By Janet Moore Hujon

Hills
God turned all hardness into hills/
Man with harder heart entered and began blasting them.
Atreya Sarma:
Muse India. Issue 42 2012

A few years ago I wrote to my friend Deepa Majumdar and told her how “At the London Book Fair I met Mandira Sen (publisher of Stree) – a more humble, soulful person I could not have had the greater pleasure to encounter. I felt and was touched by her gentle soul. Her husband had grown up in Shillong and she says he is still heavily biased in favour of Shillong – all places are wonderful if they reflect Shillong in some way!” Later I was to learn that her husband had had a career as a diplomat, so his viewpoint vis-à-vis Shillong was high praise indeed.

The prime reason why I visited London – which I tend to avoid – was to listen to Mamang Dai, my teacher, Mrs Temsula Ao, and Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih. I was so proud to see these names from the hills on the programme – North-East India was on the global literary map! Hearing what Mandira Sen had to say was the added bonus, deepening the warm sensation with which I left London that evening. Yet today those same words only emphasise the sense of loss I have when I think about my city today. I can no longer kid myself that the pride I felt in the Shillong that was, can in any way be sustained. It is only because I am a Khasi who grew up in the hills that the city still tugs at my heart-strings.

Why and how did we allow Shillong to be dragged to this state? It is totally misleading and verging upon falsehood, to describe Shillong as “a pollution free city where you can breathe clean and fresh air”. (http://meghalayatourism.org/spots.htm) How can a city choking on its own traffic fumes be pollution free? And those stinking mounds of garbage are certainly not figments of anyone’s imagination. As for the majestic Wah Umkhrah now reduced to an effluent – albeit not without the power to wreak powerful revenge. Is this what “halfway to heaven” (again courtesy Meghalaya Tourism) looks like?

And isn’t it an outrage to advertise our caves as a tourist selling point when they are being dynamited out of existence? No wonder Brian Kharpran Daly whose knowledge of these caves was spurred by love and intellectual curiosity, should feel so betrayed by our government. Read his article (Mining Policy? A Lost Cause) with that sense of truth that is deep in all our hearts and listen…listen carefully and you might just hear a heart break. How perceptive and far-seeing was our Soso Tham when he wrote “Jingshai ngi wad sawdong pyrthei/Jingshai ka Ri ngim kheiñ eiei”… (We seek the light from far-off lands/ Despise the light within our land).

To the detriment of our state and our people we in Meghalaya, for whatever destructive reason, persist in ignoring local expertise. And by expertise I not only mean scientific and practical knowledge, but the love that keeps that knowledge alive. This you can see in the reflections of people like Brian Daly and HH Mohrmen. It is people like these two gentlemen who should be at the forefront of any government endeavour to preserve and promote Meghalaya. Here are two individuals who know what they are talking about because they are in touch not only with the environment and the people they write about, but also with their own conscience. I am in no doubt that there are many others like them whose voices have been made mute by a sense of utter hopelessness. Besides giving us the Khasi equivalent of the word conscience, Holando Lyngdoh’s English Khasi Dictionary provides the nuanced explanation. Conscience is an inner knowing which either damns (pynrem) or strengthens/elevates (pynksan) any other shared and more overt knowledge (ka jingiatiplem). To know therefore is to love, and to love is to discard that which taints the purity of the emotion and of knowledge.

Unlike our ‘leaders’ these men do not just make the appropriate ecological noises to suit a certain gathering, but tirelessly and generously give of their time and commitment, drawing our attention to the imperilled state of our nurturing environment. In his article Nongtalang – another Sohra in the making Mohrmen clearly shows how the menace of rampant limestone mining and deforestation will destroy the unique life of an idyllic self-sustaining village. Pan leaf cultivation is under threat, says Mohrmen, because water resources are being systematically despoiled. Does this not ring alarm bells in the heads of all those who trumpet endlessly about our tribal identity and culture, while doing their best to squander the natural resources connected to that same culture? Isn’t it time we all realised that a community which destroys its environment is also slowly destroying itself?

The foundations of our tribal identity is grounded in our relationship with Nature. Our earliest mentors have been our hills and our rivers, our forests, our plants, our seasons, our birds and our animals. By observing them our ancestors framed the rules by which they lived their lives. But in the technological world we live today we ignore the writing on the land and doing so we court disaster. If unchecked, the speed with which ‘development’ is taking place can only lead to one end – we will no longer have a living, vibrant, distinctive culture but one that is only visible in museum reproductions and artefacts. And when the awful implications of selfish government and corporate policies become a reality, will we then ask experts from Israel to bail us out, ignoring the fact that “…the War Jaintia…are experts in irrigation”?

There is no denying the fact that Israel today is a modern miracle fulfilling the biblical prophecy contained in Isaiah 35 “…The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom; ..Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams run in the desert”… These stirring, inspiring words which gave succour to persecuted Jews looking for a homeland have indeed been made to come true. But at what cost? Every year the River Jordan is shrinking because its waters have been diverted to quench the thirsty soils of Israel and her neighbours. This is how a steady supply of produce is ensured to feed not only Israel but all other parts of the world with a similar buying power.

This frightening trend to control and not work with natural resources is similar to what is happening in parts of the Peruvian highlands where glaciers are receding and the soil is now impoverished simply because intensive asparagus cultivation requires copious amounts of water. Packaged in attractive, indestructible plastic, the asparagus then makes its way to dining-tables thousands of miles away in Britain. At such points I wonder at the selfish and reckless use of so-called knowledge. Like the villagers in the limestone rich areas of Meghalaya who have always wisely used their natural resources, the mountain people of Peru, through no fault of their own, will soon be left with nothing. The fact that they have always worked in harmony with their surroundings and not been driven by greed, will be forgotten in this mad phenomenon called globalisation. Like the avaricious mining companies in Meghalaya, supermarket giants here in the west are the new colonisers who ensure that those who already have too much can always feel they can have what they want, whenever they want. And like the colonisers of old, the new colonisers will leave with little or no thought for the emotional, cultural and economic cost of that blithe philandering and tampering with Nature.

But amid all this gloom I am beginning to feel some hope. The graphic images of filth and plunder which are appearing with more regularity in the Shillong Times, along with their accompanying write-ups are, strangely enough, encouraging. The articles may provide depressing reading and the photographs still make my heart sink, but underlying the reportage and documentation, there is a sense that we are no longer denying the presence of Rot in the state. Acknowledging evil is after all the first step towards ridding ourselves and our environment of this pollutant. It is also heartening to hear the voices of the younger generation who – to slightly amend Toki Blah’s words – are less “..enchanted with our unwritten past, and are no longer willing to ignore the future they are expected to script”. And script it we must if we are to regain our self-respect and forge anew our identity as responsible citizens of Meghalaya and of this world. So it is the ballot box that will proclaim whether we have the courage of our convictions, whether we can show ourselves and maybe the rest of India that our politicians are in office to promote Meghalaya and not themselves, that they are one of us – people who share our joys, our sorrows, our hopes and our fears, who will work for us and not against us. (The writer is from Shillong but currently lives and works in Cambridge, UK)

By Arup Dey

Mahatma Gandhi worked tirelessly to ensure that the people of India followed his example and lived in poverty, although of course, not in Birla House or the other stately homes that the Father of the Nation chose as his temporary residences. Not for him the passion for wealth that motivates so many “servants of the people” during these sleazy times. A particular politician in India is known to wear a sari on only a single occasion, putting it away once worn rather than perhaps gifting it to the more needy.

This would imply that the lady must need to acquire around 500 saris each year, not a large amount for a person who regularly travels by chartered jet. In her zeal to give cheer to sari merchants, the lady differs from the Mahatma, who possessed only a few changes of clothes, and these homespun. Scanning the horizon for political leaders who emulate the Mahatma in his (absence of) needs, one comes across only Mamata Banerjee and A.K. Antony.

The current defence minister does not, however, entirely share the Paschim Banga CM’s penchant for ensuring that the entire country sinks into the poverty that characterises her state. Especially since 2009, the merest hint of a tantrum from Mamata Banerjee can paralyse Manmohan Singh into silence. Initiative after initiative has been cold-storaged because of the lady. In the process, not only West Bengal (whose people clearly prefer to live by the teachings of the Mahatma, else why would they have chosen Mamata?) but the rest of the country as well is being deprived of the opportunity to decide on whether they would like to join Didi in her Cuban-style economics or go in a different direction, perhaps marching to the beat introduced in China in 1979 by Deng Xiaoping.

Rather than pretend that he is a pensioner rather than the head of government, Manmohan Singh ought to introduce economic reforms with the caveat that it is up to individual state governments whether or not to implement them.

If Mamata is allergic to foreign-brand retail, perhaps Nitish Kumar or even Prithviraj Chavan may not be. Why should these two be denied the choice, simply because the Trinamool Congress supremo wants the nation to stick to Gandhian economic doctrine religiously? Although the idea may sound daft, there may exist a few people in India who would like to do their shopping in a more ordered environment than that provided by the kirana stores frequented by Didi during the days when she was just an MP.

In a few years, it will become clear whether the West Bengal CM was right or the CM, Gujarat, who is busily welcoming foreign enterprises into his state. Should Mamata find that international department stores add to the economy rather than subtract from it, hopefully the lady will change course.

Not that there were not strong reasons for her sabotage of Singur and Nandigram. Think how many extra votes the Left Front would have got, had these two mega projects proceeded smoothly to become operational.

Despite the fact that both the Heir Apparent as well as his closest associate seem to be too terrified of Mamata. His soft corner for Rahul persists, warmed by memories of the (then) young lad strolling around his father’s home office in the 1980s. Instead of believing that voters in India are too stupid to understand the opportunism behind his one night stays in miscellaneous huts, Rahul needs to mobilise his soporific party machinery into agitating for economic reform.

While it is too much to expect Manmohan Singh to show the energy to challenge Didi at this age, the Congress party’s favoured choice for PM needs to tell Mamata that while she is welcome to block change in West Bengal, she will not be allowed to veto it in the whole of India. Give the states the freedom to decide to what extent they are willing to embrace reform, and all of a sudden, the clouds that have blocked growth will begin to dissipate. INAV