Khasi society is the inverted reflection of a patriarchal setup. Here, the women enjoy social mobility, cultural acceptance and financial privileges
Meghalaya is a destination of choice for scholars and researchers who nurture rosy pictures of a society where women ‘are the bosses’. It is home to three major tribes: Khasi, Jaintia and Garo, all of whom practise the matrilineal system. Curious scribes come here with the notion of meeting women who actually live in a social system that defies patriarchy. Most visitors are awestruck by the concept of matriliny itself. It is, in fact, quite common to hear comments such as, ‘How wonderful to know that women enjoy such an enviable status in family and society’, or ‘How lucky you ladies are to own property in your name’, etc.
Compared to those in the rest of the country, women in Meghalaya certainly have an edge in that (i) they perpetuate the clan, because, lineage is from the mother’s bloodline; (ii) there is no dowry system; (iii) young women are not under any pressure to marry; (iv) marriage is purely by choice and mutual consent and not arranged; (v) co-habitation or what modern couples call ‘living together’ is a part and parcel of Khasi society and not a taboo. Children born out of that union are legitimate in the eyes of society. Khasi culture accepts polygamy as long as the man is in a position to fulfill the financial and material needs of each of his families. Co-habitation became a taboo only when people accepted Christianity and its sacrosanct marriage laws.
In one sense, Christianity gave marriage a sanctity that Khasi society and its indigenous faith did not consider important since procreation is the purpose of marriage. Co-habitation makes it easy for the man to abandon his wife. Marriages are brittle and leave a trail of psychological trauma for the abandoned woman but more so for the children who invariably live with their mother. If the mother has no means of support, the children bear the brunt of their parents’ separation. Often they drop out of school because the mother is unable to support their education. They are forced to work and supplement the family income. Khasis have tended to depend on the strength of the clan. In the past, the clan did care for its destitute members and women were cushioned from adversities. But with modernisation and the attendant economic challenges, the clan ties are weakening. Individual households tend to fend for themselves. If at all the clan helps, it is only by way of a one-off donation for meeting emergencies such as sickness or death in a family.
In Khasi society, property passes through the youngest daughter. But she is not an heiress as some assume. The ancestral home is the hearth and home of all her brothers and sisters as long as they are unmarried. If any of the brothers divorces his wife, he can come back to this hearth and stay with his youngest sister. In recent times there have been loud protests from the male members of Khasi and Jaintia societies that sons too should receive a part of their parents’ property. landlessness or the absence of land titles in the name of male members of Khasi society reduces their status as bankable individuals who can access loans to start a business. Organisations such as the Syngkhong Rympei Thymmai and Mait Shaphrang Movement have been demanding equal rights for both men and women which actually boils down to equitable distribution of parental property. It is unfortunate that these movements are urban-centric and have not made much impact beyond Shillong.
But there is nothing in Khasi society which debars men from inheriting landed property. Some clans owning large tracts of land are known to divide the money earned from their sales equally among clan members, be they men or women, sons or daughters. It is a myth, therefore, to say that men have no property rights. But as a rule, perhaps, men do not inherit property in the manner in which the men in patriarchal societies do. If there is any property at all, it must go to the youngest daughter (Khatduh) because she fulfils certain obligations which her brothers might not like to take upon themselves, more so because after marriage, a Khasi man leaves his parental home and goes to his wife’s home. If he marries a Khatduh he has to live in her home. If he marries any other sister, the couple starts a nuclear family. When a man marries, he is said to have left for somebody else’s home. This does create a sense of psychological alienation for the male as it does for the daughter in a patriarchal society.
Is Khasi society a gender equitable societyIJ What is the status of men vis-à-vis menIJ There is no doubt that parents unwittingly place greater value on daughters because she is the perpetuator of the lineage. But sons are not exactly discriminated against or unwanted. In terms of educational opportunities, sons and daughters get equal opportunities. But like all other societies, Khasis also confuse the biological aspect of being male and female with the cultural construct of men and women. Sexual division of labour is very marked. As a rule, men/boys do not cook, wash the dishes or clothes. Among agrarian families, the woman does more than her share of work from dawn to dusk. Women are expected to care for the sick and elderly. They fetch water and bring fuel wood home. They are also engaged in farm works. Anyone who visits Meghalaya is delighted to see women dominating the marketplace. Vegetable and fish markets are dominated by them. But they are also engaged in other businesses as well. Khasi women enjoy social mobility and this enables them to pursue their small and medium businesses without inhibitions.
Incidentally, Khasi women freely marry outside their community. The children from such marriages continue to adopt the mother’s clan name even if the father is a non-tribal person or a foreigner. Hence the offsprings of mixed marriages are considered Khasi and tribal and enjoy all the rights of a tribal under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. When a Khasi male marries a non-tribal woman or a foreigner, the wife has to go through a process called Tang Jait which means being given a new clan name. Hence a new Jait or clan is born and the children born of such a couple will adopt that new clan name. In recent times the number of Khasi men marrying outside the community is on the rise. This is possibly because men believe that women from other communities are more subservient to them than the Khasi woman. lineage from the mother’s side is an issue that unsettles a man in Khasi society. He feels insecure because of the outside world’s perception of him as the breeding bull. His second source of insecurity springs from being dispossessed of family inheritance. These are two crucial factors challenging Khasi matriliny at this juncture.
Ironically, although Khasi women enjoy social mobility, the traditional institutions which regulate the affairs at the village and locality levels, somewhat like the panchayats do, debar them from holding any decision-making positions. Hence women are kept out of the crucible of politics. The nomenclature of the head of the Dorbar — or the village level traditional institution — the Rangbah Shnong, literally means ‘Headman’. Women now realise that they need to claim this important space and fight for a more gender-equitable language of inclusion. Male domination over vital decisions in the family persists. Decision-making is entirely in the hands of the male members. So merely being a matrilineal society does not naturally empower women. The gender biases operating in patriarchal societies can be traced even in Khasi matriliny too.
Any talk of gender equity in Khasi society tends to become acrimonious. Women believe that they are deprived of the right to decision-making in grassroots institutions, while men aver that women are already empowered because of their right to lineage and ownership of property. Traditionalists believe that a woman’s place is in the hearth and home and that she should not meddle with matters outside her home. Khasi society has a pejorative term for a woman who has political views. She is termed as a ‘crowing hen.’ The saying goes that when a hen begins to crow then doomsday is at hand.
At the heart of the societal conflict is the inability to discuss these ticklish issues in a non-threatening space where views can be openly shared without fear of losing face. A gender war is the last thing that Khasis want. No society can hold on to tradition merely as a means to retain power. Governance at any level requires the best skills and statesmanship, which a woman is as equally endowed with as a man. By denying a woman the right to a fair contest in traditional institutions, the society is also deprived of her skills and capabilities. Tradition should not be a pretext for avoiding change. In fact, change is the only variable that keeps a society vibrant.
Myths are usually resuscitated by an ethnic group mainly to protect its sense of uniqueness and identity — to project itself as being different from “others”. You expect scholars to challenge these myths and help people deal with hard realities. Unfortunately, the Khasi academic community has yet to do so. The unwillingness of local scholars to unbundle these myths has prompted curious research scholars from across the world to unpack them. They are re-writing Khasi history as they see it from hard facts and evidences and Khasis are increasingly seeing themselves as just one of the several ethnic threads inhabiting India’s Northeast and are not, as they claim, to be of “divine origin”.