Why The Shillong Unrest Was Not Just Over A Small Colony And Its Relocation

The violence that rocked Shillong, the picturesque capital of the hill state of Meghalaya in northeast India, early last month was not the first time that non-tribals came under attack from the indigenous Khasis (tribals) in that state. And it definitely won’t be the last unfortunate episode either in the long history of such violence directed against the non-tribals.

This time, the trigger was a minor incident on a road passing through a small colony inhabited by mostly Sikhs belonging to the scheduled caste on 31 May. Two Sikh ladies collecting water from a roadside tap were allegedly teased and verbally abused by two young Khasi boys. Some menfolk of the colony, known variously as Punjabi Colony, Sweeper Lane and Them Iew Mathor, reportedly beat up the two boys. But the matter was amicably resolved by the police within the next couple of hours.

But by mid-afternoon, rumours started circulating on social media that decapitated bodies of the two Khasi boys were found near the colony. The false rumours led to a gathering of a few hundred young men in the nearby Motphran area, which is the main marketplace of the city that was set up as a sanatorium by the British after the First Anglo-Burmese War in 1929. The young men, all Khasis, wanted to attack the colony where the Sikhs have been residing for at least 180 years now. The Sikhs - they call themselves Mazhabi Sikhs and are also known as Dalit Sikhs - were brought in by the British as sweepers and ‘night soil’ carriers. They were reportedly allowed by the local king (Syiem of Mylliem) to settle in a two-acre plot of land in what was then one corner of Shillong. The (Sikh) community elders say the Syiem gifted the plot of land to them.

That plot of land is now prime property and successive state governments have tried to relocate the residents of the colony without any success. Many influential organisations like the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) and the Federation of Khasi, Jaintia & Garo People (FKJGP) have also been demanding that the residents of the colony be relocated and the land taken over for development. The colony has about 350 households and about 3,000 residents. Most of them are engaged in petty vocations. In the past, all of them were employees of the Shillong Municipality, but with the passage of time, while the requirement for ‘night soil carriers’ has gone (there are no kutcha latrines in the city anymore), the civic body has been giving preference to local tribals for employment as sweepers. Only 25 residents of the colony are now permanent employees of the Municipality and another 25 are engaged on a daily wage basis. The Khasi tribal bodies say only these permanent and casual staff of the municipality has the right to reside in the colony and the rest should be evicted.

Past efforts to relocate the residents of the colony have failed, primarily because the local dorbars (self-governing local bodies under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution) in the areas where they were supposed to be relocated to had objected to the relocation. The dorbars are very powerful local bodies and have a say in who can reside, buy property or conduct business in a particular locality or village. No dorbar is willing to accept the residents of the colony for two reasons: they are non-tribals and also descendants of sweepers and ‘night soil carriers’. But efforts to evict the residents of the colony, which is quite an eyesore since it is a slum, have continued over the past few decades.

The residents of the colony, which has a gurdwara, three temples and a church, and a school as well, say that the land on which they stand was ceded to them by the Syiem of Mylliem and the Shillong Municipality has no jurisdiction over them. They cite this 1975 Supreme Court order to buttress their contention that since the civic body has no jurisdiction over the colony, it cannot issue eviction notices to them as well. They also cite a 1999 Gauhati High Court order directing the Syiem to give pattas (land title deeds) to the householders of the colony. The Syiem had given pattas for the places of worship and the school that time.

But then, this is not merely about a dispute over a two-acre plot of prime land in Shillong. The dispute arises because the residents of the colony are non-tribals. “Had this colony been occupied by tribals, there would have been no problems at all,” says Gurjit Singh, the secretary of the Harijan Panchayat Committee and the president of the Gurdwara committee. Singh is not wrong in his contention, given the fact that there exists a latent animosity among many Khasis towards non-tribals, who they derisively refer to as dkhars, and given the fact that non-tribals have faced repeated and organised attacks (read this article by prominent journalist and The Shillong Times editor Patricia Mukhim) since 1979. As Mukhim writes in the article, it was the Bengali community who faced attacks in 1979 and a large number fled Shillong permanently then and in subsequent years. Since then, the Biharis, Nepalis and Marwaris have also faced attacks. This time, it is the Sikhs who are the targets.

Agrees a mid-ranking Khasi bureaucrat, who is also associated with a prominent civil society organisation that played a crucial role in calming tempers and restoring peace after the latest violence. “The primary issue is not over land, but the identity of the people residing in that plot of land. Agreed, that colony is a slum, but relocation of people living in a slum to another area has never worked in any part of the country. There are critical livelihood issues involved. The slum represents a failure on the part of successive state governments and the Shillong Municipality to develop the area. With the dorbars of other areas in and around Shillong unwilling to allow these people to be relocated in their areas and with non-tribals barred from purchasing land except for a 10 km x 10 km area (called European Ward) in the heart of Shillong, and land in this area is prohibitively expensive anyway, where will the residents of the colony go? They cannot be simply evicted and left homeless in a hostile environment,” said this lady, one of a growing number of Khasis who disagree with xenophobic Khasi tribal sentiments. But the fact that she did not want to be named is evidence enough that the sane and moderate voices within the community remain under threat.

Getting back to the violence earlier this month, Gurjit Singh says that there was a clear attempt to drive away the residents of the colony and cleanse it. “The mobs (of Khasi young men) were brought in from other places and were given money to attack us,” he said. From 31 May evening, when the crowds congregated at Motphran (a couple of hundred feet from the colony), and throughout 1 June, the police battled the mobs and tried to keep them at bay. But on 2 June evening, the mobs greatly outnumbered the cops, who then retreated for a couple of hours. “That was the signal for the mobs to attack our colony. They started hurling petrol bombs and one salon belonging to one of the residents of our colony was reduced to ashes,” Singh recounted.

Gurjit Singh, in desperation, called up top police officers. “But none of them responded. I called up Home Minister James Sangma (his elder brother Conrad Sangma is the Chief Minister of the state) who, after listening to my appeal for help for a minute, suddenly said I had dialled the wrong number and disconnected the line. But I know I had dialled the right number since I had spoken to him earlier also on that number. That is why I believe the present government was behind this whole agitation and violence to drive us out of the colony,” alleged Gurjit Singh. He said the mobs had planned to enter the colony on fateful night and attack the residents while setting fire to the houses. “Had they succeeded, we would have had to flee and the government would then have taken over the colony,” he said.

The government, in which the Bharatiya Janata Party is a junior partner, refutes this allegation. “Some opposition politicians were behind this. A probe is on and we will identify and punish those involved. The young men, who gathered there and tried to attack the colony, were brought in and given food, money and liquor by some opposition politicians in order to create a grave law and order situation and discredit the government,” said a government spokesperson, who also cited the Chief Minister’s statement in this regard.

The fact that the violence was communal in nature and directed against the Sikhs was borne out from the fact that properties belonging to Sikhs in other parts of the city were attacked and destroyed and a truck driven by a Sikh torched on the Shillong-Guwahati highway. “If it was only an issue between the government and the residents of the colony over their relocation, then why did it flare up so much and how did the mobs get involved? It was an attempt at ethnic cleansing. There are many cases of land disputes in the state, but none of them attract the kind of hostile reaction from the tribals as this one does. I’m sure had this colony been inhabited by local tribals, it would not have been an issue at all and there would have been no attempts to evict them. In fact, had the government tried to evict tribals from such a colony, organisations like the KSU would have stood beside them,” said a prominent member of the Sikh community who did not want to be identified for obvious reasons.

The state government’s stand, and that of tribal and students’ organisations, is that the colony was meant for employees of the Shillong municipality, specifically sweepers employed by the civic body, and the present occupants of the colony who are not municipal employees are all squatters and illegal occupants. The ‘illegal occupants’, says the state government and tribal bodies, must go.

But, says Gurjit Singh, they have nowhere to go. “We cannot buy land, except in the European Ward where land prices are too high. And since most of us work in the vicinity of the colony, our kids study in the school in the colony or in nearby schools, and since many of us have our shops here, we cannot move from here,” says Singh. He disputes the reasoning that a majority of the residents of the colony that was meant to accommodate municipal workers are illegal occupants since they don’t work for the civic body. “The land was ceded by the Syiem to our forefathers and not to the municipality. This is not a municipal colony or land,” he argued.

The general perception, and one repeated by most of the Khasis this reporter spoke to, is that the residents of the colony are trouble-makers and that the slum is an eyesore which needs to be removed. The images this colony conjures in one’s mind is that of young men idling away, or playing carom and cards by the roadside, shacks jostling for space with people crammed into them, filth flowing down narrow drains, a few hole-in-the-wall shops transacting business and an overall air of decrepit unkemptness shrouding it.

It is, however, not because of lack of efforts or requisite qualifications for gainful employment that the young men or menfolk of this colony are mostly engaged in petty vocations or are unemployed. A whopping 80 per cent of government jobs in Meghalaya are reserved for the indigenous Khasi, Jaintia and Garo tribals. “And even in the general category, it is very difficult to get jobs. Non-tribals face severe discrimination and make up for barely 10 per cent of the state government workforce. Trade licences from the Autonomous District Councils are mandatory to conduct any sort of business, and once again, non-tribals find it almost impossible to get these licences. Even if one manages to get such a licence, getting a space to set up a shop or an office is next to impossible,” said a Marwari businessman who is a third-generation resident of the state. The Khasis deny the charges of discrimination and say the reservation in government jobs and the restrictions on buying property or conducting business are constitutional safeguards to preserve the identity and interests of the tribals.

The bigger question, say non-tribals who have been staying in that part of the country for decades, is it the legal discrimination against them which makes them second-class citizens of the state is fair. “We are as much citizens of Meghalaya as the tribals. The discrimination is matters of ownership of property, conducting business or employment is grossly unfair,” said a third-generation Bengali who works as an advocate. Many non-tribals have started advocating the Sikkim model that considers all those whose parents and grandparents, irrespective of their ethnicity or religious beliefs, were residents of the state in a certain year as Sikkimese citizens. And only Sikkimese citizens get to avail reservations in jobs, can buy or sell properties, and conduct business in the state.

In the past, the attacks on specific non-tribal communities resulted in large-scale exodus by members of those communities (Bengalis, Biharis, Nepalis etc) out of Meghalaya. Shillong, especially, was once a highly cosmopolitan city, but has lost that character. But this time, the attack on the Sikhs has not yielded similar results. If anything, the residents of the colony have dug their heels in and are not only determined to stay put, but have also displayed their ability to put up a tough fight. When the mobs from Motphran were about to attack them on 1 and 2 June, hundreds of sword-wielding Sikhs letting out their full-throated war cry - Jo Bole So Nihal, Sat Sri Akal - sent a collective shiver down the spines of the potential attackers. And the visits of ministers, MPs, MLAs and leaders from Punjab, as well as delegations of the powerful Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), acted a strong deterrence against any further misadventure on the part of those who want the area to be ethnically cleansed.

Add to that the legal rights of the residents of the colony. “It will be impossible to evict them from the colony. They have rights as long-time residents of the colony and there are many judgements of the Supreme Court and various high courts which uphold these rights,” said a senior advocate. The state government has now constituted a ‘high-power’ committee to look into the issue, but this committee has no representation from the residents of the colony. Whatever be the recommendations of this committee, if the residents of the colony don’t accept it, legal experts say there is no way the government can implement those recommendations.

Given this, say the moderates among the Khasis, it is best to take the residents of the colony into confidence and develop the colony so that it can be opened up for commercial use without displacing its long-time residents. And, along with that, it is also high time to have a relook at the laws and rules which reduce long-time non-tribal residents of Meghalaya (and some other states of the Northeast as well) to the status of miserable second-class citizens.