Against State, against History by Jangkhomang Guite

Author:Jangkhomang Guite [Guite, Jangkhomang]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP India
Published: 2018-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.1 Khawtlang Forked Post in Lushai Hills

Source: Shakespear (1998 [1912]: 64–5).

In the sense noted in both the cases, one can say that the wealth accumulated by a person in stateless society was a social and cultural capital, rather than economic. It was not related to markets, but constituted a common wealth of the community. If every prodigal was ‘a public enemy’ and every frugal ‘a public benefactor’ in Smithsonian terms in a capitalist society, then the reverse was exactly true for the stateless society. Within this notion of wealth as a communal resource, I will now locate the various economic activities of the hillmen in stateless society.

Time, Work, and Labour

A researcher working on jhum cultivation in the hills would be mesmerized by the mosaic of knowledge inherited by the jhumers. Almost every question asked would be answered with authority and accuracy, including the relationship between the size of land, labour, seeds, forest and soil types, and harvest. They would be decidedly the best authority on all these counts. However, the issue of concern here is work, labour, and leisure in relation to time. If you ask a person about the size of his jhum field, he would tell you in terms of number of workdays or number of seeds sown, and not by any modern measurements. A Kuki, for instance, would tell you that the size of his land is ‘such-and-such tha’ (literally, flesh/energy, meaning physical labour a person can do in one day). If he says 30 tha, it means the size of his land is what 30 persons can cut in one day or one man in 30 days.20 In a rugged landscape, this is, I think, by far a more scientific and accurate way of expressing than an actual measurement. What is interesting is the centrality of tha (labour) in his worldview when it comes to work. Even more interesting is the fact that when he uses the term tha or labour, it is always related to work (na-toh, literally, work-doing) and ‘work’ (na) is always invariably related to agriculture work (lou natoh).

Thus, tha is used in khotha (village labour in jhum), haosatha (labour for the chief in jhum), kithaneh (eating-labour together or cooperative labour in jhum), and so on. If he is going for agriculture work, he would say, ‘I am going for labour’ (tha-kon, literally labour-going/doing); and if he is going for non-agriculture works, he would say, ‘I am going for such-and-such thing’ (say, hunting, fishing, trapping, trading, and so on), not tha-kon. Similarly, if a person is engaged in agriculture work, he would say ‘I am working’ or ‘I am doing work’ (na-toh or tong, literally work-doing); and if he is engaged in non-agriculture works, he would say, ‘I am doing such-and-such thing’ (say, hunting, fishing, trapping, trading, and so on), not na-tong. Thus, to the hill people, ‘work’ and ‘labour’ means agriculture. In other words, all other works not related to agriculture are not ‘work’ and the labour they endure with such works is not ‘labour’ in the conceptualization of ‘work’ and ‘labour’.

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