Bhembre, Nagri Konkani and the project of Brahmin supremacy

Some time ago, speaking on the BBSM’s platform against the assertions of FORCE Uday Bhembre, is reported to have represented “the FORCE action as not a mere step for English medium but a revival of the Portuguese agenda to denationalise Goans from its language and culture.” In addition, Bhembre suggested that, “‘English medium is a step of deculturisation, leading to the ultimate agenda of denationalisation. These are the same people who line up in front of the Portuguese Consulate for Portuguese passports. Tomorrow, these people would not hesitate to chant a slogan – Viva Portugal’”. Bhembre is not the only person to have made these suggestions.  Arvind Bhatikar is reported to have made similar statements. 

 

Persons familiar with recent history will not be surprised that Uday Bhembre is associating with the Hindu nationalist RSS and engaging in hate speech against the Catholics in Goa. However, at least the 80s this is the man who was hailed by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church as one of the most secular leaders of Goan society. How then, did this switch take place?

This confusion will be allayed, and Bhembre’s recent statements make sense, if we place him within a tradition that seeks brahmanical hegemony over both Konkani and Goa.

For this it is necessary that we go back into the past, to The Triumph of Konkani penned by Vaman Varde Valaulikar (translated by Sebastian Borges, 2003), fondly known to his spiritual children as Shenoi Goembab. The first chapter of Valaulikar’s polemic seeks to establish that Konkani is the mother-tongue of Goa. This task was important for Valaulikar, because he was in fact trying to persuade members of his caste group to accept Konkani as their mother-tongue. This was not an easy task, because many of them, like a certain Raghunath Ganesh Shenoy Talwadkar, identified Konkani with the Catholics of Goa. Valaulikar spends some time in this chapter responding to Talwadkar’s arguments.

What is very clear from reading the polemic is that Talwadkar had a horrific distaste for Christians. Valaulikar indicates that Talwadkar had disparaged Dr. José Gerson da Cunha as a “defiled Christian”, “bigot”, and “goanese”; and had indicated his argument against adopting Konkani as a mother tongue because it was a Catholic tongue derived from the language of “the very low classes viz. fisherfolk and farmers (p.16).”

Valaulikar’s response to Talwadkar is very interesting. To the suggestion that Konkani is a language of lower caste Catholics, Valaulikar’s suggests that while Konkani may have been developed by the missionaries, these “priests in Goa learnt their Konkani from the Brahmins alone (p.21).” In other words, he dismisses the possibility that humble folk may have been at the root of developing the language. With regard to da Cunha, Valaulikar’s response is even more revealing. Rather than tick Talwadkar off for his prejudices, Valaulikar’s responds, “Dr. Gersonbab is certainly not a religious fanatic; he is a large-hearted, virtuous scholarly Brahmin who, having been born in Goa, endeavoured to spread worldwide the glory of his motherland (p.32).” In short, what Valaulikar stresses as redeeming about the language and da Cunha is the fact that they are both brahmin.

This reference to history is to highlight that, while Valaulikar’s project may have been about Konkani, it was also about establishing Brahmin hegemony over the Konkani language. The period in which Valaulikar lived and worked was the period when dominant castes across India, and especially southern India, were preparing to create linguistic homelands where they could rule the roost.  If the Saraswat caste was to compete with others, it was necessary that they have both a territory and a language. To fulfil this task, it was important to convince people like Talwadkar that Konkani was indeed their language. To do this, it was necessary to take Konkani away from the labouring castes, in particular the Catholic bahujan, both in Goa and especially in Bombay, and convert it into the property of the Brahmins. This was done by constructing a history that suggested Konkani was developed by brahmins and creating a hitherto unknown language, Konkani in the Nagri script. This also required that the development of Konkani during the colonial period be erased. The tragedy is that this period of the early to mid-twentieth century was exactly the period when the Catholic bahujan, drawing on Christian and European sources, were crafting a golden period for Konkani by reading, writing, composing music, and crafting theatre in the language. To make Valualikar’s fiction into fact required that history itself be denied, and this is why Bhembre wilfully ignores a complex Goan history to make the hateful suggestions about denationalisation.

This is the common link that joins the appeal of Marathi to the bahujan of Goa from the ‘60s to the ‘80s, the fight for the official recognition of Konkani in the Roman script, and the demand that the Government support English language as a medium of primary education. All of these are directed against Brahmin and brahmanical oppression, and it for this reason that brahmin supremacists like Bhembre have been opposed to all three of these liberation projects. It is possible that Bhembre is not in essence a Hindu nationalist, but has a more limited agenda of Saraswat hegemony in Goa. However, given that Hindu nationalism is a project that seeks, and sees, brahmins as the natural rulers of the land, it is little wonder that Bhembre makes common cause with the RSS and the BBSM.

(A version of this post was first published  in the O Heraldo on 21 Aug 2015)

Rajdeep Sardesai, Caste and Secularism

Rather than presenting the news, Rajdeep Sardesai has very recently actually been in the news on two rather different occasions. The first occasion was when Sardesai got into a scuffle with some of Modi’s supporters when the Prime Minister was in New York. In the video war that followed, Sardesai was first seen as being beaten by the Hindu nationalist, then as having started the scuffle, and finally as having been forced to respond violently to the nationalist’s heckling. Regardless of the reasons for the scuffle, or its context, however, Sardesai almost instantly became the poster boy for Indian secular liberals across the world. Vociferous opponents of the BJP, Hindu nationalism and Modi, they cheered Sardesai and used the episode to reflect on the rowdy ways of Hindu nationalists.

The second occasion, however, saw the same Rajdeep Sardesai being booed for being casteist. His sin this time round was a tweet where he confessed to “Saraswat pride” at seeing two members of his Saraswat caste being included in the prime minister’s cabinet. In response to the outrage that rained on him, Sardesai sought to explain himself in an oped in the Hindustan Times, and subsequently in the Navhind Times. This only complicated matters further, since what could have been excused as a momentary lapse was now justified rather elaborately.

How does one explain this swing from being the archetypical secular liberal to unrepentant casteist in the space of a few months? The sad truth is that all too often what Sardesai demonstrated more recently is not an uncommon feature of the Indian secular liberal. 

Indian secular liberalism is based on caste and largely the ideological position of anglicised upper caste Indians. One need go no further to unearth this relationship between caste and secularism than to look at Nehru, the revered figure of Indian secularism. Often referred to as Pandit Nehru, where did this title of Pandit come from? Nehru was a graduate, but the title of Pandit came not from his graduation in Western education, nor from any knowledge of the Sanskrit texts. The title is one inherited from his caste location as a Kashmiri Pandit. Nehru may have been an unrepentant dismisser of Hindu religiosity, but that did not stop him from claiming his brahmin privilege and assume a right to leadership that supposedly came with his heritage.

Nehruvian secularism was the product not merely of one man, but a social milieu that gathered around Nehru and formed the core of the anti-imperial nationalist struggle. Referred to as the ‘nationalist class’ by Partha Chatterjee, this was a group that in some ways was secular. They were secular in the sense that they did not necessarily find their spouses within their natal caste groups, nor did they follow other traditional caste rules. They did not do so, largely because they did not have to. Theirs was an anglicised milieu and they had in fact formed a sub-caste, or jati, of their own. This was the group that controlled power in the Centre through the initial decades of Indian independence.

The fact of the matter is that group was composed of people like Pandit Nehru, anglicised segments of already dominant caste groups. The nationalist class was not averse to recruiting people and accommodating them in various governmental institutions. However, the route to this recruitment depended critically on the privileges available to dominant groups in India. This meant the ability to be educated in one of the “good” schools in India, gain a degree in Oxford, Cambridge, where one gained access to scions of these families. These options are technically open to all, and yet as is the reality of this country, were, and are available largely to privileged segments of dominant caste groups. Rajdeep Sardesai, with his dominant caste background, and his privileged education is a natural member of the nationalist class jati.

One would not appreciate how this nationalist class can be seen as a jati if one has the standard static notion of India and its culture. One has to recognise that like culture, caste is not static, but dynamic and constantly changing. Take, for example, the fact that the Gaud Saraswat caste that we today assume to be an ancient caste was in fact produced through a caste unity movement that commenced in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This caste movement gathered together various jati like Bardezkars, Bhanavlikars, Pednekars, Kudaldeshkars and Sasthikars on the one hand, and Smartha and Vaishnava sampraday on the other, to form one Gaud Saraswat caste. This movement took a good amount of effort and often ran counter to the wishes of the Swamis of the various sampraday, as well as orthodox elements within these jati. 
 
When upper castes like Sardesai refer to themselves as progressive, they are not necessarily referring to a tradition of egalitarianism, but rather to their caste histories where some radicals reading the need of the times stop following caste laws and began to westernise themselves. As Sardesai’s tweet and subsequent article demonstrate, none of this meant that they gave up caste. What happened was that caste was now masked under a superficial veneer of westernised behaviour, like eating meat, not fulfilling brahmanical Hindu religious rituals, crossing the waters. In other words, they merely produced new rules for their caste groups.

New jati, therefore, are constantly being born, and if the Gaud Saraswat caste was born in the context of creating opportunities in colonial Bombay, the nationalist class is a jati that was formed through the process of fighting off the British. The idea of a single nation was the idea of this jati and they had to fight off rival claims from the princes and other caste groups. These latter groups were more interested in maintaining spheres of influence. While the princes were dismissed through democratic rhetoric, the dominant castes from various regions were accommodated through the process of the linguistic reorganisation of States. This process allowed for the regional hegemony of these caste groups by recognising their dialects as the official languages of the states where they dominated, while the Nehruvian elite dominated the centre with their secular talk of “unity in diversity”.

Unity in Diversity, with Hinduism on top

The Indian nation is not an ancient primordial entity. It is a production of the Indian nationalists held together by the force of the post-colonial state of India and the logic of Hindutva. Given that the maintenance of the Indian nation was always under threat from the dominant castes of various regions, the nationalist class always existed in some tension with the regional dominant castes. As yet unfamiliar with the options that anglicisization could bring, these regional castes stuck to the regional identities that brought them power. If they cooperated together, it was because they recognised that Hindutva is what allows for dominant brahmanised castes to assert their dominance in the various Indian states. As such, as long as their assertions of caste, regional and religious identity did not challenge the integrity of the Indian state, these were always treated with some amount of condescension by the nationalist class. It was only if these regional groups got too strident in their assertions that the Indian state got nasty.

If one looks at the longer videos of Sardesai interviewing those who had come to support Modi in New York, one will recognise instantly the condescending manner in which Sardesai did not so much talk to these supporters, as much as he talked down to them. This is the condescension that the members of the nationalist class reserve for those that do not buy their version of secularism. Rather than see the assertions of caste, and religion as a way in which segments of the Indian population are trying to assert power, the secular liberal sees this as the product of dull minds who are unable to grasp the sublime truths and value of secularism. Indeed, Hindutva in its current form is  the political response of the non-anglicised regional dominant castes to the secularism of the largely Hindu Nehruvian elite. Had the Nehruvian secularists been honest about the fact that their version of secularism was itself limited by their social location, that it was also a casteist project, then perhaps the project of Indian secularism would have met with greater success.

The two episodes that got Rajdeep Sardesai in the news are not antithetical to each other. In fact, they are but two sides of the same coin.

(A Version of this post was first published in the O Herald on 2 Dec 2014)

The academic, economic and emotional politics of Konkani

To,

The Editor,

Navhind Times.

We write this letter to indicate that we found the article “Konkani Bhasha: Its Academic, Economic and Emotional Viability”, that appeared in your newspaper on 17 Aug 2013, lacking in terms of conveying the real story regarding the health of the Konkani language.

This article which ostensibly discusses the future development and status of Konkani, including the forces that work for the strengthening of the language, has nowhere, not even once, made a mention of the Roman script, nor of the cultural and literary productions in that script, nor of the institutions engaged in giving the script and its productions new life. Allow us, therefore, to present an alternative narrative about the academic, economic and emotional politics of the Konkani language.

The article commences with a paean to Shenoi Goembab (Varde Valaulikar), in an attempt to situate him as the origin of the literary development of the Konkani language. While there can be no doubt regarding Varde Valaulikar’s contributions to Konkani literature, it should not be forgotten that he was but one of the many supporters of the language and cultural production in it. Notably, while the article makes a case that it is just a small segment of the Konkani-speaking population that is attempting to safeguard the language, reality is entirely to the contrary. The Konkani language acquired its first mass base largely through, but not restricted to, the literary efforts of working class Goan Catholic migrants in Bombay, and the simultaneous articulations of the language on the stage through the associated arts of Tiatr and Cantaram. Tragically however, this literary tradition has been stifled by the policies followed by the official Konkani language establishment since the adoption of the Official Language Act of the State. Nevertheless, Konkani continues to thrive via Tiatr and Cantaram, not merely in the State, but in various parts of the country, most notably Bombay, as well as globally, once again in places where Goan Catholics have migrated in search of employment. Tiatr shows, festivals and competitions receive widespread public patronage and run houseful on a regular basis, in towns as well as villages of Goa. So popular are these performances that it has also led to a thriving business in the sale of CDs and DVDs of these shows. While on the topic of the cultural productions of the Roman script, allow us to highlight the contribution of Romans (Konkani language novels in the Roman script) writers to Konkani literature, amongst whom Reginald Fernandes was the most towering figure, and is believed to have written over 200 books.

Also worth mentioning is the role played by the Konkani language establishment, especially the Goa Konkani Akademi (GKA), in stifling the Konkani language as embodied in the Roman script, and the dialects other than the Antruzi variant identified with, and claimed by, the Saraswat caste.  The GKA has since inception been formed largely by members of the Saraswat caste, and caste-groups and individuals allied with this caste. If anything, this only further contributes to the limited narrative that the article proffers about Konkani and its alleged proponents.

The article quotes Pundalik Naik speaking of the apparently uphill battle that the GKA has waged to raise Konkani to this dubious level of merit. What is not highlighted is the perhaps grimmer battle that this institution and its allied partners have waged against persons writing in the Roman script. Whether in the Kala Academy or the GKA, contributions in the Roman script used to be rejected for competitions, on the basis that Devanagari alone was the official script, and hence the Roman script could not be recognised. As if to add insult to injury, subsequent to these discriminatory rejections, and clearly without reading these works, submissions in the Roman script were routinely dismissed as “lacking in standard”. Rather than attempt to support litterateurs who used the Roman script to achieve these levels of standard, these persons were starved of state support, as they were forced to work in Devanagari and the Antruzi dialect exclusively. With official Konkani’s highly sanskritised form and rejection of Konkani history, we would like to highlight that this was akin to requiring Hindi litterateurs to write in English! Myopic measures of this nature are precisely what have curtailed the growth of literary traditions when, in fact, the rich diversity of Konkani in its many scripts and dialects should be lauded for the fertile possibilities they allow for multifarious growth. The Kala Academy, however, thankfully appears to be changing its policy, as obvious from a recent notice dated Aug 27, 2003, that it has extended the scope of its annual literary awards to include works in Konkani in Devanagari as well as Roman scripts.

Furthermore, the official guardians of the culture of the State systematically went out of their way to ridicule Tiatr suggesting that it similarly lacked standard. This, despite the fact that reputed scholars like Pramod Kale, Rowena Robinson, and Goa University’s Rafael Fernandes have recognised the dynamism of the tiatr form.

The story of Konkani since Liberation, and especially since the adoption of the Official Language Act, has therefore been a history of the destruction of an organic and vibrant language in order to prop up the artificial language dreamed up by a small segment of the Goan polity, more obsessed with Brahmanical purity and pedigree than the health of a polity and a language. Not only does this serve to limit literary and linguistic possibilities based on caste and class, but it also undercuts avenues of growth outside of the limited imagination prescribed by such intention.

To its credit, the essay does refer to the Chief Minister indicating that “it is important that we include various dialects in our writing.” However, this stray phrase would not make much sense to a reader unfamiliar with the quiet but intense battles being conducted behind closed doors. Further, this recognition by the Chief Minister has come about as a result of intense efforts not only to reviving organic Konkani, but also to give it political recognition. Yeoman service in this regard has been rendered by the Dalgado Konknni Akademi, Romi Lipi Action Front, and the Tiatr Academy of Goa, three multisectarian fora that have acknowledged the problems that have been caused by the exclusionary strategies of the official Konkani language establishment. As a result of their efforts, one can notice a certain renaissance as artistes long starved of state support now have a sense that their language is not something to be ashamed of, but one they can be both proud of and productive within.

We would also like to point out that the whole idea of a single “mother tongue” has been severely criticised in more recent scholarship, pointing to the fact that the real geographies of any language are much more complex. Indeed, it has been the insistence on colonial, racist, and out-dated notions of a single mother tongue that has resulted in the complicated tensions between those who prefer to use Marathi as public language, and those who prefer to use Konkani, and the wicked suggestion that the demand that state support be offered to schools that provide primary education in the English language is anti-national.

Giving that these essential facts were missing from the article, we believe it risks misrepresenting the complexity of the Konkani language in Goa. As such, we would appreciate it if the editor gave prominent space to this letter as a way of recognising the diversity of the Konkani language, and especially the presence of the Roman script, and non-Antruzi dialects.

Jason Keith Fernandes, Taleigāo – Goa

Dale Luis Menezes, JNU Delhi/ Quepem – Goa

R. BeneditoFerrão, Porvorim – Goa

(A version of this letter was first published in the Navhind Times, in the My Take section, on 2 Sept 2013)

English Talks, Konkani Rocks! : histories, innovations and democratic public culture

The problem around Goa’s Medium of Instruction (MoI) did not begin this year, nor did it begin in the 1990’s when the backbone of education in Goa, the Diocesan supervised schools switched their MoI from English to State Konkani. The roots of this problem lie all the way back, at the turn of the nineteenth century toward the twentieth. This was the time when Konkani was being set-up as the ‘mother tongue’ for Goans through the hand of not only Varde Valaulikar (Shenoi Goembab) but other (Catholic) intellectuals as well. Indeed in his later years, Valaulikar got a good amount of support from Catholic intellectuals, making his effort secular in the sense that it was a project that cut across religious divides.

What has not adequately been discussed however is that beyond this cross-religious collaboration there was also a caste-class divide that compromised the secular potential of this Konkani language project. Valaulikar’s Konknni was seen by non-brahmin Hindus as a Saraswat Brahmin project, that presented the Saraswat dialect alone as the perfect form of the language; while the Catholic intellectuals who supported this project, saw value in this project as a way of civilizing those Goan Catholics (both in Bombay and Goa) who came from non-dominant castes and were largely working class.

This working class had no real need for a Konkani language project however. They produced abundant literature of all forms for their consumption, and worked Concanim into the cultural forms that gave them livelihood. Thus they produced Concanim music to the form of the Waltz, Rhumba, March, Swing and Jazz (among others). Concanim lived among them, as it did not for the elites who moved this political project. For the Catholic elites Konkani was a way for them to not only civilize their ‘lower’ brethren, but to also regain a cultural authenticity that the nineteenth century theorization of society told them they had lost. For the largely Brahmin movers of the project, Konkani was not only the primary tool to forge one single Saraswat caste from multiple Konkana jatis along the west coast, but also a political tool through which they could carve an area for their dominance. If Pune and Bombay belonged to the Marathi Brahmins, who insulted and ridiculed them, then Goa would be the Konkana base. These two trends are the basis of the eventual decision to recognize Konkani (in the Nagari script) as the official language of Goa.

In making this move, Konkani was cast into more familiar forms of Indian nationalism. As in the case of Hindustani, Nagari alone- primarily for its brahmanical origins, though ‘scientific’ arguments were also thrown in - was seen as Indian. As a result of the historical model for Hindi that Konkani follows, the burden of North Indian communalism weighs heavily on the Konkani project. With this formulation, the Hindu and Brahmin came to be seen as the font of cultural authenticity. As a result of the elite (and hence minority) location of this project, and its nature as a civilizing mission, official or State Konkani could not walk normally as a language. The Konkani language project was marked by multiple anxieties. Because of its minority location, it could not be popularized; it had to be constantly under the control of a minority group. Because it was a civilizing mission too, ‘deviant’ forms could not be permitted. Because it was not based on a living social reality but an imagined past, it could not look to the future.

When cast in this way, it is little wonder that State Konkani did not find sync with a large number of Goans, and especially the Goan Catholic migrant working class, who were (and despite the allegations of the BBSM and its ilk, remain) the lifeblood of this language and its cultural forms. For this group Konkani was so much theirs, it sat lightly, but no less cherished, in their basket of social capital. No fuss about it. It would pass on to subsequent generations as it had to them, without passing through school. School was for where they learned other tricks and trades. The official Konkani project is to make them Konkani in an official and nationalist sense, the Goan Catholic working class, already knows it is Concanim enough.

Once we recognize that there are at least two Konkanis at work in the Goan cultural sphere, things begin to make a lot more sense. We can see that the official and stunted State Konkani may in fact be killing a vibrant unofficial one. Recognizing the working class history of unofficial Konkani, would also point us in the direction where Concanim can be a vehicle for an inclusive secular culture in the State.

It seems that it is this history that Armando Gonsalvez and his collaborators have connected with in their ‘Konkani Rocks’ project. It has been interesting to see the manner in which this project slowly evolved from ‘Jazz’ to combining ‘Jazz’ with ‘Konkani’. The beauty of the whole project is that because it delves, quite unselfconsciously into lived (and living) Concanim history, there is hardly a contradiction in the project. It is fun and it draws the crowds, persuading us without being heavily pedantic that Konkani can and indeed is fun. Simply put, it ‘Rocks!’

In this project, Konkani is not a nationalist millstone round our collective necks. On the contrary, it connects both with cosmopolitan past, and a cosmopolitan future. Armando’s formulation, ‘English Talks, Konkani Rocks’ twines the pragmatic approach of the Goan working class perfectly. There is no need for either to be displaced since each language has its place, and fulfills a definite need. Furthermore, 'Konkani Rocks' returns to a history that many of us, not just those pushing State Konkani, have done much to hide and forget. These actions, of shame in our working class history, have done much to ensure a shame in Concanim. By holding it, albeit indirectly, as something worth returning to, 'Konkani Rocks' reminds us that the Goan Catholics working class past is nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, it was a period that generated the culture that we today recognize as Konkani.

That this formulation is also concerned with what the BBSM claims to be concerned with is obvious from a column Armando penned some days ago. He pointed out that ‘When I felt that my children were not so keen on learning the language [Konkani], I was all the more pained because I myself am not that good at it. Hence, instead of forcing the language down my children’s throats, I decided that the best way forward would be to attract them to the language, to pull them to their mother tongue, and what better way to do it than via music, dance and other cultural avenues. I presumed, correctly I think, that if my children would sing a Konkani song and dance to one, their interest in the language would improve drastically, and in this way their will to learn the language would be that much more fired up that without this cajoling.’

Rather than pull out some dusty folk-song and dance that the children may not identify with, Armando delved into a cultural tradition they could identify with. On the twentieth of August they drew from one of the most popular forms of recent history, the Big Band; and voila, Magics became!

Konkani Rocks is truly magic, and is a wonderful example of the role elites can play in pushing a more democratic public culture to greater prominence in society, by attending to popular histories instead of relying on civilizing missions that were inspired from the racist and colonial paradigms of the last millennium. It would be interesting to see how ‘Konkani Rocks’ manages to push forward a more democratic and sustainable model for Konkani in this State.

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 24 Aug 2011)