Desmond L. Kharmawphlang: Author Profile
Community: Khasi people, Meghalaya
Desmond Leslie Kharmawphlang is a poet and folklorist who works as a professor in the Department of Cultural and Creative Studies at North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong, Meghalaya. His poetry often explores the ways in which history and progress have irreversibly changed the Khasi way of life. Some of his published poetry collections include Touchstone (1988) and Here (1993).
Kharmawphlang is also deeply invested in preserving the cultural heritage of the Khasi people, and has written several books on the subject. In Khasi Folk Songs and Tales (2006), Kharmawphlang documented and translated into English several songs and stories that he had heard from other Khasi people. Notably, his translations "retain the original style of narration in keeping with the poetic tradition in which the story was performed." Folklore Imprints in North East India (2017) is a collection of critical essays on folklore that draws on "a considerable corpus of material collected at the source, from story-tellers, singers, shaman-singers, traditional healers and informants, during rituals, ceremonies, storytelling sessions, festivals and other events which take place from time to time in the villages". Some other books he has written include Ki Matti Byrshem (a collection of essays on folklore studies), Folklore in the Changing Times, and Orality and Beyond (a collection of papers presented at an academic conference on orality in North-East India).
Desmond L. Kharmawphlang also served as the principal investigator for a project under the British Library's Endangered Archives Program in association with The University of Melbourne and North-Eastern Hill University. The resulting archive is titled: "Protecting Endangered Heritage in the Abode of Clouds, Meghalaya: Critical Materials from the Khasi Cultural Transformation and Folklore Traditions" and can be seen here.
Some excerpts from Kharmawphlang's poetry
"Kohima, 10th June '95" (Indian Literature Vol. 43 No. 2, 1999) captures the deep desire and pain that is a result of environmental changes due to humans:
"The Conquest" (Quoted in "Poetic Voices from North-East India") draws parallels between the colonial violence enacted by the British in the 19th century and the imperial gaze of mainland India:To return to these hills
is to look for a song
that has died of melancholy.
But here I am, beneath
your overcast sky, to write
about desolate earth
......................
I do not want your colours
to weep, I do not want you
to be dead in the pages of night;
I want you to burst
from the knots of leaves
and sing.
In "Letter to a Dear Friend" (Indian Literature Vol. 36 No. 6, 1993), the speaker tells their friend about how things have changed at home since they left, exploring the ways in which Khasi indigeneity and connection to the environment has been eroded by progress:Long ago, the men went beyond the Surma
To trade, to bring some women...
Later came the British with gifts of bullets,
Blood-money and religion.
A steady conquest to the sound of guns began.
.......................................
Quite suddenly, the British left.
There was peace, the sweet
smell of wet leaves again.
But in the wavering walk of time
There came those from the sweltering plains,
from everywhere.
You stricken land, how they love
Your teeming soil, your bruised children.
One of them told me, “you know,
Yours is a truly metropolitan city”.
You ask me about our hills - well,
they are still there - the stones
and rivers too - they are being
pimped out for tourists and lately,
in many places disemboweled mercilessly.
..........................
About my people, nothing much has
changed. Fools parading as leaders
distribute words to the hungry and
the rich have started importing
dreams from the west.
..........................
Please keep in touch. You shall hear
from me, this recorder of bitter things.
Articles on and By Desmond L. Kharmawphlang
"Culture and Social Values" by Desmond L. Kharmawphlang (NECARF Review, 2020)
"The Khasis believe that it was in the Second Divine Assembly (Durbar-Blei Baar) that God assigned to them the moral code of conduct. Khasi Ethics has been preserved through oral tradition in the form of narratives which have passed on from one generation to the next. Therefore, we can see the tremendous power and relevance, and the subsequent influence of Narrative in Khasi Ethics."
The Realm of the Raconteur: Khasi Women and Storytelling by Desmond L. Kharmawphlang (NECARF Review, 2021)
"In Khasi, the word for memory is maw or stone which demonstrates that the community computes its history through the megalithic or stone culture. The Khasi word for tradition (in its broad sense) is nongkynti which, literally, means wages of the hands. Maw or stone is not inanimate; it is organic because it actively participates in the production and reproduction of meanings and metaphors of life. It is connected to the tangible actions of the human materiality through hands... Memory is clearly embodied in culture and the hermeneutics of recall..."
"The Heritage of Hynñiew Trep in Desmond Kharmawphlang’s Poems" by Sayantan Chakraborty (South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2025)
From the abstract: "Through his poems, Kharmawphlang mobilises the heritage values of Hynñiew Trep within his community, negotiating between cultural vulnerability and resilience to strengthen Khasi identity. His poems seek to advance Khasi communal resilience by mobilising specific heritage values which are deeply rooted in the ethical foundation associated with the Khasi concept of Hynñiew Trep."
"Poetic Voices from North-East India: A Study on Robin S. Ngangom’s and Desmond L. Kharmawphlang’s Poetry" by Kalyani Hazarika (MSSV Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences)
"Desmond L Kharmawphlang looks at the past in an ambivalent manner writing of it at times, with a kind of ferocity. The past is permeating, yet the past and the present interface with a sense of longing: the emotional pause created between the past and the present leads to sadness layered with irony; notwithstanding a touch of sarcasm."