Let’s Talk About Rights!

Growing up in the 1980s in Goa from time to time I would hear the more vociferous men in my family swear: “These bloody Indians!” Attending school where a steady diet of Indian nationalism was a part of the curriculum, we youngsters would be horrified. Surely, these figures of parental authority couldn’t speak like they did? Besides, weren’t we Indian? It was at this early age that I realised that to be Goan is not the same as being Indian. And it was possible for Goan history to read Indian nationalism differently. I have spent the rest of my life trying to figure the differences out.

A politicised Goan, such as myself, looks on this season, where allegations of being anti-national are being flung like confetti, with some cynicism. Not unlike Muslims in India, Goans, and especially Goan Catholics, have been used to be seen as de-nationalised, if not anti-national, for a while now. This critical evaluation has only heightened since some years when it came to be understood that many Goans have been “giving up” Indian nationality for Portuguese citizenship.

A common misunderstanding of the situation in Goa is that this devolution of the Indian passport has to do with pride in their Portuguese connection, and an application for citizenship. Appreciating the nuances of the situation requires disabusing a number of misunderstandings.

To begin with, it is not merely Goans who are giving up their Indian citizenship, but persons from the larger Portuguese state of India or Estado da Índia (EI), which in 1961 included the territories of Goa, Daman, Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. These persons are able to acquire Portuguese citizenship not because of any continental ancestry, but because of a legal history that differs significantly from that of British India. Where residents of British India were merely subjects of the British Crown and never citizens, native Christian residents of Portuguese India were almost from the very beginning of the presence of the EI in the early 1500s, seen as equal subjects of the crown. With the inauguration of the Portuguese constitutional monarchy in the mid-1800s, citizenship of all subjects was formally recognised, and subsequently deepened when the Portuguese Republic was declared in 1910. As citizens of Portugal a restricted electorate of persons from Goa were able to elect persons to represent their interest in the Portuguese Parliament in Lisbon. This marked a significant distinction from the situation in British India where natives had no Parliamentary presence, and even Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Indian in the British parliament, was elected by Britishers to represent an English constituency.

Indeed, so dramatically different was the situation in British India from that which obtained in Portuguese India that Goans were often able to assert themselves against the British. Take, for example, this anecdote from the city of Bangalore in the year 1940. In his memoirs, From Goa to Patagonia: Memoirs spanning times and spaces (2006: 146), Alfredo de Mello recounts his altercation with a Revered Xavier who had recently joined the staff of the famous Bishop Cotton’s school:

 
“One evening, while the Cotton's Cadets were drilling in the field with their 1914 vintage rifles and polished bots, Rev. Xavier and I were watching them and he remarked; ‘How come you are not marching with them?’, and I replied: ‘I am a foreigner, Sir, belonging to a neutral country’, and Rev. Xavier, in a tone that dripped with contempt, retorted: ‘Why don't you become a British subject? Don't you know that we are the salt of the earth?’

Trying to control my nerves and smarting under such a presumption, I said, ‘I am a Portuguese citizen, Sir, and not a subject like yourself. Furthermore …[e]very dog has its day. Portugal had its glorious quarter of an hour in History, as a world power, in the sixteenth century, and yours is about to end’.”

The situation where former citizens of the EI can continue to claim Portuguese citizenship is the result of the unorthodox manner in which Goa was integrated into India. Portugal was governed by an authoritarian regime from the mid-1930s until 1975 that refused to countenance the idea of Goa’s independence or integration into India, until India did so by force in 1961. When India annexed these territories in 1961 it failed to recognise that the residents were in fact Portuguese citizens and unilaterally extended Indian citizenship to them. Indian control over the territories that constituted the EI was not recognised by Portugal until the regime fell in 1975. At this point, the Portugal recognised the ancient constitutional rights of the residents of the now lost territories. Thus, when residents of the former EI renounce their Indian passport, they are not applying for Portuguese citizenship; merely asserting their pre-existing right to Portuguese citizenship. 

The recovery of this right lay somewhat dormant from 1975 until recently. It was with Portugal joining the European Union that a Portuguese passport gained a completely new significance. If there are so many persons queuing up to assert their right to a Portuguese passport, it thus has less to do with Portuguese nationalism, though this cannot be discounted in some cases, and more to do with making an economic choice.

The assertion of this right by citizens of the former EI has upset nationalists both in Portugal and in India. Some Portuguese nationalists desire that this right be curtailed or withdrawn entirely. Portuguese citizenship, they argue, should be given only to those who speak the Portuguese language, know something of Portuguese history, and have a love for Portugal. Like most nationalistic assertions often tend to be, these too are offensive. Citizenship is not a gift given for good behaviour, it is a fundamental right, and such rights are sacrosanct. They cannot be withdrawn on the basis of some petty excuse. Further, one could argue that the retention of the right to Portuguese citizenship is a part of post-colonial justice.

Most Indian nationalists are similarly unable to recognise the fact that the actions under discussion are the result of a law and a right. This should give some idea of how the operation of Indian nationalism has dulled Indian appreciation for law and rights. Indian nationalism crafts the recovery of this right as a treacherous betrayal of the motherland refusing to recognise that given the absence of a legally existing state of India before 1947, residents of Portuguese India in fact had Portugal as a legal motherland. As is often the case, Indian nationalism also comes with its communal twist. Even though the persons renouncing Indian citizenship belong to the various faiths that constituted the Portuguese empire, it is largely Catholics who are charged as anti-national for giving up Indian citizenship.

To the question what do citizens of the former EI think of nationalism, the response would be why should they think of nationalism? They are thinking of their economic futures, and asserting their rights, and this is far more important than any nationalism.

(A version of the post was first published in the Indian Express  on 28 Feb 2016)

The End of Goan History

In 1992 Francis Fukuyama wrote his influential book The End of History and the Last Man. The book achieved worldwide interest, at least in the Anglophone world, so much so that, when I was admitted into law school in 1995 the claims of the book were still being actively discussed and its arguments touted in debates within and outside the classroom. Simply put, The End of History claimed that liberal democracy was the final form of human political evolution. Fukuyama was able to make this claim for liberal democracy because of the momentous events of those times, not least of which was the collapse of the Soviet Union. History, Fukuyama wrote, appeared to culminate in liberty: elected governments, individual rights, an economic system in which capital and labour circulated with relatively modest state oversight. He further argued that it would not mean that every polity would turn into a liberal democracy; rather the propriety of the liberal state would be so apparent that other political forms would end their ideological pretensions of representing different and higher forms of human society even as they continued to exist.

Predictably Fukuyama’s work was received with howls of protest. There was the usual, and in my opinion valid, argument: Fukuyama was speaking from a peculiar location that arrogates to itself a central location in international history and presumes that what is good for America, is good for the world, and that the view from the North Atlantic world reveals a clear vision of the world. An outlook of the world from other vantage points indicates that liberal democracy is not necessarily seen as a culmination of political institutions. Indeed, while the centrality of democracy itself is not being challenged, one is witness to increasing critiques of liberal democracy. Critics point out that there are substantial problems with Liberalism, and the system is just not philosophically capable of responding to the diversity of human experiences without doing serious violence to some groups. Indeed, some would see as the rise of Islamism as one of the many political ideologies that are countering the hegemony of liberalism in the world.

Fukuyama’s argument is important to a Goan audience because it appears that some political actors in Goa, and representatives of the Indian state in Goa have a similar position with regard to the end of history in Goa. Take, for example, the responses to the argument for recognising the legal history that results in persons resident in the former Estado da Índia (Goans, for the sake of brevity) having rights of citizenship in Portugal. In this situation, where the Indian state seems unable to comprehend the situation, and the rights of these Indians are being held in abeyance, I had argued that it makes sense for concerned Goans to include the recognition of the right to hold dual citizenship in the charter of demands in favour of Special Status for Goa. I had argued that such a demand would do more to protect Goan interests than the exclusive focus on ownership of land. A focus on restricting land ownership to Goans alone would secure the interests of landowners more than the rest of the Goan population.

One response to this argument, typical of many Indian apologists, was that of the Commissioner of NRI Affairs, U. D. Kamat who argued that “[a]s regards ‘Special Status’, it needs to be appreciated that our political leadership in Goa lost a golden opportunity to highlight this particular issue before the then Prime Minister, late Rajiv Gandhi, while canvassing for statehood which was granted in 1987. Now, with the passage of time and with so many less-developed states pleading for special status, the central government will not be in a position to consider our demand as Goa is perceived to be better developed as compared to a majority of the states of India.”

In other words, with regards to the question of Special Status, history came to an end in 1987. No matter how circumstances change, citizens in Goa will be unable to articulate a new arrangement of power between themselves and the Indian state. It should be pointed out that Special Status is not the only Goan claim that is being given short shrift by representatives of the Indian state. Since we are on the issue of the rights of Goans to hold a dual citizenship, it should be pointed out that there are some who would argue that the moment for stressing this right was in 1961, when Goa was integrated into India, or 1974, when Portugal recognised India’s sovereignty over the territories of the former Estado da Índia. For these apologists for the Indian state Goan history ended on these dates and we are now stuck within a political arrangement that will endure until the end of time.

If Fukuyama’s arguments smacked of an American arrogance, then the proposition of those who believe in the end of Goan history is an unspeakable horror. Some defenders of Fukuyama point out that his formulation of the end of history distinguishes between events and history. Fukuyama’s argument is not that events will cease, but that these events will be resolved within the existing liberal-democratic framework. The liberal state will continue to secure the rights of citizens within the framework of a democratic regime. The representatives of the Indian state in Goa, on the other hand, would have it that regardless of the occurrence of events, there can be no resolution, because the form of Indian democracy has been fixed and cannot be changed.

There is an extremely popular perspective of history as the continuous expansion of the rights of individuals. In Fukuyama's terms, history is the movement towards liberty.  From this perspective, states evolves as they move to secure newer dimensions of rights within changing contexts. If there are demands that Goans be allowed to exercise their rights of citizenship in both Portugal and India, and that Goa be granted a Special Status within the Union of India it is because the passage of time has revealed new ways in which the rights of Goans need to be secured. To claim that it is too late to assert these rights is to make an anti-democratic argument, and in  fact suggest that the Indian state is not dynamic enough to accommodate these changes. This would not be an argument in favour of India's continued relevance in the contemporary period and might relegate India itself to the dustbin of history.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 25 Dec 2015)

Not Going, Merely Coming

Sometime in the morning of 25 October, I received an SMS from a friend. The SMS contained the word ‘traitor’, followed by a link to an article in that day’s Times of India titled ‘Goan with the wind’. The article, authored by Lisa Monteiro and Andrew Pereira, offered figures and comments on the phenomenon of scores of persons from the former Portuguese State in India (Goans, for the sake of brevity) ‘migrating’ after claiming Portuguese passports. The article itself made no suggestion of traitorous behaviour on the part of these persons, leading to the conclusion that it was not the facts that were problematic but their interpretation. Such an interpretation requires that we supplement our analysis with additional information.

There is a suggestion that the migration of Goans holding a Portuguese passport is a unidirectional movement outside of Goa. This is not necessarily true. Goans have been migrating for centuries, whether to East Africa, to other parts of Asia or, more recently, to the Persian Gulf and Europe. Most of these migrations have been marked by a return of these Goans’ earnings to erect the beautiful homes that are today mistakenly marketed as ‘Portuguese’. This is to say that Goan migrations have not traditionally been unidirectional. Rather, they have been marked by a back and forth between the two territories. If contemporary migrations with the Portuguese passport seem to have changed something—and, in fact, it is still too early to judge whether this is the case—then, we need to inquire as to the circumstances that might have led to this change.

What is often overlooked is that the legal landscape that impinges on Goan migration has changed substantially. Yes, Goans have awoken to the fact that they can obtain a Portuguese passport and benefit from the status of the European Union, but the other fact that is rarely commented on is that Indian law has deprived them of their traditional rights. The rush to acquire a Portuguese passport may be a new, decade old, phenomenon; however, at least since the first quarter of the nineteenth century, all Goans were formally recognised as Portuguese citizens. Predating this date, too, varying sections of the Goan population were recognised as Portuguese citizens. For example, from the mid-1800s, those paying property taxes were able to vote in the elections to determine who would represent Goa in the Portuguese Parliament. When the Indian army marched into Portuguese India in 1961, the ability to assert this right was lost, and India unilaterally imposed not only its own citizenship on these Portuguese citizens but also the restriction that they could have only one nationality. This is an odd action for a state that claims to be a liberator. Logically, a liberator only adds to existing rights; it does not take them away.

Further, the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) regime is not really an option for persons who wish to have a continuing relationship with their country. We are often misinformed when told that the OCI card allows for ‘multiple entry, multipurpose life-long visa to India, granting… exemption from reporting to the police for any length of stay in India’, and that the only restrictions are voting in elections and the purchase of agricultural land. Recent events have highlighted that this is, in fact, not the case. Regardless of OCI status, persons engaged in research in India need a research visa. Further, one needs a business visa to work in India as an OCI. And finally, there is the social life of the law—the manner in which rules are actually implemented. Take the case of Christine Mehta, who, despite possessing a valid research visa, was recently deported from the country, or the case closer home of Saturnino Rodrigues, who in February 2014 claimed that he was prevented by the state administration from carrying out mutation of a property sold to him by an OCI.

Thus, if Goan migration seems to be turning into a one-way exit, it is because of the oppressive legal regime that the Indian state insists on. Goans are not obtaining Portuguese passports; they are merely reclaiming the Portuguese citizenship that they have always enjoyed. This is not a situation that most Indians would appreciate, because the British Raj never allowed for natives to enjoy British citizenship. Natives were always subjects, never citizens. A legal regime honest about history would undoubtedly allow for a more dynamic movement of Goans between Goa and other places. Indeed, the ongoing movement for Special Status for Goa should take cognizance of this fact and demand dual citizenship for Goans as an integral part of the Special Status demand.

Subsequent to pointing to the way the legal landscape has changed and impacted Goan migration, it is also necessary to point out the changed social landscape. The TOI article suggested that Goan migration was pushed by ‘rising unemployment and an uncertain economy’. This is only part of the equation. Left unsaid is the increasing intolerance in the country, initiated well before the current rise of the BJP, which has made Goans, and especially Catholics, scramble for alternatives, where they will not be made to feel like minorities. Indeed, the fact that the TOI article found it necessary to provide data regarding the religious make-up of those reclaiming their Portuguese citizenship and forced to give up their Indian citizenship speaks to the vitiated manner in which the matter is being debated.

Nevertheless, what most encounters with those migrating indicate is that the choice to migrate with a Portuguese passport is, in fact, economic. The problem, however, lies not in a lack of employment but in a lack of decent employment. The fact is that in India, and this includes Goa, the salaries for blue collar jobs do not allow for middle class lifestyles and options. While Goans migrating to Europe may be forced to work in sweatshops and live in slums today, the existence of a welfare state in the West, no matter how much under threat, will ensure that their children will have options that they could never imagine in Goa and India.

To conclude, the Goan migration via a Portuguese passport should not be seen as evidence of a traitorous relationship with India. On the contrary, Goans are merely asserting a pre-existing birthright first obtained by their ancestors. Further, if Goans are renouncing Indian citizenship, it is under the duress of the Indian state that refuses to recognise Goa’s peculiar legal history. A number of South Asian languages proscribe ‘going’—a word that indicates no return—preferring instead, as in Konkani, yetam (coming). Given a more accepting socio-legal regime, when migrating abroad Goans would very well be saying ‘I’m coming [back]’, rather than ‘going’.

  

(A version of this post was first published in the Times of India on 3 Nov 2015.
The Director for NRI Affairs, Govt. of Goa, responded to this article in the Times of India on 13 Nov 2015.)