Unapologetic Christians: Slaves and the Freedom Project

In the context of this business of Ghar wapsi, and the recent release of the novel Swapna Saraswat, it appears that tales about the terrible destruction wrought by the Portuguese have received a renewed lease of life. We in Goa need to be concerned about the myths these kinds of fictional accounts spread largely because, as Victor Ferrao has pointed out in his book Being a Goan Christian: The Politics of Identity, Rift and Synthesis (2011), the contemporary Christian in Goa is seen as a clone of the Portuguese and made responsible for the deeds of the early modern Portuguese in Asia, as well as the Christian missionaries of the time.

But what is it exactly that the contemporary Christian needs to feel regret for? The popular answer is forced conversions and the fires of the Inquisition. While I will not engage in the issue of the Inquisition in this column, I will address the issue of forced conversions that is raised with annoying frequency.

The core question that needs to be asked when dealing with the issue of forced conversions was very neatly raised by Uma Chakravarti in her celebrated essay “Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi?Orientalism, Nationalism, and a Script for the Past” (1990). In this article Chakravati points out that the myth of a golden age of Indian womanhood as located in the Vedic period was constructed only in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, this myth was articulated by foregrounding the Aryan woman "as the only object of historical concern" (p. 28). Completely left out of the picture was the Vedic dasi, women who had been captured, subjugated and enslaved by the conquering Aryans. It is for this reason that she posed the question of her title “Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi?”

Chakravarti’s question makes us realise that pre-modern India was not a land of free people. On the contrary it was a land divided into masters, and slaves, with a large part of the population being held in servitude by a small segment of population that was free and slave-holding. The caste-system was an integral part of this system of slavery. When the Portuguese arrived in the city of Goa, Ilhas and subsequently in Salcette and Bardez, they would have found free castes like the Saraswat, Dessai, Chatim, ashraf Muslim and a few others. The rest of the population, the ancestors of today’s Bahujan and Dalit communities would have existed in varying degrees of serfdom; tied to the land, and to their masters.

Pre-modern Goa would not have been a pleasant place. It was a society marked by human sacrifice, both voluntary, as well as involuntary. Look closely at many of the rituals followed by contemporary Hindus, and one will see the past of human sacrifice. For example, the ugly dolls often strung on contemporary constructions are substitutes for the bodies of slaves who would have been sacrificed to protect the emerging building.

When the Christian missionaries came into the city of Goa and its surroundings, it was this blood thirsty culture that their Christian morality caused them to attack. Remember that Sati was one of the first abhorrent practices that Albuquerque banned on taking power. Should one be apologetic for this destruction of the local culture or celebrate this destruction?

Similarly the conversion of local populations was not effected entirely through force and cunning. Rather, as Angela Barreto Xavier points out in “Disquiet on the island:Conversion, conflicts and conformity in sixteenth-century Goa” (2007) marginalised caste groups were more amenable to conversion than the free, land-owning and dominant castes. This is not surprising given that Christian missionaries extended themselves to ensure material support to those that converted. In the case of the village of Chorão that Xavier studies this material support was a palm-grove to offer accommodation to the marginalized segments of the village. In Xavier’s words, “They [members of this marginalized caste] had good reason to expect a better living in a Christian order—and they actually had the best reasons to dissent against the old order (p. 281)”. That their conversion was in fact dissent is made powerfully clear by Xavier when she points out that after their baptism these local persons “dressed and ate forbidden food, and behaved differently. That is to say, they openly transgressed their old rules (p. 282).” In the sway of the propaganda by Hindu nationalist groups and Indian nationalism, we have come to believe that caste is merely about the community one is born into. The fact is that until the advent of Christianity and until freedom provided by the Dalit framer of the Constitution of India, caste, especially for the lower castes, meant the inability to wear certain clothes, eat certain foods, and behave in particular manners. The conversion to Christianity, therefore, was definitely a challenge to the power of upper caste groups.

In her book Globalising Goa (1660-1820) (2014) Ernestine Carriera points out that the Christian missionaries also ensured laws that would make it impossible for Christians to be slaves (pp. 392-393) and that this new scenario was opposed by local Muslim and caste Hindu slave owners. While most persons focus on episodes such as these to stress the strategies that were used by Christian missionaries, what often escapes attention is the fact that we are dealing with slavery here. If we place our sympathy with the slaves then we are able to read the story of Christianisation from quite a different light. From this perspective, the story of the Christianisation is a story of the liberation of depressed castes from the cruelty of their upper-caste owners. If these upper-caste tyrants were forced to flee because they refused to brook this new situation of freedom then we need have no sympathy for them at all.

If at all we have been thus far sympathetic to the fictional accounts like Swapna Saraswat, then it is because we have thus far been listening to the myths of local savarnas peddled largely through coffee-table books supported and authored by dominant castes (both Catholic and Hindu) rather than the histories of Bahujan and Dalit castes. If these latter castes, most of who are quite contently Catholic, have no memory of conversion trauma then it is because conversion would have provided a welcome release from the more horrific aspects of caste life.

The majoritarian Catholic presence in the Old Conquests also brought relief to the non-Catholic Bahujan populations once the New Conquests were integrated into the Estado. Once the dominant castes converted to Christianity, the social mobility available to middle-rung and marginalised castes decreased and caste reasserted itself once again. Nevertheless, the horrors of the pre-modern system were muted. As the centuries progressed the Old Conquests began to get depopulated due to service castes withdrawing their services from the Christian upper-castes and migrating to obtain labour that would not be couched in daily and ritual humiliation. In his essay titled “Humiliation in a Crematorium” Peter R. de Sousa points out that the vacated space came to be occupied by Dalit-Bahujan groups who migrated from the New Conquests fleeing from the “the pernicious laws of Manu...which operated in the Konkan socio-cultural landscape”. De Sousa might as well have included cruel landlords to the list of horrors that the Dalit-Bahujans were fleeing from. The religious freedom that the leaders of the New Conquests negotiated for themselves when these territories were added to the Estado merely meant continuing impunity to treat lower castes like chattel. De Sousa argues that this migration from New to Old Conquests gave the Dalit-Bahujan a chance to “reinvent themselves”. This reinvention he refers to is perhaps the manner in which depressed castes were able to represent themselves as members of the Bhandari caste, which would explain the preponderance of this caste in in contemporary Goa.

The rhetoric of the Hindu Right, and that of their Ghar Wapsi project, rests on the suggestion that pre-modern South Asia was a society of free individuals. The fact is that it was not, it was a land of widespread servitude and slavery. Colonial rule and Christianity came as a welcome relief to many of the people who converted. This is not to say that slavery disappeared altogether. It definitely did not. However, the presence of Christianity allowed for a variety of previously unavailable challenges to the caste order. Those who converted made as much use of Christianity and the missionaries as the Hindu Right imagines the missionaries made use of the marginalised castes.

The vision of the Hindu Right is the vision of a caste ordered past. The question we need to pose when faced with novels like Swapna Saraswat is whose stories are they telling, and whose stories are they actively erasing. In other words, what ever happened to the pre-modern das and dasi?

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 23 Jan 2015)

Liberation and the English Language

The two lectures and accompanying discussions held in Goa recently under the aegis of the Dr. Ambedkar Memorial Lecture Series provided much needed food for thought and discussion.  Organised to proffer Ambedkarite visions on issues that are of concern to the country, the lectures featured Dr. Varsha Ayyar from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay, and the acclaimed Dalit intellectual Chandrabhan Prasad.

Chandrabhan Prasad spoke on ‘Ambedkar’s India Project’ suggesting that Ambedkar had a definite vision for India, one that was not tied to any one dogma, but one that was committed to destroying the caste system and creating an Indian society that would be more respectful of all. A part of this project relied on the industrialisation and mechanisation of agriculture. Once people have access to machines, Prasad argued, all kind of jobs are open to people irrespective of caste. He provided the example of sanitation services in high-end hotels. Labelled more appealingly as “Housecleaning” and with provisions for gloves, uniforms and tools, these jobs that would normally be reserved for dalits had now seen the entry of dominant caste persons.

Prasad is perhaps more famous for his support of school education in English, going so far as to propose a temple for the goddess that is the English language, and the celebration of Macaulay’s birthday. Given that he did not touch directly on this more controversial topic, I ventured a question: In the context of Goa, where those who argue for English as a state-supported medium of instruction are berated as anti-national, denationalised and against Indian culture, what would your response be?

Prasad’s response was crystal clear. What is this Indian or vernacular culture that these anti-English educationists seek to promote? It is the very culture that oppresses Dalits and other marginalised communities in the country. This is a culture that embodies caste. If this culture will be destroyed in the process of education in English, then let it be destroyed.

Prasad’s logic recognises that language does not necessarily come alone, it is often accompanied by a culture. Prasad avers that the culture that comes along with English is largely an egalitarian culture and should be welcomed. This assertion is very true. Vernacular cultures in India are very often markers of caste location. Any person who speaks Konkani will know that to speak Konkani is to give away one’s caste. If one wants to speak the so-called ‘perfect Konkani’ one has to speak like a Saraswat brahmin. The problem is, given that Saraswat speech is the result of a complete immersion in a sub-culture, it is in fact difficult to speak this language. If one is able to master this caste dialect, then this is at the cost of giving up the Konkani of one’s home.  When one slips, the mask drops, and one is almost always embarrassed for it becomes obvious, one was performing the language rather than living it. In addition, there are numerous stories of households, both Hindu and Catholic where children correct both parents and grandparents, telling them, or worse laughing at them, saying “your Konkani is wrong.” Learning Konkani, is to also learn about caste, to be ashamed about one’s caste location, to try to imitate the dominant castes, and to fall short, as some applicants for government jobs have reported. The result is that the only group that is able to be proud of Konkani is that of the Saraswat Brahmins, because it is their Konkani alone that is held up as perfect.

A great part of the Goan population in fact understands this tricky situation vis-à-vis Konkani which is why they will speak it at home, but, if they are upwardly mobile, avoid it outside. They prefer to use English in public engagements outside those in the marketplace. Because, while English and its cultures may have class markings, they are both as yet largely free of markings of caste. It is for this reason that English is preferred by a large segment of our population.

The issue of culture also came up with Dr. Varsha Ayyar, the speaker who inaugurated the Ambedkar Memorial Lectures. Dalits do not celebrate their culture, she said. They seek to liberate themselves from the culture which traps them in a definite social location. But it is different with the bahujans and “their” culture. This fact was also observed by one of the participants in the discussions subsequent to the first lecture. A Dalit activist composed a question in the form of a Marathi poem, asking “In this country the Brahmin acknowledge that they are Brahmin, the Kshatriya that they are Kshatriya, even the Ati-Shudra that they are Ati-Shudra. In this country it is only the Shudra who refuse to acknowledge who they are. What do we do with the Shudra?”

What he meant was that rather than recognise that it is brahmanical culture that oppresses them and those below them, the Shudra embrace this culture that not only restricts their own mobility, but becomes the basis for the persecution of other marginalised groups in the country.

Listening to this poem and the discussion that ensued various pennies dropped in my head. To begin with, I realised with a start how the movement against English and in support of the Indian languages is led by those who see themselves as bahujan leaders in Goa. It also became clear why, so often, Hindu bahujan leaders who should reach out to their Catholic bahujan brethren often use Hindu nationalist imagery that pushes the Catholics away.

The problem is not only with the Hindu bahujan, however. The Catholic bahujan too fail to raise questions of caste, preferring to ignore the pink elephant in the room in the hope that it will go away. Rather than raise questions of caste and fracture the consensus that has caused so much misery in Goa since at least its integration into India, they grasp at straws. Therefore, rather than say that Devanagari currently operates as a tool of brahmanical domination in India, rather than say that state-supported Konkani is a tool of caste-based oppression they suggest that they are genetically unable to understand the script and dialect. In doing so, they aggravate the pro-Hindutva bahujan leaders, and also waltz straight into the arms of the upper-caste Catholic leaders who excel at playing second fiddle to the leaders among the Hindu upper-castes.

One strain of Dalit thought makes it very clear that if India is to emerge out of the morass of daily persecution that marks the lives of so many of the people in it, a good portion of Indian culture itself will have to be destroyed. There is no point being nostalgic about a poison that kills. English must be acclaimed because it is one way to check the caste logics that lurk so close to the surface of vernacular languages.

As a certain Jewish leader so many centuries ago once remarked, “Man was made for the Sabbath, not the Sabbath for man.” Thus, let Indians, and Goans, craft their own culture in new egalitarian forms, and not be enslaved to horrific forms of the past.

Viva Bhim!

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 12 Dec 2014)

The Portuguese language and the future of Goan Liberation

A popular rhetorical cliché used on the anniversaries of Indian independence, inquires if indeed, we Indians are really free. This cliché urges us to consider independence not as a single moment in time, but as a process towards realizing a utopian society free of all social evils and problems. It would not be out of place therefore, to ask a similar question of Goan liberation, and stress that liberation cannot mean a single moment in time, but must necessarily be seen as a process, of our deepening commitment to the democratic project.

The introduction of Indian democracy to Goa has been an interesting process. Unfortunately however, it has also meant the abandonment, or erasure of the Portuguese language in Goa. It should be stressed however, that the learning of Portuguese by the contemporary Goan, is not unconnected with the larger project of greater democratization of Goan society. On the contrary, the fulfillment of the democratic project is critically tied to more Goans learning and using the Portuguese language.

This stress on the Portuguese language is not to give this language a rightful place in Goan history, nor to legitimize the traits of those Goans who have a marked ‘Portuguese’ aspect in their lifestyle. Such an argument borders on recognizing Portuguese for its value as Portuguese, and does not hold much value from a cultural-nationalist point of view. An argument that would (and should) hold value from a nationalist position, is one that is tied to the manner in which Portuguese is linked to the arrangement of power in contemporary Goan society.

To wholly understand the significance of this argument, it is essential that we underline a well-rehearsed argument; colonialism in any part of the world, and this holds true for Goa as well, was not merely the result of unilateral foreign domination. On the contrary, colonialism persisted thanks to the participation of local elites in the colonial project.  Thus, as English ensured access to power in the colonial British-Indian administration, and education in English models of education ensured participation in the power forms of the British Empire, so too in Goa, the adoption of Portuguese was critical to gaining power not merely in the administrative and political sphere, but also in the social. Righting this balance of power is critical to the democratic project.

In colonial times the Portuguese language was so intimately associated with elite groups, both Hindu as well as Catholic, that the knowledge of Portuguese was, and continues to be, effectively a caste marker of the dominant groups in Goan society. Thus for example, at least among Catholic circles, despite the predominance that English has come to take as a marker of social mobility and status, to come from a ‘Portuguese speaking background’, continues to indicate one’s (longer) privileged location within the hierarchies of Goan Catholic society.  Furthermore, it is not uncommon to have it pointed out, that Portuguese was not a lingua franca within Goa but one largely used by the elites. In making this seemingly innocent factual assertion however, one is simultaneously also subtly marking the boundaries of Portuguese heritage within Goan society. Thus for example, as a result of this logic, it is overwhelmingly the lifestyles and material culture of the landed elite that have been focused on as representations of Indo-Portuguese architecture, while those of the more humble are largely ignored. These demarcations ensure a privileged focus on the lifestyles and material culture of just this small elite segment of Goan Catholic society, casting the rest into a kind of cultural barbarity. Take for example the manner in which the vibrant Tiatr tradition, primarily because it was not, and continues to not be, the entertainment of the Goan elites, is constantly shrugged off as ‘lacking standard’ despite the fact of its stellar role as a medium of social analysis and entertainment. To encourage a broader learning of Portuguese would effectively challenge this link between social status and the language. If more Goans become ‘Portuguese speaking’, it would make nonsense of the ‘Portuguese speaking background’ marker that we currently use, effectively frustrating, albeit partially, the manner in which social difference is articulated today.

More critically, and moving beyond the possibly restricted frames of the Goan Catholic, knowledge of Portuguese was critical to the maintenance of control over the State administration as well as State documentation of land rights. Not a few family, and caste group, fortunes were made by virtue of this restricted access to the language in colonial Goa. Even though English has now replaced Portuguese as a State language; as the continuous stream of persons perusing land records in the State archives in Panjim would indicate, Portuguese continues to be critical to being able to assert, and mask, claims to land. Today, when subaltern groups in contemporary Goa face even an greater threat of access to land rights, it would be a  strategic error to allow control of the interpretation of Portuguese language documents and laws, to be based in the hands of just the few, largely ‘upper’ caste, groups that have resumed learning the Portuguese language.

The popular history of the Portuguese period in Goa has largely been restricted to the gory tales of the initial conquest of the island of Goa, of the Inquisition, and the dramatization of the anti-colonial episodes in the territory’s history. To a large extent, this nationalist history dissuades Hindus from subaltern castes from studying the language. This has ensured that it is solely dominant-caste narratives that are incorporated into the histories of the territory, preventing alternative and liberatory narratives to emerge from a re-reading of the texts and narratives of the period of Portuguese sovereignty over the territory.  It is little known for example, that the knowledge of Portuguese is critical to the bahujan challenge to Hindu upper-caste groups’ monopolistic control of the Goan temples. This monopolistic control of the temples was forged in particular through these latter groups’ knowledge of Portuguese.

Finally, is the argument that rests on the recognition that the emergence of equality is facilitated when there is parity in representational power. While a number of Portuguese scholars work on Goan history and society, it is extremely difficult to find Goan scholars who work on explaining Portuguese society, and its history unrelated to Goa. When we are able to effectively build up this band of scholars, who can represent the workings of the Portuguese to Goa, India, and the world; and engage in Portugal’s press and academy, with their representations of Goa; then we would lay the definitive foundations for greater equality between the two spaces. To do this however, requires that the Goan learn Portuguese.

For these reasons therefore, the learning of Portuguese by the contemporary Goan, is an essential component of our democratic project that the action of the Indian Union in December 1961 sought to forward.

(Published in the commemorative section of the O Heraldo 19 Dec 2011)

Naraka Shoora: Turning Traditions on their head

Some weeks ago, sometime around the eve of Diwali, a friend of mine posed a question that would have made proud the masters who crafted the Agamas and Dharmashastras. ‘At what time is it’, he asked, ‘that the Narakasura, whom we consign to flames on the eve of Diwali, becomes a Narakasura?  Is it when the head-mask is put on? Or when the lights are put on? Or is it when the music starts? Or the moment the frame is made? Is there a specific moment?’ Continuing in this Agamic tradition, a friend of his opined that the real moment should actually start, when the effigy of the Narkasur is burnt down and the Diwali lamps are lit up. At the same time however, this respondent lamented that nowadays, we concentrate more upon creating Narkasur (the symbol of evil) than that quintessential mark of the Goan Diwali, the Akashdivo.

Kancha Ilaiah

When lamenting this inversion of the ‘traditional’ rules of the Diwali celebrations however, this contemporary Agamist may have grabbed the wrong end of the stick. Take the example of the public Ganesh festival, which has come a long way from the time of its invention by Lokmanya Tilak, and is today marked by loud film-music and often by drunken young men dancing to these popular tracks. While the poor Lokmanya must be turning in his grave, the contemporary intellectual Kancha Ilaiah has suggested that these trends, rather than being lamented should be seen as the Dalitisation of the Ganesh festival. Ilaiah’s argument would be that while Tilak’s public festival was intended to consolidate the population along nationalist, brahmanical, and thus elitist lines, the trend otherwise so lamented, should be seen as a populist correction of this trend.

In other parts of the country, the Dalitisation, or de-brahmanisation, of popular Hindu festivals has proceeded apace along rather different patterns.  This trend has been led by Dalit student organisations who have argued that the myths surrounding Hindu gods and goddess and their festivals are in fact symbolic representations of the history of 'upper' castes’ domination over the indigenous population of the country – SC, ST and OBCs.  To correct this history, they therefore re-interpret these events from a Bahujan perspective. Thus for example, the members of the All India Backward Students Forum (AIBSF) in the JNU campus in Delhi suggested that Dussehra was in fact a celebration of the killing of the Sudra king Mahishasa by the upper-caste woman Durga.  Similarly on the campus of the Osmania University, on the eve of Diwali, some students cast Naraka Chathurdashi as “Narakasura Vardhanti,” the death anniversary of Naraka. They reinterpreted the event as commemoration of the killing of the Dalit hero Naraka by the brahmanical figure Krishna, who killed Naraka to suppress the revolt by Dalits against upper castes.  Arguing that the Asura was appended to a name to demonise the character, Narakasura was now called “Naraka Shura”. In this reworking of the name, Naraka remains the name of entity, while the Asura is cast away to make Naraka a Shur-Vir, or brave warrior.

The event at the JNU campus not surprisingly, did not go down well. Upper-caste students taking offense to this inversion and demonization of brahmanical deities assaulted the students of the AIBSF. This sort of confrontational violence has not been universal however, and the modern history of Kerala and the Onam festival is perhaps an interesting example.

Mahabali returns to Kerala

Most people today, both within Kerala and without, see the festival of Onam as the moment when the mythical king Mahabali returns to his former realm, thanks to a final boon by the Vishnu’s Vaman avatar, to check on the well-being of his subjects. It is to welcome him and reassure him that all continues to be well, that Onam is celebrated with pomp and style. Writing on the historical evolution of this festival however, J. Devika argues that ‘Onam used to be, in many parts of Kerala, … more a celebration of Vishnu, rather than Maveli — Mahabali — and domestic rituals associated with Onam celebrated not Mahabali but Vamanamurty.’ She points out that a different interpretation of Onam was forged ‘in the decades in which the movement for uniting Malayalam-speaking regions into Kerala gathered force, one in which the left was certainly a hegemonic presence. Brahmanical mythology according to which Kerala was founded by Parasurama the warrior sage was insistently attacked by left-leaning and anti-caste intellectuals …who launched a scathing attack against the setting up of a depiction of Parasurama outside the venue of the Aikya Kerala Conference in the 1940s.’ As in the case of Goa, Puranic legends cast Parashurama as the mythical creator of Kerala, and clearly, the Aikya Kerala movement, set up to consolidate the Kerala state was seeking to draw on this origin myth to create a  popular history for the nascent Kerala sub-nation. As a result of this attack, Onam was converted from a festival focused on the Vaman avatar, to a celebration of the benevolent asura king Mahabali, an idea that was spread in school text books, and through them into popular imagination.

Mahatma Jotiba Phule

This overturning of the Mahabali- Vaman avatar relationship however, has a much longer tradition than that involved in the consolidation of Malayalam speaking territories into the State of Kerala. This tradition can be said to date back to the efforts of the 19^th century philosopher and social reformer Mahatma Jotiba Phule. In a recent book,  The World of Ideas in Modern Marathi: Phule,Vinoba, Savarkar, G. P. Deshpande points out that Phule con­trasted Baliraja, the shudratishudra king, with Vamana, the brahmanical avatara, to make a point about the nature of power relations between caste  groups in the sub-continent.  Deshpande argues that the extent to which Phule returned to this myth in his work would allow us to see Phule as possibly constructing all recorded history as the history of the Vamana-Baliraja struggle. Not surprisingly, Phule is an important figure in the political pantheon of Dalit political groups.

The exploring of the social relations and social history encoded within the myths that form the basis of Hindu festivals may not be as simple a task as a merely intellectual discussion however. The attempt of the AIBSF on the JNU campus ended up with upper-caste students assaulting the members of the AIBSF. Given the sensitivity with which we in India take our religious figures, one can see that suggesting that it is not the Asura, but the Vishnu avatar who is the bad guy, may fall nothing short of asking for the cataclysmic to break down on us. The Dalit activist on the other hand, would argue that the un-deifying of the Vishnu avatar is central to undoing the brahmanical violence, perpetuated on Dalit communities on a daily basis, and in allowing Dalit communities to construct a history that explains the conditions that they find themselves in.

The options are admittedly not easy, and we don’t have to necessarily take a call now. We need to merely recognize that this social process is on, and watch for what happens. The Agamas were/are scriptures that lay out the ritual guidelines for the appropriate construction of an image that will subsequently be infused with the spirit of the deity. Given the attempts that are on to re-evaluate popular myths and interrogate belief-systems, it appears that the almost Agamic questions that were referred at the start of this column, are not entirely out of place?

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 25 Nov 2011)