A Goan Waltz around Postcolonial Dogmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

Shades of casteism

It is often the case that when speaking about caste-related problems one is accused of being casteist.  This is also true in Goa, where any discussion about the realities of caste power evokes accusations of being motivated by a personal dislike for brahmin groups, or of constantly “targetting” brahmins, especially—so the argument goes—given that the Saraswats are but a minority community; so any polemical attack on them amounts to casteism or communalism.

 But it is not casteism to speak about the violence of unequal power relations engendered by the presence of the caste system and the identities of caste. Rather, the conspiracy of silence around unequal power relations and the dominance of a single group, or a couple of groups, through caste privilege is what constitutes casteism. There is generally a deep silence about the violence of caste, and casteism operates when those who seek to speak about this violence, and challenge it, are accused of being casteist.

Let us be clear that in Goa, the Saraswats may be a small community, but they are a powerful community who hold much social, cultural and economic capital, and whether consciously or unconsciously, they wield power to ensure their continued hegemony. They fulfill the sociological category of “the dominant caste” constructed by the famous sociologist M. N. Srinivas. To expose the manner in which this power is wielded is not, to my eyes casteism. 

There are often suggestions, that “to be proud of one’s origins is not casteism”. Rather, casteism is when one “belittle[s] the origins of others”. This is an ingenious strategy beloved of many supporters of the caste system.  These proponents of the caste system fail to recognise that any identity of the self is invariably linked to identities of others. Thus, one can be brahmin only because others are not. Further, as a result of the operation of history, the brahmin identity is not an innocent identity. It is invariably the identity of oppressors. This is more so the case in Goa, where groups that claim a Saraswat identity, whether Catholic or Hindu, have controlled property, people tied to those properties, and attempted to control the rest of society too. There is not the space here to demonstrate fully how the assertion of a brahmin identity in Goa is invariably at the cost of demeaning a non-brahmin one, but any honest look at our society and history will bear this out.

It needs to be stated clearly, however, that the problem in Goa is not just with brahmins alone. There are other upper-caste groups, like the Chardos and the Desais, who despite their limited size similarly exert power owing to the manner in which they not just control landed property, but enjoy social privilege. Indeed, as the case of the Konkani Bhasha Mandal (KBM) will demonstrate, it is possible for Chardos to operate with the brahmanical matrix that the KBM embodies. As friend once commented, “for the Chardos, to be anti-brahmin is to be anti-caste”. What they all too often ignore is that they are a part of the problem, along with the brahmins.

It is this limited anti-brahmin agenda, instead of an agenda of anti-brahmanism that has ensured that the bahujan movement in Goa has missed a historical opportunity to forge a democratic polity. Instead, they have slipped into Hindu nationalism, precisely because the brahmanical logic of Indian nationalism have not been challenged. Take the constitution of the Bharatiya Bhasha Surkasha Manch (BBSM), which includes not just brahmins like Bhembre, but leaders of the bahujan castes, like Shashikala Kakodkar and Vishnu Wagh. Once again though, it is impossible to have Brahmanism, without the body of the brahmin, and it is precisely through the presence of brahmins in the BBSM that it gathers its symbolic strength. This is so because historically, it has been dominant caste groups, and especially brahmins that have set themselves up as arbiters of style and standard.

The power that Bhembre, Bhatikar, and other brahmins, Hindu or otherwise, claim to determine “standard”, whether of Konkani or otherwise, flow from the way in which upper caste individuals asserted their claim over languages in the late nineteenth century. In this context I would like to refer attention to the work of Veena Naregal in Language, Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere (2001) where she points out  that

“By the later decades of the nineteenth century, drawing on philological beliefs about the essentially interrelated genealogy of the Indian vernaculars and their common descent from the immaculate purity of the great and ancient Sanskrit language, English-educated individuals in different parts of the subcontinent could claim to constitute a transregional kinship with an immaculate high' cultural pedigree. An important part of this elite self-image was their shared status as custodians of 'correct' cultural practices. Thus, when giving the Wilson philological lectures in 1877, claiming descent from the noble brahmins of the 'ancient aryavarta' was, for the well-known orientalist scholar Bhandarkar, clearly, a way of enlarging through their dominance over the regional vernacular spheres”(p. 48).

It has been suggested that Uday Bhembre and Arvind Bhatikar are ‘good’ persons who have “the highest respect” for the Christian community in Goa. If they do, they have a very strange way of showing it, given that they have been suggesting Goan Catholics are anti-national merely for asserting their right to educate their children in the same English language that Bhembre and Bhatikar’s families are being educated. One wonders if these good persons have directed similarly vituperative language at the members of their own families. In any case, the assertion of the patriarchal right to dictate to other local communities is very much a part of brahmanical arrogance. An ideal way to show respect for the Christians in Goa would be for Bhatikar and Bhembre to cease their frightening hate-speech and support the right of these communities to determine the path of their own future.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 18 Sept 2015)

The Brahmin Double in Goan history

In his article, “The Brahmin double: the Brahminical construction of anti-Brahminism and anti-caste sentiment in the religious cultures of precolonial Maharashtra” ([2012] 2014), Christian Lee Novetzke discusses the cases of the Marathi bhakti poets Jnaneshwar and Eknath. Novetzke’s argument is that the image of Brahmin reformers is not as cut and dry as it is made out to be. Rather, he argues that these reformers were embodiments of what he calls “the brahmin double”. The brahmin double is the strategy through which a brahmin pokes fun of, or critiques other brahmins who are cast as bad, evil, or bigoted. In doing so, the brahmin operating as the good part of the double “provides one important way to separate Brahminism and Brahmins”. That is, the audience fails to see that the problem is not with individual brahmins alone, but also with Brahmanism. By deflecting critique toward individual brahmin figures, and not the system that produces brahmins and brahmanical structures, the good brahmin ensures that Brahmanism continues its grip over Indian society. Novetzke points out that a classic feature of the Brahmin double is that it always offers reform of Brahmanism, and never radical critique. Thus the Brahmin double ensures that there are superficial changes, even as the status quo is maintained.

Reading this argument, it occurred to me that recent Goan history offers great examples of the “brahmin double” over various generations. A previous column discussed Varde Valaulikar’s response to Raghunath Talwadkar. Valaulikar’s proposed that the Saraswat caste embrace the Konkani language as their mother-tongue while Talwadkar opposed this proposal pointing to the language’s association with lower classes, and castes, and with “defiled” Christians such as José Gerson da Cunha. As pointed out in that column, Valaulikar’s response was not to condemn Talwadkar’s blatant casteism. Rather, he offered the suggestion that in fact the Catholic missionaries had learned Konkani from brahmins, and that da Cunha himself was a brahmin. In this equation, Talwadkar gets castigated as the bad brahmin, and Valaulikar effects the “brahmin double” move by ensuring that brahmin hegemony is not challenged, but rather paves the way for the Saraswat caste and associated caste groups to assert their claim over the Konkani language.

Another argument that I made in the earlier column was to point to the fact that Valaulikar’s project was carried forward by men like Uday Bhembre. To this extent, Uday Bhembre, and his associates, are contemporary embodiments of Valaulikar. Bhembre was a hero of the Konkani language agitation, a legend of his time. He was lionized as the man who went into the meetings of pro-Marathi activists and shouted out loud that Konkani, not Marathi was his mother tongue, at certain risk to his bodily integrity. The more important legend for my argument is his response when asked by pro-Marathi activists; “How can you claim Konkani as your mother tongue when your father claims Marathi as his mother tongue?” Bhembre’s famous response was “But don’t you know that my mother and my father’s mother are not the same person?” In the course of the Konkani language agitation, Bhembre was playing the Brahmin double, and his father, Laxmikant Bhembre, and other brahmins, were cast as the bad brahmins, who could not see that Konkani was the mother tongue of Goa. Through his actions Bhembre junior ensured that he deflected attention away from the fact that the Konkani that he and his companions were pushing was in fact not a Konkani of the bahujan masses, but the Antruzi dialect and the Nagri script, both associated with Valaulikar’s project of brahmin hegemony in Goa.

Today, with the kind of association that Bhembre is making with the RSS against the demands for the recognition of English as a state supported medium of instruction, you have younger Saraswat men who are effecting the strategy of the Brahmin double. Responding with horror to Bhembre’s suggestion, they point out that there are more Hindus than Catholics studying in diocesan schools that have switched from Konkani to English medium. What is interesting is that these arguments do not fracture the meaningless labels of “Christian community” and “Hindu community” invoked by Bhembre and others. This is not surprising given that this group is actively engaged in Hindu reform, a process which neuters dalit-bahujan assertions, and consolidates disparate caste groups into a single Hindu community usually under brahmin leadership or direction. Their rhetoric and activism is never really one of a radical rejection of caste hegemony, but of managing the anger against their caste group and its leadership of the political community Goa.

Another touchstone to use for evaluation would be their response to the demand that the Roman script be recognised on par with Nagari Konkani. These secular Saraswat will agree that there is a need for a more “bahujanised” Konkani, but will not budge when it comes to giving equal rights to the Roman script. Thus, what they are doing is trying to make Nagari Konkani, the vehicle of Saraswat hegemony in Goa, more palatable to the bahujans, even while they completely ignore the real issue of Romi Konkani.

It is important to underline that it is not my argument that these men are performing the strategy of the brahmin double deliberately. Very often our actions are determined not by our conscious selves but determined by the milieu in which we are raised. The response, therefore, is not to necessarily condemn these men. Our response ought to be to always be aware of the manner in which the social structure asserts itself, and thus question brahmin saviours, and make these saviours aware of the pernicious politics that they reproduce.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 4 Sept 2015)