By Justin Lamin
Waiting is the universal ordinary act we perform every day. We perform it, often without ever realising. We wait for the traffic to clear, for the phone to ring, for the queue to shorten, for the class to end. These waits were negligible and manageable; we often forgot and moved on with life. But there are kinds of waiting that don’t seem to pass, that linger in the bones, that are familiar with the sun that rises but fails to deliver its promises. This waiting is silent, yet it is frustrating and demoralising. Without proper explanation, it grows heavier with each passing day. Pierre Bourdieu writes in Pascalian Meditations, ‘ Waiting is one of the ways of experiencing the effects of power’, and ‘domination lies in the act of making people wait yet without fully destroying their hope’. Waiting can be understood as both an expression of weakness and frailty and a spark that generates wakefulness, vigilance, and awareness of what happened to oneself and one’s surroundings.
For the people of Khasi-Jaintia, there is a particular kind of waiting that defines their consciousness; it is not passive but actively anticipates a dawn that seems to be perpetually disappearing and out of reach. For the people, this experience of waiting has crystallised around two monumental dreams – the implementation of the Inner Line Permit and the inclusion of the Khasi language in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. At face value, these two anticipated dreams appear to be mere policy demands. From a community perspective, it rests with the subjects of identity and security.
The demand for ILP stems from concerns about the demographic explosion and the anxieties it entails. The tenet of ILP is about preserving indigenous identity by regulating people’s mobility patterns entering the state. Academic discourse has stated that the Khasi-Jaintia community fears marginalisation in their native land due to unregulated migration that threatens their economic and cultural interests, often citing cautionary tales from neighbouring states. Amidst this fear, the state government passed the Meghalaya Residents Safety and Security Bill in 2016 and amended it again in 2020. However, the Act was returned by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to the state government, and Meghalaya High Court noted that certain provisions in MRSSA were omnibus in nature and lacked specific parameters, leading to the closure of the entry-exit gates. Parallel to the struggle for ILP, the struggle for recognition of the Khasi language, enshrined in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution, has been pursued persistently to strengthen the cultural legitimacy of identity within broader Indian narratives. Seven years ago, the resolution to implement ILP and to include the Khasi language, along with the Garo language, in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution was unanimously passed in the august House of Meghalaya. It was considered a rare event by many; everyone was on the same path, irrespective of party affiliation. There were various speculations and narratives about it; some attributed it to public pressure, while others saw it as a serious concern for the state. However, it appears that even after the bills and resolutions have passed, the wait continues.
One could argue that the Khasi and Garo languages have been recognised as official languages in Meghalaya, so what was the need for inclusion in the 8th schedule? Although the move was crucial at the moment, a firm assertion of indigenous identity and recognition is much more needed in the oceans of diverse cultures in India. Furthermore, these are not new in the socio-political sphere of Meghalaya; the struggle and demand for the implementation and recognition of these two imperative issues, ILP and the inclusion of the Khasi language in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution, date back to the 1990s and 1970s, respectively. Meanwhile, during this process of waiting over the past decades, several protests have taken place, spearheaded by the civil society organisations, alongside the submission of memoranda and numerous delegations meeting with concerned ministers of different governments. These efforts have been made by all sides – by the civil society organisations, the state government, and the regional parties- to convince the concerned ministries of the union government to fulfil these two milestones. Despite all of these, the people have waited, yearning for that day when their long-held hopes finally become reality. This waiting – an absolute experience of humankind engenders myriad forms of fluctuating emotions – from anger to anticipation, from hope to excitement and from nostalgia to patience. Moreover, this kind of waiting experience, marked by uncertainty and significant delays, creates a sense of powerlessness, often resulting in visible irritation and restlessness.
Once every five years, at the festival (election) celebration. Numerous groups made numerous promises that pump up hope among the people. At such a juncture, those years of waiting in silence, solitude, and heavier anticipation seem to disappear and cease to exist. It was as if people were on the verge of reaping those fruits – it appeared as if their demands would be fulfilled as soon as the festival wound up. For decades, those dreams have existed only in imagination, yet to be materialised. These decades of collective waiting find their echo in Penelope’s protracted vigil for Odysseus, not to forget that, at least, he returns to her. This art of waiting, as a particular experience of time, becomes normalised for people anticipating the implementation of the ILP and the inclusion of the Khasi language. It appears as if the dawn is finally breaking, yet the light never quite arrives. This demonstrates that it is not merely a collective waiting – it is being kept waiting. Schwartz, in one of his classic writings, about the study of queues as social systems, puts it as “to be kept waiting an unusually long time, is to be the subject of an assertion that one’s own time (and therefore, one’s social worth) is less valuable than the time and worth of the one who imposes the wait”. This experience of waiting is structurally embedded – the apparatus’s schema is designed so that a person waits. Waiting is a testament of patience that raises expectations and high hopes for those who wait for their dreams to be realised, and of vulnerability, emptiness, and anger for those who keep on waiting yet are uncertain about the outcome. However, through the lens of those who are constantly waiting, this has become a commonplace experience, a challenging aspect of anxiety to contemplate.
The wait for ILP and the inclusion of the Khasi language in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution have transcended the political sphere and become a lived experience for the people. This collective waiting arises from a deep concern for identity and the preservation of culture. A waiting that has been persistently followed up on through various memorandums, delegations and assurances. It is a wait that slowly erodes public trust, pushing civil society groups from petitioning to intense protest. For the people, these are not abstract political goals or individual achievements but a concrete affirmation of their identity and culture. Perhaps the sunrise might deliver its promises someday, and perhaps that heavy weight of waiting will be lifted sooner, but until then, people wait and hope for that day.
