"Mädchenland": How the Khasi tribe lives, where women decide everything

EVERY DAY PHOTOGRAPHERS AROUND THE WORLD looking for new ways to tell stories or to capture what we previously did not notice. We choose interesting photo projects and ask their authors what they wanted to say. This week we are publishing the project "Mädchenland" by German photographer Carolyn Klupelle. For several months, she figured out how the matrilineal society of the Khasi people is organized and how it lives, in which women have far more rights than men.

In India, there are two indigenous matrilineal tribes, that is, those in which the transfer of the name and property goes through the maternal line. One of them, Khasi, has 1.2 million people and inhabits the state of Meghalaya. That's where I went to shoot the project "Mädchenland". Already on the spot, I decided to choose a small village — it would be easier to get close to the locals — and went to Molinnong, in the south of the state, on the border with Bangladesh. I lived there for a total of nine months in one of the local families, and it was an unforgettable experience.

There are several theories that answer the question of whether Khasis have always been a matrilineal people. The following explanation seems to me the most logical: the men of the tribe spent too much time on wars and could not properly take care of their families, therefore at some point they transferred the ownership to their daughters. But not to sons who, too, would sooner or later go to war.

In the Khasi culture, women are traditionally highly respected, and any dismissive attitude towards them is regarded as undermining public foundations. Daughters here are much more desirable children, they are continuers of the gens. If only boys are born in a family, they begin to look at it with pity. Khasi does not even have an arranged marriage. Having fallen in love, people just start living together in the same house - most often it’s the woman’s house, because men simply don’t have any property here. Such cohabitation equates to marriage. Khasis are Christians, and in recent years many couples come to church to get married. Here, they are positive about divorces and remarriages, and in Shillong, young girls often choose to live alone.

Khasi family life seems conservative at first sight. Men work in the fields, while women take care of the household and raising children. Those of them who still go to work, take the children with them. At the same time, men never stay at home, because on average their wages are twice as high. I was amazed that husbands always give all the money to their wives - they distribute the family budget. Khasi men not only do not own any property, but also their children from previous marriages are not members of the new family. This is partly why they are irresponsible to their relatives, go to the left and, as a result, have children outside of marriage, so that in the end they can easily just go to another woman. They have nothing to lose. That’s why the Khasi women prefer to marry men from other tribes.

In Khasi, girls and women occupy a central place in society, and the mission of procreation makes them very self-confident. The aim of my project was to reflect the outstanding role and contribution of women in the Khasi culture, but at the same time I did not want to simply document their lives. I took a series of portraits of girls, because I was amazed by their overconfidence and decided that this is how matrilinearity manifests itself externally.

Best of all, I managed to find out a girl named Grace, in whose family I lived for three months. She is seven years old and she is amazing. Grace has three younger relatives whom she looks after, for example, when mom leaves for the river to do the laundry. Grace is not for years mature and caring in everything that concerns help with children and housework. But exactly at that moment, when she has free time, Grace turns into an ordinary careless child.

It seemed to me important how the attitude of parents to children affects their future. I am sure that Khasi girls receive much more recognition from their family than girls in other parts of India. After all, the way you are treated, reflects on how you perceive yourself later. At the same time, local traditions operate only in the territory of the state of Meghalaya: if someone from the Khasi moves to live in another place, he ceases to follow the traditions, no matter whether it is a man or a woman.

In Western society, women certainly have more opportunities to be independent and build their own lives on their own. Most Khasi families are very, very poor, especially those living in villages. Therefore, Khasi girls rarely have the opportunity to receive a good education. The most that they can count on is that if a family has money, they will most likely spend it on paying for their daughter, not a son.

What struck me most was the incredible concern for Khasis and the Indians in general who were close to their relatives and friends. Perhaps this is a consequence of the general poverty of the population and negligible attention from the state. Without mutual aid here can not survive. In Khasi, no one ever feels lonely, because they realize that they need each other. At the same time, in our society, loneliness is something that millions suffer from.