Editor,
I write as a parent of a daughter who has represented Meghalaya in cricket – young women who took to the game with dreams of making it a career, and who deserve far better than what they have been subjected to in all these years.
In recent days, we have watched with growing dismay as the matter of sexual harassment within the Meghalaya Cricket Association, a matter of the gravest seriousness, is now being quietly reframed into a procedural dispute. MCA Secretary Rayonald Kharkamni and those rallying behind him are now changing the real issue to the legality of a suspension order. It is a shameful deflection.
When a person in authority faces accountability for enabling or overlooking sexual misconduct, and his first instinct is to reach for procedural arguments, the public is entitled to draw its own conclusions.
A suspension pending inquiry is not a punishment. It is the most basic, instinctive response that any responsible institution owes to the women who have come forward. Employers across every sector, public and private, understand this. The fact that this elementary step has been resisted with such aggression tells us something deeply uncomfortable about Kharkamni’s actions and priorities.
What is being lost in this noise is the substance of what the Women’s Commission found – findings that reflect badly not only on individuals named in the report but also on a culture of institutional apathy that our daughters have been quietly enduring for years.
We say quietly, because many of us know that it did not begin here. Some parents among us came together sometime last year after our daughters shared deeply troubling accounts of what they had experienced and witnessed. We approached Kharkamni. We were not received. Our concerns were not entertained. There was no attempt to understand what we were raising or to offer any assurance of safety or redress.
We now understand why.
Kharkamni is not alone in this failure. There are other individuals who now don’t hold formal office, who showed the same indifference when we and our daughters tried to speak up. The pattern was consistent. The Commission’s report, along with the voices now finding the courage to speak publicly, has made that pattern impossible to ignore. The MCA’s problems in this regard were not accidental. They were systemic, sustained by individuals who had neither the will nor the interest to act differently.
We are not naive about the politics of cricket administration. We are aware that the current President carries his own political associations and that the MCA does not exist outside of Meghalaya’s broader landscape. But whatever one may think of James Sangma, what is self-evident is that something is being attempted—a cleaning up, however imperfect—and the desperation with which Kharkamni is resisting it speaks volumes. A man with nothing to hide does not fight this hard against accountability.
Our daughters chose cricket. They gave years of their youth, their physical effort, and their belief to this game and to this state. They deserve officials who take their safety seriously, who would sooner resign than become an obstacle to justice. Until individuals such as Kharkamni are removed from positions of authority, we fear that the environment our daughters play in will remain hostile to their dignity, however many Commissions report and however many orders are passed.
Yours etc.,
RP Dkhar
Via email
The Jaintia Are Not a Footnote of Khasi History
Editor,
Bhogtoram Mawroh’s article, “Shillong Lok Sabha By-Election: More Than a Contest between Two Teachers,” may focus on electoral politics, but it also reflects a wider issue that often appears in public discussions of Meghalaya’s history: the way the identity of the Jaintia people is sometimes presented as secondary, or absorbed into a broader Khasi framework.
This raises a simple but important question: are we accurately representing the distinct historical identities of the peoples of Meghalaya, or are we slowly narrowing them through selective interpretation?
The Jaintia people are not a subgroup of the Khasi, as Bhogtoram has mentioned in the above article and has frequently argued elsewhere in his writings. They are a distinct indigenous community with their own language, religion, customs, traditions, social systems, and historical record. Reducing this identity into a subset of another community does not reflect historical complexity.
Long before the formation of Meghalaya, the Jaintia Kingdom existed as an independent political entity with its own rulers, administration, laws, and governance structures. The British annexation of the Jaintia Kingdom in 1835 marks a separate and clearly defined historical trajectory. These are not interpretations. They are established historical facts.
While the Khasi and Jaintia peoples share ancient cultural and linguistic connections and have lived side by side for centuries, shared roots do not mean identical histories. Over time, each developed its own political institutions, cultural practices, and social traditions. Recognising this is not about division; it is about historical accuracy.
The term “Jaintia” is not merely a geographic label. It is the name of a people who built a kingdom, shaped institutions, and preserved a rich cultural heritage. The British did not invent the Jaintia identity; they encountered an already established polity with its own structures and traditions.
This is why historical writing and public commentary require care. When key parts of a people’s history are consistently underemphasised or merged into another narrative, it creates an incomplete understanding of the past.
When the unique history of the Jaintia people is repeatedly overlooked, readers have every right to question that narrative. Bhogtoram Mawroh’s readers have seen this pattern often enough to notice it. In discussion after discussion, the Jaintia historical experience is subtly folded into a broader Khasi framework, as though centuries of separate political and cultural development can be merged into a single storyline. One is left wondering whether this is careful historical analysis or selective framing. Good scholarship is built on evidence, not assumptions, and certainly not on repetition that gradually replaces fact with convenience.
This is not an attack on Khasi identity, nor an attempt to divide indigenous communities. The Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo peoples together form the foundation of Meghalaya. Their unity, however, must rest on mutual recognition; not on the absorption of one identity into another. Unity does not mean uniformity. Respecting the distinct identity of the Jaintia people is not regionalism. It is historical honesty.
Bhogtoram Mawroh, like any public intellectual, has every right to interpret and analyse. But public influence carries responsibility. Readers also have the right to critically examine narratives that do not fully reflect historical evidence. No interpretation of history should be beyond scrutiny.
The histories of Meghalaya’s peoples belong equally to all its communities. Any account that consistently fails to reflect this balance remains incomplete.
History cannot be written by leaving one people out. The Jaintia are not a footnote in Khasi history- they are one of the founding indigenous peoples of Meghalaya, with their own long and independent historical legacy. That reality is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of historical record.
Yours etc.,
Mantre H Dkhar,
Via email
