Being and Becoming: Men in a Matrilineal Society

Abstract

This article elucidates what it means to be a man in a matrilineal society by critically assessing the status of men within the Khasi matrilineal tribe in Meghalaya, India. This article argues that Khasi men constantly negotiate their gender identity in tandem with a tribal identity and find themselves trapped between a masculine assertion of patriarchal hegemony and demands that the rules of matriliny apply to their everyday existence. There is inevitably a conflict between the two, and Khasi men constantly tackle this dilemma by presenting their worldview through a notion of victimhood or a sense of pathos in explicating their position in the tussle between these two polarities. While the structural order of a matrilineal system determines the existence and ways of being a man and even a woman in a matrilineal society, this article argues that both of these positions could be prescriptive while ascribing of an identity in itself.

Introduction

This article elucidates what it means to grow up male in a matrilineal society, and critically assesses the status of men within the ambit of matriliny. The matrilineal society under consideration is the Khasi matrilineal tribe in Meghalaya, India. Early anthropological works (Bachofen 1967 [1861]; Morgan 1851) have addressed the dynamics of power sharing between men and women and the principles of social organisation within matrilineal societies. Subsequent portrayals of matrilineal societies have looked at matriarchies and matrilineal societies as the antithesis of all patriarchies and the hierarchies they create. Some of this literature construes these societies as ‘societies of economic reciprocity’, exemplifying ‘perfect mutuality’ between genders (Goettner-Abendroth 2005). These positions seem dated today and too simplistic to capture the dynamics of matrilineal societies in contemporary times. Matrilineal societies are neither pure matriarchies with sovereign rule of the woman nor societies with complimentary equality between sexes. Such overarching categorisations are rather dangerous, as matrilineal societies do not exist in isolation without any contact with the outside world. The proximity and prevalence of a markedly different social structure with a dominant patriarchal hegemony influence and shape the dynamics of what we consider matrilineal in contemporary times.

Within the trajectory of anthropological work on matrilineal societies, the question of Khasi matrilineal structure becomes even more complex because of its inherent contradiction. While Khasis trace their lineage and descent through women, men clearly hold power in the form of social and political authority. Khasi matriliny ensures women have a right over property inheritance by combining matrilineal descent with matrilocal forms of residence. Despite this, Khasi men still hold ordained structures of power, as the traditional Khasi institution of local governance—the Dorbar—only allows men as members. Even within the private sphere of the family, the mother’s brother, in the structure of the avunculate, is the major decision-maker and responsible for his sister’s children. This distinctiveness and inherent contradiction of Khasi matriliny, given the specific combination of lineage through women with matrilocal forms of residence, on the one hand, and political/social authority residing with men, on the other, has been pointed out by many scholars, including the classical works of Lowie (1919), Levi-Strauss (1969) and British colonial archivists like Gurdon (1990). Early anthropologists such as Hodson (1922, 1925) and Bose (1934, 1936) have also commented on this Khasi exception, but more so in terms of providing a distinct contrast to generalised systems of exchange insofar as rules of tracing descent for marriage class were concerned.

Later anthropological research on Khasi social structure and matrilineal complexities has touched upon the matrilineal gender dynamic through an analysis of, say, questions of Khasi kinship (Nakane 1967) or how Khasi kinship structure is not structurally devoid of normative conditions of choice-based marriage, which is almost prescriptive (Nongbri 2013). The complex interrelationships between Khasi gender and identity (Nongbri 2010), the normative structures of matrilineal society with women at the centre (Bareh 1997; Ehrenfels 1955; Gurdon 1990), the question of how lineage is distinctly and traditionally drawn from women (Das and Bezbaruah 2011) or how Khasi society is more matriarchal than matrilineal (Banerjee 2015) have also been the focus of many other works. Commenting on Khasi political institutions, namely in terms of the Dorbar at the village level, some scholars have shown how such institutions are male-centric, non-democratic and unaccommodating of women and their participation (Roy 2018). Some others have pointed out how a few Dorbars do have women as members, but only as exceptions (Laloo 2014; War 1998). A few studies present a generalist overview of an entire matrilineal society (Mawrie 1981a), while some others include a mention of Khasi matrilineal society in a formalist manner. Debates around lineage, descent, structures of local governance and dynamics of power sharing thus occupy a large part of the scholarship on Khasi matriliny.

Works not in this terrain of research focus on Khasi society in terms of customary laws and practices (Barooah 2007; Cantlie 1974 [1934]), indigenous religion (Mawrie 1981a) or its long missionary history (May 2012) or a history of evangelisation (Sen 2015). Some works also collapse an entire overview of a community along broad-brush strokes by talking about Khasis as a ‘people’ (Bareh 1997), while others present a romanticised travelogue kind of overview by taking about authentic ‘Khasi village’ experience of hospitality and difference (Leela 2016) unlike any other place, and so forth. A particularly rich arena of work has looked at Khasi society as a repository of folk practices, tradition and heritage, often stemming from looking at songs, rituals, beliefs, practices, stories and folklore (Kharmawplhang 2001; Lyngdoh 2016). As an exception, some have looked at urbanity and the city through a critical lens on the ‘folk’, arguing how matriliny is changing given the contemporary cosmopolitan ethos, generally marked by the city of Shillong (Lyngdoh 2012). Yet a few others still fall within the uncritical reportage mode of glorifying such folk traditions and practices (Bhattacharya 2015; Dutta and Kikhi 2016; Sen 2004). There are a few contemporary research studies along very specific axes, such as the sociopolitical dynamics of community ownership, inheritance and control of land, given the constraints of the sixth schedule of the constitution (Soreide and Gloppen 2019), or Khasis caught in a border conflict between the states of India and Bangladesh (Hölzle 2017) and other such concerns marked by the presence of the state and its relationship with the identity question.

Examining this scholarship carefully, one notices an obvious and palpable gap in both classical and contemporary scholarly work on Khasi matriliny—the question of addressing the Khasi matrilineal structure along the register of masculinity. Most research do not present a perspective on Khasi social structure keeping men and questions of masculinity in mind. Thinking of Khasi matriliny from the perspective of men has either been to highlight how men hold sway and power despite the matrilineal structure through the structure of the avunculate or in terms of political and social authority given the publicly recognised role of men in local structures of governance and domination. The vexed position of the ‘Khasi man’ caught between prescriptive demands of matrilineal descent, inheritance and residence, while occupying the aspirations of being men given the larger patriarchal hegemony of the world at large, has not been the focus of any anthropological or sociological work so far. Commentaries and writings highlighting the men’s questions have mostly been journalistic (Ahmed 1994; Gopalakrishnan 2020; Kharkongor 2017; Warjri 2018) or a broad overview in large brush strokes (Stirn and Van Ham 2000). Nongbri’s (2014) reflection on fatherhood concurrent with changes in the contemporary world, where she argues how newer choices do have an impact on matriliny vis-à-vis the question of fatherhood, or Pakyntein’s (2000) work, which talks about Khasi men exerting differing marriage choices, might be the only exception to an extent. However, both of these works do not foreground the question of masculinity directly within a matrilineal society, nor do they provide a theoretical paradigm centrally working with the notion of Khasi masculinity. This article addresses this visible gap in anthropological work on Khasi matriliny by foregrounding the men’s questions to analyse and comment on contemporary Khasi matriliny and its inherent social structures vis-à-vis a tribal identity in an overlap and distinction with gender identity.

Looking at the status of men in matriliny and what it means to grow up male in a matrilineal society, this article argues that Khasi men occupy a realm in between the larger patriarchal order, which ensures the gendering of men in a particular way, and the tribal identity of being men with specific stated roles within a matrilineal set-up. Men in a matrilineal society like the Khasis are engaged in negotiating their worldview and social standing between these two polarities of a stereotypical masculine identity, on the one hand, and an entrenched matrilineal tribal identity, on the other. There is inevitably a conflict between the two and Khasi men constantly negotiate this positionality.

Further, this article also argues that Khasi men, in presenting their worldview, always take recourse to a notion of victimhood or a sense of pathos in explicating their position of tussle between these two polarities. Their constant refrain is how the ‘system’ has been unfair to them and that they are ‘just not men enough’. Whether this is true or not, I feel it is pertinent to highlight the overarching universal presence of this voice, which Khasi men adopt in negotiating their masculine identity within the social framework of matriliny.

Note on Methodology

The structure of this article works with individual narratives elicited in conversations that I had with a variety of people in both Shillong and rural areas of Meghalaya. While ethnographic in methodology, the article is primarily an outline of what people say about matriliny and being male in the context of matriliny. The organisation of this article follows a recounting or retelling, as it were, of what I witnessed, heard and had the privilege of ‘listening in on’ while in Meghalaya—initially over a period of 2 months for this particular research and subsequently over 3–4 intermittent years during different fieldwork-based research that I was doing in Meghalaya. The question of how men think, react and respond to the structure and prescriptions of matriliny, stated and unstated, has always presented itself in many ways. This research did not deploy questionnaires, surveys or any strict interviews to seek responses on the status of men in matriliny. Unless one wants specific factual corroboration, questionnaires and surveys may not elicit a perceptive response to life and living. Since the intention of this research was the latter, I chose to focus on the conversational. For me, thinking about what it means to grow up male in a matrilineal society was a way of researching perceptions, finding a way of eliciting perceptions and seeing if that could become ethnographic in writing. This article then draws from conversations I was privy to or had access to and recounts them ethnographically.

‘Bury the System’: The Matrilineal Existence

Thinking about the dynamics of the matrilineal system and its implications for masculinity and growing up male, one is struck by the import of a statement made by Adrian, ¹ a Khasi man who obviously thinks there is no reason or logic for a system like matriliny to still exist. Adrian says, ‘Oh, the matrilineal system? Get it done with; let’s give it a decent burial, while there is still time’. This statement, not too uncommon amongst Khasi men, compels one to ask if such a sentiment is subscribed to by Khasis in general or if it is just a one-off remark by an individual that bears no consequence. Adrian seemed to be extremely cynical when I was introduced to him as someone who was interested in researching the status of men in a matrilineal society.

Ostensibly, one would not think that the matrilineal system has been unfair to Adrian. He is well educated, had the opportunity to do what he wanted, and remarkably, even the family property has been placed in his name, which is unheard of amongst the Khasis as all ancestral property is strictly passed on only to the youngest daughter (khatduh) ² and not to sons. He said, ‘Yes, all that is fine, I have been lucky to have broadminded parents, but this is only an exception’. He said the biggest problem plaguing this ‘damn place’ is the ‘kur’. Kur in Khasi means the clan, and every Khasi belongs to his mother’s clan. A man is deemed to belong to his mother’s clan even after marriage and his children belong to their mother’s clan, which effectively means that a man does not really have a right over his own children.

Adrian’s sentiments were echoed in discussions and conversations with other Khasi men as well, who constantly felt they were at the receiving end of an ‘unjust system’. One does not doubt the conviction of such a claim; however, in accepting the presence of such a voice, always bordering on pathos, I think it is important to then ask the question of what makes a section of men in one society choose to explain their life world and societal positioning as being the ‘victim of a system’. Khasi men voluntarily take recourse to this notion of victimhood, almost in collective bad faith, in narrating their life condition within the ambit of matriliny. At times, even women support this stance.

Amy, a journalist based in Shillong, seconded this view and went on to the extent of saying that ‘within the domestic sphere, men are always secondary’. According to her, the problems faced by men growing up in a matrilineal society and the demands that it places on them in the sharing of household duties could almost be seen as equivalent to a daughter’s status in a patrilineal Hindu society. In her opinion, it is absolutely justified for men to feel the way they do. At the same time, she also says how Khasi men are expected to be ‘macho, aggressive and domineering like men in any other patriarchal society’. Thus, even if on the surface there are no distinctions in the notion of masculinity, Khasi men find it difficult and think that they are not masculine enough in asserting their masculinity in comparison to notions of a man’s role in a patrilineal set-up.

This article does not attempt to present or state how Khasi men in their lived reality provide an antithesis to the patriarchal and hegemonic notions of masculinity or how Khasi women are laying claims within ‘masculine domains’ by being in a matrilineal set-up. Instead, I would like to question this very generic ‘notion of masculinity’ and ask if it would be pertinent to locate a distinct sense of what is ‘Khasi masculinity’ as well as what could be called ‘Khasi femininity’ in itself. I think such an exercise would help decipher distinct contexts of masculinity within the confines of a matrilineal system like that of the Khasis.

Whose Property?

The question of property, especially the inheritance of property and property rights, is an extremely important factor to consider if one intends to comment on the nature of men’s status and rights within Khasi matriliny. Apart from tracing descent through the woman, the youngest daughter (khatduh) is accorded the right to inherit both movable and immovable property like land and other assets. Since Khasis reckon descent through the mother only, a family of brothers and sisters is spoken of only as the great-grandchildren of one great-grandmother. Historically, there is one word in Khasi—shi kpoh—to express this idea of the clan traced through the mother, which literally translated means ‘one womb’. The youngest daughter (khatduh) is also seen to ‘hold’ the religion (ka bat ka niam), and it is her duty to ritually perform the family ceremonies and propitiate the family ancestors; hence, the ancestral property is always passed on to be taken care of by her (Bareh 1997; Gurdon 1990; Mawrie 1981a). The status and rights of the khatduh are intrinsic to her duties as the youngest daughter. Inheritance was not as important as the performance of all these rituals to maintain the idea of a Khasi tradition. However, in the present-day context, the khatduh is not a mere ‘custodian’ of the ancestral property. It now becomes a question of inheritance, and often, the khatduh, while being bound to ‘inherit’ and ‘take care’ of the property, ends up ‘asserting’ her rights over it undermining the position of other siblings in the same family, especially the brothers. Contrarily, it has also been argued that it is men, in the structure of the avunculate, who in effect are the executors and managers of the land and property of their sisters (Banerjee 2015; Pakyntein 2000). However, this view is contentious, as officially all property is in the name of either the mother of the household or the khatduh, and often it is the men who must vie for a share of the property since they are not entitled to any of it formally.

If this is one scenario, one should also keep in mind the pressures working simultaneously on a khatduh in acquiring property as she is expected to look after her siblings, especially the bothers if they wish to stay in the ancestral home even after marriage. She is bound to provide for them, which translated into today’s economic equations effectively means that, as one respondent, Fiona, said, ‘the man can just sit at home and eat from his sister’s earnings’. Fiona, a middle-aged Khasi woman with a high educational background is an independent entrepreneur living in Shillong who believes that ‘men have it so easy here’. When asked to elaborate, she said that because the onus is on women to earn and look after the children, men can afford to laze around and ‘just not work’.

Contrastingly, Elisa, a single working woman who is also a khatduh, is absolutely at peace with the matrilineal system. She says how the system in fact ‘ensures the protection of women’ because everything is geared towards ‘protecting the women’. If the property remains with the woman and descent is traced through women, then there is no danger of the Khasi race dying out. ‘Men work out and the women manage the home’ was a common refrain one always encountered. It was interesting to see how most women always adopted either of the two points of view presented above, one being how the system is favourable only for men (Fiona’s stand) or the other being how it ensures equity for both (Elisa’s stand). However, things are not as simple as ‘men work out and women manage the home’. This only seems to be rhetoric that would be the easiest to use.

Almost all men, on the other hand, disagreed with the idea that the youngest daughter inheriting property was bereft of any complications. They say that the problem emerges in the distribution of assets and other forms of tangible and non-tangible sources of income besides ancestral property. Even though traditionally all movable and immovable property is passed to the khatduh, she is always seen as the ‘custodian’ of this property and nothing more. Moreover, nowadays, there are innumerable forms of property besides assets and land. Bank guarantees, commercial properties, fixed deposits, bonds and policies are all forms of property that one could inherit. The ownership of these assets then becomes contentious, as quite often everything is given to the khatduh. Property inheritance in present-day circumstances cannot be under the purview of solely what the traditional system of matrilineal inheritance determines. Given these circumstances, Khasi men find themselves compromising and negotiating their status within the dictates of a matrilineal structure.

Apart from passing property to only the khatduh families today are deciding on an equitable distribution of property to an extent, at least in urban Shillong, as was the case with Frederick. Frederick works at the State Bank of India and is the father of three children: two sons and one daughter. He lives in his khatduh wife’s house and looks after her mother, as his wife is deceased. He says nowadays even the khatduh realises that it is wrong on her part to not share property with her siblings. He would not think of passing all his property to only his daughter without leaving anything for his sons. However, even if one person in his individual capacity wishes to distribute property equally between his sons and daughters, it may not be a question of individual choice as other members of the wife’s clan (kur) may raise objections. Frederick faced a similar crisis when his younger sister (the khatduh of the family) wanted to pass on the property that was in her name to him. She had settled in Canada and had no intention of returning to Shillong. Since her brother lived in Shillong, she thought he could use the property and thought of passing it to him, even if it meant selling it to him. But when she did try to pass on the property, which is also the house he grew up in, it did not materialise. There were objections from her maternal uncle and a few other relatives. Finally, she had to sell the property to an outsider. Thus, it may not be a matter of individual choice. What one may choose is also a part of the larger structure of matriliny and the rules, latent or manifest, stated therein.

Contrarily, a khatduh is also under undue pressure to always inherit ancestral property, especially in the name of custodianship. David, a young professional in Shillong, pointed out how his friend, a girl working in Delhi with a flourishing career, had to suddenly come back home to take care of the ancestral property passed on to her because she was a khatduh. Although David had always heard of these pressures and demands on a khatduh, this was the first time he had heard someone directly voicing these pressures in a resentful tone, like his friend, who says how she had to ‘just leave her job and come back home to sleepy Shillong’, much to her chagrin. There are distinct and specific demands of a matrilineal society for both men and women, especially regarding property. Property relations do significantly define the idea of how one gender position has an edge over the other in terms of entitlement and most perceptibly in terms of inheritance.

These demands are very real, and the entire system has been encoded in law after the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council (KHADC) approved the Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Bill presented in 1997. ³ The second amendment to the bill introduced in 2018 reifies the status of matriliny even further by asserting that any Khasi taking on a father’s surname or a Khasi woman marrying a non-Khasi man will lose the status of being a Khasi. This second amendment to the bill was brought in after the withdrawal of the first and a previous second amendment to the bill in 2015 and 2018, respectively. This bill hopes to preserve the exclusive flavour of the matrilineal Khasis by stating that a Khasi must follow the matrilineal system by taking his/her clan’s name from the mother’s side, and the social custom of lineage must be preserved in its purity. This is the basic tenet of this law, and the subsequent amendment wishes to reinforce the matrilineal system as it is traditionally understood and practiced. There has been massive opposition to this second amendment, the strongest being how the provision of making a Khasi woman ‘ceasing to be a Khasi’, dispossessing her of all rights and privileges as a scheduled tribe, let alone being a member of the tribe, is in direct violation of the various provisions of the Indian Constitution, namely Article 14, 19 and 21. This act amounts to ostracising a Khasi woman if she chooses to marry of her own volition to a non-Khasi man, which violates constitutional principles and basic human rights and reflects the classic patriarchal gesture of controlling women’s sexuality.

The question of these amendments to the bill gets complicated further with the introduction of an altogether new bill by the KHADC now—The Khasi Inheritance of Property Bill 2021. This bill demands the equitable distribution of property amongst both male and female siblings, an apparent gesture to overthrow the natural order of a social custom and lineage where only the khatduh can inherit property. In a way, the proponents of this bill could have hypothetically helped Frederick inherit ancestral property with a no-objection from his sister, who is a khatduh, or suited David’s friend, who may choose not to take the burden of custodianship. This bill apparently will also safeguard the loss of ancestral property if any Khasi man or woman chooses to marry a non-Khasi and adopts the culture and tradition of their respective non-Khasi spouses. ⁴

The provisions of these enactments in law work in codifying the idea of what is manifestly ‘pure’ and of traditional lineage, albeit under pressure from various stakeholders asking for a change in the system. The blueprint of these bills wishes to preserve the envisaged and imagined ‘purity’ of what is matrilineal descent, but the question to ask is whether such enactments instituted through state institutional mechanisms preserve a system unmindfully or help it adapt to contemporary demands and concerns. Whether the matrilineal system today, given all its rules and dictates, suits everyone, keeping in mind the modern-day social and economic circumstances of a society like the Khasis, is a difficult balancing act to strike. It would be foolhardy to think of Khasi society or even matriliny as purely harmonious and cohesive, suiting the demands of the ever-new gender formations of the contemporary.

Organisational Opposition to Matriliny

Most of these structural changes demanded within the matrilineal system have come to the fore as various Khasi voices have raised these concerns over the years. One of the strongest organised bodies opposing Khasi matriliny is this organisation called the Syngkhong Rympei Thymmai (SRT), which has always opposed the Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Bill 1997. The latest Khasi Inheritance of Property Bill 2021 could be seen as a coming together of these voices to address the lacunae in the previous versions of the 1997 Bill. SRT has been vocal about how the original 1997 Bill has numerous objectionable clauses that are detrimental to the interests of a Khasi man and are almost discriminatory in essence for men. Although the new 2021 Bill seeks to address some of these concerns, SRT is sceptical and is waiting to see how the bill will pan out as it is in its consultative phase right now. SRT claims that men suddenly inheriting property when they have traditionally not been able to do so may be too sudden a change for them to handle, especially to manage the responsibility that comes with inheritance. However, the interesting opposition to the new bill has brought both Khasi men and women together as they oppose the strong wording of what it means to be a Khasi. The main bone of contention is the fact that members of the community who do not adhere to the provisions of the act will cease to be Khasis and will not be entitled to any benefits of belonging to a scheduled tribe. The very idea of ‘ceasing to be a Khasi’, according to the mandate of an enacted legislature, is quite forbidding, they say—it is emblematic of thoughtless protectionism of people’s lives and identities.

The SRT was formed in 1990 for men to assert themselves in the light of ‘discrimination’ because of their secondary status compared to women. Literally translated, SRT implies a ‘Restructure of Khasi Society’. Mr Pilgrim K. Lakiang, one of the founder members of SRT, adopted a tone of utter disdain and attacked the matrilineal system as it stands today as soon as I met him as someone interested in the contemporary dynamics of Khasi matriliny vis-à-vis the position of men. ⁵ He says, ‘The men are nobody in this society; neither do they have a status of a father or husband’. The role of men in Khasi society is purely functional ‘to produce children for the lineage of the woman to carry on’. According to him, men are seen as secondary, and it is always the upbringing and care of women that are of central concern for all families. When asked on what basis one could assume the secondary status of men amongst the Khasis, he said that is self-explanatory and one gets to see it in the very day-to-day circumstances both within the family and outside. Women are always introduced first. Friends, relatives and family would always enquire about the well-being of girls in the family rather than boys. If there is no girl in a family, then there is always this reaction, ‘Oh, no girls?’. Mr Lakiang believes such ideas are internalised early in life for Khasi children, especially in the case of the khatduh. Apparently, the statement which is extremely common for children to hear or for adults to voice is ‘oh, this one is the khatduh’ or ‘she is the youngest’, which in itself is a very loaded term. A young khatduh, say seven or eight years old, immediately realises the significance of the term ‘khatduh’. An organisation like SRT attempts to address and talk about these discontents among Khasi men and then formally calls for a changeover to a patrilineal mode of being through law.

However, what seemed a little distressing is that all their resentments and demands were premised on the assumption that men are secondary to women in Khasi society. As much as Mr Lakiang, even Mr K. Pariat, the then-president of the organisation, adopted the same line of argument and asked, ‘How can men be secondary to women?’. Directly or indirectly, they always hinted at how ridiculous it was to see Khasi men the way they are. They said, ‘men are naturally stronger, that is the order of nature’. They justify their demand on the basis that men need to regain their position of ‘natural superiority in the family’. According to Mr Pariat, the very idea of belonging to a clan is divisive for the family unit because, even upon marriage, the father will always only belong to his mother’s clan.

The demands of an organisation like the SRT are not based on a sense of powerlessness in the public domain; rather, it is a dissonance between the privileges within a familial private domain and the public domain. In demanding a privileged position for the man in Khasi society, what they are essentially asking for is a reprisal of the sense of non-power within the private domain of the family. Khasi men privilege the domain of the private family over social and political authority. However, the argument against this could be that since Khasi men already have sway in terms of social and political authority, they are now asking for dominion in a sphere where they do not have a hold, which is the clan and the unit of the nuclear family.

Women and/in Matriliny

I had briefly mentioned Fiona and Elisa above, two women who subscribe to one of the two points of view that men have either had it too easy or that the system as it exists suits both men and women equally. Before talking to women to analyse what they had to say about being men in a matrilineal society, it was interesting to see how men always seemed to talk of their victimhood and sense of pathos with regard to women vis-à-vis the privileged woman figures of the mother, the wife and most significantly, the khatduh. Given this position, one wonders whether women adopt a similar stand when speaking of or about men while making a comment on the matrilineal system. As much as I would be guarded in stating that all men look at the system along registers of pathos or victimhood, similarly, there is never one single line of thinking that all Khasi women adopt or express in talking about the matrilineal existence. The urban–rural divide seems to be quite pronounced in their view of the system and its complexities. Women like Fiona and Elisa from an urban context like Shillong have a point of view that is quite well formulated, and they have figured out a way of negotiating and fixing their own gender position vis-à-vis men and what it means for them to enjoy their privileged or disadvantaged location within matriliny. For instance, Fiona has problems with her husband, Neil, and narrated to me in an extremely nonchalant manner how they have mutually decided to live separately despite their two young children. Interestingly, they run a business together, and she says she does not mind sharing this professional space with her husband, although they have mutually agreed to live separately. She said one cannot waste one’s time investing too much energy in a man here ‘If you can’t get along, fine, just move on’. It was in this light that she said, ‘men have it too easy here. They are pampered at home and even after marriage they do not grow up’.

However, one heard a surprisingly different version of things when I met Neil, who told me how he was interested in the future of the kids along with their relationship, but it seemed that ‘things just did not work out’ and he had no option but to leave. He eventually detached himself from the kids and her life. He said how they had always thought of starting a business venture together, as he had a lot of ideas. They shared these ideas, but her brothers always wanted to get involved, which he did not appreciate. He obviously lived with her in her house with her mother and brothers. On separating, the first thing for him to do was to move out, and it was then that he started this small confectionary as a business venture. Initially, she was not involved in his project, but to his amazement ‘she suddenly started coming to the shop when she saw it was doing well’, says Neil. He said he did not want to work with her anymore, which was completely contrary to what she said about not having problems in sharing a professional space. It was interesting to see how the wife insisted that it was okay for them to separate, while for the husband, there is no other alternative but to say that ‘I will have to do something on my own’, knowing that the children within a matrilineal set-up can never be his. While I did not manage to spend too much time with Fiona as compared to Neil, it may seem like a skewed perspective to present Neil’s version of events in detail, while that may not be the case with Fiona’s. However, the sense of loss, betrayal and grief, although palpable, was not asserted and articulated by Fiona as directly as it was by Neil. Nonetheless, in the urban context, both women and men have a way of exercising their will, and both seem to assert what suits them, whether it be Fiona choosing to ‘live life on her own terms’ or someone like Frederick deciding to pass on property to all his children or Neil adjusting to a new mode of life as a professional partner with someone he was married to.

Stepping out of the urban milieu, however, allows one to notice how the idea of what it means to be a man or a woman is not intrinsically tied to what the matrilineal system entails in terms of inheritance and rights. The women I met in rural Meghalaya do not look at their gender status as an identity in relation to the matrilineal system or to men in particular. It was fascinating to have a conversation with Kong Clara in Sohra, who is a victim of domestic violence from an abusive alcoholic husband. She says, ‘Earlier I used to be scared and took a lot of beating’, ‘but once I had children, I did not care for him at all and just concentrated on rearing them as best as I could’. She said, ‘men are like this only’, and that ‘did not bother me’. I asked her what she meant by saying ‘men are like this only and if she ever thought about the status or position men enjoyed within a matrilineal set-up, considering that women do have a lot of privileges, at least officially. She said one did not really think about things in this manner ‘In living one’s life, one is not thinking about all these things. I knew my husband was useless and hence I better take care of things’. She said her children mattered to her, and that was all. Suddenly, in an animated gesture, she raised both her hands in a fist formation and said, ‘I am the man’, and broke into a hysterical laugh. The entire room, including her mother and her sister’s daughters in the other room, broke into peals of laughter.

Looking back at my interaction with Kong Clara, one does not know whether her statement ‘I am the man’ ought to be read as an aspiration of wanting to be a man or as a statement that proclaims that it does not really matter whether one is a man or a woman. However, in the context of another rural woman in this village called Kharang, one clearly got to see how the status of being a woman is so crucial given the matrilineal structure and how a woman asserts her status within it. A woman in Kharang, a high school graduate, is the pride of the entire village. Now her mother is looking for a ‘match’ for her daughter and is specifically looking for a groom who is not at all educated. This is apparently not what the daughter wants; she, being a high school graduate, wants a person who is at least slightly educated if not a graduate. However, the mother is adamant and only wants a non-educated groom, as she thinks that an educated husband for her daughter would not be comfortable helping around the house and would not be interested in agriculture. In the context of matriliny amongst the Khasis, Das (2002) has argued that if a Khasi girl marries a more educated man, there is a tendency for the couple to set up their own neo-local residences and alternatively, if the girl marries a boy less educated than her, then they continue to stay in the traditional matrilineal system without any hassle. The mother went on to say that educational level is not an important consideration for a girl in choosing a marriage partner, and that boys tend to drop out of education or discontinue it after marriage as they get engaged with work, especially in a rural context. Girls, on the other hand, continue work or seek education, as that is an easier proposition given that they stays with their mother in their own household unit. In perceptible contrast to how women like Fiona, Elisa or Kong Clara may view the status of men within Khasi matriliny, the next section illustrates very briefly how we might think about the location of men within matriliny from their perspective.

What Boys/Men May Think

David, a designer by profession and one of a family of only brothers, which is quite rare in a Khasi family, is someone I know personally. Being from a family with only boys, he said ‘he never felt what it really meant for him to grow up as a boy and not a girl’. David reiterated time and again how he and his brothers never felt the overarching dominance of either his mother or his father at home. David initially took the surname of his father, but he changed it to his mother’s surname later. He does not have a problem with either, and he changed it as he ‘likes the way his mother’s surname sounds’. There is no reason to doubt this rationale, but his elder brother Nigel said it is difficult to carry on with one’s father’s surname in a matrilineal society, as then you are not officially recognised as a Khasi. That could be a problem for an independent freelance worker like David, who obviously requires to furnish his official identity for all kinds of project grants, bank loans and so forth. David, however, was never under any pressure from his mother’s immediate kin to change his name. He says it was his own choice.

Khasi men taking on their mother’s surname following the dictates of the matrilineal line of descent does not imply that they do not have any form of affiliation or ties with the father. A kinship tie with the father is not determined according to the official reckoning of this tie through a name. There may be other forms of expressing and acknowledging the father that may not be officially visible and recognised. Relationships of affect outside the bounds of official kinship are one such mode of acknowledging the significance of the father. The domain of affective kinship ties could redefine that which is ordained by the principles of a matrilineal structure. Using the mother’s surname does not imply an undermining of the father’s social position. David may have changed to his mother’s surname for official recognition, but in his personal domain of affect, he still associates himself with his father. His taking on the father’s surname against the matrilineal rule of descent in the first place is indicative of that.

David said that he never felt the lack of a sister, but he felt something was odd when he would be introduced as ‘David, the second child of a family of five brothers’ when he went visiting friends and relatives with his parents as a child. He said as a child, this did not occur to him, but since they were a family of only boys ‘something somewhere felt awkward’. After being introduced, people would expectantly wait for something more, and at the end of it, there would always be this refrain: ‘Oh, no girls?’. He always noticed as a child how, amongst his relatives, girls were always introduced first, and they were never ‘just boys’. He said that if he were to look back at his own childhood, he would realise that there was never any specific expectation or any onerous responsibility that he had to fulfil. He attributes his carefree attitude towards life to the freedom that he enjoyed as a child. In retrospect, David thinks of this freedom as a lack of responsibility that all Khasi boys enjoy, and he thinks that most Khasi families consciously or unconsciously impart this attitude to their boys.

Speaking about how Khasi men always speak about Khasi women as a ‘standard’ that they do not measure up to and hence adopt a condescending tone of reference in talking about them, I would like to briefly mention my interaction with Mark, a government official who is an alcoholic. It was a captivating experience when I spent one whole day with him. Mark had skipped office that day to drink. He constantly kept referring to his wife while progressively getting drunk, and saying how she would not approve of him missing work and just wasting away his time and life. He then went on to say how ‘wife is everything in this world’. He said, ‘my wife will come with big big eyes’, and while saying this, he made a comic expression with his eyes, as if to say that the big, watchful eyes of a wife or any Khasi woman were ridiculous, yet one could not escape their gaze. He said, ‘We leave our mother’s home naked, just with our clothes on, not even a suitcase and report to our wives’. I realised later that he too is separated and has a 12-year-old daughter. He now lives with another woman whom he calls his wife, and interestingly, ‘the big big eyes’ reference was to her and not to the mother of his child. Spending the day with him made me realise that Mark’s drunken stupor probably captured the generic sense of disillusionment that Khasi men seem to embody in their day-to-day mode of living, and that this rhetoric of being the victim was the only language left for an alcoholic like Mark.

Although it is difficult to place a conclusive closure on the question of what it means to occupy the position of being a Khasi man in today’s times, I would like to briefly present the story of Nigel, David’s elder brother, who in due course of time became my key interlocutor. Almost everyone I met for my research came through Nigel. While I was telling David about my purpose for coming back to Shillong and my research intent, David reaffirmed the significance of trying to figure out how it is important to talk about men and men’s issues in a place like Shillong. In this light, he specifically told me to meet his brother. He thought that his brother had suffered because of the ‘way things are for men in this society’. Nigel, after a point, ceased to be a mere respondent as I shared more than my research intent and question with him. Nigel became my constant frame of reference when speaking to and gathering divergent viewpoints from so many other people. In our very first meeting, he shared that he ‘couldn’t handle the pressure of this matrilineal system’. Nigel, too, is separated despite a nine-year-old relationship. He has two children, a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son, and there is never a question of the children living with him, as he has absolutely come to terms with the idea of ‘meeting them only on Sundays’. According to him, since his wife is a khatduh, she has responsibilities far greater than her relationship of wedlock to Nigel. Though Nigel never discussed or had squabbles with his wife about anything, he reiterated time and again through his conversations that his wife had to concentrate on ‘taking care and maintaining her ancestral property’ rather than her marriage with him. He has said in as many words that ‘men in this society have no say and women have it all’. He says, ’it’s too bad’. Nigel, being from a family of only brothers, has always been on the receiving end of jibes like ‘Oh, how unlucky, no girls?’ from various quarters.

However, if one were to break these conversational patterns and see if, as an individual, there was something distinct that had an impact on or affected his childhood as a young boy, then one surely cannot draw a direct connection. Obviously, he never foresaw the pressures of a future separation when he was young, but one would obviously not look for a direct, tangible connection to figure out what young men or boys think in their growing-up years. One knows that one would not think about one’s possibility of marrying another individual and the responsibility that comes with it when one is young, but there is a distinct idea amongst the Khasis about what it means to be a khatduh and the fact that you grow up to inherit or not inherit ancestral property.

Speaking about how one knew that a ‘girl was pampered’ or ‘what it means to be a khatduh’, it was interesting to spend time with young undergraduate college students of St. Anthony’s College and their friends at the ‘college hang outs’ like the roadside ‘kwai’ shop or the local ‘jadoh stall’, and so on. ⁶ It was fascinating to be with these students, who were mostly boys, and try and see if I could extract something meaningful about what it means to grow up with the conscious idea of being male in a matrilineal society. John, a second-year college student, spoke of how he belongs to a joint family with all brothers and one younger sister, who is the youngest of them all. He feels his youngest sister is ‘totally pampered and spoilt’. When asked to elaborate what he meant by ‘pampered’ and ’spoilt’, he said, ‘she always got what she wanted’, and now when he looks back at his childhood, he feels that he had wishes that were not entertained the way they were and still are for his younger sister. Apparently quite often there are dinner table conversations between his mother, aunt and his other siblings, and there are always derisive references to the boys and how they would be at the mercy of this little child who is a khatduh, who can ‘throw them out of the house if she feels like’. He says his younger sister is used to statements like this, and she obviously knows what it entails to be a khatduh—‘a privilege which the boys just do not have’.

Conclusion

Given this inherent dichotomy of Khasi matriliny, my attempt in this article has been to argue that the power and privileges that Khasi men hold in terms of political and social authority are simultaneously inflected with a certain disembedding of power in the familial domain. The status of Khasi society as far as authority is concerned was never black and white, as has been argued by many scholars. Even if Khasi men hold sway in the structure of the avunculate or have social and political authority inscribed in the form of membership in the Dorbar, men always find themselves slipping in and out of embedded power structures beyond their own reckoning.

Khasi men find themselves in between the aspirational realms of a masculine assertion in terms of complete authority in both the private and public domains and the constricted demands that the rules of matriliny make on their day-to-day existence. The former is what I have chosen to call a ‘gender identity’ that Khasi men are striving towards, even if it is in terms of a stereotypical masculine construct, and the latter is what I mean by a ‘tribal identity’ that they are constantly living with. The problem and complication arise in the assertion and staging of a particular masculine identity vis-à-vis this tribal identity. There may be differences amongst men and women in Khasi society, but these differences, as has been discussed so far, exist because there is always a constant degree of competition between Khasi men and women, or at times between Khasi men and men themselves. For instance, if you think about the position of the father in dissonance with that of the mother’s brother, these innumerable degrees of competition become grounds of conflict because of which both genders are forever asserting their positions vis-à-vis one another.

There are always degrees of perception and degrees of differences in looking at any social phenomenon, and it depends on what basis one would interrogate the socialisation process of males amongst the ‘Khasis’. The intent of broaching the theoretical tenet of what we call ‘masculinity’ could be slightly difficult here because there is not even a clearly formed idea of Khasi ‘femininity’, let alone Khasi masculinity. It is not imperative that masculinity needs a reference or a vantage point, specifically that of femininity, to word itself, but if one espouses what is essentially the idea of being male, or say, growing up male in a matrilineal set-up, then one needs to consider what is the immediate other to the constitution of such a perspective. It is in this context that one is trying to figure out the nuances of male socialisation rather than make a comment on ‘Khasi masculinity’, as in so doing, we immediately bring in points of contrast and distinction of Khasi men within the whole matrilineal system rather than looking at men as a distinct category in relation to women. An affirmation of only the latter view could run the danger of overlooking the specificities and politics of a matrilineal system, which one cannot ignore. While attributes of masculinity could refer to the same idea of what it means to be a man vis-à-vis a woman in any society, but what we need to reiterate is how the structural order of a matrilineal system determines the very existence and ways of being a man and simultaneously even a woman. In a matrilineal society, both of these positions could be prescriptive while ascribing the terms of an identity itself. Male socialisation processes amongst the Khasis may not be completely independent of the pressures of female socialisation amongst the Khasis, but the point here is to recognise how both Khasi men and women find themselves trapped between prescriptive gendered roles given the overt matrilineal structures of social organisation that they must work with. The prescriptive position might just be a tad bit worse for Khasi men given the dominant patriarchal hegemony of the world outside, which becomes a constant comparative for Khasi men to speak about themselves.