The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Opposition politicians and men’s rights activists in Meghalaya have denounced an order by the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council (KHADC) to refuse Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to people who adopt their husband’s or father’s surname.
Titosstarwell Chyne, the KHADC’s chief executive member, told The Hindu that the order was given to preserve the Khasi society’s matrilineal customs and was in line with local laws.
In Khasi culture, children take their mothers’ surnames, men move in with their wives, and the youngest daughters in a family inherit their parents’ homes.
But detractors say that these customs are exclusionary and demoralising.
“I will fight for my children if there is an attempt to take away their right of being called Khasis,” a Meghalaya legislator from the Voice of the People Party (VPP) said, adding that his children use his surname in contrast to Khasi norms.
“Why can they not be considered Khasi when my wife and I are Khasis?” he was reported saying by The Hindu.
Keith Pariat, a former leader of the men’s rights group Syngkhong Rympei Thymmai, told a BBC News reporter that Khasi culture often reflects sexist assumptions.
“A tree is masculine, but when it is turned into wood, it becomes feminine … the same is true of many of the nouns in our language. When something becomes useful, its gender becomes female,” he said.
The KHADC has made attempts in the past to enforce the Khasi community’s matrilineal rules. In November 2021, the council tabled a Bill which proposed that women and children who adopt their husband’s or father’s customs should be deprived of their inheritance rights.
“We have women living abroad, who have adopted their husbands’ customs, but who still own their families’ property instead of their brothers living here. Why shouldn’t that change?” Chyne said in defence of the Bill for an Open the Magazine feature in 2021.
In fact, the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Act, 1997 also says that in order for someone to legally belong to their mother’s Khasi clan, they or their mother cannot adopt the “personal laws” of their non-Khasi father (or husband).
Despite the KHADC’s enforcement of these norms, some women’s rights groups have expressed their concern that Khasi culture is actually a “patriarchal society in disguise.” In the Open feature, an activist named Joy Grace Syiem said that the lack of women in positions of power and government is evidence for the patriarchy in Khasi culture.
Meanwhile, in an interview to The Meghalayan on May 16, Chyne said that the KHADC was in the process of seeking the Meghalaya government’s permission to authorise ST certification themselves.
ST is a protected category in India which, among other things, affords reservations in educational institutes, government jobs and legislatures to its members.