Editor,
The Khasi Students’ Union’s (KSU) latest directive demanding the Public Works Department remove temporary pandals and structures along PWD roads exposes a glaring, selective hypocrisy. One is compelled to ask: would the KSU ever dare issue a similar diktat to prevent pandals, lights, and other celebratory paraphernalia during Christmas, or do they suffer from a selective phobia exclusively reserved for the Durga Puja festival? For years, the landscape of Police Bazar, Laitumkhrah, and other vital areas of Shillong has routinely been taken over and choked by festive decorations during Christmas—usurping public spaces as if they were private ancestral property rather than shared civic domains. Ironically, this very culture of grand public takeover and large-scale street ornamentation is something the local tribals themselves imbibed and learned from the vibrant milieu of Durga Puja festivals, given that such flamboyant street displays were virtually unheard of during earlier generations when Christmas was a subdued, quiet affair in this hill town.
It is an open secret that until the local populace witnessed the grandeur, scale, and organizational spectacle surrounding Durga Puja, Christmas celebrations in these hills were remarkably dull and low-key. Yet, after mimicking and adopting that very culture of largeness, the KSU now turns around to selectively weaponize administrative rules against a specific festival. This transparent double standard carries dangerous real-world consequences. The same KSU figures and local pressure groups are quick to cry foul, shouting racism, detestation, and bigotry whenever a tribal from Meghalaya is harassed or attacked on the streets of New Delhi or elsewhere in mainland India. Do these organizations ever pause to realize that their vitriolic, exclusionary acts and targeted policing of cultural traditions back home have a direct, corrosive bearing on the safety and goodwill of their own brethren across the rest of the country? Hypocrisy on home turf breeds resentment elsewhere; you cannot demand universal tolerance abroad while practicing petty intolerance at doorstep.
Observing the insular and regressive mindset of the KSU, one gets the distinct impression that if railways were ever successfully introduced to Meghalaya—especially connecting East Khasi Hills—the tracks would effectively operate as a one-way street, where trains would only roll into the state and none would ever dare leave, crippled by an irrational fear of openness. What exactly does the leadership hold on to? They fiercely champion an identity while following a dominant religion that is completely foreign and out of consonance with their indigenous hearth, home, ancient traditions, and roots. One is forced to wonder if there is even a full-blooded, culturally grounded Khasi identity left in the community today, or if it has been hollowed out by borrowed dogmas and artificial outrage.
More tragically, when has the KSU ever shown this kind of aggressive hyper-vigilance or pressurized the state government over the abysmal, dilapidated health and educational infrastructure plaguing Meghalaya? Their collective larynx is strained over temporary puja pandals that naturally come and go within a week, yet they remain deafeningly silent on the daily suffering of their own people, whose identity, dignity, and socio-economic survival are barely known or cared about beyond the boundaries of the Northeast. Wake up, KSU, and confront the real, crushing crises destroying the state from within—or else you will soon find that you no longer have a society left to protect, nor even any real issues worth screaming your lungs out for. This is not an invitation to ignite friction, but a blunt, necessary clarion call to wake up and see what your misplaced priorities have made of you.
Ranjit Bose
Bivar Road
Shillong
