Why Khasi vigilante groups have pushed Meghalaya government on the back foot

On July 26, members of a little-known Khasi nativist group stopped tourist taxis about 25 km from Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya.

Members of the Hynniewtrep National Youth Federation insisted that taxis with Assam registration numbers could not proceed to two of Meghalaya’s most popular travel destinations: Sohra or Cherrapunjee, and Dawki.

“Assam is [our neighbour] and the hub of Bangladeshi migrants and Meghalaya too shares a porous border with Bangladesh,” Hynniewtrep National Youth Federation president Sadon Blah told Scroll. “So that’s why we insist on proper verification of those entering our state.”

As they were turning the tourists back, the police arrived and arrested 10 members of the group.

In the last month, the roads leading to Meghalaya’s capital Shillong have been at the centre of vigilante action by several Khasi nativist groups.

Three weeks before taxis from Assam were turned away, a group of unidentified masked men attacked labourers working on the Shillong-Guwahati highway. The Khasi Students’ Union, one of the oldest and most influential Khasi nativist groups, also rounded up migrant workers from several construction sites in Shillong, and allegedly assaulted several of them.

Despite mounting criticism, nine pressure groups from the state met on July 24 and announced that they were intensifying their agitation to “check the flow of migrant labourers” into...

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