The Proposed amendment clearly seeks to excommunicate and ostracise a Khasi woman who marries a non Khasi and her children, in contravention to our customary practices, Human Rights law and our Constitution. The bill is being justified on grounds of protecting the Khasis against economic exploitation and land alienation, but this was done without proper and diligent research and the proposed amendment will not in any way resolve what is sought to be projected as being the crisis in Khasi society. In fact legislations such as the land Transfer Act and The Benami Act already exist to protect and curb economic exploitation and land alienation. These need to be strictly implemented in letter and spirit. Further there is an urgent need to bring a Land Ceiling Act such that rampant land alienation leading to landlessness especially rural landlessness is immediately checked. Given the serious nature of the lapses and violations to the many constitutional provisions and our customary practices we sincerely urge you to withhold assent to this problematic amendment bill.
Category: Words
Hato, haba lah ïaid kato ka bill lyngba ka KHADC ngi lah poi ha ka phang ba ngin hap ïai sngewthuh ïa ka jinglong Khasi. Ka jinglong Khasi kam shong tang ha ka snam ba hiar pateng, bad ruh ha ka jingtip-kur-tip-kha bad ka shongkha-shongman. Kaei kaba lah buh u Khasi myndai ka long kata kaba lah ohshrong ha u maw kiba ngi iohi mynta kum kita kiba ngi khot ki mawbynna. Ka ktien ‘kynmaw’ ka don kata ka ktien ‘maw’: ki Khasi ki dei ban kynmaw iakata ba la ohshrong ne lah pynsahdien da u longshuwa-manshuwa. Haba ki shna kane ka bill, ki kynmaw ne em balei ba ngi shim jait kmie? Ki kynmaw ne em balei ba ki mawbynna ki don kita ki maw kiba pynsahnam ïa ka Ïawbei, U Kñi bad U Thawlang jongka?
To a noble MATRILINEAL tribe
I am an unclean woman, lost in her love for the outsider or anyone deserving of her MATRILINEAL love
This morning the outsider (who may be a shiteng jait or a half this half that, a riff-raff uncertain of ITS own identity) and I contemplated starting a new super tribe
Sorry but not everyone is allowed in
I have withdrawal symptoms. The end of the football World Cup is making me put pen to paper. The World Cup has always been an important personal reference point. Growing up in Goa, right from class 1, my friend wanted to be a footballer like Romario. He is now a full time footballer who played in the Indian Soccer League and is now at a football league in Mexico. My consolation was that I grew up to be a wildlife biologist and have had a diversity of football related experiences. This World Cup got me hooked in three places. I was in the land where “football” bears no resemblance to o jogo bonito, while being part of the conversations from the Eastern Himalayas where I work, and the seaside state of Goa where I was born and raised.
The gender biased KHASI HILLS AUTONOMOUS DISTRICT (KHASI SOCIAL CUSTOM OF LINEAGE)(SECOND AMEDMENT) BILL, 2008 is a violation of the fundamental right of a Tribal women…This decision to discriminate against woman is more like a Khap Panchayat in our backyard waiting to pounce on women…Can the law passed by the KHADC overwrite the laws passed by the Centre? And can the Governor of Meghalaya, assent to an unconstitutional Bill which is demeaning and Discriminating Tribal woman and their children? Benami is rampant by many greedy Tribal men and many leaders, yet KHADC remained blind to this fact and zoomed in only on Tribal women. This bill for me, smells of Formalin Fish…
It must be put on record that the consensus on NRC makes no distinction on the basis of language, religion or ethnicity for people who could prove their credentials from before the cut-off date of 24th March 1971. To portray the process of NRC as against any particular linguistic or religious community is, therefore, to subvert the very basis of social harmony and established democratic values.”
A Statement on Fact-Finding Report by “United Against Hate” & “Avaaz” online campaign for intervention by UN by FORUM AGAINST AMENDMENT OF CITIZENSHIP ACT BILL
Debates on National Register of Citizens no longer remain confined to the borders of Assam (and North East). United Against Hate, an Indian Human Rights…
Let me start with the caveat that I am totally against the politics of Mother Teresa’s model of charity and how the missionaries of charity is run.
The way the entire controversy around the alleged trafficking of infants in Ranchi by nun(s) belonging to the Missionaries of Charity exposes the underbelly of hatred and suspicion of the other on the part of savarna India.
On 16th of July, 2018 some of the news portals in Kashmir Valley published a letter from Abdul Manan Wani, member of the resistance group – Hizbul Mujahideen. Mr. Manan was a research scholar from one of the prestigious universities in India and was in news some months back when news channels flashed ‘scholar turned militant’ in the headlines. Within no time the letter was taken down from the virtual space from by the State authorities and the police were quick to start legal action against the web-portals who had published this letter.
There is a video posted by Postcard News that’s been doing the rounds on social media. It claims that (patanjali) gaumutra (cowpiss) purifies by body by getting rid of toxins.
But this is bullshit…Dr. Seshadri Kumar goes behind the science of this nonsense
Most books in English on the subject matter are about Muslims and address non-Muslim readers—painstakingly defending or decrying Islam. Till Talaq Do Us Part by Zia Us Salam is refreshing in also addressing Muslim readers. It is positioned as a primer on the issue of Talaq busting myths of all kinds and making a strong case for potential for gender justice from within Islam.
SOLVE FIVE FOOTBALL WORLD CUP MYSTERIES
1. Why do people suddenly “get into” football during the World Cup, when usually they’re not interested?
2. Why do people cheer and yell during a match in a way they never normally would?
3. Why do we criticise our country’s team so much, but feel annoyed if someone from another country does it?
4. Why do we enjoy it when a team that’s not meant to be very good wins a match?
5. Does the World Cup always causes conflict between different countries?
Suresh emerged from the trees, shouting at the top of his voice, “The Right Thing! The Right Thing! The Right Thing!” Oddly it sounded like the INSAS rifle he was firing: Ta-rat-ting! Ta-rat-ting! Ta-rat-ting! Finally, he had his eyes open.
The Bengali Bhadrolok class always gets rattled whenever there is even a scratch on its two academic fiefdoms, Presidency and Jadavpur Universities. These are the two primary apparatuses for the reproduction of hegemony of this class in Bengal’s socio-cultural life. Noone has found this extraordinarily parochial class moving petitions or capturing media time and space to express their concern about or outrage against Bengal’s bleak education system. In the last few years, this class has gradually given up on the Presidency, and now, it is more bothered about Jadavpur. In the rising populist tidal water, the island mentality of the Bhadralok class has become acute. Latest is their rage against the decision of the Jadavpur University (JU) administration to scrap entrance examination to a few undergraduate programmes, English being the focal point.
Luz Almanza, Jaime Peña and Rocio Campos have more in common than living around the same football field, the site of one of Colombia’s most horrific massacres. On 16 May 1998, all three lost a family member. Their organizing in search of the disappeared and defiance of state impunity is what binds them.
Most of the problems and social conflicts experienced by the Khasi society today are due to misinterpretation of traditions and acceptance of colonial innovations as sacred and God-given traditions that existed since time immemorial. Let us discuss on one of these colonial innovations which remains in force today through modern legal instruments, but stands in perpetual conflict with the deep-seated cultural sentiments of the people. Khasi elders of old said that the Syiem was appointed in a Raid or Hima because the Bakhraw, as leaders of the founding clans refused to take over the properties of extinct clans, to inflict punishments on criminals, thieves and murderers. The Bakhraw also thought that it was dishonourable for them to live by begging for free gifts, donations, or to fill one’s coffer by fees, fines and taxes levied on the products of others in the markets. Hence, all these reprehensible functions and unholy sources of income were handed over to the Syiem.
Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, artist and author of the autobiographical Finding My Way (2016), found himself at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London speaking on 21 June at a seminar on “Indigenous Media, Self-Determination and Cultural Activism”. This poem came to him then as he first typed out Hindi in Roman script on his phone and sent it to his friend and accomplice S. Anand, publisher at large at the small Navayana. Anand felt impelled to find the words in English just like he did when working with Venkat on his autobiography. Venkat’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including at Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, in 2013.
“Bhairavi was trying hard to concentrate on her Haruki Murakami novel as she kept tossing on her mahogany bed. But she was frequently getting distracted by the beautiful sharp notes of Himachali folksongs she played on her laptop just a short while ago.
At that moment, she suddenly heard a hiss hiss sound coming from the window near her. She was dazed to see an enormous python creeping through her window railings and slipping along its body towards her room. A chunk of his large smoky body glittered in the mid-day sunlight.
On 30th June, the complete draft list of NRC will be published, a narrative has been constructed, mostly by BJP leaders and the Sangh Parivar that 30th June will decide the fate of who is a citizen and who not. This narrative of finality has been spearheaded by powerful BJP minister Himanta Biswa Sarma who has been repeatedly saying that 30th June 2018 will decide ‘friend or foe of Assam”. This imposed narrative has, understandable, created anxiety and fear among many people, especially Muslims of East Bengali origin.
That being the situation, If any issue related to NRC is sensationalized without proper substantiation or due to lack of understanding of the nuances related to the process, one may unintentionally further strengthen the conspiracy of fear that is being spread by the Sangh parivar.
At a book reading in Kolkata, about a week after my first novel, The God of Small Things, was published, a member of the audience stood up and asked, in a tone that was distinctly hostile: “Has any writer ever written a masterpiece in an alien language? In a language other than his mother tongue?” I hadn’t claimed to have written a masterpiece (nor to be a “he”), but nevertheless I understood his anger toward a me, a writer who lived in India, wrote in English, and who had attracted an absurd amount of attention. My answer to his question made him even angrier.
“Nabokov,” I said. And he stormed out of the hall.
What actually happened on the 31/5/2018 would be best known only to a few with whom the incident occurred. But when an incident is made sensational news for heavy sale, for political power, for organizational comeback, then facts are distorted and everyday the facts are woven into such lies that creates mayhem and breeds hatred among communities. Sad to see people reach to such a low with their vulgarities. We were known for being a loving race that respects man and God but the recent incident displayed all. Our level of tolerance was zero. All because the past Governments did not do their work all these years and one wonders why…
A day before Eid, a Twitter storm with the hashtag #InquireKashmirKillings erupted. Notwithstanding the pall of gloom caused by the killing of respected editor- in-chief of Rising Kashmir, Shujat Bukhari by unknown gunmen on the very day that the report by the UN on the situation in Kashmir vis-a-vis human rights was released, Kashmiris hurled themselves into battle.
Today is “Rev. Thomas Jones Day”, gazetted as a Special Holiday for all State Government Offices and all revenue and Magisterial Courts and Educational Institutions across the Khasi and Jaintia Hills and the Ri-Bhoi District. What might this 22 June holiday mean, individually or collectively, for Christian or non-Christian, in that shape-shifting ground between the past and the present?
The 22 June holiday commemorates Thomas Jones as a founder, a father, a first. The idea of historical “firsts” often drives a popular understanding of the past— and more pertinently, the political use of the past in the present—but is not always helpful in really getting to grips with complex and interconnected historical processes. There’s not necessarily a ground zero moment when it comes to cultural change. Hero worship, furthermore — though it comes with a feel-good factor— can be rather unhelpful.
Convergence of an existing ‘fitness fad’ amongst India’s aspirational middle class with the #HumFitTohIndiaFit social media campaign as a precursor to the International Yoga Day, has helped to convert an exclusionary and violent somatic nationalism of the RSS into a secular principle. This appeals greatly to the Indian middle-class. It allows India Inc. to feel the rush of patriotic sentiment without having to get its hands dirty in a refurbished akhada. It allows those of us who live in comfortable high-rises with attached gyms and swimming pools to smell our own sweat and feel incredibly proud for having performed an immensely patriotic act.
This is lifestyle patriotism of the most insidious variety. It turns citizens into consumers, yoga into a collapsed 5-minute workout video, and the very real issue of both individual health as well as the health of a vast citizenry into nothing more than a social media gimmick.
“What about the Kashmiri Pandits?” For well over a quarter century every public conversation on Kashmir has been dogged by that question. As a tiny Hindu minority in predominantly Muslim Kashmir (they constituted less than 5% in the 1990s) Pandits have had an extraordinary valence in the often-heated discourse around the conflict, and their “migration” from Kashmir in the early 1990s continues to cast a baleful shadow on the present.
The convenor and the presenters of the panel ‘Feminist Reframings of India’s Northeast: Gendered Geographies and Genealogies’ have decided to withdraw our panel from the AAS-in-Asia, 2018 Conference. The panel has made this decision in the light of how the denial of visas to scholars from Pakistan was handled by AAS and Ashoka University. The Association has kept this news away from all other participants of the conference.
On August 15, 1947, when India gained independence, Bishnu Prasad Rabha led a black flag demonstration in a village named Dighelia, shouting “Ye Azaadi Jhootha Hain, Sirf Chamra Ka Badal” (This freedom is a hoax : only a change of skin), and he was promptly arrested and put behind bars. After he was released, Rabha went underground for years – presenting a serious challenge to the establishment. He took up arms and engaged in guerrilla warfare against the government.
The image she shows me on her laptop shows smears of blood on the floor, discarded clothing and prayer mats at one corner of the corridor. No action. No people. But Sanna Irshad Mattoo, one of Kashmir’s growing bunch of women photo-journalists, conveys the potential of objects and belongings to bear “witness”. The inanimate speaks out of the terrible violence that stains, not just the hospital floor, but, as the hashtgag suggests one that has permeated the soul of Kashmir.
In a statement issued on April 16th 2018, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) claimed that the ‘National Policy and Action Plan’ to combat Left Wing Extremism (LWE) is ‘a multi-pronged strategy involving security and development related measures’. This new policy, apparently in place since the NDA government came to power at the centre, claims to have ‘zero tolerance towards violence coupled with a big push to developmental activities so that benefits of development reached the poor and vulnerable in the affected areas’. The statement talks of substantial improvement in the LWE scenario by indicating reduced incidents of violence over the last four years. Within a week of this statement to the press, several Maoists are killed in an alleged encounter in Gadchiroli district of Maharastra and, then, in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh.
In #Shillong, never is #masculinity as intensively interrogated as during the World Cup…Personally, I had never developed a love for any sport, let alone football. This year’s world cup for me is a time machine. As it takes me back, I rediscover an old feeling of resilience. Each time the world cup happened, it has allowed for me to become a target of collective bullying. “Why are you such a sissy?”, “What kind of man are you?”, “Hijras like you should not be born”.
The complicity of the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) with the Indian government’s violation of academic freedom compels us to boycott the conference. We do so in solidarity with our Pakistani colleagues and to express our commitment to the unfettered exchange of ideas. Today, this government has decided to ban Pakistani scholars. Tomorrow, another might decide to deny Indian or Chinese or British scholars, or issue conference visas on the basis of religious identification or sexual preference. Would we still allow pragmatic reasons to dictate our participation? Boycotting is an obligation we owe not only to our Pakistani colleagues, but also to the values of open and inclusive intellectual exchange that we cherish.
Sukracharjya Rabha was born in 1977, in a remote village Rampur in Goalpara district of western Assam. He started working with local tribal people to promote theatre. Within short span of time he authored and directed number of drama and got recognition as a unique theatre activist in the part of the country. He was honoured with the Bismillah Khan Yuba Puraskar from Sangeet Natak Akademi in 2009 for direction and the Aditya Bokra Birla Kala Kira Puruskar in 2010. On June 8th 2018, at the age of just 41 years he succumbed to a massive cardiac arrest. He is survived by his wife and two children. Maulee Senapati, filmmaker & Abdul Kalam Azad, an activist write pay their tributes.
Hasmukh P. Modi and his wife came with their young daughter to Shillong in 1979. A Gujarati family from Rajkot, they had settled in Africa, but were forced to leave during the civil war in Ethiopia. Their quest for a suitable school for their daughter, a place where they could strike roots and establish means of livelihood ended during a holiday in Shillong. In Ethiopia, Hasmukhbhai had worked in the marketing department of French and British firms selling everything from pins to jet planes. In Shillong he decided to take up the business of his grandfather— grocery—and deal in spices imported from Kerala—cardamom, cinnamon, cloves—and from Gujarat—coriander, cumin, fenugreek and fennel seeds (jeera, methi, sauf ).
My mother is a woman with ten tongues
That is why she raves incessantly
Unmindful whether it’s day or night!
I run from home to bazaar
Muddle-headed on lanes and streets
Like an owner-less dog;
When I returned she fumed again
“Offspring of sin why don’t you die
At least other children die by swallowing poison”,
I became so angry my blood boiled,
From my heart my pulse bounced in and out.
This essay describes socio-economic profile of the Mazhabi Sikhs (and other ‘sweeper’ Punjabis) settled at Shillong for more than a century. These safai karamcharis (sweepers) have been keeping the city clean but themselves live in worst slums. The essay tries to locate survival strategies of Punjabi sweepers in a milieu hostile to ‘outsiders’. What makes them stick together, maintain their ethnic and religious identity and resist various attempts to ‘relocate’ them.
When heat became hard to beat with fresh drink and fan To cool myself, hastily to Shillong I ran Where pine-decked hills and deep dark…
I am near the Indo-Bhutan border in a village called Dimakuchi in the Udalguri district of Assam in Northeast India. There are hundreds of people around me and we are in a large field where temporary tents are pitched. Lightning flashes in the sky as people huddle together under a slight drizzle. The faces of the crowd are all turned to one direction, captivated by the spectacle of dance, song and entertainment on the makeshift stage as though they are under a spell. As the compere monotonously calls for the next performer in line for the Master of Dance competition, I wonder if this is the Bodo Film Festival I was invited to, and how I am supposed to make sense of it.
No one goes to Iewduh, now burning.
“Too crowded, eww”, they say.
Dirty and living, too like OUR city.
We are non-tourists,
It’s not even famous on Instagram!
Five days my city burns
And the non-tourists have disappeared.
Kashmir is burning too.
Where will you go now?
Fucking tourists!
I intend to go beyond the Punjab and seek to review the Mazhabi Sikh past of two important urban centres of north-eastern India. They are located in Shillong and Guwahati, and have so far escaped the attention of scholars engaged in studying the Dalit past of the region. Situated in the Khasi Hills, their early presence in Shillong goes back to the days of colonial rule, while in Guwahati of the Brahmaputra Valley they may have settled around the time of the country’s Independence. Their emergence in two different cities under dissimilar political conditions perhaps offers an interesting point for the enquiry.
This is the best time to read Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih’s poem Sundori, while we sit amidst angers, rumours and curfews in Shillong. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih is the key Khasi modern poet whose rooted yet critical verses uncover the unsaid of Khasi society. Sundori was written during the troubles of 1990s when the local nationalist anger and resentment was at its peak.
Documentary film has had a long and interesting career in India. It was mobilised, until Independence, as a vehicle for Imperial propaganda, and put in the service of the nation-building project in free India. To be sure, much of Films Division (FD) sponsored documentary work also did not rise much above the status of propaganda, but its ideals were self-avowedly loftier – to educate the ‘masses’ beholden to tradition, to create modern and scientific-minded citizens, national integration, etc. Work of several filmmakers, like S. Sukhdev and SNS Sastry, supported by FD in the 60s and 70s did betray an independent streak, evidenced by their efforts to tackle difficult subjects coupled with bold formal experiments, but their critical perspective seems to have dissipated by the time of the Emergency.
We who come from the north-east of India to feel a sense of guilt for reading English books, watching Hollywood movies and soaps and not regional cinema, let alone popular Hindi movies and for hearing and singing English songs. I also found myself sometimes, defending the fact that cinema halls in Darjeeling and Sikkim did screen Hindi movies, which were widely watched and that south Indian movies were much awaited and enjoyed as well. But to much dismay, this still did not alter the attempts at fitting in well to engage in the cultural dialogue that existed among the lower classes in mainland India.
By this time, most of you would have heard of Modi’s huge blunder in China where he misspelled “STRENGTH” as “STREANH” and became a laughingstock.
Now, let me make myself clear on one thing: I don’t expect Modi to know good English. So I do not judge him poorly for his poor mastery of English.
I would have been perfectly happy if Modi gave a speech to the Chinese in languages he is comfortable with – Hindi or Gujarati.
But given that he chose to speak in English despite having the option, he bears the responsibility for the goof-up.
The past four years provide a grim picture of neglect of public health by the government and further, a disdain towards policies that promote welfare. The period has seen several outbreaks of infectious diseases such as dengue and chikungunya, often reaching epidemic proportions in many parts of the country. The epidemics have laid bare the inability of the country’s health systems to protect people’s health. Yet successive budgets presented by the Central government have strengthened the perception that this government is ideologically committed to reducing public expenditure on welfare and public services. The period also saw examples of extreme failure to provide healthcare of acceptable quality both in the Public and Private sectors. The failure of public services was epitomised by the horrendous report of deaths of hundreds of children in a hospital in Gorakhpur, which lies in the constituency of the Chief Minister of UP. Yet we were informed from the ramparts of the Red Fort that the children who died in Gorakhpur’s hospital were victims of a ‘natural calamity’.
Why has there been so little uproar in Assam about NRC?
The lack of outrage in progressive quarters over NRC updation or detention of suspected foreigners is worth mulling over. Do they not see that perfectly innocent people are being incarcerated on dubious grounds by the Foreigners’ Tribunals? Or, that people are going bonkers trying to procure the right NRC papers, and killing themselves when they are unable to? Most of the unfortunates are Muslims – 70% of those lodged in detention camps are Muslims. Some, though Hindu, speak Bengali. But the considerations of religion and language were important to the blood and soil politics-propagating rightists. Not to the left, who stand by the marginalised. Indeed, should they err, it better be on the side of the weak. Or, so one thought. Unfortunately, as a friend put it, it has become hard to distinguish the position of the left from that of the right. What explains the want of empathy?
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