Why Khasi vigilante groups have pushed Meghalaya government on the back foot

On July 26, members of a little-known Khasi nativist group stopped tourist taxis about 25 km from Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya.

Members of the Hynniewtrep National Youth Federation insisted that taxis with Assam registration numbers could not proceed to two of Meghalaya’s most popular travel destinations: Sohra or Cherrapunjee, and Dawki.

“Assam is [our neighbour] and the hub of Bangladeshi migrants and Meghalaya too shares a porous border with Bangladesh,” Hynniewtrep National Youth Federation president Sadon Blah told Scroll. “So that’s why we insist on proper verification of those entering our state.”

As they were turning the tourists back, the police arrived and arrested 10 members of the group.

In the last month, the roads leading to Meghalaya’s capital Shillong have been at the centre of vigilante action by several Khasi nativist groups.

Three weeks before taxis from Assam were turned away, a group of unidentified masked men attacked labourers working on the Shillong-Guwahati highway. The Khasi Students’ Union, one of the oldest and most influential Khasi nativist groups, also rounded up migrant workers from several construction sites in Shillong, and allegedly assaulted several of them.

Despite mounting criticism, nine pressure groups from the state met on July 24 and announced that they were intensifying their agitation to “check the flow of migrant labourers” into the state. The Hynniewtrep National Youth Federation, which stopped taxis from Assam, was among the groups at the meeting. Giving in to the pressure, the Meghalaya government led by Conrad Sangma has recently agreed to increase scrutiny of migrant workers’ criminal antecedents.

Meghalaya has a long history of violence against non-tribals and outsiders. But observers of the state’s politics said the competitive policing by nativist groups has been fuelled by the rise of Khasi nationalism in the mainstream political space – especially the emergence of the Voice of People Party or VPP, which is a strident advocate of Khasi-Jaintia interests.

“One of the reasons these pressure groups have started this drive is that they fear that the VPP will stake claim over their turf,” said Shillong-based political scientist Moses Kharbithai.

The current conflict also represents a convergence of interests. “The aim of both the VPP and the Khasi nativist groups is to push chief minister Conrad Sangma on the backfoot,” Kharbithai said.

The surge in Khasi nationalist discourse, observers said, is being used to put Sangma, a Garo, and his National People’s Party at a disadvantage. While the Khasi and the Jaintia tribes share close ethnic ties, the Garo community is considered ethnically distinct. Some of the groups have in the past called for a chief minister from the Khasi community.

Labourers attacked

On July 6, workers from Assam and Bihar were repairing a stretch of the highway near a Bharat Petroleum petrol pump on the outskirts of Shillong when masked men assaulted them.

The workers had been hired for the task by the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited or NHIDCL.

Six of the workers were badly injured. “They were attacked without provocation at the site,” an NHIDCL official told Scroll.

The masked men demanded to see the “work permits” of the labourers and told the official to hire local people for work. “They said they were enforcing the ILP or inner line permit system,” the official said. “We have filed police complaints but most of the time they overpower the police and carry out the verification of documents.”

The contractor, who engaged the workers from Assam and Bihar at Shillong-Barapani stretch, told Scroll that hundreds of his workers left Meghalaya after the attack. “It has become very difficult to get more workers after they were injured.”

The assault came amid a drive against migrant labourers by the Khasi Students’ Union. Since July 6, KSU members have roughed up labourers from several construction sites in and around Shillong, insisted on checking their “work permits”, and allegedly beat them up.

The checks were part of the organisation’s renewed demand for the “implementation” of the inner line permit system in Meghalaya.

The inner line permit is a travel document required for Indian citizens from other states to enter Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur for a brief stay. A colonial-era legacy, it is seen as a shield for smaller indigenous communities against excessive migration from mainland India.

Meghalaya does not have an inner line permit system but the entire state – barring a tiny area within the capital Shillong – comes under the Sixth Schedule, which are constitutional provisions that protect the way of life of tribal communities and give them control over resources like land.

The claim of unrestrained “illegal immigration” into the state is not backed by evidence. Successive Census data reveals that the native population has been increasing – according to the 2011 Census, Scheduled Tribes form 86% of Meghalaya’s population, an increase from 80.48 % in 1971.

Nevertheless, on July 6, KSU members set up “an ILP check gate” at a village in Ri Bhoi district on National Highway 6 – which is the entry point for visitors from Assam.

“Since July 6, we have pushed back more than 2,600 labourers whose identity is in doubt,” Lambok S Marngar, who heads the Khasi Students’ Union told Scroll. There is no official estimate of the number of workers forced to leave the state.

Despite criticism of its actions and appeals from ministers, KSU continued their drive. In all, 10 cases have been filed in this regard against individuals and Khasi groups but no arrests have been made.

KSU’s Lambok S Marngar said the organisation was forced to step in because of the failure of the state and central governments to implement the ILP. “Their silence forced us to [implement] our own ILP.”

A problem of plenty

The KSU was formed in 1978 to address problems faced by students but shifted its focus to agitating against the alleged “unabated influx” from neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh and Nepal, which they say poses a threat to the indigenous tribal population.

But over the years, newer “pressure groups” espousing Khasi nationalism have emerged in the Khasi hills.

The four-year-old Hynniewtrep Youth Council is one such organisation. Last year, it led a protest seeking a Khasi chief minister. Its leaders were booked this year for carrying out an illegal eviction drive against settlers in the Lum Survey area in Shillong.

“One of the reasons why the KSU is raking up the ILP issue is because they have to stay relevant as other pressure groups like Hynniewtrep Youth Council and Hynniewtrep National Youth Federation are also coming forward,” said political scientist Kharbithai.

Kharbithai pointed out that the rise of the VPP has pushed the KSU to be more active. “The VPP would like to replace all pressure groups and become the only voice to reflect local angst,” he said.

The effect of this overdrive has been to put the NPP government led by Conrad Sangma on the backfoot – and underline the VPP’s claims that the government has failed to check migration.

Mrinal Borah, a research scholar from Delhi School of Economics working in Meghalaya, pointed out that NPP is increasingly being seen as a party soft on outsiders. “It has lost ground to the VPP in all the Khasi Hills areas,” said Borah. “The current drive against migration is an extension of the pro-Khasi political discourse which has been growing since the past few years.”

Kharbithai said that the Khasi nationalism is being mobilised against the NPP in the same way that the Bharatiya Janata Party uses the right wing groups like Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

“They [VPP] are only interested in emotionally driving the people towards some kind of idea that if we have to survive, we are the only people who should survive,” said Kharbithai. “So cosmopolitanism has no more space in the present political narrative.”

A fractious debate over the state’s reservation policy, too, has seen the VPP emerge as the advocate of Khasi interests. “The first issue they have successfully raised was about reducing the reservation for Garos,” said Bhogtoram Mawroh, Shillong-based columnist and political commentator.

Since last year, when NPP staked claim to form a government, there has been a strong push to project NPP as a Garo party and Sangma as a chief minister who protects Garo interests.

“In the right wing circles, there is a perception being manufactured that the NPP is a Garo party,” said Mawroh. He said the drive against workers plays into the hands of increasingly assertive Khasi nationalist groups.

An editorial in The Shillong Times, one of the oldest newspapers in the region, pointed out that the pressure groups in the Khasi hills “have decided to synchronise their agenda of embarrassing the government”.

“But once more, there is an attempt to find an enemy in the ‘outsiders,’” said Borah.