A Goan Waltz around Postcolonial Dogmas

Some days ago I found myself invited to a ball in Lisbon hosted by the Austrian embassy in Portugal. Revived after more than a decade, the current initiative was conceived of a way to generate funds for deserving causes. In this inaugural year, funds were raised in support of A Orquestra Geração, which is the Portuguese application of the El Sistema method created in Venezuela. Another objective was to introduce Portuguese society to aspects of Austrian, and in particular Viennese, culture.

It was because the event was billed as a Viennese ball that I have to confess being somewhat concerned about the protocol at the event. For example, would there be dance cards? It was when I actually got immersed into the ball, however, that I realized that I was not in foreign territory at all. The ball followed a pattern not merely of contemporary wedding receptions and dances in Goa, but also approximated quite well the manners that had been drilled into me as a young boy, when first introduced by my parents to ballroom dancing. One requested a lady – any lady – to dance, accompanied her on to the floor, and at the end of the dance, one thanked her, applauded the orchestra or band, and returned one’s companion to her seat. In other words, there was, structurally, not much at this ball that I, as a Goan male, had not already been exposed to.

This encounter made me realize once again, the validity of the argument that my colleagues at the Al-Zulaij Collective and I have been making for a while now; that Goans, or at least those familiar with the Goan Catholic milieu, are in fact also European. Given the fact that Goans participate in European culture, and have been doing so for some centuries now, denying this European-ness would imply falling prey to racialised thinking that assumes that only white persons born in the continent of Europe, are European.

To make this argument is not the result of a desperate desire to be seen as European, but to assert a fact. One also needs to make this assertion if one is to move out of the racialised imaginations that we have inherited since at least the eighteenth century. It is necessary to indicate that European-ness is not a culture limited to a definite group, but like other cultures, is a model of behavior, in which one can choose to participate in. And one chooses to participate in this cultural model because the fact is that, whether we like it or not, this is the dominant cultural model in the world. The choice then is not determined by a belief in the model’s inherent superiority, it is simply a matter of pragmatic politics.

Some days before the ball, I intimated a continental Portuguese friend about this upcoming event, and the fact that I was on the lookout for a place I could rent a tailcoat from. She sneered. The suggestion in the sneer was, why do you have to become someone you are not. One should remain true to one’s culture, and not try to engage in the culture of others, or in other words, not engage in social climbing. The response was upsetting, but not particularly out of the ordinary. This is, in fact, a standard response, one that derives directly from our racialised imaginations. There is this misplaced idea that when we participate in one cultural model, say the European, one is abandoning other cultural models, and, more importantly, that non-whites would always be on the back foot when faced with European culture. A look at the cultural practices of Goan Catholics, however, will demonstrate the ridiculousness of the proposition.

Goan Catholics have not only taken up Western European cultural forms, but in fact excelled at them. In doing so, they have not abandoned other cultural models, particularly the local, but in fact rearticulated both these models at the same time. One has to merely listen to the older Cantaram (Concani language music) regularly played by the All India Radio station in Goa, to realize the truth of this assertion. Take the delightful song “Piti Piti Mog”, crafted by the genius Chris Perry and Ophelia, for example. Set to a waltz, the song talks of the desires and sexuality of a Goan woman. The emotions are honest to her social location. There is no betrayal of the local here, even as Perry articulates it within an international idiom. Indeed, one wonders if there is much of a difference between this song, and the soprano aria “Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß”. From the opera Giuditta, and featured at the Viennese Ball, this aria also sings of the sexuality of a young woman in her prime.

There are some who would argue that what has been described above is not participation in a cultural model, but in fact mere mimicry, or at best syncretism or hybridity. To put it bluntly, Goans are mere copycats, there is nothing original in what they do. Indeed, a good portion of the post-colonial academy would describe the examples I proffer as syncretism or mimicry. To such critics my question is this, were the young Portuguese women and men, making their social debut in the ball, not also participating in an etiquette that is not quite Portuguese? The waltz itself, that great institution of the Viennese balls, originated in Central Europe. Does their participation pertain to the category of mimicry, and syncretism, or is it somehow an authentic performance? To suggest that it is, would be to fall right into the racist paradigm where things European appropriately belong to whites, and the rest are merely engaging in impotent mimicry. The anti-racialist argument would recognize that all of these groups, whether continental Portuguese, or Goans (indeed also Portuguese by right), are participating equally in a common cultural model, each of them giving a peculiar twist to the model in their performance, all of them authentic.

Another challenge to my argument would perhaps emerge from Indian nationalists. If no one culture is authentic, and one merely choses to participate in random cultural models, why privilege the European? Why not join in the Indian cultural model? In the words of a passionate young man from the Goan village of Cuncolim I once interacted with, why not prefer your own people over foreigners? At that interaction I pointed out that crafting the choice in terms of Us Indians, versus Them Europeans, and stressing a biological or genetic proximity was falling back into the very racist equation we should be trying to be exit.

To begin with, this construction of the Indians, versus Portuguese works only because like most Indian nationalists he privileges the terrestrial contiguity of Goa to the subcontinent. The art critic Ranjit Hoskote phrased a succinct response to this claim in the curatorial essay for the exhibition Aparanta (2007) when he argued “Geographical contiguity does not mean that Goa and mainland India share the same universe of meaning”. In highlighting Goa’s Lusitanian links, Hoskote rightly pointed out that the seas were not a barrier to conversation but a link, and maritime connections are no less powerful than the terrestrial. Indeed, while connected to Europe, Goa has been an equal part of the Indian Ocean world, often sharing as much, if not more, with the East coast of Africa than with the Gangetic plains; that privileged location of Indian-ness. Terrestrial contiguity apart, this nationalist argument also succeeds because it willfully ignores a legal history, of Goans being Portuguese citizens, and hence European, in favour of a biased construction of cultural history. 

The most important support to nationalism, of course, comes from the racism inherent in the post-colonial order which is built on recognizing cultural difference managed by nationalist elites rather than stressing continuing connections. Indeed, as I go on to elaborate below, to some extent everybody participates in the European model in today’s world – in clothes and speech and education and science, and so forth. But the control of nationalist elites over the national space, and the international post-colonial order itself, would be threatened by such recognition. It is therefore necessary that while quotidian affairs run along European lines, the extraordinary is sanctified by the irruption of the national. Thus, while Indians wear pants and shirts every day, they believe that special days call for traditional garb, like kurtas. The Goan bucks this trend by privileging special moments with a lounge suit. In other words, Goan culture celebrates what is overtly European, which is what the Indians don’t like as its wrecks the nationalist posturing of not participating in European culture.

To those who would simply ask, why not exert a choice in favour of the Indian, the answer is two-fold. The first, is that there are many Goans, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, who are in fact choosing the Indian model. They do so because they see that this is where local power lies. Behaving like Indians, they believe that they can make their way better in the Indian world. Others, however, recognize the limitations of the Indian model. It can take you only so far. Upwardly mobile Indians themselves recognize that they have to perform by different rules when they emigrate. Worse, the captains of industry will tell you that they have to perform by European rules whenever they meet with their compatriots from other parts of the world. As indicated before, where the European cultural model dominates the world, it is merely pragmatic politics to follow that model. Finally, it is precisely the lack of social mobility that makes many wisely avoid the Indian cultural model. The very attraction of the European model is that practically any person can learn to perform in it and be accepted as authentic. Indian models are so limited to Hinduism and caste that one cannot hope to make this parochial model work as a tool of social mobility. Indeed, one could ask whether there in an Indian cultural model at all, and if it is not just a savarna/brahmanical model?

This lack of social mobility is best illustrated by an example from Goa, where the Saraswats are a dominant caste. Speaking with a Saraswat gentleman at a Nagari Konkani event, he indicated to me how pleased he was with the response to the elocution competitions organized by the Nagari Konkani groups. Many a times the winners were Catholic girls. “But their accent is so good”, he shared with me, “one cannot even tell that they are Catholics!” Where Nagari Konkani is largely based on the speech of the Saraswat caste, one is forever trapped into behaving like a Saraswat, and distancing oneself from one’s natal behaviours. One can never be Saraswat unless one is born into the caste. A good part of the Indian model is similarly pegged according to the behavior of the dominant castes of various regions. This model has been created not necessarily to enable a democratic project, but to ensure their continued dominance within post-colonial India. As such, they will put a person in their place when a person from a non-dominant caste performs effectively. The adoption of the European model, however, is not restricted to birth precisely because it has been adopted so universally. The adoption and occupation of this model by diverse groups has thus ensured that its very form now allows for local variation. Indeed, it needs to be pointed out that the model is very dynamic. Let us not forget that at one point of time one was expected to speak Queen’s English on the BBC, but the same platform, at least in its local transmission, has now made space for a variety of accents.

The policing of cultural boundaries is one of the silent ways through which racism continues to flourish. It is in partly in the breaching of cultural boundaries that racism can be broken. Further, it is in operating within the idiom of power, and then filling the forms of power with differing contents, that negotiation with power operates and one moves from the margins of power towards the centre. In this project, Goans are past masters. Viva Goa!

(A version of this text was first published in Raiot on 26 April 2016)

India made Goa Portuguese

Recently, there have been a number of voices that have pointed out that a part of the problem in contemporary Goa is the manner in which Goa is being consumed. Writing in The Goan Everyday, Vishvesh Kandolkar pointed out that Goa “is perceived as a perfect holiday destination with its sun, sea, and sand, apart from the Europeanised atmosphere that they [Indian elites and tourists] don’t find anywhere else in India.” Picking up on the concerns raised by Kandolkar, Dale Luis Menezes, writing in the O Heraldo also pointed that Goa’s problem lies in the fact that it is perceived as European, and following an argument by Paul Routledge, argues that Goa was created and projected as a pleasure periphery, a site of tourism and pleasure.

To make sense of these claims it is important that we delve deeper into the process that allowed Goa to be seen, or be represented as European. Most persons with some knowledge of the academic literature on Goa will point out that Goa’s character and European is the result of the Estado Novo’s claims from the late 1940s. Responding to the demand of the post-colonial Indian State that Goa be “returned” to it, Salazar’s Portugal responded that this was impossible. Goa was not Indian, they claimed, it was Portuguese. 450 odd years of Portuguese presence had ensured that Goa was strikingly different from the rest of India, and that the people of Goa had more in common with Europe than India. This way of presenting Goa has given rise to the trope of Goa Portuguesa. 

 

Not to be undone, Indian nationalists, and academics who sympathized with the Indian position, crafted another trope in response; Goa Indica. Rubbish, they claimed, Goa was merely under Portuguese control. It is, and always has been, profoundly Indian. There are some who would argue that Goa Indica was the post-colonial response to colonial propaganda of Goa Portuguesa. The problem with this argument is that Goa Portuguesa has been one of the planks on which Goa’s tourism industry has been built, especially from the 1980s. This is to say, that while Goa’s Portuguese identity may have been initially crafted by the Portuguese state, it was given added life by the post-colonial Goan, and Indian, state, and the allied institutions of film, advertising, that support the state.

How does one make sense of this fact, that it was Indian control over Goa that deepened Goa’s image as Portuguese, Iberian and European? Raghu Trichur provides a very plausible argument in his book Refiguring Goa (2013). He suggests that “[i]ntegrating Goa into the Indian nation-state was more problematic  than occupying and liberating Goa from Portuguese colonial rule, especially if one was to consider the politics that surfaced in ‘postcolonial’ Goa over the two decades since 1961” (p.12). He elaborates that “it was only after the state sponsored development of tourism in the 1980's (two decades after Goa's liberation/occupation in 1961), was Goa effectively integrated into the Indian nation-state” (p.13). Trichur’s suggestion, then, is that the marketing of Goa as Portuguese and European was a strategy of the Congress government that sought to skirt the politics inaugurated by Dayanand Bandodkar and the bahujan groups subsequent to integration into India.

The nature of Bandodkar’s politics, and how it offered a genuine liberation for the Hindu bahujan of Goa is interestingly elaborated in India’s First Democratic Revolution (2015) a monography recently written by Parag Parobo from the department of History, Goa University. The difference between Nehruvian politics and Bandodkar’s politics was recently succinctly articulated by Kaustubh Naik: “Nehru’s vision for India was a result of his upper caste elite background which worked only to the benefits of Indian elites while the marginalized struggled to find a place for themselves within that vision. Bandodkar, with his lower caste capitalist background, set a model of governance that prioritized liberating the Bahujans from bonds of feudal and social oppression.” Indeed, the initial years of the Congress in Goa were marked by complete upper-caste dominance. This hegemony was completely rejected at the polls for almost two decades until the MGP ran out of steam, and the upper-castes were to combine forces and once again re-assert themselves through the Congress party.

There is, however more to this equation that merely trying to reformulate Goa outside of bahujan politics, and this aspect speaks directly to the desires of Nehruvian elites that marked the Congress party in Delhi and their largely upper-caste associates in Goa. This aspect can be uncovered if we ask why Goa Goa’s being European should be exciting for (elite) Indians?

To answer this question requires that we look at the politics through which Europe is constituted. The fact is that while core European values are defined by the practices in the north-west of that continent, such as Germany, The Netherlands, Britain, the South, namely Spain, Italy, Greece, has been marked off, since at least the nineteenth century, as the place largely of leisure and pleasure, tourism and adventure. Northern European, but especially British and American magnates, travelled to the South for leisure and illicit pleasure. Northern Europeans articulated their European identity by setting themselves off as different from Southern Europeans.  This logic was then applied to the rest of the world, where Europe was set off from the rest of the colonised world, just as Northern Europe was set off from the southern part of the continent.

To return to Goa, I would argue that a Portuguese Goa was appealing for the Nehruvian elites because they saw themselves as the inheritors of Britain’s paramount sovereignty in India. With Indian independence they became the British, and inherited the British gaze on the world. Thus, they inherited the British gaze on the Portuguese, as well as the Portuguese territory. Thus, if Portugal, part of the European south, was a place for leisure, so too did Goa become a place for pleasure for the brown sahibs. If European elites went to the South of Europe for their leisure, so too would the Indian elites go to Goa, their piece of Europe, for leisure. In other words, post-colonial Goa was Europeanised to cater to the fantasies of the Nehruvian elites for whose consumption India was constructed.

The problem doesn’t end with just the elites, however, since what the elites do, the upwardly mobile follow. To demonstrate how the consumption of Southern Europe, and the concomitant production of oneself as European of western plays out I would like to offer an example from the city of Bangalore from about little less than a decade ago. Around this time, there were three different real-estate developers who were offering homes around Southern European themes. There were “large Spanish homes” at Mantri España, Purva Venezia “inspired by the magical landscape of Venice", and another development that sought to sell property on the basis that it would feel like home to Vasco da Gama should be return to India.

Given that in our neo-liberal times work demands so much of us, the house is increasingly cast as the space of retreat, and leisure. In such a context, it makes sense that real estate developers would market their properties to the Indian upper middle class, who seek to be western, along lines that would make sense to westerners. Thus, where the house is a space of leisure, it follows patterns of leisure that would appeal to the Northern European. Translated into the Goan context, this ensures not only the hordes of Indian tourists, and the Indian middle class who want to buy homes in Goa, but also the pastiche architecture, with sloping roofs and faux-Iberian aspects. Because of Goa’s indigenous building traditions there is something vaguely local about this contemporary architecture, but its success lies in the fact that it appeals to vague Indian notions about what southern European architecture looks like.

Between the Nehruvian elites, and the upwardly mobile groups of contemporary India, Goa is up for grabs largely because it is a space where, thanks to whitewashed churches and the presence of Catholicism, these groups can pretend that they are in Europe, and play the European. While the Estado Novo may have been responsible for initially articulating this idea, it is the Indian regime, and the comprador class in Goa, that has done more for presenting Goa as Portuguese and European. As Dale Menezes has argued, this has been done largely to suit Indian interests than groups in Goa, the marginalized sections of which continue to languish without necessary attention, or respect.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 16 Oct 2015)

Reflections on a Papal Transition I : Reading Pope Francis for Meaning: Culture vs. Power

There has been a great amount of enthusiasm subsequent to the election of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to the chair of St. Peter. This enthusiasm has been generated as a result of a number of his actions that seem to suggest a desire to embrace a life of simplicity even as he occupies a position that has long been associated with pomp, luxury and power.

As welcome as these actions may be in the context of the way in which the Vatican has worked, there is need to be cautious about the manner in which the same actions are interpreted outside of this immediate context. As I will go on to argue, a blind imitation of the Papal embrace of poverty and simplicity could in fact work against the very poor and disempowered that Pope Francis seems to seek to privilege.

Two particular choices that Pope Francis made did not go unnoticed by the world. The first was his opting to not wear the ermine lined mozzetta (the red-hued cape) when he made his first appearance, and secondly his preferring to wear his black shoes, rather than the traditional red shoes of Popes past. These two actions have been among others that have been hailed as a non-European Pope’s indication of his rejection of what are seen as outdated, and European, symbols of the Papacy. In the context of the continuing contestations around the meaning of the II Vatican Council, it is possible that these actions will be seen as a Papal approval of the discarding of earlier traditions of the Church and making space for vernacular cultures. While making space for vernacular cultures is an action that should be welcomed, we should take care to ensure  that the vernacular does get swallowed by the national. Furthermore, we should eschew any moves that suggest that all older traditions of the Church are colonial European relics and have no space in decolonized space. Too often this has been the case with the Church, especially in India (and Goa is no exception but in fact an exemplar of the rule), where older traditions of the Church have been cast aside as colonial and instead of promoting the vernacular culture that has digested European introductions into local culture, symbols that are in conformity with national (i.e. upper caste Hindu) culture have been introduced.

What needs to be recognized, not just for India, but in places as diverse as Africa and Latin America, is that the “European” is welcomed by the disenfranchised and those outside of power. This European-ness, is welcomed not because of some self-loathing, and Euro-aping fetish of the majority of these populations, but because the European is the de facto culture of power. It is the nuances of this culture which ensures that these people can move outside of their poverty and disenfranchisement. One need only take the example of so many working (and other) class Goans, Catholic or otherwise, who have managed to better their lives essentially through their adoption of European manners, and European passports. What is perverse about the rejection of European-ness is that all too often, these projects are enthusiastically supported by upper-class elites whether within the Church or outside of it, who maintain their European manners, even while the wish the lower-classes to live without them.

Another papal action that has stirred the world is Pope Francis’ rejection of the luxury of the papal apartments, and his opting to stay in the relative modesty of a suite in the Vatican hotel for visiting prelates, the Domus Sanctae Marthae. It is the relative modesty of the suite in Domus that must necessarily be stressed, for it drives home the fact that this poverty that Pope Francis adopts is in the context of the overwhelming luxury that characterises the papal suites. The suite in the Domus is still a far cry from the poverty of St. Francis, or indeed much of the world’s poor. Indeed, it is the relative poverty of Cardinal Bergoglio’s choices even when he was Archbishop in Buenos Aires that must also be stressed.

I make this argument to recognize the relativity of Pope Francis’ actions because too often, the actions of persons like Pope Francis are used to justify, rather than fight poverty. Rather than challenge the structures and situations that cause poverty, the papal actions will be used to encourage the poor to accept their fate, and the miserable handouts that come their way. In a world that is disfigured by poverty, it needs to be stressed that beauty and luxury were created for a purpose. They should be seen as gifts from God, and as such are both earthly visions of paradise. The challenge must therefore lie not in rejecting in, but in ensuring an approach to beauty and luxury that recognizes these conditions as privileges that must necessarily be shared.

Rather than opt for these problematic ways in interpreting the actions of Pope Francis, I would suggest that all of the actions that have been acclaimed, and that I have problematized thus far, could be more acceptably welcomed if we stressed the possibility for communion that pervades these actions. Pope Francis’s actions have sought to affirm a collegiality of the Pope among the Bishops, and of an approachable guide among the laity. What Pope Francis can also be argued as doing therefore, is righting the scales of power, to create the possibility for equality. Rather than take away dubious cultural meanings from his actions thus far, we would be better served by embracing the collegial, and egalitarian message his actions contain.

(A version of this post first appeared in the Gomantak Times dated 4 April 2013)