Goa
não é um país pequeno, if translated, quite literally would read as “Goa is not a small
country.” The title for this exhibition has been borrowed from a similar phrase
that was articulated by the New State (Estado
Novo), the authoritarian regime that ran Portugal from the 1930s to 1974. The
start of the twentieth century was not easy for the Portuguese state. It faced
challenges from other European colonial powers, saw the collapse of the
monarchy, and the start of a shaky Republic. The New State that emerged in the
1930s promised an end to all of this instability. In the face of challenges
from other European powers and the rising tide of anti-colonial nationalist
movements, the New State asserted that Portugal was not a small peripheral European country but a great multiracial nation. The New
State argued that the various territories that Portugal held across the world
were not colonies but in fact overseas provinces of the country. It was, in
sum, one vast multi-continental country. It was in this context that the New
State articulated the slogan Portugal
não é um país pequeno—Portugal is not a small country—and refused to countenance any
suggestion of freedom or autonomy for its colonies. Goa, as is well
known, was a Portuguese possession until 1961, the year that the Republic of
India subsumed the territory into itself. In the final analysis, it was
this metropolitan intransigence embodied by Portugal não é um país pequeno that was, to a great extent, responsible for the troubled manner in
which Goa was integrated into the Republic of India.
In the context of the present exhibition, this imperialist phrase is
reutilized to suggest that Goa’s small geographical extent does not limit its
size. Despite the fact that Goa is the smallest territory in the Union of
India, it is home to a remarkably diverse history. Not only does it play host
to a variety of migrant communities; it is also the home of a migrant community
that is spread across the world. As the artworks in this exhibition
demonstrate, and this essay elaborates, this breadth of experience allows for
Goans to hold a variety of perspectives and to own diverse insights into the
multiple worlds that they occupy.
The structuring concerns
If there is one intention that guides this
exhibition, then it is the desire to represent the breadth and diversity of the
Goan experience through art. This desire is in fact the result of a number of
concerns that the curator, Viraj Naik, encountered when charged with putting together
the exhibition. The concerns that he encountered are not necessarily personal
but those that bother many Goans.
Foremost of the questions that agitate many Goan minds is the issue of
identity. Way back in 2005, the art scene in Goa faced a peculiar situation
when Pedro Adão, the Consul of Portugal in Goa of the time, organised a show titled
“Portugal through the eyes of artists in Goa” [emphasis added]. This formulation was the result of identitarian conflicts
within Goa, where some native Goan artists asserted that only they could claim
to be Goan artists. Those who were not sons of the soil, the logic went, could not
call themselves Goan artists; they were merely artists in Goa. It is perhaps in response to these identitarian
politics that the artists presented in this exhibition include persons who
could be called native Goans as well as those who, though not native to the
territory, have made Goa their home for generations now. The exhibition
includes both Goans based in Goa and those who have settled outside of Goa. The
ensuing selection of artists was also determined in an attempt to represent
experience, allowing us to see the work of those who are well-established, mid-career
practitioners, and younger artists.
The diversity that this exhibition has attempted to reflect has also
ensured, perhaps inadvertently, that this selection of artists represents a
number of bahujan voices. This is truly a positive step in the
representation of artistic work from Goa. Until recently, the more celebrated
of Goa’s artists, such as Mario Miranda, Angelo da Fonseca, Francis N. Souza,
Ganesh Vamona Navelcar, and Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, have all hailed from dominant
caste backgrounds. That this unilateral representation will give way to art
from a range of social locations will only add richness to the way in which Goa
is figured and read.
Another concern that plagues the Goan is the sense of being ignored and
being left on the sidelines, be it nationally or indeed within Goa itself. It
was Viraj’s opinion that the visual art that emerges from Goa is too often not
given adequate attention even within Goa itself. His attempt, therefore, was to
create a space for the various aspects of the visual by representing, in
addition to the traditional categories, those of photography, video and
sculpture.
Above all, the curation of this exhibition was fuelled by the desire of
most Goans to somehow capture Goan-ness. As I will go on to discuss, this
desire to define Goan-ness has emerged from the rapid changes that have
occurred in Goa, not only with its integration into the former British India
but also as a result of the dramatic changes that have taken place within the
territory in recent years, such as the change in local lifestyles due to the departure
from a largely agrarian economy, as well as the dramatic change in demography resultant
from an increased flow of migrants into the territory, not to mention the surge
in floating populations—almost twice the size of the host population—during peak
tourist season. The other concerns that have motivated this desire to define
Goan-ness are the felt need to create a secular vision for Goa, one that rises
above the sectarian identities that plague a community impacted by dramatic and
rapid change. One source for this vision, Viraj believes, is in the production
of artists, who know no religion beyond art. I personally do not share this
conviction about artists being above quotidian concerns and divorced from
politics. This position smacks too much of the romanticist notion of the artist
as standing apart from society. The works of artists are interesting primarily
because they are a part of society and allow us insight into the workings of
the society from which they emerge. As I will go on to demonstrate, however, his
selections have in fact managed to present a bouquet of artworks that can
intervene in and complicate the discourse on Goan identities positively.
Continuity and change
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| "Past Perfect", Ramdas Gadekar |
That change is a major cause for those associated intimately with
Goa is obvious from the fact that at least three of the contributions to this
exhibition deal with change. Ramdas Gadekar’s twin contributions, “Past
Perfect” and “Future Tense,” respond to the changes in income patterns that
have allowed children to move from the rustic games of Goa’s past that involved
physical exertion to amusing themselves with tablets, mobile phones, and
computer games. What is interesting about Gadekar’s representation of the
perfect past is also the gun and dart shaped “toys” that are used to burst fire
crackers. While most Indians may associate crackers with Diwali, in Goa, it is
the feast of Ganesh Chaturthi that is punctuated by the bursting of fire
crackers—a Goan specificity that most are aware of and marks one more feature
that carves out a distinct Goan identity.
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| "Memory That Scandalously Lies", Aasmani Kamat |
If Gadekar’s
contributions are redolent of nostalgia for a past that is imagined as perfect,
through her contribution, “Memory that Scandalously Lies,” the
Bangalore based Aasmani Kamat eschews any valorisation of the past. Her concept
note informs us that our memories of the past are invariably embellished by our
present and hence are unreliable. Despite her refusal to indulge in nostalgia,
the works by both Kamat and Gadekar are united by their gaze at childhood. This
is perhaps largely because it is childhood that is the imagined space of purity
and authenticity. That it is the topography of childhood that is obviously
changing is perhaps the reason for Gadekar’s nostalgia.
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| “A Perilous Leap
of Faith”, Krishna Divkar |
Two other works,
though not overtly concerned with change, are engaged with the process of
archiving traditions, some of them continuing, from Goa’s past. Hemant Parab
captures performances of folk dances, while Krishna Divkar’s “A Perilous Leap
of Faith” captures a peculiar tradition among the Catholics in Goa. The feast
of São João, or Saint John the
Baptist, is commemorated on 24 June, a good few weeks after the monsoons would
have hit Goa. At this point in time, the wells are quite literally overflowing,
and Catholics in particular celebrate the feast by wearing crowns of leaves and
flowers, and jumping into these wells. These leaps are a reference not only to
John’s use of water for baptism but also his leap of joy while still in the
womb, when his mother Elizabeth met her cousin Mary, who was then bearing the
future Messiah, Jesus. The image that Divkar captures offers a particular
nuance to this tradition. Children born after an act of divine favour was
requested are also crowned with wreaths and taken into the waters with caring
adults as a thanksgiving for the fulfilment of the favours petitioned.
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| "War Heads", Assavari Kulkarni |
Assavri Kulkarni’s
photographs have a sculptural quality to them highlighting a natural symmetry.
If there is one single factor that most nostalgic Goans will agree on, it is of
the memory of Goa that was green and linked with nature and natural cycles. Kulkarni’s
images, which also contain the image of fish—possibly the food for which all
Goans share a passion—echo this fascination for the natural.
In her offering
to the exhibition, Rajeshshree Thakkar continues working with the mobile
elements that defined her earlier works. “Prayer Wheel for Goa” seems to make
obvious that given the rapid changes that are overtaking Goa, there is a need
to pray for the land, its people and its traditions. What is left to our
imagination is whether this prayer is one for a peaceful death or one for
sturdy continuity.
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| "Prayer Wheel for Goa", Rajeshshree Thakkar |
Defining Goan-ness
Predominant in Thakkar’s “Prayer Wheel for Goa” are images of a Goa
that are linked to the Goan, and especially the Catholic elite’s engagement
with the European and Portuguese cultures. To many, these images that craft the
vision of a Goa Portuguesa are
indisputable hallmarks of Goan-ness. And yet the issue of what exactly defines
Goan-ness is a hugely contested battleground. The trope of Goa Portuguesa, or Portuguese Goa, emerged in the twilight years of
Portuguese sovereignty over Goa and as a logical extension of the Portuguese
state policy that Portugal was one indivisible, multi-continental nation.
Goans, the authoritarian Portuguese New State argued, were not Indian, but
profoundly Portuguese. This assertion, strangely enough, got reaffirmed in the
period subsequent to integration into the Indian Republic, and especially under
the years of Congress rule in the 1980s, when it was used to aggressively
market Goa as a Western paradise in India. This image continues to be crudely
imitated by those who wish to sell Goa as a space of leisure, whether for
tourists or middle class and rich Indians seeking holiday homes in Goa.
In opposition to
the idea of a profoundly Portuguese Goa emerged that of Goa Indica. Goa’s identity, the partisans of the latter idea
affirmed, had nothing to do with Portuguese influences, but was deeply
connected with India. If the Portuguese state leaned toward one extreme, the
votaries of Goa Indica swung toward its
polar opposite. Even as Goa’s society changes rapidly, the truth perhaps lies
somewhere in the middle. In any case, rather than attempt to adopt a single
definition, it makes sense to be attentive to the suggestions that emerge from
the ground; in this case, the works on display in this exhibition.
One thing that
emerges strikingly in much of the contemporary artistic production from Goa is
the figure of Christ or references to what could broadly be called Catholic
lifestyles. This exhibition’s collection of artworks is no exception to this
rule.
 |
“d
lesson”
Shripad Gurav |
In addition to
the works discussed earlier, Vitesh Naik’s “Odyssey” and Shripad Gurav’s “d
lesson” seem to narrate stories from Catholic lives. Of course, it would be a
little too straightforward to suggest that these are Christian figures merely
because these images feature men in shirts and trousers, and women in skirts. These
images could also be interpreted as narrations of life in Goa’s Old Conquests,
those central parts of Goa that were under Portuguese sovereignty for the
longest period. However, because of the manner in which Western modernity
entered into Goa via Christianisation and the ensuing westernization of the
Christian populace, one can in fact suggest that a Western way of being is
subliminally tied in the popular imagination to Christians. Indeed, even as the
bahujan have increasingly Hinduised, they have also adopted forms of Western
modernity that seem to have been directly picked up by imitating Catholics.
Take, for example, the manner in which weddings are celebrated, increasingly
with Western-style bands and receptions modelled on those held by Catholics in
Goa.
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| "The Third Lie", Pradeep Naik |
Catholic imagery
is perhaps the most salient in Pradeep Naik’s exhibit, “The Third Lie,” which
is a direct reference to the Apostle Peter’s three denials of Christ. The
canvas depicts an Ecce Homo, a bust
featuring the head of Christ crowned with thorns, with ecclesial buildings in
the background. Beyond this ecclesial structure lies another structure
suggesting contemporary industrialised Goa. Divided into two halves, the other
half of Pradeep Naik’s canvas presents us with a brown, desolate plain that
seems to echo the iron rich lateritic soil of Goa and the devastation wreaked
on it by the indigenous mining industry. Perhaps the true mark of Portuguese
colonialism in Goa, mining for iron ore in Goa commenced in the 1940s. This
industry continued under Indian rule, but it surged exponentially due to the
Chinese demand for iron ore since the start of the new millennium. This was a
period when the shady operations of legally mandated miners were compounded by
those who were mining illegally. Goa was flush with funds, and despite the fact
that Ramdas Gadekar mourns these changes, it brought prosperity to a large
number of Goa’s bahujan groups.
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| Shirgão, Krishna Divkar |
The environmental impact, however, has been
devastating. In addition to the respiratory diseases suffered by people living
in the mining belt, and the destruction of fields through their inundation with
mining waste, there has also been the destruction of the water table and drying
up of perennial streams that issued from the hills that have been literally disembowelled.
The temple of the Goddess Lairai in the village of Shirgão lies in this mining
belt and is the locale of a famous feast, or zatra, depicted in a contribution from Krishna Divkar. At this
feast, members of the Dhond caste purify themselves in the spring-fed tank
attached to the temple, and then walk over the embers of ritual fires. The
irony of the situation is that the spring that fed the tank had run dry since
many years thanks to the mining operations in its vicinity. To ensure the
completion of the fire walking ritual, the tank would be filled by tankers just
prior to the start of the zatra,
making a mockery of the nature-worship located at the heart of this ritual.
While the
protests against the devastating effects of mining have received the support of
the Catholic Church, which has maintained a commitment to environmental
justice, the heroes of the agitation have sprung from the Adivasi communities of Goa. Is it this face of the contemporary
martyr that Pradeep Naik presents against the backdrop of the ravaged land?
Another vaguely
Christ-like figure manifests in Sagar Naik Mule’s sculpture “Armageddon.” The
reference to Christ’s Last Supper is also present in Vitesh Naiks’s cluster of
works. The Christian influence is perhaps more nuanced in the work of Kedar
Dhondu, the title of whose video installation, “Refrain from anger and turn from
wrath, it leads only to evil,” is in fact a quote from a biblical Psalm. His
work is a contemplation on wrath, one of the seven sins, or cardinal vices, as articulated
by Christian ethics. That so many artists engage with these Christian images,
despite their not confessing Catholicism, goes to document the integral part
that the Christian vision plays in moulding a Goan sensibility.
 |
| "Apocalypse", Sagar Naik Mule |
My assertions
above are not to reaffirm a colonial period argument that Goa is indeed Portuguesa, given that the Indica is not altogether absent either.
One of the primordial faith traditions in Goa is of its Adivasi people. These peoples, who are today largely marginalised, worshipped
the mother goddess, as Sateri, and believed that she manifested herself in the
form of the roen or ant hill. The ant
hill that is normally associated with the divine feminine energy is transformed
in Sagar Naik Mule’s sculptures “Armageddon” and “Apocalypse” into masculine
and phallic figures. “Apocalypse” depicts ants emerging from the uber-macho
masculine torso. Interestingly, the V-shaped torso of today’s ideal masculine
figure is also an inversion of the triangular form of the ant hill mound. One
wonders if this hyper-masculinity could be a reference to the growing desire,
fomented by aggressive Hindutva, to fashion tough male bodies marked by bulging
muscularity. “Armageddon,” Mule’s other sculpture, once again has an ant-hill-like
phallic object that holds a man within it.
This obsession
with hyper-masculinised male torsos is also evident in the popular art that
emerges when Goans celebrate Diwali. The difference of Hinduism in Goa ismarked by the fact that the effective high point of the Diwali celebrations iswhat has come to be called Narakasur Nite. In Goa, the night of Naraka Chaturdashi,
the lunar day before the new moon night when the goddess Laxmi is worshipped,
sees the preparation of effigies of the asura
Naraka. These effigies are the focus for raucous music until the wee hours of
the morning, when the effigy, stuffed with crackers, is consigned to flames. In
recent years, these effigies that earlier depicted the robust body of the asura have given way to depictions from
the torso up. Like the torso that Mule has sculpted, these new avataars of
Naraka are grotesquely muscled. I suspect that it is because of the structural
challenges that this new body type presents that these effigies now focus only
from the torso up and, rather than being constructed entirely of combustible
materials, are now built over a frame of iron girders rooted in concrete bases.
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| "Rebirth", Santosh Morajkar |
The
contemplation of feminine energy and form continues with the work of Rajendra
Usapkar, titled “I see the truth II.” “Rebirth,” Santosh Morajkar’s work in
this exhibition, is another example, and marks a continuation, of Morajkar’s engagement
with human genitalia, and thereby fertility, whether male or female.
In “Divine
Journey,” Sonia Rodrigues Sabharwal demonstrates the fascination with Hinduism
that animates a number of contemporary Catholics in Goa. While one of the
images offered by Sabharwal is a reworking of the Catholic icon of the flight
of the Holy Family into Egypt, the rest of her images engage with Puranic
deities and Hindu festivity. What is one to make of the squat bodies and flat
noses of these images, however? While this imaging of the human body is
characteristic of a number of Rodrigues’ works, could it also be seen as
stemming from the desire to move away from the vaguely European and Aryan
imaging of the Hindu body, as evidenced by the works of Ravi Varma and subsequent
Hindu imagery?
 |
| “Divine
Journey,” Sonia Rodrigues Sabharwal |
Even as it was
necessary to correct the suggestion of Goa
Portuguesa, the problem with Goa
Indica is that it collapsed the Indic into Hinduism. What was not Hindu was
effectively erased from the record and not presented as part of Goa’s Indic
heritage. The Jain, Buddhist, and Islamicate pasts of Goa were victims to this
tendency in Goa Indica. This history
is partially salvaged for us through the incorporation of the Maitreya Buddha
into Thakkar’s “Prayer for Goa” and the artefact of the prayer wheel. This
Bodhisattva of the future looks upon the flow of time and change that Thakkar presents,
offering hope for Goa’s future. Buddhism is, however, not merely a part of
Goa’s past but could possibly be a part of its future through the presence of
Dalit communities which, following Dr. Ambedkar’s lead, converted to Buddhism
and hold hope for a regenerative change in Goa’s future.
 |
| "The Great Indian Rope Trick" Walter D'Souza |
Walter D’Souza’s
sculpture and prints, which seem to be a take on orientalised notions of India
as the land of elephants and the great Indian rope trick, offer a jocular
engagement with the exotic notion of India. In engaging with this
representation of India, D’Souza also makes a point critical to placing this
exhibition in context. Goan artists are not limited to articulating a vision
restricted to Goa; they can, and do, converse with the larger world around
them.
Goans and the world
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| "Apparition of Roman head...", Vijai Bhandare |
One of the tropes that the colonial regime relied on when asserting
the Portuguese-ness of Goa was to point to the epithet “Rome of the East” that
was used to describe the city of Old Goa, once the capital of the Portuguese
empire in the East. This epithet is most often used to refer to the profound
influence of Christianity in the city. Until the religious orders were evicted
from Portuguese domains by Governmental decree in 1834 Old Goa hosted
representatives of the major religious orders in Christendom. However, the
influence of Rome on the Goan psyche can be seen beyond the presence of
Christian religious orders in the former capital city. Just as was the case of
the Ottoman, Russian and, more recently, American empires, Imperial Rome was an
object of emulation by the Portuguese empire as well. While various Portuguese
monarchs sought to create a second Rome in Lisbon, the City of Goa, as the seat
of the Viceroy also sought to incarnate itself as another Rome. It is not a
coincidence that the cities of Lisbon and Goa had seven hills, just as Rome
did. The architecture that manifested in the City of Goa was not Portuguese but
European, specifically drawing from architecture that had links with Imperial
Rome. It was this Roman inspiration that would later provide the basis for the
homes of the Goan elite and middle classes—buildings that are today erroneously
called Portuguese. Similarly, the westernization of the Goan, whether Catholic
or otherwise, was not so much an imitation of the Portuguese as much as it was
an engagement with European systems, a good number of which had always been inspired
by Imperial Rome. It was therefore a cynical conceit of the Portuguese New
State to claim Goa’s Western aspects as Portuguese. If anything, this
westernization flowed from an engagement with Rome effected not merely through
the patronage of the Portuguese crown but through European missionaries, and
native Goans engaging independently with Europe.
This engagement
with Rome, conscious or otherwise, seems apparent in Vijay Bhandare’s surrealist
“Apparition of a Roman head, induced by sleep paralysis in the wee hours of 2nd
November 2014.” What this work also brings to mind is the memory of another
Goan who has gained some international repute through his engagement with sleep
and paralysis. It is a little known fact that the character of Abbé Faria in
Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte
Cristo was based on a real person of Goan origin. A Catholic priest from
the seaside village of Candolim, Abbé José Custódio de Faria was part of the
native Goan elite in the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century Goa.
Travelling from Goa, Faria was educated in Rome, preached at the royal court of
Portugal for a while, and eventually found himself in Paris, where he gained
fame and notoriety for his experiments with hypnotism. His treatise on the
subject, On the Cause of Lucid Sleep in
the Study of the Nature of Man, is now recognised by some as having
initiated the scientific study of hypnotism. In 1945, this son of Goa was honoured
through a public memorial erected in the city of Panjim. A bronze statue
wrought by Ramachandra Pandurang Kamat captures Faria in the act of hypnotising
a woman. It is through this image, felicitously also captured in Thakkar’s
prayer wheel, that Faria is more substantially present in this exhibition.
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| "Mind's eye", Karl Antao |
Travel abroad,
often for work, has been a part of the Goan experience for generations now.
Some historians date this migration for work to the British Occupation of Goa
in the 1800s in the wake of the Napoleonic crisis in Europe, and subsequently
through the signing of the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1878. This treaty opened
up channels for both Hindu and Catholic migration to British India and British
East Africa. The contact with Portuguese East Africa was
possibly longer, given that Goa administered these territories directly until
1752. There continue to be substantial Goan populations in various parts of
East Africa, and it is this connection with Africa that comes to mind when
contemplating, “Mind’s eye,” and “Sprouting seeds”, the sculptures of Karl
Antao.
 |
| "Night Walks- Baroda" Karishma D'Souza |
The migrations
of Goans have continued into recent times largely because it is still difficult
to gain dignified employment within Goa. The absence of educational facilities is
another factor that has propelled Goans abroad. Karishma D’Souza’s “Night Walks
– Baroda” can be read as a testament to these voyages of migration, given that
D’Souza, like many Goan artists, completed a good amount of her education in
the fine arts in the city of Baroda. Like many Indian artists, she continued to
linger on in that city, which offered the camaraderie of other artists from
across India.
Continuing conversations
An ideal location to conclude this discussion of the works curated
within this exhibition would be the pictographs titled “Cultural Conversation”
contributed by Viraj Naik. These assemblages present a variety of characters
drawn from a number of his earlier works. Viraj is clear that these characters are
not Goan characters but embody universal aspects. They emerge from different
locales and periods, and seem to be engaged in conversations across diverse
landscapes, some of which, like the river that cuts across both images, one
could identify as distinctly Goan.
 |
| "Cultural Conversation- 3", Viraj Naik |
|
|
|
Even though the
popular imagination has pegged the sea as the quintessential element of the
Goan landscape, this is perhaps more the result of external imaginations of
Goa. Until recently, except for the fishing communities for whom the sea was
the site of labour, the sea was an alien element to many Goans. It was perhaps only
from the early twentieth century that the Goan middle classes, in imitation of
European fashions of the time, began to vacation by the seaside in the summer
so that they could take the waters. Until this time, the river had possibly
been the landscape feature that defined Goan identities. It was the rivers that
marked boundaries, whether prior to the arrival of the Portuguese or even
subsequent to their arrival. Indeed, in the first phase of Portuguese expansion
from the city of Goa, it was the rivers that provided boundaries for the realms
of the Portuguese Crown. As a fragment in Thakkar’s assemblage indicates, the
Portuguese armadas did not merely sail across the seas; they also sailed up the
rivers to assert their sovereignty over the city of Goa and other ports. Despite
engaging in trade across the seas, these ports were located upstream from the
sea. Until the advent of macadamised roads and petroleum-fuelled automotive
transport, it was the rivers that allowed for rapid transportation across the
various territories that today constitute Goa. It is little wonder, then, that
besides Viraj, the centrality of the river to Goan narratives is echoed by the
Goan poet Manohar Shetty’s collection of Goan short stories, titled Ferry Crossings (2000), while Reflected in Water (2006) is the name of
Jerry Pinto’s collection of writings on Goa. In fact, what is perhaps one of
the most famous conversations from the Goan cultural repertoire, between a
dancing girl and a boat man in the folk song Choltam Choltam, popularly known as hanv saiba poltodi voita, takes place on the bank of a river.
 |
| "Cultural Conversation- 2", Viraj Naik |
There is no
vibrant society that is not engaged in conversation, and it would therefore be
presumptuous to accord to Goa any uniqueness in the conduct of conversation.
And yet, ever since its birth as a city-state in the 1500s, and even prior to
this period, Goa’s history has been marked by the presence of diverse actors
and returning Goans, who have contributed to the sometimes bewildering
diversity of this territory. Goa means many things to many people, and Goa is
often reincarnated overseas by those who, after having departed from its shores,
reimagine what Goa used to be. It is for this reason, then, that one can assert
that indeed Goa não é um país pequeno.
(This blog was first published as part of the curatorial statement of the
group exhibition of Goan artists, Goa não é um país pequeno, at
Kalakriti art gallery, Hyderabad from 9 Feb to 28 Feb 2015.)
(My thanks to Viraj Naik for the opportunity to craft this essay, Christine Russon for her editorial help, and my colleagues at the Al-Zulaij Collective conversations with who aided the articulation of many ideas in the essay.)
Prime Minister
Narendra Modi was recently invited to be the chief guest at a national seminar
on “Religious Witnessing” organized by the Syro-Malabar Church in New Delhi.
The seminar was to mark the recent canonization of Kuriakose Elias Chavara and
Mother Euphrasia. Modi’s comments at this event seem to have sent leaders and
members of Christian groups, as well as secular liberals, into paroxysms of
delight. This frenzy possibly has its roots in the unnerving stony silence that
the Prime Minister’s Office maintained for months after the recent
vandalisations and desecrations of churches in the national capital. This
silence was a matter of concern for many and one can understand why the leaders
of the Christian communities were relieved that Modi has finally taken
initiative on the matter. The delight from various quarters has also been
fuelled by the manner in which the media has framed Modi’s statements as a “reaching
out” to Christians, and a commitment in favour of freedom of religion.
The other
statements that we should give closer attention to include the folowing: “[m]y
government will not allow any religious
group, belonging to the majority or
the minority, to incite hatred against others, overtly or covertly.” In
addition, the Financial Times reported Modi as
having said, “[m]y government will ensure that there is complete freedom of
faith and that everyone has the undeniable right to retain or adopt the
religion of his or her choice without
coercion or undue influence.”
The devil, as
they say, is in the detail, and it is this detail that I have italicised above.
In phrasing his supposedly soothing words to the Christians in the country,
Modi has also suggested that it is not just supposed majority groups that
incite hatred against others but minoritised groups too! These are hardly the salving
words one extends toward communities that have been at the receiving end of mob
violence. Rather, it suggests that these groups may have done something to
invite the violence. This position is, of course, in keeping with the position
of the Hindu Right that argues that it is Hindus who are under attack, and that
all forms of violence from the Hindu Right are merely the result of righteous
anger. The
VHP is reported to have said as much, indicating that Modi was not
referring to the Hindu Right, but in fact delivering a lecture on the good
behaviour expected from Christians in the country.
In light of these
facts, one can assume that when Modi assures that “We will act strongly
against such violence” what he is doing is in fact playing out the standard
tactics of the Hindu Right. These tactics include the march toward an
authoritarian state. Authoritarian states have a peculiar relationship with
violence. They would ideally not like to exercise mob violence continuously,
knowing full well that violence once unleashed can be hard to control. Further,
the leaders of the violence could develop their own agenda and pose a challenge
to the existing leadership. Thus, what they would like is to strategically
exercise this violence, allowing it brief and controlled reign from time to
time. The fact of past violence is used as a threat to repressed groups. One
need only look at the playing out of the genocidal violence in Gujarat in 2002 to
understand the first part of the equation that I have just elaborated. And it
is not just Gujarat; one could argue that in India, mob violence does not
simply happen, but occurs because the state allows for it to take place.
In the light of
international outcry, and the Presidential rebuke from Obama the anti-Christian
violence is now an embarrassment to the Modi regime. In this context, it is now
perfectly comprehensible if heads will roll for the anti-Christian violence in
Delhi. Also, bear in mind that this assertion of the intolerance of the state
against violence will just as easily be turned toward members of besieged faith
groups. This fact was in evidence both in the recent protests in Delhi, but
also in 2008, when Christians in Mangalore protesting against attacks on their churches were arrested and attacked by the police.
That this
assertion of an inclination toward law and order has little to do with securing
the security of non-Hindu groups becomes evident in Modi’s statements about the
freedom of religion. In assuring that he stands behind the right to freedom of
religion, he also felt the need to add that there ought to be no coercion or undue influence in the
course of adopting the religion of one’s choice. This latter caveat is
critical, because coercion and undue influence is exactly what Hindu nationalists allege against both Christian and
Muslim missionaries. Hindu nationalists of all stripes have since Independence
used this allegation of coercion and undue influence as a way to place legal
restrictions on the freedom of faith. As a result, the various Freedom of Religion legislations in India make conversions actions that can be
monitored by the state executive. In doing so the Indian state makes a mockery
of the right to freedom of religion. Modi has simply confirmed a repressive
practice of the Indian state and is being applauded for it.
The final straw
is the manner in which Modi chose to frame the entire incident. From the Hindustan Times we hear that his
statements that supposedly assure Christians that their place in the country is
secure were framed by Modi pointing out that “equal respect” for all faiths was
an ancient Indian value that was also integral to the Constitution. “This
principle of equal respect and treatment for all faiths has been a part of
India’s ethos for thousands of years. And that is how it became integral to the
Constitution of India. Our Constitution did not evolve in a vacuum. It has
roots in the ancient cultural traditions of India.” 
