Grip of chiefship on the Kukis
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Lunminthang Haokip
HOW CHIEFSHIP CAME ABOUT: The issue merits a heated debate till the sun goes cold. To the Kukis, chief-ship is age-old. Long before democracy replaced monarchy in India, in the Kuki-inhabited regions of the sub-continent’s North Eastern States and its military-ruled neighbour, Myanmar’s north-western frontiers, a unique method of hill-village governance evolved out of environmental compulsions. Good or bad, the situation in the tribal settlements demanded a semblance of self-rule in the near-total absence of proper connectivity to better-civilised societies. That’s how every Kuki village had a chief in the helm of administrative affairs, and the ancient land a chief and his villagers could possibly lay their hands upon came under a particular chief-ship. Attachment to a particular chiefship bound by clannish ties and blood relationship.
CHIEFSHIP OF THE PAST : The joke that strikes a chord with the informed citizenry in the hill districts of Manipur is, “Be cautious when you walk on the roads, neo-rich chiefs are learning how to drive. You may get hit”. The punch of the joke that saner thought leaves unsaid, is implied on the upward mobility of purse-prodded chiefs, who, thanks to the initial glut of funds in employment guarantee scheme, madly went for consumer durables like a motor car. Such a craze was usually associated with a passion reserved for religion. Some village chiefs felt ill-at-ease to drive four wheelers at their advanced stage of ageing. Like Yuppies of NW India, the scheme-savvy heads of villages may enjoy the powers and privileges granted in doses by decentralized planning. But when it comes to authority over their subjects, they are no patch on the system-backed original village chiefs of the distant past. Like in the case of the CEO of a Private Ltd company, it was suicidal not to fall in line with their whims and fancies in backblock management, then.
THE CUSTOM-BOUND KUKI: Clannishness was, and still is in lesser degrees, to the hill landlords as casteism was and is to mainland India. The effects of the ills are as chilling. Exercising absolute authority over land-holdings within his bounds, and his tight grip over life-sustaining pastoral productivity sector, a Kuki chief’s lording was as good and as bad as a that of a Rajput landlord in north India. A flip of the fingers can send domestic servants of the moustached masters tottering for cover. The Kuki chief, in his hey days, did not lag much behind. His word was law and in-law deals could be clinched or detached at will. The illogical but mandatory slaughter of the unclean pig to clean up a house ‘dirtied’ by bloodshed is an unfortunate example of the accident of tradition. The very belief that a bloodied floor can be wiped out clean by the butchery of an animal that enjoys wallowing in the mire of mud. The Scripture warns of this practice in no uncertain terms, “But He answered and said unto them, Why do you also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?”
GENERATIONAL CURSES : One can understand the bullying ways of the ruler, and the trembling subservience of the ruled, in the pre-Independence (India) era, over land and customs. Might was right then. But what is unfair is the imposition and tolerance of pre-Christianity curses like male-centric inheritance laws, sub-clan-based new-village creation norms, fine systems, mandatory show of allegiance to clan-heads, laws on marriage and divorce etc. among Churched village-folks. This staunch beliefs and practices that run counter to Psalm 24:1, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything that is in it...”, not only jeopardizes the sense of belongingness to a sub-Nation unification process, but also blunts the cutting edge of many vital Bible verses like, “Henceforth, know ye no man after the flesh (2 Cor. 5:16)”. Despite rapid globalisation, the Kuki chief-ship neither looks East nor West in transaction of human affairs. With defiant nonchalance, it insists on inspection and application of the near-insane insinuations of the past, whenever a key decision over a serious dispute is to be taken.
THE WESTERN INFLUENCE : The crossover missionary labours of the western Christians in the 19th and early 20th centuries paid off rich dividends. The early Mission preachers of the Gospel doubled up as social reformers too. The valour of the Kuki fighters, exhibited with trademark pride in the 1917-1919 rebellion against the British rulers, had negative historical ramifications to their own isolation in administrative creaming. But they could not achieve an encore in matters of religion. Ironically, the muzzle-loader trigger-happy community’s failure to shoot down the onslaught of Christianity, ultimately, set the progressive pace of development of the mind. Education, imparted with the larger motive of evangelisation of the then heathen and hidden natives, made them change their outlook, and moved them to stick their necks out on the look from the narrow apertures of ‘pagan culture’, for progressive western culture. In matters of housing, dressing, worshipping, marrying, singing and merry-making, the once kinky Kukis, never looked back ever since. No regrets there.
PROXIMITY TO THE EAST: The Kuki chief-ship is a paradox by itself. It somehow legitimizes the vast stretches of hill land a village settles in and feed themselves from. Habitually resistant to the meticulous land-holding systems, demarcation of possession of land was defined by natural boundaries like rivers, ridges, gorges and footpaths. The simple short-cut way was put to practice for ages. Natural objects were cited to settle inter-village boundaries when a dispute arose.
(To be contd)
HOW CHIEFSHIP CAME ABOUT: The issue merits a heated debate till the sun goes cold. To the Kukis, chief-ship is age-old. Long before democracy replaced monarchy in India, in the Kuki-inhabited regions of the sub-continent’s North Eastern States and its military-ruled neighbour, Myanmar’s north-western frontiers, a unique method of hill-village governance evolved out of environmental compulsions. Good or bad, the situation in the tribal settlements demanded a semblance of self-rule in the near-total absence of proper connectivity to better-civilised societies. That’s how every Kuki village had a chief in the helm of administrative affairs, and the ancient land a chief and his villagers could possibly lay their hands upon came under a particular chief-ship. Attachment to a particular chiefship bound by clannish ties and blood relationship.
CHIEFSHIP OF THE PAST : The joke that strikes a chord with the informed citizenry in the hill districts of Manipur is, “Be cautious when you walk on the roads, neo-rich chiefs are learning how to drive. You may get hit”. The punch of the joke that saner thought leaves unsaid, is implied on the upward mobility of purse-prodded chiefs, who, thanks to the initial glut of funds in employment guarantee scheme, madly went for consumer durables like a motor car. Such a craze was usually associated with a passion reserved for religion. Some village chiefs felt ill-at-ease to drive four wheelers at their advanced stage of ageing. Like Yuppies of NW India, the scheme-savvy heads of villages may enjoy the powers and privileges granted in doses by decentralized planning. But when it comes to authority over their subjects, they are no patch on the system-backed original village chiefs of the distant past. Like in the case of the CEO of a Private Ltd company, it was suicidal not to fall in line with their whims and fancies in backblock management, then.
THE CUSTOM-BOUND KUKI: Clannishness was, and still is in lesser degrees, to the hill landlords as casteism was and is to mainland India. The effects of the ills are as chilling. Exercising absolute authority over land-holdings within his bounds, and his tight grip over life-sustaining pastoral productivity sector, a Kuki chief’s lording was as good and as bad as a that of a Rajput landlord in north India. A flip of the fingers can send domestic servants of the moustached masters tottering for cover. The Kuki chief, in his hey days, did not lag much behind. His word was law and in-law deals could be clinched or detached at will. The illogical but mandatory slaughter of the unclean pig to clean up a house ‘dirtied’ by bloodshed is an unfortunate example of the accident of tradition. The very belief that a bloodied floor can be wiped out clean by the butchery of an animal that enjoys wallowing in the mire of mud. The Scripture warns of this practice in no uncertain terms, “But He answered and said unto them, Why do you also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?”
GENERATIONAL CURSES : One can understand the bullying ways of the ruler, and the trembling subservience of the ruled, in the pre-Independence (India) era, over land and customs. Might was right then. But what is unfair is the imposition and tolerance of pre-Christianity curses like male-centric inheritance laws, sub-clan-based new-village creation norms, fine systems, mandatory show of allegiance to clan-heads, laws on marriage and divorce etc. among Churched village-folks. This staunch beliefs and practices that run counter to Psalm 24:1, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything that is in it...”, not only jeopardizes the sense of belongingness to a sub-Nation unification process, but also blunts the cutting edge of many vital Bible verses like, “Henceforth, know ye no man after the flesh (2 Cor. 5:16)”. Despite rapid globalisation, the Kuki chief-ship neither looks East nor West in transaction of human affairs. With defiant nonchalance, it insists on inspection and application of the near-insane insinuations of the past, whenever a key decision over a serious dispute is to be taken.
THE WESTERN INFLUENCE : The crossover missionary labours of the western Christians in the 19th and early 20th centuries paid off rich dividends. The early Mission preachers of the Gospel doubled up as social reformers too. The valour of the Kuki fighters, exhibited with trademark pride in the 1917-1919 rebellion against the British rulers, had negative historical ramifications to their own isolation in administrative creaming. But they could not achieve an encore in matters of religion. Ironically, the muzzle-loader trigger-happy community’s failure to shoot down the onslaught of Christianity, ultimately, set the progressive pace of development of the mind. Education, imparted with the larger motive of evangelisation of the then heathen and hidden natives, made them change their outlook, and moved them to stick their necks out on the look from the narrow apertures of ‘pagan culture’, for progressive western culture. In matters of housing, dressing, worshipping, marrying, singing and merry-making, the once kinky Kukis, never looked back ever since. No regrets there.
PROXIMITY TO THE EAST: The Kuki chief-ship is a paradox by itself. It somehow legitimizes the vast stretches of hill land a village settles in and feed themselves from. Habitually resistant to the meticulous land-holding systems, demarcation of possession of land was defined by natural boundaries like rivers, ridges, gorges and footpaths. The simple short-cut way was put to practice for ages. Natural objects were cited to settle inter-village boundaries when a dispute arose.
(To be contd)