The much-delayed Monolith Festival is just days away and organisers are hopeful for a successful cultural event that really shines a light on the Khasi community.
But is a festival over a few days really the best way to go about preserving, celebrating and rejuvenating a tribal culture? Highland Post has sought to get a variety of opinions on this subject.
The Monolith Festival is being held under the aegis of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council (KHADC), which is meant to preserve and protect the indigenous Khasi community and steer it through the minefield that is the modern world. The three-day event – March 7-9 – will be held at the Mawphlang Heritage Village.
One of those who is slightly cautious about heralding the event is Ian Lyngdoh, an author and TV presenter.
The Monolith Festival, he pointed out, is a modern, tourist-driven exercise, far different from traditional religiously-oriented festivals like the Shad Nongkrem or Behdienkhlam.
“It is acceptable that such festivals like the Monolith Festival and Terra Madre have served to showcase the arts and crafts, traditional food, dress and dances to name a few, but they are limited in the sense that a two- or three-day cultural festival held once a year does not address the bigger question of preserving and sustaining the indigenous culture of the community especially amongst the youth and the future generations,” Lyngdoh said. “Culture is a dynamic process and not static. Today, indigenous ways are being trampled and threatened by new digital media and forces of assimilation. The market forces are unforgiving and like a surgeon’s scalpel they will cut through the social fabric and what’s left of our heritage and tradition and leave it wide open never to be mended, somewhat akin to the colonial rule in these hills.”
Lyngdoh was concerned that tourists may simply, once the event is over, “return to their pre-festival life with zero culture in their post-festival life.”
The KHADC, he opined, needs to do more to make up for its “non-performance in codifying our traditional laws and initiating the production of knowledge in terms of dynamics related to our social structure”.
Taking a somewhat different tack was former forest officer Gregory F Shullai. He hopes that the festival is able to combine the old and the new in a positive way.
“The festival will remind us of the culture we once professed and to some extent it may awaken us to the reality that we have forsaken that old tradition, those old ethical values and norms that were destining us toward a more unified radical culture,” he said. “Culture is central to human life and it is only a strong culture based on a solid foundation that can create distinguished, creative and powerful individuals, whereas a confused state of chatterboxes can only produce mediocre and inferior individuals.”
Khasi society is fragmented today and needs to see a revival of its life-affirming qualities of yore, Shullai opined, though he was realistic in admitting that there is no way of turning back the clock fully.
Festival preparations are in full swing, Alan West Kharkongor, a member of the expert committee, informed today.
The last Monolith Festival in 2016 was done on too large a scale, he said, and this year will only feature 80 food stalls instead of the previous 200. Handicraft stalls will also be cut to 40 from 70.
This year will feature cultural dances that are unique to parts of Khasi Hills. There will also be workshops for school students and several indigenous games of Ri-Bhoi will also be featured.
With a protected forest right next door, this year will also feature birdwatching, guided by experts in the field. Kharkongor explained that the idea is also to train the guides at Mawphlang to become birding guides, which will add value to their daily employment after the festival ends.
“Mawphlang is already identified as a hot spot for birding because of the old-age tradition of preservation of our sacred forest and the wisdom of our forefathers,” he added.
Kharkongor was a little critical of the state of the “huts” at the Mawphlang Heritage Village. The KHADC has renovated them for the festival but he felt that a lack of proper management led to them becoming dilapidated in the first place.
“With such kind of infrastructure, it is sad to see that renovation and expenditure take place only during such events such as the Monolith instead of engaging a professional management firm that will take care of the place all the time since it is already a tourist hotspot,” he said.
