Special Issue: Writing Shillong

Print and Power in the Khasi Hills
A Look at Two Historically Important Works on the Khasis


Mereleen Lyngdoh Blah

The present article by Mereleen Blah Lyngdoh entitled ‘Print and Power in the Khasi Hills - A look at two historically important works on the Khasis’    takes a closer look at two influential texts published at the turn of the 20^th century; both of which have played an important role in the making of a Khasi identity.

Fig. 1: A photograph from P.R.T Gurdon’s book, ‘The Khasis (1903)’. In it, the Khasi Durbar gathers to mark the appointment of Raja Dakhor Singh - both as a ‘chief’ and subordinate ally of the British. By 1835, the armed resitance of the Khasis was crushed by the British who then used such ‘subordinate alliances’ to incorporate local chieftains into their own colonial framework of power in the hills.    

As a keen student of the impact and influences of print in the Khasi Hills, my research into the subject led me to two texts which are highly important towards understanding the contours of the British-Khasi colonial encounter from the 18^th to the early 20^th century.  The first of these is   ‘The Khasis’ (1903), which is a detailed ethnographic account of the tribe as seen through the eyes of a British official – P.R.T Gurdon – who was the Deputy Commissioner of Eastern Bengal and Assam and Superintendent of Ethnography in Assam. The other is Jeebon Roy’s ‘Ka Niam Jong Ki Khasi’ (roughly translated as ‘The Belief System of the Khasis’) (1897) – the first book in Khasi by a Khasi writer. In this piece, I take a closer look at the implicit power relations embedded in the production of both these texts. While ‘The Khasis’ may be read as being part of the colonial project of documenting, classifying and controlling the population of the hills, ‘Ka Niam Jong Ki Khasi’, attempts not only to document the history of the Khasis but tries to reinforce a sense of identity in a community that was rapidly changing under the influence of history and foreign culture.

The Khasis are a distinct ethnic group of Meghalaya. The Khasis had for a long time, been relatively insulated, apart from engaging in trade in a few areas and plundering the inhabitants of the plains from time to time. The arrival of the British however not only established contact with the outside world but opened up the area to a concerted and far-reaching economic exploitation.

The history of written Khasi literature can be said to be synonymous with the advent of early missionary endeavors and British conquest, who used educational and religious institutions to assert political and social control. The missionaries might have come to the hills with the aim of preaching the gospel but they were not completely free from the colonial project of control. Contact with the British in the eighteenth century and the missionaries in the nineteenth, introduced for the Khasis a new mode of mapping history in the form of written literature and a new script, introduced by Thomas Jones, a Welsh Calvinistic Missionary, in 1841. The propagation of Christianity in the hills both necessitated and facilitated the process of engendering large sections of the native population with a western worldview. The aim was not merely to ‘civilize’ the ‘noble savages’, but in doing so, to render them docile and manageable within the larger project of colonialism in the hills. It should be kept in mind that the two works I refer to in this article, emerged after, and were set in the backdrop of the initial introduction of influential missionary texts and activities in the area.   

The British relied strongly on accounts and documents of the history of the people they were to govern. The arrival of the British in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills also meant the arrival of documentation. A.J.M. Mills, Aitchison and Gurdon were primarily hired by the state to collect data.

The Khasis, by P.R.T. Gurdon is one such endeavor of colonial documentation. It “forms part of a series of official publications issued at the expense of the government of Eastern Bengal and Assam”, and is in every sense of the word a detailed ethnographical account of the Khasis and their way of life. Starting with the advent of the British as early as 1765 and the influence of the missionaries, whose impact was felt most in the early nineteenth century, Gurdon provides a detailed and classic colonial ethnographical account of the Khasis, ranging from geographical location, physical appearance, clothing, food habits and rituals (from birth to death) and linguistic details and classifications borrowed largely from, Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India. The reliance on anthropometry and linguistic classifications points to the system of cataloging and compartmentalization adopted by the British as an administrative tool.  

              

  Fig. 2: Portraits of a ‘Typical Khasi Woman’ and a ‘Synteng Man’ from Gurdon’s ‘The Khasis’. In keeping with the colonial administrative system of cataloging and compartmentalizing native populations, Gurdon makes clearly marked distinctions between the Khasis, Jaintias, Lynngams, Bhois and Wars.

 

Gurdon whether consciously or unconsciously in his book, indicates a certain preference towards the Khasis who had converted to Christianity. The distinction made between a Khasi convert and a Khasi who still followed the old Khasi religion, which lays a lot of emphasis on ancestor worship and various rituals and sacrifices, is made evident, throughout the book. Remarking on the cleanliness of the Khasis, Gurdon says,

"Khasis of the interior who have adopted Christianity are generally cleaner than the non Christians and the women dress better than the latter and have an air of self respect about them. The houses in a Christian village are also far superior, especially where there are resident European missionaries. (Gurdon 6)"

This is but one instance. This is also mentioned by Catholic missionaries who considered it advantageous for a convert to be separated from “pagan villages” so that “they could practice cleanliness better in their new villages”. Christianity became a marker of difference and created a divide amongst the Khasis. It created a gulf based on religious affiliations and literacy. The missionaries were propagating education which sought not only to convert souls but propagate the superiority of the dominant race which was seen as favourable by the state and its European officials.

From Gurdon’s account it is evident that his was a successful but not the first attempt made by the state to officially document the history of the region, “with European guidance,” and “by the agency of indigenous students”. The fact that there is a mention of U Hormu Roy Diengdoh and other Khasis in the preface and U Jeebon Roy who has been quoted a number of times throughout the text points not only towards the fact that the view is of an outsider, but also that government officials relied strongly on secondary sources of information. “Early colonial historiographies in British India were dependent on native informants”, who are in this case acknowledged and incorporated into the narrative and not left out completely.

The British would have been mistaken if they believed that the ‘native informant’ would remain a passive agent in the cultural production and representation of the Khasis. Just as the colonial officials appropriated the indigenous world views of the native informant for their own ends, so would the latter manage to understand the power of print in forging a sense of Khasi identity.

This brings us to the figure of U Jeebon Roy. He was the son of U Ram Sing Korkata, who was so called because he was one of the first Khasis who were educated in the Serampore College in Kolkatta^[1] and a man of great influence. Jeebon Roy’s career is nothing short of impressive. Making the most of his knowledge of English, Sanskrit and Bengali, he entered Government service in 1858 as a Second Clerk in the office of the Principal Assistant Commissioner in Sohra, and acted as a writer and interpreter to General Shower who was the Special Commissioner during the Jaintia Rebellion. In the decades to come, he rose through the ranks of government, retiring finally as a Senior Extra Assistant Commissioner in 1894.^[2]

Jeebon Roy translated into Khasi the Hitopodesa, Buddha Deb Charitra, Chaitanya and the Ramayana. He was a pioneer in various fields, whether it was to emphasize on the role of women in society, laying emphasis on their education and employment, the opening of new schools, the introduction of new crops, the introduction of the bullock cart and most importantly the introduction of the Ri Khasi Printing Press. The Ri Khasi Printing Press was started in Mawkhar, in 1896 and was responsible for the publication of U Khasi Mynta, the first Khasi monthly newspaper edited by U Hormu Rai Diengdoh.

Jeebon Roy’s, Ka Niam Jong Ki Khasi, opens with an invocation to other Khasis to write, pointing towards a shift which had taken place in the community and the need felt by writers, as early as 1897, to preserve a culture, which would have otherwise been forgotten. Until the publication of Ka Niam Jong Ki Khasi, most writings on the Khasis were written by people who were not from the community. They were primarily outsiders and could at best try to understand the rubric of the society they were attempting to document. In writing and urging others to write, what comes across strongly is the fact that the author understood clearly the impact that print had and how the written makes concrete the mythic significance of the oral.

The book is a short but detailed account of certain Khasi practices, both religious and socio-cultural, which were considered as strange and alien by both the state and the church. The use of the word Niam, here serves to highlight not only religious practices and rituals but social customs and conventions which were a part of everyday life in the Khasi community. Ka Niam Jong Ki Khasi is the first Khasi book by an indigenous writer, who uses writing and the vernacular to emphasize the ability of the native to represent. The book marks an attempt made not only to make the Khasi self visible in the public sphere, but his choice to write on a subject which had not been explored. He provides an alternative narrative, which opposed the narratives provided by the church and state to undermine Khasi cultural beliefs by not only describing but explaining the basic tenets of Khasi religion. The fact that the book was printed immediately after the Ri Khasi Press was set up in 1896, which was also owned by the writer, is something which points to the importance that print played and his acute understanding of the power of print.

The emergence and growth of Khasi literature also goes hand in hand with the emergence of the new middle class intelligentsia whose need to write is underlined by an impetus to preserve what they saw as gradually fading into obscurity. Towards the end of the book he goes back to tell the tale of how the Khasis lost their script in a flood, by swallowing the manuscript, which explains the prevalence of the oral tradition amongst the Khasis, while the man from the plains, by tying his manuscript on his head, preserved it. By resorting to myth, he seems to be pointing towards the relation of myth and literature, “as analogous to creating a cultural world”, while at the same time expressing the need to explain the absence of a script. His is an attempt not only to document the history of the Khasis but acknowledge the fact that they have a history which cannot be flattened out by making it concrete in print, echoing Bankim Chandra Chattarji’s call, emphasizing on the need to write. “We have no history! We must have a history!

Works Cited:

1. Bell, Michael. “Anthropology and/as Myth in Modern Criticism.” Literary Theory and Criticism.New Delhi: OUP, 2007. Print.
2. Chatterjee, Partha.” The Nation and its Fragments”. The Partha Chattarjee Omnibus. New Delhi: OUP, 1997. Print.
3. Gurdon, P.R.T. The Khasis. 1903. New Delhi: Akanksha Publishing House, 2010. Print.
4. Roy, Jeebon. Ka Niam Jong Ki Khasi. 1897.Shillong: Ri Khasi Press, 1932. Print.
5. Singh, Kynpham. Ka Jingim U Babu Jeebon Roy (“The Father of Modern  Khasis”). Shillong: Ri Khasi Press, 1972. Print.
6. Stadler, G., and S. Karotemprel. Trans and Eds. History of the Catholic Missions in North East India(1890-1915). Shillong: Vendrame Missiological Institue, 1980. Print.
7. Stoler, Ann Laura. “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance”. Archival Science 2: 87-109, 2002. Print.

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[1] Singh Kynpham.Ka Jingim U Babu Jeebon Roy: The Father of Modern Khasi, Shillong: Ri Khasi Press, 1972.3. Print.

[2] Roughly translated from, Singh, Kynpham. Ka Jingim U Babu Jeebon Roy: “The Father of Modern Khasis”. Shillong: Ri Khasi Press, 1972.5. Print.

Author's Bio- Note:

Mereleen Lyngdoh Blah, completed her M.Phil from the Department of English, Delhi University. She is currently teaching as an Assistant Professor (ad hoc) in Shyama Prasad Mukherji College, Delhi University.