On the death of a Queen

Queen Elizabeth II (ERII) is dead, and it appears as if the entire world – or at least that portion on social media – has something to say about her, the Crown, and the British monarchy. My own relationship with ERII is, I would like to think, cool and distanced. When I started thinking seriously about my own social location as a Goan in India I realised that the history of British India, and consequently the Indian attachments to Britain, weren’t really as close to me as I had been taught. My history was more properly that of Portuguese India, and my relationship with the British, and British Indians, could also be routed through a Portuguese lens. I have found this way of looking at Britain, and all things British (including British India) hugely useful since it provided an alternate grounding, and a more dispassionate way of relating to the British, British-Indian, and Anglophone world around me. None of this is to contradict the fact that as a privileged Goan growing up in the Indian nation-state, and a British-Indian mother, I was raised up as an Anglophone, and consequently Anglophile. But in this, I realised after living in Portugal for more than a decade, I was not dissimilar to the privileged segments of Portuguese society, many of whom are substantially Anglophile.

It is this curious relationship that all of us, across the world, have with Britain, and British institutions, that has occasioned this outpouring of response to the death of ERII. One aspect of this relationship was very succinctly captured by Frank Cottrell-Boyce when writing for The Guardian:

“One of the reasons the Queen’s death feels so huge is that she was a living connection with that postwar consensus, that attempt to build a better nation and a rules-based world. A vision that is being demolished even as we plan her funeral. Ten years ago, we lived in a world of divided opinion. Now, we live in a world of divided reality.”

Consensus was the word that jumped out at me when I read this passage. ERII was in fact the epitome of a world that revolved around a consensus, at the heart of which, was a socio-cultural one, and perhaps this is what ERII, with her all-important dress-sense and etiquette, represented best – a way of being, and doing things that everyone agreed with.

This is not to say that the consensus was democratically reached, or that everyone who was a part of the consensus agreed with it wholeheartedly. But thanks to Britain’s couple of centuries in the sun – to put it politely – it was central to determining the way in which we all behaved, from the British-Indians who were a subject population of the British Crown, to the Portuguese, who, though not a subject population, nevertheless had a less than equal relationship with the Crown.

The consensus worked because there was something in it for all of us. Above all there was a discourse of fairness that one could appeal to. Even if this fairness was not necessarily realised in the operation of the British Empire, the discourse ensured that one could hold Britain accountable, then, and in the future. There was also, as I suggested earlier, a socio-cultural consensus eventually rooted in western European Christianity, that made us better people. Women were treated as social superiors, there was a way one behaved at the dining table, there was a way one dressed. All these were important, because it enabled us to create a uniformity, a level playing field, that allowed us to understand one another. After post-modernism and post-colonialism, as Cotterll-Boyce rightly points out, that world has disappeared. We don’t live in a world of divided opinion any more; we live in a world of divided reality. As contemporary Indian politics itself demonstrates, we can’t even agree on the reality of the world we live in since our points of departure are so radically different.

ERII’s death represents the disappearance of that world that we were all used to, and we must all be sorry for her death, because the fading away of the world she embodied makes our lives that much poorer and unstable.

As should be obvious from the tangential references above, I am well aware of the critique of the continuing violence of the British Empire. However, I would like to once again stress that the Empire also built into its operation a discourse that has allowed for it to be taken to task. One can think of the way in which this was ensured in the case of the Mau Mau rebellion, or the case of the Gurkhas. I fear the same cannot be said for the dissensus that represents the alternative to ERII’s world.

Take, for example, the horrific responses to ERII’s death. I offer only one, particularly troubling response, that of Uju Anya, a professor at the Carnegie-Mellon University, who reportedly tweeted: “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating”. Just so that we don’t forget the context, this vitriol was directed at a ninety-four-year-old woman, who has been a figure-head at best, and for all we know done her best to moderate things she was capable of moderating.

Sadly, Anya’s response is not an aberration, but true of a good number of persons who identify as “woke”. This kind of self-righteous indignation, and the willingness to inflict harm on a representative of an order one is opposed to, is becoming increasingly common, whether by persons on the right, or on the left, or centre. If this horrific incapacity to distinguish between a person and an institution, and to wish ill to a person, particularly one who is not directly responsible for the actions attributed to her, is the world that woke activists wish, then this is not a world, or better still a consensus, I would like to be a part of.

The Catholic Church teaches in its Catechism that one may not engage in armed resistance to oppression by political authority, if one cannot ensure that the resistance will not provoke worse disorders. This teaching offers us a definite lesson in the current and similar cases: if your resistance to colonial, or other, oppression is to justify unequal violence against often-innocent actors, and inaugurate a worse system than that which preceded it, then you are a part of the problem, not a part of the solution. There is no doubt that ERII was a figurehead not only for the genteel consensus I speak about but an Empire that has unleashed much violence that continues to wreak havoc. However, our response to this violence cannot, and must not, be to unleash more violence.  Our response must be to unleash, what the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the [Catholic] Church, calls “a civilisation of love”.

It bears reminding that none of us is innocent of violence, and that we are all figures trapped within our own contradictions. I believe that ERII attempted to do her best despite the contradictions she was born into. In many ways, her heir, King Charles III represents continued attempts to do good despite the contradictions he has been born into. Let us wish him well.

The Queen is dead. Long live the King.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 14 Sept 2022).

Catholic Politics and a Goan Romance: Thoughts on the release of Radharao Gracias' A Shortcut to Tipperary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure for me to release A Shortcut to Tipperary this evening.

There is an interesting set of dynamics between the person who releases a book and the event of a book release. In some cases, it is the person who brings honour to the event, and in others it is the event that brings honour to the person invited to release the book. This afternoon is an example of the latter case and I thank Doutor Radharao for the opportunity. I could think of many others, some present in this gathering, who are more worthy of this task, but I am nevertheless delighted to be able to release the book and share with you my thoughts on the novel.

I have to confess that I agreed to release the book without having read it. But then, how could I refuse Dr. Radharao? And having been witness to his provocations in social media over the years, and thanks to our conversations I knew that subsequent to accepting I would not be placed in an awkward position. And to be honest, the author exceeded all expectations. For this, my congratulations Doutor.

When he invited me, Doutor Radharao had indicated that his intention had been to preserve a record of the Goa of his youth, a Goa that is fast disappearing, or indeed has already disappeared. This is not an uncommon desire among Goans of a certain age, and yet, oftentimes the result is disastrous. The narrative labours under the weight of an activist’s frenzied desire and one must deal with tedious explanations of the minutiae of the local life that the activist author wishes to capture, down to the most boring detail. And then there is the question of the language placed in the mouths of the characters – either it seeks to mimic the native tongue of these characters and is often a hideous pidgin, or it is a form of English that is so removed as to be unrealistic. I am happy to report that A Shortcut to Tipperary suffers from neither of these shortcomings. Doutor Radharao says all that he has to say, and he has much to say, but with a hand that is as light as a merengue! I wish I had such skill. Indeed, as a friend and I were discussing the other day, at times teaching is best done indirectly, through parables. On this score the Doutor has done very well indeed!

But what exactly is our Doutor preaching? In a nutshell I believe he is, like many of us, concerned with the question of Goan difference. In his telling, and I am in agreement with him, the difference is Catholicism. What makes Goa Goan to Advocate Radharao Gracias is the Goan Catholic. “Without us,” he argues through the figure of Alberto, “Goa will never be Goa.” Catholicism, and to some extent language – and on this latter point I disagree with him partially, but I will return to this point later – are what make Goa. What makes, or to be honest, what made, the Goan different, honest, hospitable, is Catholicism. This is the  ingredient of an earthly paradise. Our author recognises that not all Goans fulfil this norm, indeed A Shortcut contains a wonderful example of a dastardly Goan Catholic, but as the narrator points out there are always a few bad apples. Nevertheless, bad apples notwithstanding, the norm still holds, or held, and these general features of the Goan resulted from Catholicism.

Underlying the entire narrative, is the suggestion that the anti-thesis of this Goan-ness, is Indian-ness. At one point there is the query whether this morphing of the Goan spirit is a result of being incorporated into the Indian mainstream. There is one particular point in the narrative when our attention is drawn to the fact that the Indian courts are not courts of justice, but courts of law. Justice is not a virtue that the Indian state, through its courts, is able to deliver. Indeed, there are other points in the narrative when the reader is cautioned against litigation. Instead, the reader is offered that biblical counsel which helps in building community – make peace with your brother, your neighbour, resolve your differences among yourselves. What Gracias is offering for Goa is a vision of an organic polity, and I will return to the question of the future in a while.

Resolving some of the crises in A Shortcut to Tipperaray is the figure of the bhatcar. The bhatcar is a contested figure in Goan literature. Whereas some present the bhatcar as the figure of oppression, and I have no doubt that there were many who were, Gracias while not denying that there were some – perhaps many – evil bhatcar, proffers an example of the benevolent, wise and kind bhatcar. Is he being reactionary in this option? I think not, for a couple of reasons. To begin with, I suspect that the bhatcar in A Shortcut is the way Doutor Gracias would like to think of himself.  The second reason, however, I think is more important; Gracias is offering us a model of the ideal leader for this organic polity that will stand up to the rot represented by Indian influence. In this position his project is similar to that of the late Maria Aurora Couto, who wrote histories of the landed aristocracy of Goa, not to blindly glorify them, but to offer us, who are their political and cultural heirs, models of emulation, and ways forward. Most of us may have been mundcars or members of other service groups, but today many of us have the fiscal capacities formerly available to the bhatcars. How do we wield these capacities? The noble bhatcar is the model that Gracias, rightly in my opinion, offers to us.

The appropriateness of this model is one that derives from a certain kind of Catholic politics; one that is not tied to conflict between economic classes, the famous class war, but directed by a notion of justice. It is my belief that so much of so-called “progressive politics” ever since the French revolution is inspired not by an indignation over the unjust exercise of privilege, but by envy – why do they; i.e. the elite, have what we don’t, if we don’t have it, neither must they. As Doutor Gracias points out to us, once again through the voice of the bhatcar, “The poor take vicarious pleasure in the ruins of the richman’s house” (p. 195).

This model of Catholic politics is not simply directed by a notion of justice, it is further animated by the individual’s pursuit of the virtues. Each of the protagonists of the narrative is a virtuous figure, and urges others to be virtuous. Let us return once again to the scenario I just referred to from the narrative. After suggesting that the poor not take vicarious pleasure in the ruins of the homes of the rich, the bhatcar points out to how the very persons who claim that their tenants are not vacating the property, are themselves refusing to vacate properties in Bombay where they are tenants of another landlord. Forgive me for what I am about to say, but I have often had reason to be scandalised when I see Goans who have accumulated substantial property, refuse to abandon properties where they are tenants, and insist on paying miniscule rents that do neither correspond to the market value, nor are they sufficient to support the landlord. And then we wonder why Goan properties are falling to pieces.

Unlike these contemporary Goans, when, as in the case of the narrator, he fails to do justice, or do the virtuous act, his conscience – guided conveniently enough by the Sunday sermon – is sufficiently pricked so that he returns to doing the right thing. There is place also, in this model of Catholic politics for suffering. More than once in this novel we read that “through suffering comes salvation”. I think that this would be a good mantra to hold on to as we suffer through the trials and travails that is our lot in contemporary Goa. So long as we suffer in the course of our pursuit of justice, there is salvation at the end. Not just for us individually, but for all Goans.

And this is where I would like to return to the future that Dr. Radharao offers us in his novel. He has made his peace with the generations of Goans who have emigrated, and continue to emigrate. But, as he suggests via the words of Alberto, “You have a duty to your mother land to come back” (p. 228). This is all very well, but I am also concerned with the question of what do we do while we are away? I would argue that we do exactly what we have been doing earlier, and has been portrayed in the book. The late nineteenth century and the early to mid-twentieth century were marked by the institution of the kudd. The kudd embodied the networks of family, caste, and village that supported Goans in the city of Bombay. The kudd stood at the centre of Goan success in the metropole. I propose that we return to this principle of associationism, with one difference; every Goan is a brother who is in need of our support; not simply those from our family, caste or village network. We should learn to see the outmigration of this century not as a burden, to be lamented, but as an option to create a new Goan century. A century when Goans across the world join hands to reject the mediocrity of middle-class values and aim for the excellence that was a hallmark of the Goan not a couple of generations ago. I have to point out that this is already happening in some places. Speaking recently with Dr. Stella Mascarenhas-Keyes I realised that she is engaged with the issue of the impoverishment of Goans in the UK both in her current role as Patron of the Goan Welfare Association, and her earlier presence on the the Goan Association committee for welfare and immigration. We have here a wonderful example of individual and association engaged in community focussed philanthropy. The new Goan century will be built on the back of this sort of fraternal camaraderie, and not merely on the repetition of old songs, dances.

If we are to attain this vision, we have to necessarily embrace and love our past, as Dr. Radharao has done and transmitted to us. There are a couple of points, however, with which I disagree with him. First, at some points in the narrative, the author seems to display a utilitarian understanding of Christianity – our Lord Jesus Christ did not found a religion, he was a teacher. If Christ were not the Son of God, then to paraphrase the apostle Paul all of our Christianity is pointless. What makes Catholicism tick is not a set of mundane virtues, but the fact that it is animated by the transcendent. This fact is important to acknowledge because too often we Catholics assume that simply having the cultural markers of Catholicism is enough – both for us, and for our Goan difference. I beg to differ. Catholicism is so, only if linked with a recognition of, and love for, Jesus Christ, recognised as the Son of God. Doutor, I will have to turn you over to the Inquisition for this!

The second point on which I disagree, was the egregious lack of accents in words that have come to us via Portuguese. This is a common practice, and one, which I believe, compromises our cultural health. We need to embrace the discipline of the accents, because it is through this discipline that we are able to remain a viable, healthy cultural entity. As the Goan mango breeds will demonstrate, and indeed as the Catholic faith asserts, by ourselves we are nothing, it is when we draw from the traditions of others, that we grow sweeter, and better. On this note, and to return to a point I promised I would, Goa is not only the home of Konkani, it is also the home of Portuguese. A Konkani that is impoverished by cutting its links with Portuguese, is no Konkani at all. It is as the history of the Konkani language shows, some variant of proto-Marathi. It is through Portuguese that our Konkani was born, and became a universal tongue. Were it not for this, there would be no Konkani but a variety of dialects of different castes and sects.

I conclude on this point, thanking you Doutor for this opportunity, not only to present your book to the Goan audience, but for the opportunity to read this book. Thank you and God bless you.

(Radharao Gracias' debut novel  A Shortcut to Tipperary was released on Saturday 27 Aug 2022 at Ravindra Kala Bhavan, Margão. I was invited to release the book)