(Continued from: https://highlandpost.com/khasi-christians-and-the-rss/)
The Khasis were building this institution when it was abruptly invaded and slowly done away with. As an institution we were beginning to establish the most enduring form of organisation by bringing in the clan to play the role of the centre of gravity of the family, not the couple.
With the new way, the clan could no longer stand in the way of the couple as the new way brought with it the above compelling instruction that man and woman shall leave the clan and establish their own instead. Under this instruction the smallest domain of the family became the man, the woman and their child, not the clan.
The child became the sole inheritor of the parent’s property and acquisitions, the parent’s power and influence, and to shoulder the protracted tasks in the years ahead of them as a family. As a rule, whether the clan is the centre of gravity or the parents, marriage instinctively includes a long term arrangement and a most enduring form of organisation and basically this concept establishes itself for the long term. If this was not the case then marriage had no meaning at all. Modern day marriage has lost this meaning consequently it is losing out and the increase in single mothers is an affirmation of this fact.
What we have come to feel today of the new or the modern day family is regret because the old ways were more meaningful and that a revival would be the ideal but, a turning back in any sense and to any degree, is quite impossible now.
There may be those that consider it possible, who believe they can revive the social ways of an earlier standard of virtue but there is no way that a crabwise retrogression can be made to happen; society is not as free as a crab; there is only one way for it and that is to go forward; that is to say step by step further into a more decadent state. At best we can only retard the situation, more than that we cannot do.
And now, as if we did not learn enough from the first invasion, the Khasi society is embracing another invasion – the introduction of “return to the old ways” with a twist because the return is with a different element – religion, and the RSS is the motivator.
A visit to Kongthong village near Sohra would throw more light on what I’m referring to – to return to the old faith they have even prescribed a mumbo jumbo ritual as a first step. From what can be observed we do not know if it is a going back or a going into an even more frightful state – a state that looks with disdain on the “Christian Khasi” way. There may be those among the Christian Khasis that do consider a return to the past but where do they really want to take the present to?
And this is what the Khasi must ask, “where does the RSS and its “Ghar Wapsi” slogan really want to take them?” We already are so deeply embedded in this new way of life that it is impossible to see where exactly in time we might land. Most sane people see the whole RSS adventure as one big farce being enacted by those who consider themselves as revolutionists.
Others suspect that all this is one big ploy enacted for political and economic gain, and there are others who hate it for the simple reason that it seeks to introduce a wedge between the Seng Khasi and the Christian Khasi by bringing out the hypothetical abstraction of where the Khasi would be if Christian morality had not invaded the Khasi way of life. To be honest, though Christianity has influenced marriage and family life, it stopped there. Every other Khasi way remained intact.
This latest way may influence more than that, it may introduce the “Doctrine of Manu” or the Hinduism way, the one that teaches that “equality is for equals and inequality for unequal” because that is what their voice of justice is, “born of the priestly clan bred into the priestly clan born of the menial clan bred into the menial clan” that is what Hinduism accepts as the true voice of justice, and what follows from it, “never make equal that which is unequal,” which has never been the Khasi way. There is no reason for esteeming such a policy because anyone who has experienced it has experienced it only with disgust.
The problem I see here is not what ought to follow in the sequence of the Christian and the RSS influence on the Khasi, but what type of Khasi is being bred as compared to what ought to be bred, what ought to be desired as being the more valuable for a bright future of the Khasi society.
The higher breed Khasi has existed often enough not because we caused it but by sheer luck, and was reflected in Tirot Singh, in Kiang Nongbah, in Jeebon Roy, in Radhon Singh Berry in Homiwell Lyngdoh in J J M Nichols Roy, in L L D Basan, in L G Shullai and many others who gave the Khasi society a strong influence to remain and uphold for eternity the Khasi traditions and culture. We must never lose sight of these stalwarts and prevent with every sinew of our might the creation of the reverse type which sadly seems to be the trend these days.
