the way we have done in the past 54 years. As a result, we incurred a heavy opportunity cost. All our energies are spent regurgitating on the past but we have no appetite for solving the current problems and imagining a better future. This has happened because we have not learnt to balance tradition with change nor to navigate identity, development, and modernity. Whenever we arrive at a difficult juncture instead of looking for solutions we look for scape-goats. In the case of Meghalaya, the most convenient scapegoat is the non-tribal who we believe is constantly looking at usurping what is ours, when the devil is lurking somewhere else.
So, what Meghalaya needs today is a public platform that discusses and analyses problems; finds solutions and looks for a way forward. It is more meaningful to approach the Government with a list of possible solutions to vexed problems than to berate it all the time. After all, the Government is what we have elected, so, we have to make it work. Those in charge of the KND Hall please open its doors and let’s get back to discussing the most pressing issues and work towards solutions. Our propensity to politicise everything and gain brownie points by putting the Government on the docks has not worked in the last 54 years and is unlikely to work for the future too. The time to change is NOW. Let’s focus on the present and future and only learn important lessons from the past.
