Special Issue: Writing Shillong

                                

  SHILLONG

THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF A COSMOPOLITY

   Binayak Dutta

In this article, ‘Shillong: The Making and Unmaking of a Cosmopolity’, Binayak Dutta charts out a contemporary history of Shillong, tracing its evolution from a colonial undertaking with strong cosmopolitan traits that subsequently collapsed under the weight of communal strife in the post-colonial era. 

Fig.1: A photograph of the old assembly building in Shillong (1948)

INTRODUCTION:

When Captain Lister of the Sylhet Light Infantry was given the charge of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills District, the head quarters was located at Cherrapunjee. By 1854, the Khasi Hills was placed under an Assistant Commissioner for civil functions and the East India Company Government ordered the shifting of the district headquarters from the Cherrapunjee to the valley of Yeodo. Weather conditions combined with immense economic potential to arouse Colonial interests on these Hills within a very short time. But despite its pleasant surroundings, incessant rains made Cherrapunjee too wet for the health and comfort of the British soldiers and officers, stationed there. This set off the search for a new station that could serve as the headquarters of the district beyond the limitations of a mere military sanatorium.

MAKING THE COSMOPOLITAN HEAVEN CALLED SHILLONG:

The desire to have an all season communication between Cherrapunjee and Guwahati helped to justify the importance of Shillong in colonial perceptions. The outbreak of the Jaintia Rebellion in 1860 rattled the European minds and there was a tearing hurry to locate an area and establish a safe military base, secure from insurrection. Therefore, as H.K. Barpujari observes, “[I]n early 1866, the headquarters of the Regiment and the office of the Deputy Commissioner were transferred to Shillong and Yedo…” The new civil station was located “between the then existing Khasi villages of Mawkhar and Laitumkhrah…” Therefore the origin of the town of Shillong could only be traced to colonial intervention in these hills. It is interesting to record the observation of scholar- administrator R.T. Rymbai that “ there was no settled habitation, known by the name of Shillong till the British came to select the said valley  as their headquarters in 1864…” and that there were only a few scattered villages in this valley known by the name of Laban, Mawkhar, Laitumkhrah, etc.”

To the colonial mind, the new station was designed to serve the needs of increasing number of European officers in the Brahmaputra Valley and Cachar. In a letter written to the Secretary to the Government of Bengal in 1862, Brigadier General G. D. Showers, the Commissioner of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills was candid in pointing out that the station, would, “… introduce an intercourse with the native inhabitants which would fix their loyalty,…” Loyalty was an important component of the European quest in post Revolt era; more so with the outbreak of the rebellion in the Jaintia Hills in 1860.

Therefore, Shillong, unlike most of the other hill stations, was to facilitate the ends of European colonial commercial interests of drawing “out the commercial resources” and serve as a site for interaction between these European officers and the Indian people. The desire of the colonial state, in the language of Brigadier General G. D. Showers, was to encourage the settlement of residents at Shillong, beyond the ends of a mere ‘weather retreat’. The government was thus impelled to “encourage European settlers and invalids” to set up offices and establishments which “would attract trade and population and call out more rapidly the resources of the district….” Therefore, despite being established on a tribal land, the station was conceived as a cosmopolitan zone. With the constitution of Assam into a province of colonial India, under a Chief Commissioner, Shillong was made the capital of the new province. This administrative reorganization along with the decision of the colonial state to make Cachar and Sylhet, predominantly Bengali districts a part of the new province only contributed to consolidate the capital’s cosmopolitan character as people from the Assam valley and these districts came to join government service and relocate themselves in the capital town. The seed of Shillong’s cosmopolitanism was embedded in its colonial character.

Thus, besides the Khasis, to whom these lands belonged, the first settlers in this station were the European officers who negotiated with the local Khasi chiefs to acquire lands, construct and expand the colonial cosmopolitan station of Shillong. These European officers located themselves in bungalows on the Secretariat Hill overlooking the Wards Lake; what was called the ‘European Quarters’ an area encircled by the Bivar Road. The first step towards expansion of the ‘Station’ was the establishment of a small market started near the police station. The ‘Thana Road’ came to form the core of Police Bazar, as the area came to be known. Following the European administrators came the Bangla speaking people, from the different districts of Bengal, who served as the clerical staff in the colonial administration.  The Bengali settlement in Shillong was coterminous with the “shifting of the administrative headquarters of the District from Cherrapunjee to Shillong in 1864. K.D. Saha in his study on Shillong observes that, “Reportedly at the time of construction of the District Headquarters in Shillong, 14 Bengali employees were brought from Cherrapunjee to the site for clerical work and were allotted land on Jail Road for settlement. Majority of them were Hindus and from Sylhet, particularly northern Sylhet, and a few fom other districts, namely from Nadia, Santipur, Jessore, Commilla (Tipperah) and Dacca.”Till about 1897, the Bengalis predominated as the “native employees of the government”. The Bengalis also dominated in business and enterprise. Bengali Muslims came from “Hooghly District” and “started their careers as enterprising businessmen.” A major part of commerce including the business of transport was in their hands. While the Bengali clerks established their habitation in the Jail Road, Thana Road and Laban, the Bengali businessmen came about to concentrate their holdings around ‘Police Bazar’ and Laban. By 1920s the Bengalis also came to establish their houses in other localities of Shillong such as Jaiaw, Mawkhar, Laitumkhrah and Nongthymmai. But they were not the only non-tribe who contributed to construct the multi-ethnic space of Shillong.

The Assamese community also developed substantial holdings in Shillong. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, as Prafulla Misra observes, “ there were not more than  30 to 35 Assamese residents in Shillong, almost all were government servants…” The Assamese people engaged in government service hailed from Upper Assam as they were the hardest hit by the colonial rule and abolition of the paik system. It was only in the twentieth century that people from Lower Assam came to join their counterparts from Upper Assam and join government service. Migration of the Assamese to Shillong accelerated with the creation of the composite state of Assam after 1947, when “Assamese representation in the bureaucracy was enhanced.”  But they were energetic, creative and culture conscious. The Assamese settlement in Shillong was initially located in Laban and its vicinity. Therefore Bishnupur and Malki were areas that witnessed the proliferation of Assamese houses. Subsequent holdings were acquired in Lachumiere, Oakland and Laitumkhrah. In 1896, the Assam Club was formed and started functioning from a rented house in Laban. The cultural and social life of the Assamese community in Shillong centered around this club. The Nepalis were perhaps the earliest settlers of Shillong, whose arrival into the colonial district headquarters could be traced to the movements of the colonial army. Therefore the history of the movement of the Sylhet Light Infantry and the 8^th Gorkha Rifles are also the story of Nepalese migration into Shillong. Closely associated with the colonial military establishment, Nepalese settlements have been close to the European Cantonments in Shillong. The Gorkha Pathshala School established in 1876 was one of the oldest schools in this region to cater to the children of Army personnel. Here, the helpers and attendants of the British officers who were given elementary education through “the medium of Nepali language.” The Marwaris engaged primarily in business and the Biharis engaged in various dimensions of the service industry such as milk vending, hair cutting, cobbling, butchery, laundering and loaf-selling, were other major components of this cosmopolity.

Fig.2: A view over Shillong (1948) – The early ‘cosmopolitan heaven’ of Shillong was forged through a range of diverse cultural influences which included the efforts of communities like the British, the local Khasis, Bengalis, Assamese, Nepalis, Marwaris and Biharis.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Shillong became, as historian David Reid Syiemlieh was to observe, “a cosmopolitan town with a mixed population of locals, Europeans(administrators, tea planters and others who settled here on retirement), an increasing element of Bengalis who staffed the offices, Nepali crofters, enterprising Marwari traders and a small segment of other communities.”

THE COLLAPSE OF THE COSMOS:

The struggle for a hill state subsequently named Meghalaya also witnessed a close cooperation between the Tribal leaders and the non-Tribal elite, especially the Bengalis. Stories about the Bengali trade unionists operating in the various central government offices having facilitated the meeting between the then prime minister and the Hill State leaders still feature in grass-root nontribal narratives. But within a short time since the realization of statehood, relations soured between the tribes and the non-tribes. The Hill State was perceived as a haven for the protection of the Tribes, who constituted more than eighty percent of the population. If the Census is an indicator then there is no doubt that between 1971 and 1991, the tribal population of Shillong has increased from 41.47% to 53.13% while in the same period, the non-Tribal population has declined from 58.53% to 46.87%. Mistrust gave way to diatribe and diatribe to violence reflected in major conflagrations.

The first violent engagement came principal in 1979, where the Bengalis were identified as the principal adversaries. This was followed by the conflict with the Nepalis, who were viewed as the new adversaries in 1987 and then came the clash with the Biharis in 1992.  While the cause for these riots could be contested, there could be little disagreement that these three major conflagrations and many minor ethnic clashes, ensured the collapse of cosmopolitan Shillong.

The magnitude of violence had a decisive impact on non-Tribal minds. If the B. N. Sharma Commission Report on the 1992 Riots is to be followed, then 34 persons of the Non-Tribal communities lost their life in 1979 alone. According to the reported cases, the number of wounded was as many as 145, the number of Shops and establishments looted were about 225, as many as 9 houses were gutted and 50 partially damaged by arson, number of families evicted were 143 and number of displaced were 1500 scattered in 6 camps. The Riots of 1979 started the Anti- Foreigners agitation in Meghalaya when the local Member of Parliament opposed the demand of some of the non-tribal civil society organizations for rehabilitation of the riot displaced. For the first time, the slogan, “REFUGEES ARE ‘FOREIGN NATIONALS’” resonated in Shillong after the formation of Meghalaya. The anti foreigners agitations have formed the core of any anti Non-Tribal movement in Shillong ever since.  According to the Sharma Commission Report,  the conflict between the local Tribals and the Non-Tribals had became a regular feature since 1979 and in the decade 1981-1991, as many as 100 non Tribals had lost their lives to sporadic ethnic conflicts. Casualties have been recorded on the side of the Tribals as well. But these have been of a comparatively smaller number. Violence gave way to more violence and became causes to justify further ethnic polarizations and conflicts. In 1992, the number of Tribals who lost their lives was 3, while as many as 27 non-tribals were killed as a result of this riot.   

Fig.3: Photograph of Jail Road in 1948: The area became a major Bengali colony starting with the arrival of clerks from Bengal who accompanied the British administrators into the hills; joining them in the endeavor of creating Shillong. As the hill-station grew, the localities Jail Road, Laban and Thana Road emerged as predominantly Bengali localities. The subsequent riots of 1979 did much to destroy the Bengali community’s idea of a cosmopolitan Shillong.

But these riots were not without a pre-history. The antecedents of this conflict could be traced to the politics of the closing years of colonial rule. Conflict was endemic to the colonial construction of empowerment of ‘natives’ through the introduction of western education, a process that was not uniform and highly irregular. In the Khasi and Jaintia hills, western missions and private initiatives competed with and complimented each other to establish educational institutes which became the breeding ground for the Khasi elite. This education and culture contributed to the emergence of native elites who began to participate in the political life of colonial Assam. The gradual introduction of democracy with qualified representative politics in colonial Assam along with the other provinces engendered an aspiration among these elites to have a share in offices and participate in politics after the implementation of the Government of India Act 1935. But it also sowed the seeds for disturbing the communal harmony in Shillong. Non tribals were generally ‘fence sitters’, generally casting their lot with the Congress, “throwing marginal support in favour of Khasi candidates.” In 1938, their support ensured the elevation of MacDonald Kharkongor as the president of the District Congress Committee. S.K. Chaube, the author of Hill Politics in North East India points out that the non-tribals probably acquired an adversarial role by default. In the elections of January 1946, Nichols-Roy, a Congress man, emerged victorious over MacDonald Kharkongor. This election was a watershed in tribal-nontribal relations as it definitely turned a part of the articulate Khasi elite and the traditional chiefs who supported MacDonald Kharkongor against the Bengalis, who were the largest of the non-tribal community in colonial Shillong. The conflict was between two tribal elites, MacDonald Kharkongor, the president of the District Congress Committee and  Rev. J.J. M. Nichols-Roy, who ultimately succeeded in securing the Congress ticket in the elections of 1946. MacDonald Kharkongor, denied the Congress ticket, founded the Hill Union with a demand for a hill state. But along with that demand came a diatribe loaded with “communal hatred towards the second largest community in Shillong, namely the Bengalis (from Sylhet)… and had now voted for Nichols-Roy.” This election began the age of Tribal-Nontribal conflicts in Shillong.  

The partition of India and the transfer of Sylhet to East Pakistan led to the migration and settlement of a large number of lakhs of east Bengali migrants in Shillong. A new batch of Bengalis settled in Shillong.  Post colonial state of Assam with Shillong as the capital also attracted the settlement of the Assamese. But they were successful in developing a better relationship with the tribes. The birth of the Indian Constitution and the formation of mechanisms of constitutional protectionism reignited the tension between the tribes and the non tribes in the hills. Constitutional institutions set up to safeguard the interest of the tribes were often perceived as opportunities to convert these tribal areas into exclusive zones of tribal hegemony. Cosmopolitanism was the first casualty in the practice of constitutional protectionism in these hills. As the headquarters of the post-colonial state of Assam, Shillong became the focal point of this new brand of politics.

Therefore, when the District Council for united Khasi and Jaintia Hills was inaugurated on the 27^th of June, 1952, a Black Flag Demonstration was held in protest of the inclusion of some ‘Dkhars’ (foreigners in Khasi Language) in the Council. Non-tribals who traced their origin in the hills to the early days of colonial rule found their position challenged as Anti-Dkhar agitations came out into the public for the first time. Hill areas came to be marked on ethnic lines as exclusive zones and multi-ethnicity was viewed as transgressions of community spaces. Violence was viewed as legitimate means to homogenize geo-political and social spaces, in the name of protection of community interests. In the Hill areas, tribal interests have been recognized as paramount, to the detriment of the other communities that had shared these spaces with the tribals for more than a century.

CONCLUSION:

These conflicts, over the last seventy years have only reinforced the forces of exclusion and hatred. Thus one can only agree with the perception that the “old mixing up of the society amongst different races, creeds and ethnic groups has also reduced to a large extent be it in the fields of education, social functions or in service. Mutual love and respect waned to a great extent.

While different ethnic groups drifted apart, the administration took certain steps to sow the seeds for all subsequent onslaughts that was seen in this long held peaceful heaven of Shillong.” Today, while Shillong moves surely and rapidly towards becoming a local metropolis as the capital of Meghalaya; it is surely also a sad marker of the demise of its own cosmopolity.

  

Author's Bio- Note:

 Binayak Dutta teaches History in the North-Eastern Hill University.