Shillong's People

With a Khasi couple [middle two] - circa1990

One of the many responses to my last post is given below. 

I thought of giving it a personal reply since it was a personal query. On second thought, I concluded that a public response would be better since many people might have similar queries some of which cast aspersions on the indigenous people of Shillong.

The most important clarification I have to make is that my problems in Shillong were not created by the indigenous people of Shillong at all. The Khasis who are the indigenous people can be as friendly as they can be hostile. It depends on how you deal with them. They are tribal people and there is a certain degree of clannishness in their outlooks. That comes, I believe, from some sort of insecurity feeling coupled with an inferiority complex that seems to run deep in the tribe, particularly among the menfolk.

If one of their own scholars, Kynpham Sing Nonkynrih, whose voluminous book on the Khasis I reviewed recently, is to be believed, the advent of Christianity corrupted the Khasi culture by superseding the position of the man in the Khasi matrilineal system with the Christian priest or pastor. The man became redundant, so to say, in matters that really mattered – cultural affairs, particularly.

Even at home, the man’s position was undermined. “[W]hen Khasi men marry, what do they get out of wedlock?” One of Nongkynrih’s characters asks. “Nothing! Their children are not their own! They cannot even identify with them.” The children get the mother’s surname. Even the house belongs to the woman of the family. The man is a nobody at home.

Whatever the role played by Christianity in this undermining of the position of the Khasi male, the situation led to a lot of frustration among the menfolk. In the 15 years that I lived in Shillong, I experienced hostility of varying degrees from the menfolk of the Khasi tribe while the women were exceptionally cordial. The male hostility owed itself to the potential threat that the nontribal male posed to the Khasi male. Nongkynrih makes it abundantly clear in his book how the Khasi women were more drawn to nontribal men for various reasons which I don’t want to enumerate here.

So, to answer my friend who raised the above questions, not all Khasis are unfriendly. The women are very friendly. Probably because they don’t suffer from the insecurity and inferiority of the men. And most men are friendly too, especially those who have achieved success in some field or the other – professionally, socially, etc. Like in every society, among the Khasis too there are many disgruntled elements and they create problems. The uniqueness of the situation in Shillong makes it look like acute xenophobia.

I left Shillong in early 2001. The place must have undergone many changes in the last two decades. I am told that it has become more receptive to people from outside, especially visitors and tourists. Jobs may not be available for outsiders [dkhars, as nontribal people are called by Khasis] anymore. There must be qualified indigenous people now for most jobs.

There was intrinsic distrust of nontribal people in the olden days. I am told that this distrust has not vaporized yet. I guess that runs deep in the collective unconscious of the people and won’t vanish soon. It will take generations and a lot of amiable mingling of cultures. There has been a lot of mingling of cultures and an undesirable degree of miscegenation. But not much of it has been perceived as healthy for the tribe by the menfolk.

As I said earlier, I cannot speak for the present situation in the place. I am not a firsthand witness anymore. I tried to answer the queries put to me. I thought it’s necessary to clarify one thing at least: the personal problems I mention sometimes when I write about my Shillong days were not caused by the inherent xenophobia of the Khasi male – not significantly at least. My problems were partly a creation of my own personal flaws and partly of the nontribal men with excessive missionary zeal. These men took it upon themselves the arduous job of “civilizing or reforming” me. It was their will against mine. It was lose-lose situation in the end. But that’s my personal loss, never mind.