Men Against Matrilineage: Contestations Around Gender in Shillong, Northeast India

Abstract

Taking the discursive figure of the enervated, emasculated Khasi male as its starting point, this dissertation analyzes the assertions of crises being articulated by a few groups of Khasi men that have identified their matrilineal traditions as the cause of the ‘unraveling’ of Khasi masculinity and a purported degradation of this hill-tribal community in Northeast India especially in the face of significant changes over the recent decades. More broadly, it examines how urban Khasis negotiate the dilemmas of these changes and frequently call upon modern and globally popular discourses such as indigenous rights, human rights, justice, dignity, and gender equality in order to describe or validate their understandings of different social problems. I argue that analyzing contestations around gender and kinship allows us to trace the multiple nodes along which Khasi identity is being activated, both in relation to hegemonic conceptualizations of modernity and progress, and through complex dialogues with ideas about nationhood and group belonging, especially in their imbrications with understandings of ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, language, religion and culture.