SHILLONG: The Maitshaprang has asked all women NGOs, religious bodies, pastors and individuals to support and create awareness about the importance of compulsory registration of all marriages besides the equitable distribution of property.
The statement came from Maitshaprang convener, Michael Syiem, after an article was published in a website, which portrayed Khasi women as women with loose characters, who move freely in and out of marriage.
Syiem also said that the NGOs, religious bodies and pastors should make public any other better alternatives rather than Meghalaya Compulsory Registration of Marriage Act and Equitable Distribution of Self Acquired and Ancestral Property Act, to show to the world the positive side of the Khasi society, to facilitate positive writings about the local people in near future.
“Along the years, many more writings from mainland India and abroad appeared portraying Khasi men and women in poor light,” he said while recalling that on May 2, 2010 , The Shillong Times carried an article by Paramita Lahiri Muller, who translated a Bengali novel “Biloris” about plains people from Bengal and Assam who came with the British to the Khasi Hills, many who had wife and children back home, but they kept Khasi women as “Concubines” and children born from such relationships grew up without knowing their fathers.”
Making a call for introspection on why such writings keep appearing every now and then, Syiem added that if people continue to be in a denial mode, people will find that in matrilineal Meghalaya, especially among Khasis, where marriage registration is not compulsory, for both Christians and non-Christians, dissolution of marriage will be more “regressive” than Triple Talaq and negative writings about Khasi society will keep appearing.
Syiem also pointed out that in triple Talaq, the man will have to pronounce Talaq three times, and in Matrilineal Meghalaya, the man simply walks out of a marriage without saying or giving anything.
