As I write this piece, the Shillong roads, which are otherwise known for their ubiquitous traffic jams, are suddenly deserted. It’s a Saturday and normally the city roads are choc-a-bloc and one has to keep a buffer time of an hour to reach any place at the designated time within the 10 km radius – a distance that should not take more than 15 minutes to traverse.
The reason? Rumours of so-called pressure groups under a rainbow of acronyms and one of them with the slogan 'Save Hynniewtrep Mission' burning effigies of state Chief Minister Conrad Sangma, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswas Sarma and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, right in from of the Meghalaya CM’s official bungalow.
There was a scuffle with the cops as they tried to prevent the group from carrying out their plans but the effigies were finally burnt amidst shouts of having accomplished their mission.
The Agitational Politics in Shillong
For the group going by the name of Hyyniewtrep Youth Council (HYC), it was a moment of triumph that they could fulfil their mission of embarrassing the National Peoples’ Party (NPP)-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) government, of which the Bharatiya Janata Party is also a partner. The latest killing of five Meghalaya villagers by Assam Police and Forest Guards, in Mukroh village, in distant West Jaintia Hills 124 kilometres away from Shillong on November 22, has given the HYC and other pressure groups an alibi to assert their authority over a state where the law is simply not enforceable.
On October 27, another pressure group – the Federation of Khasi Jaintia and Garo People (FKJGP) – had organised a rally against unemployment and taken out a procession through the crowded city. During the procession some of the rallyists who were masked up, assaulted innocent bystanders with their bare hands or with the bamboo poles they carried that held the flag of the organisation. All this happened during the peak school hours in the morning when parents were dropping their children to school and in the evening again when school ended which was also the time when the rally finally ended and the crowd dispersed. On their way back too, the rallyists beat up random passers-by. No one dared to file an FIR, knowing the consequences of doing so.
As is the normal turn of events in this city, at the first hint of trouble all the shops, particularly in downtown Police Bazar, a commercial hub, through which the procession participants passed, had downed their shutters, thereby putting paid to their businesses for the day. A shop-owner said, “For us one stone pelted at the shop window would cost much more than the loss of a single day’s transaction.”
Hynniewtrep, or the Seven Huts
The very next day, the East Khasi Hills District Administration enforced Section 144 across Shillong. But pressure groups paid no heed to this section of the law and continued to protest over this or that issue. The police present at the protest sites pointed out to the agitating groups that they are not supposed to gather in droves but to no avail. Shillong continued to remain tense. It took another spark at Mukroh to bring the city to a halt yet again. And all of this happening at a time when students are in the midst of their exams, creates tension both for the students and their wards.
The word Hynniewtrep translates into seven huts in the Khasi language. Those interested to go into the origin myths of the Khasi-Jaintia people of Meghalaya might like to read up https://cherrapunjee.com/the-legend-of-the-forbidden-tree/. It’s a word that rekindles in the Khasi people memories of a romantic past – a past that was innocent but turned awry when sin entered the human consciousness. It’s a tragic past as humans forgot their covenant with god the creator and were left to suffer travails on earth.
The HYC are now on an assignment called 'Save Hynniewtrep Mission.' The word ‘Hynniewtrep’ continues to evoke a multitude of passions depending on the colours that different groups and individuals want to give it. But what normally happens is that if any group decides to protest on any issue and the word Hynniewtrep is used to light up emotions, it also immediately creates an ‘other’ – those that do not belong to the Hynniewtrep fold – those held responsible for all the wrongs attending the Hynniewtrep people.
Fraught Borders
Shillong has been the capital of the British Raj since 1874 and Bengalis were brought in as clerks to assist the British, especially in accounts keeping. The Marwaris and others came in for trade and commerce and since the entire region was known as Assam, the concept of an exclusive Khasi homeland had not emerged.
However, it must be reminded that Tirot Sing, the Khasi Chieftain of Nongkhlaw, had put up a spirited fight against the British when they wanted to construct a road via the chieftainship of Nongkhlaw connecting Sylhet to Assam. That road was never built as the British suffered heavy casualties in their fight with the Khasi warriors who used only their bows and arrow. But the British managed to arrest Tirot Sing from a cave and he was imprisoned in Dacca (in the then East Bengal, later turned East Pakistan, and now Bangladesh) jail until his death.
Meghalaya was carved out of the composite state of Assam in 1972. The problem with carving out states and establishing borders is fraught with complexities. People at the borders are not clearly demarcated as residents of Assam or Meghalaya because there are no clearly drawn boundaries as those drawn between say the present Bangladesh and the Indian border states of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, etc.
While it is possible to put up border fences along the international borders, it is not possible to do so between states within the same country. Populations overlap, hence what the people of Mukroh believe to be their land traditionally is now claimed by Assam as being under the West Karbi Anglong district.
A visit to the border will reveal that forests from one state grow on into the other state and there are really no clear lines of demarcation as to which forests belong to whom. Besides, tribals have always considered the forest their abode until state laws came in and turned the forest resident into interlopers.
At Mukroh as I walked along the road connecting the village to Mokoilum close to Jirikinbam where the Assam Police border outpost is located, there are forests on both sides of the road. Occasionally there are rough lanes where trucks enter to cart out the cut timber. Timber cutting from these forests seems to be a regular affair despite the Supreme Court directives of 1996 that the Forest Department should have detailed working plans on managing the forests.
The reality is that, in Meghalaya, only 4% of the forests are under the watch of the state Forest Department. The rest 96% of forests held by clans and communities, happen to be under the custody of the Autonomous District Councils. Since the councils have no revenue model to run their affairs other than the occasional funds given to them by the state and central governments, they rely on sale of forest products for which they collect taxes. In fact, the district councils also grant mining leases for coal and limestone within their jurisdiction. This is an extractive economy but no one seems to think there’s anything wrong with this unsustainable revenue model.
What Happened at Mukro Could Have Been Avoided
The truck that was allegedly carrying smuggled timber from what is seen by Assam as part of its forests is also seen by the people of Mukroh in Meghalaya as an extension of their forestland. And judging by the forest tracks this is certainly not the first time that a timber-loaded truck is crossing into Meghalaya from Assam’s Karbi Anglong district.
What most astute observers say is that if the Assam Forest Guards had fired at the tyres of the truck and it had come to a halt then they could have confiscated the timber, established who the truck owner is and at whose behest the timber was being cut. There was no need to get into a frenzy to arrest the driver and handymen and give them a chase up to a point where they had come nearly 9 kilometres inside Meghalaya territory at Mukroh where the shooting happened and five villagers were shot down mercilessly.
It is difficult at this juncture to establish the truth since both sides have their own versions. But since large part of the forests at the borders are also cleared for farming and this being the harvest time, the villagers reside in huts around their farmlands, it could be conjectured that when they heard shots they panicked and rushed to the safety of the village. Meanwhile, the other villagers also must have responded to their call for help and this led to a direct confrontation between the Assam Forest Guards and Assam Police and the villagers of Mukroh. Assam Police might have been in a state of panic and fired indiscriminately.
What is missed here is that Mukroh in West Jaintia Hills district of Meghalaya is just 124 km away from Shillong but one must travel over short stretches of roads and then drive over stretches where there were once roads but they have been eroded and never maintained. All along the way, one saw little girls aged 10 or less carrying their little sister or brother on their backs with a sling. Poverty is writ large on the faces of these residents. The homes of the five men who were killed spoke of stark poverty and a hand-to-mouth existence. Interestingly, it is only when we arrive at Barato just short of Mukroh that the road begins to look like a highway and gets better. From Mukroh right up to the Assam border close to Mokoilum the road is as good as any in the country. It’s the internal roads that are non-existent.
The Mukroh incident is just one of the many border clashes between Assam and Meghalaya. Assam Police manning the border outposts have always been seen as the aggressors firing at the border residents inside Meghalaya territory and lives have incidentally been lost on the Meghalaya side. This is one reason why the pressure groups are taking a stand that Meghalaya should not continue to be the victim state. There is a loud call for a strong border outpost at Mukroh to be manned by the elite Special Force-10, which was trained to combat militancy.
All these incidents assume a heightened sense of drama also because of the upcoming Meghalaya elections and the need by some to show the present Government in poor light – not that it is underserved. The Home Department has been disastrous and in any other state the home minister would have had to resign but not in the abode of clouds where interests are short-lived.
Repercussions in the State Capital
While all this plays out at the border, Shillong – the capital of Meghalaya – passes through yet another cycle of insecurity. Tourism has been hit with a sledgehammer as tourists cancelled their bookings and people attending conferences see their sightseeing schedules get short-circuited. As of Sunday, November 27, tourist taxis from Meghalaya cannot ply inside Assam and vice versa.
On Friday, members of the North East Students’ Organisation, which includes the Khasi and Assam Students’ Unions, met at Shillong and made a joint statement that there is no enmity among the people of the two states. But that’s a call that has come many days too late. Travel from Shillong to the Guwahati airport or railway station means that a person must get off at Jorabat and get into an Assam taxi, which is very inconvenient.
Mukroh will soon be forgotten; the poverty of the people will be an unwritten saga even as politicians jostle for space to ride to power and things go back to ‘normal’ for them. For the rest of the population of Meghalaya, nothing is normal. Poverty is at 37%, maternal and infant mortality figures are lower only to that of Bihar. 50% of children in Meghalaya are stunted. The state also has the highest number of drop-outs (up to Class 10) in the country at 39%. All the development indicators are skewed and only the wealth ranking of the tribal elite (read politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen) have catapulted sky high.
And amidst all this the non-tribal residents of Shillong, in particular, are reminded that theirs is an untenable existence. They will have to be the scapegoat each time there are tensions created by any kind of incident in any part of Meghalaya. And unfortunately the non-tribals of Meghalaya have never made common cause for their own safety and security. A non-tribal who has lived in Meghalaya over generations cannot be termed an 'outsider,' Period.
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