By Gregory Shullai
The assertions and the suggestions that follow are meant for a few readers who are cognisant with the problems that Shillong society is going through, and no others…that is really one of my wishes. As for the latter part of the wish I do, of course see more and more that it may not be fulfilled, as what follows is about tackling the problems that society is faced with these days and which I believe is a matter of growing concern everywhere. In the paragraphs that follow, it goes without saying that there will be a certain degree of impudence in the conclusions I have drawn on how and why society is slipping away, and that “Educators” – the first prerequisite of education are lacking (except in very rare cases) hence the decline of our culture.
If anyone has made a reckoning of what we are going through in today’s society, it is obvious that not only our tribal culture is on the decline but that the reasons for it are building up more and more. No one in society today can spend time analysing on what’s happening to our culture – that is true of individuals, it is also true of Government, and judging from the recent approach of Government in finding a solution to the problems in society there is every reason to believe that Government is aware that our Educators – the Rangbah Shnongs and the Dorbars must play a more proactive role. But that is where the problem lies. Rangbah Shnongs are a stepping stone to a career in politics or are retired personnel – the former are too ambitious the latter have no ambition at all, as they are busy spending time on balancing their expenditure with their earnings, keeping updated on senior citizen affairs, streamlining their Aadhaar and Bank documents, EPIC card matters and attending to family obligations, etc, etc that there is a shortage of serious time in any other direction. All we really do about the important matter of our declining society is talk. That explains why the individual cannot, or is not doing enough to update the culture of our traditional heads of society with the times so that they use their authority as and when the situation demands in these changed circumstances.
We have left the growth of our culture to the Autonomous District Councils (ADCs) and to some extent the State Government. And let us be clear on this matter, culture and the State – we must not be deceived – are antagonists: that the State should support culture over the statute is a wishful thought. To maintain our culture, we now depend on the 6th Schedule of the Constitution of India, but is that the right thing to do? Our culture was at its peak when there was no politics or politics was not dominating our lives. That which is great in the cultural sense doesn’t need and cannot coexist with politics, and the reason is very obvious – politics is about power, culture is about a shared system of meaning that binds a society together. Culture provides the values, beliefs and practices that people use to make sense of the world in which they live while politics is about money huh. Culture should influence politics – sadly it doesn’t, politics should not influence a culture – sadly it does. That’s the ipso facto – the irrefutable fact on the matter. Politics has become so much our source of bread and butter that the old ways of educating our people by the traditional institutions like the Dorbars, can no longer be taken seriously enough. Furthermore, scholars from the Universities and the Centres of learning, having spent serious months and years writing thesis after thesis into ‘the what and why’ of our culture now believe that they have a greater right to comment on anything that has to do with our culture so much so that even the Dorbars are incapable of the kind of seriousness that culture demands of them. It is for this reason that I repeatedly impress that every thesis from any University on our culture be inscribed with, “For Academic Purposes Only” just as an official document is inscribed with, “For Official Purposes Only” so that the comments and claims in these documents (theses) have no validity in legal matters and definitely not in matters connected to our culture. The essential ‘thing’ has gone out of the entire system of our cultural growth owing to these scholastic documents which are being used to determine and describe our culture.
The history of the Schedule Districts and the enactment of the 6th Schedule to the Constitution of India, signified one thing above all else – a displacement of our centre of gravity of our growth from culture to politics. This fact is known to everyone but they refuse to admit it, maybe because it’s something that’s too difficult for us to entangle with now. We have come to realise that whatever protection we are afforded with has been given to us by the 6th Schedule to the Constitution of India. Under such a set-up it was only natural that the grounds on which our culture grew faded away.
Unlike politics, culture is not a fruit without roots, there are Educators who guide society towards the attainment of a cultural goal and they are not the grammar taught teachers and University scholars that press towards scholastic goals – they were the Syiems, the Rangbah Shnongs and their Dorbars – these institutions were aligned with what we were, what we are and what we needed to become. These were the first line “Educators” and were the first prerequisite for promoting our culture. They, like living bodies, grew from start to finish in the noble spirit of those that knew the past, were cognisant of the present and confidently stepped into the future. These institutions were our Educators and the British gave them due recognition when they were nearing the end of their reign over India. An extract from Layers of History by our own D.R. Syiemlieh will establish what I’m getting at. “In early 1934 was formed the Federation of Khasi States. The Federation was revived in 1946 when the State became concerned with their future. It was with this Federation and the individual Khasi Chiefs that the Indian Dominion had to negotiate for their integration into the Union of India.” (page 72-73). It goes on to say that “the future of these Hills was….to be decided by the Khasi Chiefs” and that though the existing arrangements would continue the federated States would have “judicial power,” in short, the Dorbars would dominate the future plans of integrating the people of the “Hima” with the Union of India
This arrangement ensured that the customs, the culture and the traditions that the people lived by would continue and that the “Educators” would not alter in spite of the changes brought about by the political and constitutional changes. Sadly, things changed almost immediately – not in the way that we hoped but in the way that the new political leaders desired – an order was issued for the arrest of Wycliffe Syiem, who was personally very upset because he believed that the Khasi Syiems were coerced into signing the Instrument of Accession, and declared the Hima Nongstoin as a Sovereign State. He fled to East Pakistan where he died in 1988.
The Syiems (Hima and Raid) continue to exist but the Syiems no longer innovate ways and means to strengthen our culture as the seat of power has now been usurped by the political leaders. In short, our Educators – the Syiems, the Rangbah Shnongs and their Dorbars were so thoroughly de-seated from power that their role in our cultural growth stagnated and has remained stagnant. We are now wandering in a world of wishes and searching for that something in our Dorbars that can lift us out from the slough of insufficiency and teach us again, simply and honestly, what our culture demands of us – but how? people have become so complicated that they must be dishonest if they wish to act on their words. To the rest of the country, we are not recognised for our culture – Khasi, Jaintia or Garo – we are recognised because of the 6th Schedule.
