Thinking About Babush

Mapping the terrains of the operation

On the 23^rd of March 2009, despite opposition to 10 of the 11 seats being contested at the Panchayat elections, the panel floated by Atanasio Monserrate won all 11. How does one make sense of the results of the recently concluded elections to the Taleigão Panchayat? The dominant view within the opposition is that Monserrate is the embodiment of evil, and that all of Taleigão cowers in fear. Other views would argue that he has filled Taleigão with migrants who blindly vote in his favour. Others argue that some sold their vote for the gifts of a thousand rupees, a bicycle or a sewing machine. I believe that the story of Monserrate is a little more complex than this, and we need to necessarily rethink our evaluation of him.

Countering the allegations that he bribed the voters, Monserrate reportedly responded that we should not insult the voters. Monserrate makes a valid point here. As with any allegation of corruption, there is a certain political point that Monserrate’s opposition is trying to score. The point is to undermine the individual decisions of those persons who voted for Monserrate. The suggestion is that they are not free-thinking, concerned and responsible citizens. It is scornfully suggested that they are merely opportunists who will vote for the highest bidder. While I have no doubt that in fact money did exchange hands and that gifts of cycles and sewing machines, drink and chicken were in fact made, I would choose to look beyond the allegation that the votes of the people were purchased. The reason I choose to refute the argument that votes can be purchased is because this scornful position refuses to recognize that the persons who accepted these gifts were in fact making calculated political decisions. Just like the ‘apolitical’ stance taken by Goa and Taleigão Bachao Abhiyan, the argument that votes can be sold, refuses to appreciate and engage with the politics of the people.

To begin with, whose is this scorn? Clearly it is the scorn of those who do not need a thousand rupees a vote, or cycles or sewing machines. It is the scorn of the haves for the have-nots, the haves presuming that it is only they who well and truly appreciate what democracy is all about. The gifts were accepted because these gifts, as petty as some of us may consider them, did make a difference to the economy of the households that they were presented to. Further, the gift-taking is in fact a rather complex participation in democracy. The gift-takers recognize that the politician cares for them only to the extent of their votes, that the system will not address their condition. Thus, if they have to vote, they will vote only if you pay (gift) them to do so. It is thus, through this gift-giving, and their construction of themselves as a vote-bank, that they force the electoral process to in fact work. If they didn’t vote, then given the fact that most of the middle class does not vote, the electoral process would grind to a screeching halt! The scorn for the gift-taking therefore, is extremely problematic and ironically, politically naive!

This political naiveté is built on the incredulousness of the upper orders who are convinced of their own political maturity and the corresponding immaturity of the labouring classes. They reason that it is because these labouring classes, which often correspond with the Dalit-bahujan groups, are so immature that our democracy is today malfunctioning the way that it is. These orders refuse to see that these ‘malfunctionings’ of democracy are in fact the result of the deeply problematic socio-economic divides that persist in our society, and that we repeatedly refuse to address. It is because we refuse to recognize this fact, and persist in our confounded arrogance, that a good portion of the opposition to the development lobby in Goa is primarily engaged in ‘creating awareness’. These members of the upper orders of our society are firmly convinced that the only reason for the silence of the majority is because this majority is not aware. It is because we stubbornly refuse to consider the alternative, that they are politically astute individuals making carefully calibrated decisions that the tide we seek to stem continues to inundate us.

If we recognized the maturity of these gift takers and recognized that gifts are accepted because these gifts made a difference to the economies of the households that accepted them, our positions and our strategies would change instantly. We would recognize that the presence of ‘outsiders’ in our villages, and their transformation into vote-banks for the unscrupulous, can be addressed if, and when, we address the issue of the poverty of these outsiders. If we are able to ensure that their working conditions are better, the salaries they are paid are higher, and that social welfare extendable to any worker, we would see a significant drop in the arrival of these outsiders. This for two primary reasons; first, because it would make employing ‘external’ labour more expensive (especially if one is talking of housing migrant construction-labour); and secondly, with an increase in pay-scales and benefits, the Goan, who in facts demands a more mature work environment, would begin seeking employment within Goa. As is increasingly becoming clear to me though, much of the oppositional space in Goa is captured by elites, who do not want to see radical change, but want only a return to the status-quo. Secondly, when the non-elites among this opposition take charge, they unfortunately don’t seem to be able to articulate their demands in broader terms. On the contrary, they too get caught in the whirlpools of the discourse established by the elite. As a result, rather than seeing solidarity with the ‘outsider’, they too begin outsider-bashing. As a result, there is no substantial progress towards resolving Goa’s crisis.

To return to this matter of respecting the voter though, while Monserrate’s objection may have helped us see a valid point, he too is guilty of disrespecting the voter. There is a certain perversity, when one hands scraps to the needy, even as the socio-economic and ecological base of these needy are being destroyed. In addition, it is clear that while Monserrate may share scraps, it is a lion’s share that he keeps for himself.

What I will try to elaborate in the next segment is how, while Monserrate has offered his constituency a political dream that they can identify with, in reality he offers them only a mirage, one that will never be realized substantially. What clinches the deal for him however, is the fact that he has managed to offer concrete glimpses of this mirage. This is enough for the hopefuls of our land. On the other hand though, his opposition offers no dream at all. It offers only a return to a fast-disappearing status-quo. And NO-ONE wants to return to that, except the elite. If the opposition to Monserrate (and the rest of the brokering political establishment) are serious, then they need to not only present to the people of Goa a dream, but put their actions where their talk is and working toward presenting a concrete example of the dream that they offer.

The Dream that Won Babush the Election

Persist to think of Babush Monserrate as the embodiment of evil, and it will be impossible to understand the reasons for his victory in the recently concluded Panchayat elections. If one is to provide a counter to him, then one has to come up with another, more plausible explanation for the victory. Demonizing him serves no purpose other than to blindly hate him and provide a bonding among the various groups opposed to him for their own varied reasons. In the previous segment of these reflections, I had suggested that the key to Monserrate’s victory was not the fear that he allegedly instills in the people of Taleigão, but because he is in congress with them for reasons of a dream that he offers them. One cannot capture votes merely by handing out gifts. One has to also capture the imaginations of the people one is gifting. Monserrate seems to have done exactly this. He offers the people of Taleigão a dream. He offers them the dream, and the promise (even if it is a false promise) of modernity.

This modernity is has a definite physical location, and that location is the city. More particularly, it is the city of Bombay. As the Delegate of Fundacao Oriente, Paulo Varela Gomes, has convincingly demonstrated on a number of occasions, Bombay has, at least since the mid-nineteenth century, been the goal for the Goan, and especially for the Goan dalit-bahujan. It was the city that promised them employment, the city where their culture blossomed and found mature expression, it was the location where they were able to escape the vice-like grip of their village and feudal elite, and if not wholly escape it, contest these elites on a somewhat equal footing. The city, with its broad avenues and high-rise buildings, offers not just the chic aesthetics of modernity, and we have to recognize that Monserrate has oodles of oomph [style] as evidenced from the public works carried out under his stamp, but also the promise of liberation through the destruction of the landscape and hierarchies of the village and the introduction of the anonymity of the urban environment.

What dream does his opposition, the forces that cry 'Save Goa' have to offer instead? By and large, they offer the people of Taleigão, and Goa, the dream of the village. They do not point to them the way forward, but look back with fondness to the aesthetics and relationships of the village. What 'Save Goa' offers them is a return to the status-quo. But as is clear from the voices of the people in Taleigão, the people don't want a status quo, they want change, and they will grab at change any which way they get it.

The village is not necessarily the ideal place we imagine it to be. To the vast majority of people it is a place marked by the absence of facilities and most importantly glitz. In addition, it is a place that is intimidating for anyone who is Queer. It is a suffocating location for the wife who refuses to be raped by her drunken husband and returns single and pregnant to her parents' home, the homosexual son or daughter, the unemployed person who refuses to have employment if it means his daily humiliation, a member of the former ‘servant castes’ who chafes at the attitude of the former dominant castes. I have written much about the need for a revolution in Goa. Silly me, I didn’t recognize the revolution when I saw it. Babush Monserrate and his ilk represent the revolution and they have with them the masses of the people. Unfortunately however, Monserrate does not represent the revolution which I imbue with the positive notions of establishing a commonwealth. His agenda represents what I have earlier termed a fitna, an upheaval without the necessary renewal of society. Which is why, the task before the opposition to Monserrate and his ilk is not merely the presentation of the dream of the village, but the dream of the village radically renewed.

Thankfully however, the opposition to the politico-business lobby is not all composed of the elites interested in a return to the status-quo. Some of us are opposed to this desertification through concrete, and hold up the model of a village because we are animated by the knowledge that the concrete industrial city that has become the model for Goa promises only a temporary relief from oppression. It breaks the bonds of village hierarchies, but simultaneously creates oppressions of other sorts. It destroys ecological independence. In a few years time, there will be no fields in Taleigão capable of producing food. The hills of Dona Paula covered with constructions will no longer soak up rainwater; the village wells will run dry or turn saline. Others will be fed by raw sewage rather than fresh water. The rich will be able to up and leave; what of the poor? Where will they get water from? Will they be able to purchase food at exorbitant prices? Monserrate’s strategy may destroy the spatial and social relationships of the village, but it is not producing sustainable employment. Lastly, the concrete city destroys intimate bonds of the village to create the anonymous spaces and relationships of the city that encourage crime. How many of the faces in São Paulo – Taleigão’s market area- do we recognize anymore? The liberation of the city that Monserrate offers therefore, is in fact a mirage. It promises a liberation that it cannot in fact deliver. At some level, I doubt that Monserrate even realizes the damage he is doing. As I will elaborate in the last segment of this series, it is possible that he too, as a member of the society he leads, shares in the misplaced assumption that the trappings of modernity (the roads, high-rises and conspicuous consumption) alone, rather than a concomitant commitment to the social values of modernity, will ensure deliverance from the curse of our caste-bound society. It is therefore quite possible, that Monserrate actually believes that his vision will bring deliverance and liberation.

It is for this reason that I have been arguing for long that we need a revolution, an inquilab in Goa. We don’t require a return to the village of old, or the creation of the concrete industrial city, but a radical re-founding of our communities. We need to present to the citizenry of Goa, which now clings piteously to the promises of the false prophets of our age, tangible and material evidence of what this new commonwealth will look like. It calls for a change in the way in which we do and imagine politics and associations. It calls for a demonstration of the possibilities of eco-friendly and community-friendly business ventures. At present the elite groups who lead the opposition both in Taleigão and in Goa seem rather reluctant to commit themselves to this radical refounding. It is not that they don’t have the imagination, but that they refuse to entertain any scheme that will radically change the status-quo. They too are committed to a fitna, a mere superficial management of society.

It is this vacuum then, which Monserrate has filled, and will continue to fill until such time as we are ready to talk equity and equality. Until such time as we are ready to establish a radically equal society in Goa, the biblical New Jerusalem, Sant Tukaram’s Pandharpur, or St. Augustine’s City of God, the city of Monserrate will be the paradise which the citizenry of Taleigão and Goa will determinedly walk toward. And I can’t say that I blame them.

Moving the ‘Devil’ from out of the shadows, into the Light of the Faith

The express intention of the Thinking About Babush series was to move away from the position that demonizes Babush Monserrate. The intention was not to essay an uncritical celebration of the legislator from Taleigão, but to present a hypothesis that would allow us to better understand the dynamics at work in the constituency. To demonize Monserrate goes beyond doing him a disservice; it prevents us from recognizing the socio-economic and political conditions of the constituencies that he manages to represent.

In the first part of the series I suggested that the eyes that demonize Monserrate were in part, also eyes of the elite that refused to see the political motivations of those they alleged were either bribed, or were blindly voting for him. The second segment suggested that in addition to lavish gifts to his constituents, Monserrate also presented them with a vision. This vision was one of the City where the hierarchies of the village would be dissolved, and all would be able to participate in a genuinely modern existence. In this segment, I would like to suggest that in many ways Monserrate is trapped within his modus operandi, both for reasons of his own personal location in society, as well as the kind of society he lives in. However, I would suggest that for these reasons, he is also a possible repository of hope for the future.

As I suggested earlier, Goan society can be very punishing, if you don’t fit the rules it lays down. Despite his nominal position among the landlords and gãocars of Taleigão, the vicious whispered rumours about his ancestry give Monserrate a just and understandable reason to want to destroy the social hierarchies of the village. As discussed in the last column, one way to destroy these hierarchies is through the fashioning of the village into the city. What I am suggesting therefore, is that the dream that Monserrate peddles could be more than an evil plan he has for lining his nest at the expense of the people of Taleigão. He could actually be emotionally invested in it, believing that it would provide deliverance as much as the others who believe in this dream.

India’s encounter with modernity is peculiar. Rather than being understood to be the values of equality and respect, reasoned acceptance as opposed to acceptance by diktat, modernity has been understood primarily as the acquisition of technology, the material benefits that come with it, and the associated aesthetic styles. The intellectual foundations of modernity have been rejected in favour of the purely material. In focusing primarily on the material, it is possible to spin the web of meritocracy and argue that if one does not gain the material benefits of modernity, it is because one has not worked hard enough for it. Thus only the upper-castes and classes benefit from modernity, while the rest slave under it. Even worse, the myth of meritocracy, destroys tendencies toward solidarity with the marginalised and allows the creation of a (slum)dog eat dog world, where it is each one for oneself. To gain respect in this faux modern world, one has to garner as much wealth as one possibly can. In the process, one must necessarily cut personal ties to climb the ladder of achievement. As a result our interests are now seen to lie with those who are already in the big game, not with those one is leaving behind. In India, this automatically has caste implications. The caste implications are at their most stark when we expect Dalit leaders to somehow be Colossi of morality, while other leaders who feather their nests are somehow exempt from this harsh social judgment. A perfect example would be the vicious criticism that has so often been leveled against Mayawati, the leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party, for her alleged corruption even as others get away relatively easily.

It is in this context that I would like to see Monserrate. In addition to the social agenda he may have, he is also as hostage to the skewed understanding of modernity as the rest of us. Thus in his race for respect, feathering his own nest is but a natural outcome. While this is under no circumstances excusable, the question we should ask is why we reserve such scorn for the acquisitions of Monserrate, or indeed the similar figure of Churchill Alemão, even as we excuse the sins of others in the political establishment. Why for example are we more accepting of the tactics of the Rane establishment, in particular the father? It has always been rumoured that it was he that initiated the land scams with the late R. N. Ray when the latter was Chief Town Planner. Is it his ‘noble’ birth and cultivated charm that allows us to look the other way, not investigate these rumours? Perhaps. It is therefore, in the social exclusions and hypocrisy practiced by our society that the only route open to Monserrate is to continue to line his own nest, and open up his own path for a radically different social order.

It is this and other reasons then that are at the basis of our demonizing of Babush Monserrate. We fear the social reality whose coming he represents. We would prefer to keep him and the classes he represents entirely out of our perfumed consciousness.

In addition to this though, there is another, possibly communal angle to the whole game. I don’t believe that it is entirely by accident that Monserrate, like Alemão, is demonized, is Catholic, and effectively occupies the lower-caste, bahujan position in our society. This has been a pattern of our society, where among the Catholics, only the upper-caste is feted and the rest of them are expected to just follow suit. Thus when J. B Gonsalves had a chance at being Chief Minister, the glitterati on Panjim scoffed, ‘the baker wants to be Chief Minister!’ In recent times the communalization of our society has taken a more serious turn. As unchallenged Rei de Taleigão, the demonization and destruction of this man, theoretically opens up the way for the unchallenged romp of the BJP into the village.

There are therefore multiple reasons for us to view with suspicion the demonization of Babush Monserrate. And yet, none of this should be taken to endorse the manner in which he funds his agenda. In the final sum, his modus operandi is going to give us only skin-deep modernity and a resulting social, political, economic and ecological mess. With so much power in his hands, undoubted access to cultivated minds (as his urban projects show, he definitely has talented architects working with him) Monserrate’s failure to engineer a more egalitarian and sensitive politics cannot be condoned. Our opposition to Monserrate’s modus, real estate funded social change, must therefore continue. It must, however, be a principled opposition. Principled opposition is not a notional, do-nothing, and think much opposition. Firm and unyielding when no quarter can be given, it is also cognizant of the benefits he may possibly bring. It is necessarily marked by action. In the long run, such an unyielding but principled opposition will force him to necessarily adopt, even if in slow and reluctant measures, a more sustainable route toward the agenda that we support. A neighbour of mine prays for the conversion of Babush just like Sta. Monica did for the conversion of her son, St. Augustine, who would go on to become a Doctor of the Church. In many ways, I join her in her prayers. I do so because I believe that such a conversion is possible; Monserrate does in fact have what it takes to be the Augustine of our age. Until such conversion however, this principled opposition, the physical evidence of our prayers, in favour of the village refounded must continue.

(This post is the consolidated version of a three piece op-ed that was first published in the Gomantak Times in April 2009)

Out with the old? Advocating a measured approach to built heritage

That we ought to tear down ‘ugly’ and ‘old’ buildings was the suggestion of Mr. Armando Gonsalves in a recent column in the O Heraldo dated the third of May. Mr. Gonsalves was careful to specify however that when he recommended this demolition, he did not mean ‘heritage’ structures, but buildings that have come up in post-Liberation Goa. Among some of the buildings that Mr. Gonsalves recommends that we pull down, is the building that houses the Department of Health in Campal, as well as the Junta House in the centre of Panjim, that is home to a number of Government offices.

The Dept. Of Health, Campal.

These suggestions are hugely problematic ones to make for a variety of reasons. To begin with, there is the assumption that the idea of beauty is one that is universally held by all. The argument assumes that there is something that one can look at and immediately pronounce, ‘ugly’ or ‘beautiful’. Unfortunately, this is not quite the case. Because, as is well known, but little reflected on, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder; beauty is not intrinsic to an element, but depends on the appreciation of the beholder. Thus, beauty is reckoned by a canon, or code or rules. If we do not know the rules to appreciate the building, or image, then we would simply fail to realize in what manner the building is an interesting, or uninteresting contribution to built heritage. Thus for example, one may look at the Junta House, or indeed the Department of Health, or the similarly styled Department of Education building in Panjim city and marvel at their ridiculousness. However, if one sees them within the context of modernist design that they were being articulated from, then they become very interesting buildings in themselves. Add to the fact that these are government buildings and the State that built them, whether it was the Portuguese State (as may be in the case of the Junta House) or the Indian State, and you realize that a statement was being made. These buildings were not meant just to house governmental departments, but were built to make a statement. Of new times, of the will and determination of the State. Once again, for these reasons alone, these buildings gain an interesting perspective, and grow in beauty in the eyes of the beholder, as well as the heritage activist.

Dept. of Education, Panjim.

If we have so far been unable to appreciate the beauty of these (and other like) buildings however, it is perhaps because of the odd contours of the word ‘heritage’ that is being provided both by Mr. Gonsalves as well as others within the area of built heritage in Goa. What Mr. Gonsalves at any rate is doing in his argument, is to limit the scope and terrain of heritage to solely buildings built before the ‘Liberation’ of Goa. While it is surely not his conscious attempt, what Mr. Gonsalves is doing is to stop Goan history with the period of Portuguese sovereignty over Goa. The rest of Goa’s architectural evolution, does not really matter. This is not an uncommon position unfortunately, and the process of selling Goa (both by State and non-State actors) as a Portuguese-Indian paradise has compounded this trend. Unfortunately, what is often seen as Indo-Portuguese heritage are often the homes of the more privileged members of Goa’s colonial society. Even more unfortunate has been the manner in which buildings from before Liberation, often articulating international styles like Art Deco have been stripped of their ornament and distinctness, to be rearticulated in a new form that seems to be slowly emerging, figuring azulejos, pastel earth tones, and harking to a rural ideal. Post-Liberation architecture, from the homes of people who got rich via tourism and earnings from the Gulf, to the apartment blocks erected by the fledgling real-estate developers, tells us a critical story of the rise of formerly subaltern groups, out of a restrictive social environment, to a more liberating one. These buildings, as ‘ugly’ as they may appear to us, even when we understand their internal vocabulary, are a proud moment in Goan history, and we cannot simply brush them aside and order their demolition! To cast only a particular genre of Goan built heritage as heritage, would result in our effective freezing of a definite kind of social relations, one that sustained the colonial presence in Goa, and this would be simply obscene!

Rearticulating an urbanTaleigao Indo-Portuguese style

More than obscene however, they will lead to a whole lot of social strife, because the association of Goa with Indo-Portuguese styles alone, and this freezing of time sometimes relied upon by heritage enthusiasts, is opposed not just by the Hindu nationalists, but a wider swathe of the Goan population than we would imagine. Take for example the incredible support that Mr. Monserrate, the MLA formerly of Taleigão, gained for projects in the constituency that scandalized one segment of Goa’s population. These projects, aimed at destroying the rural structure of Taleigão, by inserting roads and the like, was supported primarily because the rural setting, a particularly privileged locale for the Indo-Portuguese aesthetic, is not particularly appealing to those native-Goans who form Mr. Monserrate’s vote-base. That Mr. Monserrate nevertheless used elements of Indo-Portuguese design, drawing on conventions of certain kinds of European design, and interestingly rearticulated these in the projects that he initiated, however, is another matter, and one that points us in the direction of lessons that we ought to take note of.

Mr. Gonsalves’ arguments are scarier than they prima-facie appear to be, because they draw on a logic that once approved for use in the manner in which we determine which buildings can stay, and which have to go, the logic can be extended to other areas of social life as well. Take for example, the fact that Mr. Gonsalves suggests that the building of the Department of Health ought to be demolished because it does not fit in with the rest of the ‘Heritage’ zone of Campal. The logic that lies below this facile suggestion is that if something, or someone, does not fit in with the larger group, out they go. This sort of exclusivist logic is the very basis on which the vegetarian ghettos of Indian cities have, and are, been formed; where difference is absolutely not tolerated. This is the logic that eventually led to the European Holocaust that saw the calculated murders of Gypsies, homosexuals, Jews and Communists; simply because they did not fit in into the larger scheme of things. This is ofcourse not the intention of Armando Gonsalves who has led many a charitable and philanthropic event, but these are the implications of the logic that he has perhaps unwittingly used in making his suggestions.

Mr. Gonsalves also makes the error of assuming that if the buildings are ‘spanking new’ then they will replace the older buildings that he finds ugly, with a more interesting urbanscape. His assumption is that “Architecture was not such a developed art a few decades ago”. The sad truth is that, none of this is true. Architecture was just as developed a few decades ago, as it is today. There were some buildings that were perhaps more provincial or clumsy followers of international trends, and others that manifested international trends interesting. But we would know this only if we developed our understanding of the vocabulary that architects and designers have been using. Furthermore, some of the problems with the built environment in Goa, as in other places, is not simply that they are ugly, but because increasingly, every architect seems to want to make a statement; because street facades are not being maintained, because the skyline (or the roof façade of the city) is increasingly out of control, and the sense of scale is being violently disrupted, the larger sense of order that we experienced is being lost. The answer to our built heritage woes therefore, is not necessarily to pull down anything that is old, but to spend some more time figuring out what exactly is the problem, educating ourselves in larger issues of urban design, management and styling, and once we do that, to address the issue advisedly.

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times dtd 16 May 2012)

Standing for Rights: The demand for English and the ‘Mother tongue’

The events subsequent to spectacular showing at FORCE’s (Forum for Rights of Children's Educations) rally on March 20, present a delightful opportunity for us to reflect on the nuances on Goa’s complex politics.

To begin with, the opponents to this move have raised the predictable bogey of ‘mother tongue’. The attempts by FORCE and related groups and individuals so far has been to respond to these arguments by rather weak formulations. In these formulations, lacking anything more than a superficial understanding of Goa’s linguistic politics, as well as operating as if movements in the rest of India did not matter, they fall over themselves while making statements about Marathi and Konkani, alienating rather than gaining allies. This situation could be resolved by focussing on the real issue here, that of power. Addressing the situation in this manner, will provide them an effective platform to display the mother tongue argument for what it is, a scam.

An essay in a recent issue of the Economic and Political Weekly pointed out that ‘In the case of historically marginalised sub­jects who have been denied their rights, such as Dalits, arguments in favour of Eng­lish as the language of empowerment and emancipation have been around for some time now.’ These pan-Indian movements, most notably Chandra Bhan Prasad’s celebrations of Macaulay’s birthday, and the setting up of the cult of the English Devi, point to the question of power. In which language is power held they ask? The answer is quite clear. Universally, nationally, and locally in Goa, as demonstrated by the publication of the State’s Gazette, power is wielded in English. As groups since British-India’s freedom struggle have realised, access to English is imperative to demand rights that are being denied.

Within Goa, there is another language that holds power; Konkani. This Konkani while masquerading as the popular language of Goa, is not a Konkani (or 'mother tongue') universally spoken or written by all Goans. It is primarily a Konkani spoken by the Sarasawat and its allied castes, and is presented to the rest of the Goans as the pure language that they must all mimic. The model for Goanhood is thus, the Saraswat, and all other local cultural and life-style models are either faulty, or as some would not hesitate to bluntly accuse, anti-national. By this model, despite the suggestion that one can eventually ‘blend in’, one can never be properly 'Goan', until and unless one is Saraswat or part of a similarly aligned caste. The operation of Konkani in Goa therefore, confers supreme power on some (caste groups), and deprives others of power completely.

This latter reason ensured a participation in the March 20 rally that cut across divisions of caste and religion. The demand at the rally was truly unitedly ‘Goan’ in that sense. It is perhaps also for this reason that the Education Minister, Mr. Monserrate, who represents a social group largely excluded from official power, responded positively to the rally’s demand.

The letter written by Fathers Mousinho de Ataide and Jaime Couto to the Archbishop in opposition to this demand however, point to an interesting fact. The leadership of this demand, as evidenced by those who were on the platform on the 20th, are largely Catholic (and I dare hazard a guess and suggest dominant caste/ middle class). FORCE would do well to make its leadership more representative of the forces that support it. This would be the perfect and only way in which it can effectively respond to its critics, gain its objectives and not fall into the Marathi trap that the Konkani lobby regularly lays. In other words, they need to forge alliances with those Hindu bahujan who were clearly present at the meeting and also wish a support for State supported English language education. This alliance can only come about, if the current leadership of FORCE takes the perspective of power seriously. To do so would require them to relook the Konkani-Marathi agitation, and ask the questions that Dr. Oscar Rebello asked us recently, why did almost the entire Bahujan Samaj want to merge with Maharashtra? The answer is that they feared power be firmly established in Brahmin hands. Those unaware of the history of ‘Konkani as mother tongue’ should know that it has largely been a brahmanical history dominated by the socio-political goals of the Saraswat caste. Merely look at the caste origins of those opposing the current demand to understand the value of caste analysis.

Caste analysis would also warn us that those in favour of support for English education need not engage in Saraswat bashing. For, does the opposition to English not include Mrs. Shashikala Kakodkar under the banner of Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch? Caste analysis will point out that support for ‘Indian’ ‘mother-tongues’ is largely the tool of brahmanised castes and groups. Through this tool, they effectively restrict other groups from accessing State power in India. Ms. Kakodkar’s opposition however may largely flow from the internal contradictions of the Maharashtrian Maratha-pride movement that structured the reform experiences of Goa’s bahujan samaj. In Maharashtra the Maratha despised the Brahmin, but sought to become brahmanised themselves. Further, a look at the largely ignored history of Goa’s Portuguese period will point out, as has Rochelle Pinto, that Goa’s Catholic elites, whether Bamon or Chardo, used the brahmanical imagination of the Indian national movement to settle their own scores against the Portuguese and demand autonomy. To do this, they also had to buy the argument that their own cultures were inauthentic, and they gleefully placed the blame for this condition on the Portuguese. In adopting Konkani as their sole mother tongue, not only did they ineffectively attempt to ‘blend in’, but also obscured the fact that the South Asian experience of language does not accommodate narrow 19^th century European formulations of ‘mother tongues’. Rhetorical use of the value of Konkani however also served these elite Catholics to keep non-elite Catholics ‘in their place’.

The failure of the attempt to ‘blend in’ is the reason that FORCE has obtained the support of such staunch nationalists and formerly Nagari-Konkani stalwarts as Tomazinho Cardozo and Fr. Pratap Naik. A word of advice to Mr. Cardozo though; Drop this ridiculous argument that the ‘Medium of Instruction’ clause was a conspiracy against the Archdiocese schools. On the contrary, the Konkani language movement has been piggybacking on the Archdiocese schools to secure its power. Via this argument, Mr. Cardozo stands to unwittingly convert the issue one of Catholics versus the rest. Conspiracy to destroy is not part of the equation, and if so, may have applied to an earlier context, that does not hold now. It would be especially a pity since Mr. Cardozo has thus far admirably held the tenor of the demand for recognising the Roman script to the issue of power, and not succumbed to the red-herring of ‘us Catholics’. But then this is because the Roman script issue is a caste battle, against the brahmanised castes and groups in Goa, and even though Mr. Cardozo does not use this lens, he is a remarkably perceptive man.

It is when we speak of power that the single most powerful argument of the FORCE is revealed, it is the parent that has the right to decide the education of their child. The democratic rights of the parent cannot be held hostage to the national-community building fantasies of either a small group of people, or a State. To do so is ultimately what fascism is about. A focus on rights, would also reveal the possibility that this fight could be taken to the courts, which may perhaps prove less amenable to nationalist arguments and open to the demands of democratising access to education.

(First published in the Gomantak Times, 30 March 2011)

Learning from Egypt: Separating Water from Milk

This summer I attempted to beat the heat by drinking rose-syrup flavoured water. It is sweet, turns the milk a lovely shade of pink, and is best served chilled.

The results of Panjim’s municipal elections are still unknown as this column is being written. However the results are rather irrelevant to the points this column seeks to make. This column was motivated by the vigorous campaign launched by the Panjimites Initiatives for Change (PINC) against the panel supported (or propped up) by Atanasio Monserrate, MLA from Taleigão. Interestingly, the members of this group were also at one point prominent faces of the GBA. They faded from the GBA at about the same time that the GBA agreed to join the Committee set up by the Chief Minister to review the Regional Plan.

Rather than attempt any deep reading of this situation, we may perhaps be instructed by the voice of an activist from Egypt that seems to speak remarkably to PINC’s initiatives.

Hossam al-Hamalawi is a labour activist who in an interview with Al-Jazeera pointed to some misconceptions that were being propagated around the world about the Egyptian revolution. The revolution was not fought and won only on Tahrir Square he reminded us. It was fought and won because of the simultaneous strikes by large numbers of Egyptian workers across the country. He went on to remind us that these strikes were continuing, even as the demonstrations in Tahrir melted away after Mubarak, the figurehead of the regime, was done away with. In his telling, this dissipation of the pressure on the regime was enabled by the ‘lullabies’ sung by the middle class. ‘Let us get things back to normal’ ‘return to law and order’. When were things normal? he asked. What law and order can we return to when for 3 decades there was no law and order, but a mockery of it? Do you ask these men, living on paltry sums, to wait six more months before their most basic, roti, kapda aur makaan demands are met?

Al-Hamalawi’s observations point to the problematic role of the middle-class in any revolution. It rides the wave of popular unrest, obtains its adjustment with the regime and forces in power, and then asks the masses to go home and let the law play its role.

The point here is not to vilify the middleclass, on the contrary they may very often sympathise with the oppressed. As a class however, they will play out their inherent tendencies. The point is that we must be aware of the manner in which they will operate. The Goan mass despite having been led on a merry dance on multiple occasions now, seems to continue to buy the palliatives of the Goan elite groups. Perhaps the reason that they do so is because in Goa the middleclass groups to a larger extent overlap with caste group configurations. The middleclass aspires to lifestyles largely set in place and upheld by dominant caste groups.

It appears that the success of a Goan revolution lies in the development of a strong caste, and class consciousness. Political discourse in Goa, and especially among the Catholics, needs to grapple with these issues, going beyond dislike and hatred of caste groups, to understanding the manner in which these groups operate and influence politics. Further, there is a critical need for us to embrace livelihood issues as the primary cause. This column has pointed out on earlier occasions how the GBA’s mobilisations (when led by this PINC segment) were largely based on (dominant caste/class) aesthetic considerations. Till date the issues of mining and its impact of livelihoods, or real-estate development and its destruction of livelihood options, have not been systematically embraced by these groups who claim to want a change in Goa’s state of affairs.

Allow those groups impacted by mining to lead the demonstrations for change and watch the difference. The demonstrations will automatically take on the dimensions of Tahrir. There will be a besieging of the homes of the CM, of the Secretariat. There will be no backing down till there is a complete halt of activities. There will be a necessary confrontation between the contradictions that we do not want to, but must necessarily addressed if we want to move Goa out of the mess it is in. Contrast this then with the efforts of the groups that led the GBA, and they will begin to look like the tea-parties (pun intended) they were.

As a conclusion, regard the plea by the Convenor for PINC. He requested us to vote for the candidates identified by this group of largely dominant caste elites because “We promise to keep them on a tight leash, if elected, to obey peoples’ mandate”. Words such as these Al-Hamalawi would call lullabies. First, given the fact that the Indian democracy gives its citizens no right of recall, once elected, there is no control on a representative by the voting public, except at the end of their five year term. Second, ‘keeping on a tight leash’ suggests that the members of PINC endorse a backroom management of democracy, rather than a public, deliberative democracy. These are hardly the people you can rely on to lead Goa out of the mire of political graft, nepotism and privateering. On the contrary, as this very same group and leader demonstrated in the past, they are capable of taking command of popular movements and compromise it at exactly the moment it can press home the advantage. They did so, not because of their inexperience in social activism, but because of their deep faith and commitment to the backroom politics that has compromised the effort of so many Goan mass movements.

If Goa is to learn from Egypt, we are required to examine our politics and make a consistent stand with livelihood issues. Developing finely tuned, and publicly debated political analytical skills that account for caste and class are imperative. This will eventually allow us to live in a society where the elite-led middle class groups may contribute their mite to change, but will not compromise or hijack change. At that point, perhaps we would be able to separate milk, from water.

(A version was first published in the Gomantak Times 16 March 2011)

Sand-dunes, Monserrate and You: The story of an aesthetic hijack of our sensibilities

The decision by the CCP to ‘clean’ the sand dunes on the Miramar beach has thankfully been objected to. And it is not as if these objections are merely for the sake of objecting. More than one individual, who clearly know what they are saying, have pointed out that removing the vegetation from the sand dunes will result in their destabilisation, allowing for the sand to be blown away, as has already happened in other parts of Miramar beach.

Perhaps not unsurprisingly, Atanasio Monserrate has once more been linked with the controversy, resurrecting the possibility of our looking at the issue through the lens of ‘the embodiment of evil’. The ‘embodiment of evil’ however is not a particularly useful lens, since it obscures the larger societal processes at work through the individual who is marked out as evil. What this lens does, is only to create a scapegoat so as to absolve society of the guilt and responsibility of its error. While the sand dune issue may be the result of Mr. Monserrate’s larger urban design project in the Miramar-Caranzalem-Dona Paula stretch, we need to excavate the larger aesthetic reasons for which the CCP and Mr. Monserrate thought of going about the ‘cleaning’ project in the first place. I stress this, because even though Mr. Monserrate is a largely reviled figure, many of his actions, find support and aesthetic approval, not just among the Taleigao under-class, but among the middle classes as well. Understanding the source from which Mr. Monserrate draws his plans, will allow us to understand how much as we may revile Mr. Monserrate, his plans are but the logical result of our collective desires.

The whole idea of the ‘cleaning’ of the dunes is possible only when we look at the natural environment as a garden that can be scaped by human activity. Such a view is not new; people have looked at the natural environment as a garden that they can mould for as long as humankind have been able to use tools. Indeed, scholars tell us that there is in fact nothing ‘natural’ about most of our ‘natural’ environment. Large parts of ‘nature’ are the result of human intervention and their interaction with nature. Not all of this has been necessarily intentional however, a good amount of these impacts being unwitting and unplanned. The problems begin to emerge in the event of two factors being realised. Humankind’s increasing ability to radically change the face of the environment, and secondly when the models for this landscaping are at radical odds with the existing environment.

Making a quick detour let us have a quick look at the urban design Monserrate is systematically laying out on the Miramar beach-face. The whole project is designed to face the ‘natural’ theatre of the mouth of the Mandovi river framed by the Cabo Raj Nivas and the Aguada Fort and the Miramar beach. This ‘picture’ is to be viewed in different ways. From the windows of four-wheeler vehicles zipping along what is effectively a highway; from the pedestrian paths and benches that have been placed on the side of this road; and from the exclusive villas and apartments that have been given permission to rise alongside the road. There can be no doubt that this whole project attempts to articulate an urban design that is appealing to most ‘cultured’ people. No matter how idealistic this project maybe however, there is a problem with it. The problem is that it is entirely the product of an imagination fed by the images from Hollywood, American TV dramas and notions of the West.

These televisual worlds are not ‘real’ worlds, in the sense that they exist nowhere. They are the product of careful editing, so that any object that would disrupt the lyrical beauty of the image is clipped out. Thus in these televisual worlds, we have gardens with lush green lawns, carefully trimmed hedges, white picket fences, sandy dunes, interspersed with a few dry wisps of grass leading to the sea, people who work in immaculate clothes, and people who never really sweat. The impact of continuous viewing is that we assume them to be real, and then try to scape the world around us accordingly.

To emphasise my point that it is not only Monserrate who is the victim of this imagination, let us look at most of the traffic islands and attempts at road beautification in the State or across the country. In a climate where we need shade, and ought to plant trees, we systematically plant either lawns or other water-guzzling flowering plants. We only have to look at cases where governments have tried to beautify a location, and we see evidence of how the televisual notion of the Western domestic garden has colonised our consciousness. It is because the televisual notion of the Western domestic garden is inside our heads, that we constantly see Panchayat and Muncipality workers constantly engaged in ‘weeding’ large expanses of public property. Around my home, every year after the monsoon, the Panchayat systematically cuts down a ‘boram’ tree that has struggled to grow the previous year. Obsessed with ‘weeding’, the Panchayat does not seem to realise that ‘boram’ trees are nature’s way to revive degraded lands. In this case the barren terrain of the Taleigão plateau, destroyed by two decades of real estate development. What is clear from the reasons that CCP has provided about the ‘cleaning’ of the dunes, is that what they are attempting is a weeding of the dunes; replacing bad vegetation, with ‘good’ vegetation. Whether they originally intended this replacement or not is immaterial. What is important is that they were able to provide this reason for their action, indicating the popular legitimacy that the ‘Western garden’ model has for public landscaping.

While there are definitely problems with Monserrate’s vision therefore, we have to give him full marks for trying, and recognise also that what he is attempting to do is within a popular notion of what a civilised and cultured location ought to be. The problem then is not Monserrate’s alone; the problem is a social one, almost universally shared by all of us.

If there is to be a more sustainable saving of Miramar’s sand dunes, or of our landscape, then what we need to engage in is a weeding-out of the notion of the televisual environment, and with it the primacy as a model that the Western domestic garden has achieved. We have to realise that nothing actually lives on TV, the televisual life is a mirage, aspired for but never attained. As for the Western domestic garden, it was the product of a definite class, in a definite time and a definite environment. Riding on the tails of Western imperialism, it has now been transplanted across locations, with great success but often at great cost to the local environment. What we need is to educate ourselves in being able to see (beauty) differently.

As the lyrics of that popular track go, ‘Free your mind, and the rest will follow!’

(Published in the Gomantak Times, 30 Sept 2009)