There were a wide variety of responses to the State
Legislative Assembly’s resolution on the twelfth of this month to grant
official language status to Marathi. As can be imagined, in addition to the
delight of Marathi language activists, for whom the explicit status of official
language for Marathi has been a matter of principle, there were loud cries of
dismay and protest from those for whom Konkani is the only vernacular tongue
they consider their own.
In their anger these self-confessed Konkani lovers rejected
the idea that Marathi has any Goan history while claiming that Konkani alone is
the language of Goa, and that Marathi has ample opportunity to be patronized in
Maharashtra.
I believe that this position is a grievous mistake. The fact
is that Marathi has a long and legitimate Goan history. Marathi was an official language when the
Portuguese were around. In his book Goan
Society in Transition (1975) Bento Graciano D’Souza haw drawn attention to
the fact that the Boletim do Governo do Estado da India, i.e. the
Gazette of the Portuguese State, used Marathi to communicate with its citizens
since the late 1800s. It is also a fact that Marathi was used by the Adil Shahi
sultanate, whose territories eventually came to comprise parts of the New
Conquests. In Primary Education in Portuguese Goa (2013), Ricardo Cabral
highlights that the Portuguese State also backed Marathi-medium government
schools in Goa. Scope for the first Marathi Primary school in
Panjim was established through a Portaria
dated 8 Aug 1843, and by 1847-48 there were five schools in the Marathi
language.
Marathi, therefore, does have a historic presence in Goa,
and it would be silly to discount patent historical facts. If these Marathi
language schools were able to ensure the education of the dominant castes in
the New Conquests, it also ensured the education of the upper ranks of the
bahujan groups. These bahujan groups deepened their emotional bond with Marathi
when they used this language to counter the hegemony that the Saraswat Brahmins
attempted to assert, in both late colonial and especially post-colonial Goa,
through Nagari Konkani. It is in part this more recent history that has resulted
in the insistence that Marathi be officially recognized as an official
language, despite the fact that it has effectively been an official language
since the enforcement of the Official Language Act, 1987.
However, it should be stressed that these angry responses
are not without reason. No matter the history, the recognition of Marathi as an
official language will not be without consequence. In the course of my doctoral
research a couple of Romi Konkani activists explained to me that the
recognition of Marathi as official language would impact on government
recruitment. While knowledge of Konkani is today essential for recruitment to a
Government post, they explained, Marathi is optional. A recognition of Marathi
as an official language would require the knowledge of both Marathi and
Konkani, or ensure that those with knowledge of both languages would be
preferred for governmental positions. What this means is that Catholic
aspirants will essentially lose out in the recruitment process, further
marginalizing Catholic groups, and especially the bahujans among these groups.
Seen in this light, the opposition to Marathi is not
necessarily a blind opposition but largely the response from marginalized
groups fearful for their continued existence. One way to redress this fear
would have been along the lines articulated by Dale Luis Menezes in a recent post on social media. As he said, “if justice has to be done, it is not by recognizing
Marathi as official but Romi as official first. This is not to say that Marathi
shouldn't be recognized, but first it has to be Romi Konkani. Otherwise the
Marathi movement, which had anti-caste [and] pro-Bahujan leanings at its start [but]
has since now been increasingly reproducing Hindu majoritarian politics,
through Marathi mobilization will only lead to more Hindutva.” In formulating
the argument in this manner, Menezes hits the nail on the head. As much as
Marathi has been associated with bahujan politics, it has, and is, also
associated with Hindutva politics. What should also be noted is that with the
full recognition of Marathi, we would have a situation where the high (Marathi)
and low (Konkani) languages of Hindus in the state are recognized, but those of
Catholics and other groups are not. As such, only a simultaneous recognition of
Romi Konkani along with Marathi would ensure a state in which justice is meted
out to the various groups that call the territory its home.
However, there is also a need to point out the
ridiculousness of the propositions that are determining this entire politics.
No territory is the home to just one language. Such formulations emerged from
antiquated ideas of the Romantic movement and have led to way too many wars and
conflicts to be the basis for serious state building. The linguistic
reorganization of states of the young state of India in 1956 drew from these
problematic and racist politics. What we need is a politics that moves outside
of the faulty frame of linguistic homelands and recognizes that the duty of the
state is to speak to all of its citizens, in the languages they understand. After
all, if the much criticized, if unfairly so, Portuguese state way back in the
XIX century could speak to its citizens in languages other than Portuguese,
what prevents the Indian state in Goa from doing so in the XXI century with all
the technological capacities at its disposal?
Speaking of Portuguese, Pratapsingh Rane, the elder
statesperson of the territory, made an interesting intervention in the ongoing
debate on languages in our territory. He
is reported
to have stated in the assembly that “We should have no problem with any
language. I learnt Portuguese because our own documents are in
Portuguese,” further adding a critical point that I too
made some years ago, “If you want to know the history of what happened
in past, you should know this language also.” Indeed, in the coming years the
failure to inculcate a knowledge of the Portuguese language in a broader
segment of the Goan population will lead to a crisis in both historiography and
legal interpretation.
In the recent past there has been much talk about
cross-religious bahujan unity. In the spirit of such unity we should welcome
the recognition of Marathi as a language. However, such calls for unity cannot
be a one-way street. As such, the failure of pro-Marathi activists to also
demand the inclusion of Romi Konkani is rightly seen as pushing a Hindutva agenda.
It would be useful if we moved away from these narrow linguistic politics to
push for an agenda where the State recognizes as official all of the languages
that have had a presence in Goa’s recent history.
(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo dated 19 Aug 2016)
