The Khasis - an uncle society on the ropes?

A reader alerted me to an interesting story in The Australian about the Khasi people in north India:

TO MANY males it sounds the perfect existence. "The men here have no responsibilities," says Kaith Pariat, a member of the Khasi tribe, an ancient community of about a million people who live in the hills of northeast India.

"All we have to do is to eat, drink, play the guitar and produce children." For all their permitted fecklessness, however, the Khasi men are far from happy. Fed up with being branded the weaker sex and discriminated against, under centuries-old traditions, they have started what may be the world's only "men's lib" movement.

The tribe is a rare example of a matrilineal community. It is the youngest daughter who inherits property and children take their mothers' surnames. If a family does not have a daughter, it must adopt one to become its heir.

Men are expected to sleep in the house of the mother-in-law and to keep quiet. They are excluded from clan meetings, which are presided over by a network of matriarchs. This strict social hierarchy is supported by the Indian Constitution, which recognises the traditions of official ethnic minorities and gives them legal status.

Men say this was acceptable in the past, when activities such as hunting took them away from home for long periods. But today, thanks in part to the influence of Christianity, the trend is for nuclear families and men say they are mere dogsbodies.

"The father of the household has no power," Mr Pariat, 58, told The Times. "He has no rights. Even if he has a very good character but his wife is a loose woman, he cannot take custody of his children." He has founded the Syngkhong Rympei Thymai ("the wedge that supports the wobbly table"), a movement with about 2,000 members that is fighting for the law to be changed and social structures reorganised. He says its key demand is that children take their fathers' surnames.

"If children take my title they are part of my clan and I will have the weight of responsibility on my shoulders. That means I will have to lead a more stable life. It will take our men out of the rut they are in," he said.

"The lack of responsibility is killing us. Boys are dropping out of school. Men are taking to drugs and drinking themselves to death by the age of 40."

Here we have an example of a failing "uncle" society. In uncle societies there is usually little emphasis placed on marital stability and/or sexual fidelity. In the case of the Khasis it seems that it is marital stability which is missing:

According to Khasi laws, a woman ... may end a marriage at her will with no objection from her husband.

The lack of marital stability has consequences:

Divorces amongst both Khasis and Syntengs are of common occurrence, the result being that the children in many cases are ignorant of even the names of their fathers. For the mother, on the other hand, the children cherish a very strong affection, all their sympathies and affections binding them closely to the mother's kin.

Let's say you belong to a society in which there are basic forms of agriculture combined perhaps with hunting or fishing. If there is little emphasis placed on sexual fidelity or marital stability, then men either won't be sure of their paternity or else the paternal connection will be weak. It then makes sense for a man to put more effort into his nieces and nephews, since these are certainly closely related to him, and for descent and inheritance to be organised through the maternal line (a matrilineal system).

So there are societies in which the male role of uncle is more important than the male role of father. In such societies, a man on marriage might well go to live with his wife's clan. But his position there will be a minor one - he will be merely the "begetter" of children. Or, he might stay with his mother and sisters and merely visit his "wife" at night (the Mosuo system). If he earns or produces something, it will then go to his mother and sisters and he might have some standing in the maternal clan as an uncle (a matrifocal system).

Here are some more descriptions of how the Khasis once lived:

Not only is the mother the head and source, and only bond of union, of the family: in the most primitive part of the hills, the Synteng country, she is the only owner of real property, and through her alone is inheritance transmitted. The father has no kinship with his children, who belong to their mother's clan; what he earns goes to his own matriarchal stock...

The Khasis, when reckoning descent; count from the mother only; they speak of a family of brothers and sisters, who are the great grandchildren of one great grandmother, as shi kpoh, which, being literally translated, is one womb; i.e. the issue of one womb. The man is nobody. If he is a brother, u kur, a brother being taken to mean an uterine brother, or a cousin-german, he will be lost to the family or clan directly he marries. If he be a husband, he is looked upon merely as a u shong kha, a begetter.

These uncle societies might be matrilineal and matrifocal but they are not matriarchal. Tribal governance remains in the hands of men (the Khasis, for instance, were once ruled by kings). Even in the family, although there is much authority held by the senior female, the uncles also often have ultimate power:

Despite its matrilineal descent, Khasi society cannot be said to be matriarchal: although women have a word to say, the ultimate authority reside with the eldest males of the matrilineage.

The uncle societies may have functioned better when basic agriculture could be left to women and men focused on activities that drew them away from home, such as hunting or warfare.

But such societies have obvious weaknesses. The men who live in their wife's household have little responsibility either to provide or to assume paternal responsibility. And even when men do have responsibilities as uncles, that can't be as strong a connection as you would have to your own children in your own household.

So it was the father societies that proved to be more dynamic and which gave rise to the great civilisations.

The dysfunction of uncle societies is likely to be even greater today when there is less need for men to hunt or to live as warriors. Which leads on to the complaint made by the Khasi male liberationist quoted above:

"If children take my title they are part of my clan and I will have the weight of responsibility on my shoulders. That means I will have to lead a more stable life. It will take our men out of the rut they are in," he said.

"The lack of responsibility is killing us. Boys are dropping out of school. Men are taking to drugs and drinking themselves to death by the age of 40."

We often lose sight of why we have the customs we do. Take, for instance, the fact that our society is patrilineal and children take their father's name and descent is reckoned through the father's line. There was a purpose to this - it was part of creating a father society, of connecting men to a paternal role and responsibility - something which cannot merely be assumed or taken for granted.

The alternative is not some great, feminist, lost matriarchy. The historic alternative was to have an uncle society, one in which fathers had little role or responsibility within a community and in which society did not, therefore, develop civilisationally.