The Goan language problem and its resolution

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)

AAP Goa as Colonial Agent?

While large numbers of its members are no doubt motivated by a genuine interest in redressing the many ills that plague Goan electoral democracy, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Goa could in fact be seen as antithetical to the pressing needs of Goans,  pushing an agenda that other national parties, operating from Delhi have done before. If the traditional national parties like the Congress and the BJP had helped, with the help of local elites, to usher in forces of unbridled capitalism in the guise of development and Hindu nationalism in Goa, AAP seems to be operating within this same model. The only difference is that AAP promises that it will deliver Goa from rampant corruption. And yet, when examined from the perspective of the nexus between New Delhi and local dominant caste landed elites AAP’s claims of difference and salvation fall flat on its face.

To examine the claim of this Delhi-Goa colonial nexus we need to explore the case of the much-vaunted Goa Bachao Abhiyan (GBA) or Save Goa Movement. While it was spurred on by the genuine concerns of many Goans as to the way Goa was being destroyed, one could also see in it the operation of colonial power. The GBA appeared at a particular moment in Goan history, when land in Goa came to be eyed by external, i.e. Indian, realtors. Thus, the existing concerns of the larger populace were whipped to frenzy by the local elite to ensure that it was the interests of the local land-owning classes and construction firms that was secured. After an initial amount of muscle-flexing, that demonstrated to external realtors the power of the local elite the movement was effectively killed, when the representatives of the GBA on the Task Force for the Regional Plan (RP) 2021 resigned their positions.

As a result of this regrettable history, nothing emerged out of the GBA except for a paralysis of the Regional Plan process, even as the real-estate business continues as usual.  Indeed, the lesson that if foreign capital wants to enter Goa it would have to be in partnership with the local elite seems to have been learned admirably in case of the usurping of Tiracol by Leading Hotels. This unfortunate outcome, however, is very much in keeping with the history of popular movements in Goa since 1961, where the manipulation of the Goan population, and especially the bahujan Catholic populations of the Old Conquests, by dominant caste elites has been a standard. In every movement, one sees that the upper caste elites gain greater autonomy for unaccountable behavior, while the masses that agitate receive no benefit at all.

These forms of Goan politics seem to be repeating themselves under the AAP. To begin with, as many have pointed out, the way the AAP is operating, by focusing on the fears of the populations in the Old Conquests suggests that it is repeating this old formula of merely harnessing Old Conquest fears to ensure the success of the upper-caste and elite class leadership. While one need not be immediately suspect if one is upper-caste, the fact that the leadership of AAP, both in Goa, as well as in Delhi is almost exclusively upper-caste is a matter of grave concern.

What is also interesting about AAP Goa is that one can deduce in it the desire of well-meaning non-Goans who have settled in Goa to influence local politics. This desire to participate is welcome, indeed many of them come with exciting ideas that we can benefit from. But one nevertheless needs to question the balance of power under which this happens.  A number of Goa’s problems are in part the result of Indian desires to settle here, as well as the manner in which Goa has been hitched to India. As individuals, we are very often also unconscious representatives of large structural powers. As such, the fact that the articulation of so much of AAP’s outreach is in compliance with a national culture, manifest through the Gandhi topi, the Hindi sloganeering, even the Hindi language outreach of the leaders, makes one question which structural interests are being served, the nationalist designs of the AAP, or those of the average Goan? Is Delhi, or the desires of the national elites, dictating what happens in Goa, or do Goans dictate what happens in Goa? The dominance of Hindi in the outreach of AAP Goa seems to suggest that it is formulating an agenda that wishes to be in sync with the assumptions of the Delhi outfit.  In such a context, especially where Kejriwal chose to holler Bharat Mata ki Jai, what is the position of AAP on Special Status for Goa?

Further, AAP Goa has the grandiose scheme of contesting all 40 seats, with the apparently single point agenda of combating corruption. But is there really a lack of critical issues in Goa that one must focus solely on corruption? In this context, it should be noted that in a rather long interview with the Indian Express, Valmiki Naik secretary of AAP Goa, noticeably skirts issues critical to the bahujan and marginalized groups, such as that of the vexed Medium of Instruction issue. Besides, it can argue that corruption narrowly conceived as economic corruption alone is the most important agenda only when one is speaking from an upper-caste position. Viewed from a bahujan perspective, whether Hindu or Catholic, it is the destruction of the twin evils of Brahmanism and Hindutva that emerges as the priority. While not an insignificant issue, dealing with corruption can come later. A failure to realize this priority, once again because it is the local dominant castes that are in control of AAP Goa, will ensure that the placing of 40 candidates in the fray will only result in the splitting of the anti-BJP vote, and the BJP’s eventual success. A refusal to heed this reality will suggest that AAP’s designs are geared more towards local dominant caste assertion, as well as towards the desire of AAP Delhi to make a national mark, rather than addressing critical Goan needs.

A leaf from Goan history should offer good reason why AAP Goa should heed this caution. In the run-up to the first elections In Goa under Indian rule the Indian National Congress (INC) was extremely confident of a sweeping INC victory in the 1963 elections. Such was its confidence, that as Parag Parobo has pointed out in his book on early post-colonial Goa, the All India Congress General Secretary K. K. Shah announced that the INC did not require any special manifesto for Goa. All of this while tickets were given almost exclusively to individuals from dominant castes. Just as supporters of AAP today dismiss the need for a regional party, so too in 63 the INC was also confident of success because of its national location. And yet the INC experienced a crushing defeat at the polls. Not only did they not gain a single seat from Goa, but in many locations the candidates lost their deposits. The moral of that election was that local issues, not national were critical to electioneering, and secondly that issues of caste justice cannot be ignored and simply dismissed. The result of that election should offer sobering advice for AAP Goa that in many ways could be said to be repeating those mistakes.

This is not, however, necessarily the end. Merely because it currently threatens to operate as an agent of colonial rule, there is no reason, especially given the genuine concerns of large numbers of its members, that the AAP in Goa cannot reinvent itself. The question is, will it?

(This post was not published in any newspaper.)

Fr. Bismarque Dias: martyr of our times

Given the contentious nature of the issues Fr. Bismarqe Dias was fighting for it is no surprise that malicious rumours are being spread about him, that the cause of his death dismissed as accidental, and worse even born of his own negligence. One has to merely look at the backgrounds of the persons spreading these rumours to know that the inspiration lies either in the Hindutva groups, or those who seek more ’development’ in Goa.  That these rumours emerge from these two camps is, once again, no surprise. Ever since Modi has seized the reins of power it is increasingly evident that Hindutva mobilizes all manner of people to push an agenda that will disempower the very people who form the rank and file of the Hindu nationalist movement. Hindutva under Modi is geared solely to the benefit of the corporate princes who have bankrolled Modi’s rise to power.

But we would be no better than the rumour mongers if we only flung muck, albeit well-deserved, at these persons. Rather, we need to address the crux of the issue, rather than engage in non-issues. The issue therefore is: does it matter if Fr. Bismarque was killed or died accidentally? I would argue that it does not. The manner of his death itself makes no difference to the fact that Fr. Bismarque is now a martyr and a symbol for right-thinking Goans everywhere.

What makes Fr. Bismarque a martyr is not the fact that he may have been killed, but the fact that he died in the field, with his boots on. His death has left us with the sense that his was a life snuffed out, whether accidentally or by design, well before his time had come; that he left us when his promise was as yet unfulfilled. 

Fr. Bismarque is a martyr because his departure has animated us even further. His death may have deprived us of a charismatic leader, but in the upheaval that has followed his passing has demonstrated that there are many who are willing to carry his cross. This churning has also demonstrated that these followers are not entirely lacking in the persons willing to lead them forward.

Indeed, like many martyrs, Fr. Bismarque’s passing has made us aware of the larger problems with the system that we need to fix if Goa,  Bismarque’s beloved, is not completely laid to waste. Take, for example, the facts shared by the leaders of the movement for justice for Fr. Bismarque. A complete forensic evaluation cannot be completed in Goa because the state does not have an equipped laboratory. In what must surely be a bad joke, the state of Goa has an empty building with some amount of equipment recently arrived. Nor has there been an appointment of skilled staff to effectively make use of this equipment As Caroline Colaço, one of the lawyers following the case lamented that a state ought to have had this infrastructure in place, especially in the scenario where crime rates are increasing. To ensure that these rates are kept down it is imperative that justice is quickly served. Unfortunately, not only does policing seem to be lax in our state, but we lack the essential systems necessary to maintain basic law and order.

The biblical lesson that “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” highlights that the human body is a poor vehicle for the spirit it bears. There is often much that we would like to do, but are unable to undertake because of the limitations of our physical frames. When trapped within his physical frame Fr. Bismarque was able to undertake a variety of activism spread across the face of Goa. And yet, even he would have acknowledged that his actions were not enough. Goa, which was once a simpler place, is no longer innocent, and the forces that threaten us are overwhelming.  The fact that Fr. Bismarque’s death is being used not only to address the issues that he addressed in life, but to take on issues that he did not have the physical capacity to do is testament to the power of his death. This is the mark of a martyr, where death does not simply mean an end, but the seed for work in the future.

There is another manner in which Fr. Bismarque has achieved martyrdom.  Before it was imbued with religious meaning, the word martyr was used to identify one who has given witness. As we all know, Fr. Bismarque’s relationship with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Goa was somewhat troubled. Various restrictions were placed on him such that people have often come to the belief that he was not a priest anymore.  This is, however, not true. The teaching of the Catholic Church, however, is that once consecrated, one is a priest for life until actively laicised by papal decree. This was not the case with Fr. Bismarque. On the contrary, through his daily actions, where he poured out his time and energy for others, Fr. Bismarque gave witness to his faith, both as a Christian and as a priest. In his dying while actively involved in what he clearly saw as his mission, he has died a martyr. If his death is established to have been caused by murder his passing will only bring us more grief, it will deepen our commitment to see justice done; it will not, however, take away from the fact that he died a martyr.

Thank you for your music Fr. Bismarque.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 13 Nov 2015)

What Amitav Ghosh can teach us

While a number of litterateurs across India were making a symbolic protest against the rising intolerance in India under the Modi regime by returning their awards from the Sahitya Akademi, a bunch of Sahitya Akademi award winners from Goa, along with two Padmashri awardees, made a very odd statement.  On the fifteenth of October these persons made a statement indicating that “[s]ome of us wanted to return the awards but we have withheld the decision in view of Sahitya Akademi’s incoming Executive Council meeting where the Akademi is hopefully expected to condemn the cultural talibanism in the country.”

This seems like a bizarre statement. First, rather than mention Hindutva violence, they refer to the Taliban. Further, as I have discussed elsewhere some of these notables themselves have been associated with Hindutva violence.  But most bizarre of all is their announcement of an intention to return the awards. After all, if you want to return your award and make a point about the scuttling of various freedoms in contemporary India and the threat of a breakdown of law and order, one should do so. To indicate that we would like to, but will not, because we expect the Executive Council to issue a statement seems bizarre at best. One gets the sense that these awardees may have slipped down a rabbit hole to Wonderland.

If one looks at their company, however, one realises that these notables from Goa may have acquiesced to the logic of Amitva Ghosh, who as a result of his part-time residence in Goa seems to have integrated into some of the local literary circuits. In interventions in the Indian Express and Scroll.in, Ghosh made it very clear that while he is appreciative of the actions of those who returned their awards to the Sahitya Akademi, he himself will not follow suit. Ghosh suggests that outrage “should be directed at the present leadership of the Sahitya Akademi rather than the institution as such.” Ghosh articulates that there was a time when the Sahitya Akademi was held in greater esteem, that there have been presidents and office-bearers of the institution who would have protested vociferously against the current political climate in the country, and “that to return the award now would be more than an expression of outrage at the Sahitya Akademi’s current leadership: it would amount to a repudiation of the institution’s history.”

Does Ghosh have a point? Is the problem merely with the current leadership of the Akademi, and by extension with Modi, or is it possible that there are larger problems with the Sahitya Akademi itself and the project of the Indian nation-state?

The Sahitya Akademi was instituted in 1954, when the Indian nation-state was still young, and there was a need to assert cultural homogeneity in the country, and a need to assert uniformity within regional literary cultures. This agenda may look innocent, and indeed the institution may have awarded and promoted literature and critical litterateurs, but this is but one side of the story.  Linguistic development in colonial South Asia was critically tied to orientalist ideologies. This ensured that it was dominant-caste forms of South Asian language that came to be recognized as the forms deserving of becoming the standard. Consequently, language forms of the marginalized caste groups, and their speakers, were actively disparaged in the process of standardisation.  To this extent, the post-Mandal challenge regarding the meaning of merit, needs to be levelled against the works that the Akademi awards.

This modus operandi of the Akademi is eminently visible in the case of the Konkani language. If one has a look at the list of those who have been awarded for production in the Konkani language one is confronted by a long list of almost exclusively Brahmin names. Further, as many Konkani litterateurs will testify, despite the fact that the Konkani language is written in five scripts, it is only the Nagari form of the language that has merited awards, despite extensive or greater production in the Roman script and the Kannada scripts. These choices have as much to do with the privileging of upper-caste forms of language that is dominant in India, as with the casteist politics that has dominated the sphere of the Konkani language. Since at least 1987, when Konkani in the Nagari script alone was recognized as the official language of Goa, the language, and its speakers, not just in Goa, but also in the other states where it is spoken, have been held hostage by the assertions of the Saraswat caste and allied individuals who seek to convert Konkani into a brahmanical language. This has meant privileging the Antruzi form spoken by Saraswats in Goa, linking it with Sanskrit, and Aryan heritage, and also tying it to the Nagari script. This has meant that the peculiar history of the language, where it was first produced and popularized through missionary efforts since the sixteenth century, and subsequently given form through the lyrics, poems, and plays of laboring caste Catholics have been ignored entirely. In fact, until the mid-twentieth century, Konkani was seen largely asa language of laboring Catholics, and disparaged both by Hindu brahmins and upper-caste Catholics in Goa. Despite these facts, the Konkani committee of the Sahitya Akademi has been party to the attempt to destroy the language form in the Roman script in Goa.These facts are not extraneous to the question I pose to Ghosh’s argument, since it is with these persons that, either consciously, or unconsciously, Ghosh has combined with in Goa.

The point is that these politics are not an aberration from the Indian norm. Ghosh may think otherwise, and indeed, many of those returning their awards, like Ashok Vajpeyi, also seem to think that India stands for a liberal tradition of tolerance and acceptance. If anything, however, this image of India is a myth created in a large part by upper castes groups, and especially Hindu upper-caste groups who dominated Nehruvian India.

A view from the perspective of the many marginalized groups within the country, whether caste, ethnicities, or religions, would suggest a less tolerant India. For these groups, it appears that the problem may not be the current political dispensation, as much as the ‘idea of India’ itself, a country created to satisfy the desires of dominant castes across the subcontinent, and united through varying degrees of Hindu nationalism.

When Ghosh suggests, therefore, that it is merely the current dispensation of the Sahitya Akademi that is the problem he is merely speaking from the position of the Indian nationalist, refusing to see, and in the process preventing an exposure of, the deeper rot. Merely blaming the Modi government is simply not going to resolve the tensions that we are witness to today. These tensions have been building up since the start of Indian independence. In other words, the problems lies with the project of the Indian nation-state itself. This is, of course, not surprising, given that, as I have pointed out in an earlier observation on Ghosh's statements, that Ghosh speaks, and indeed writes, from a position of the imperial Indian. An India that would like to speak for the rest of the global south, even as more fundamental issues, like that of internal equity, are left unattended. Take, for example, his interview with the magazine Guernica, where he suggested "one of the wonderfully liberating things about India; it lets you be exactly who you want to be." This would be more than a bad joke for the many marginalized groups in India for whom their very non-Hindu and/ or non-upper caste identity is the reason for quotidian violence.

(A version of this post was first published in Round Table India on 22 October 2015)