Films and civil society: Standing up against the easy response

Selma Carvalho, author of Into the Diaspora Wilderness is one of Goa’s brave new voices. Hers is a brave voice because she dares to speak truths that her audience does not particularly like to hear. The case I have in mind is her spirited response to the whole Dum Maro Dum controversy. In her essay on The Goan Voice, she pointed out that regardless of how offensive we may find the film or references in it to Goa, ‘Hurt sensibilities do not give us the right to clamp down on free speech in the guise of protecting society. The principles of democracy are far greater, far more important than our hurt.’

She argued further that ‘We must realize, that in a free society, civil liberties such as the artist’s right to create, to interpret, to challenge existing norms are sacrosanct. They must be protected, they must be fought for as fiercely as our nationalist heroes fought for Liberation and they must be honoured every step of the way even when it repulses us to do so. Unless the mind is allowed to roam unfettered, it cannot create, it cannot hold a mirror unto society. When the creative mind itself is weighed down by censorship, society stagnates; it becomes hollow, echoing only those sentiments which it finds acceptable from within its empty chambers.’

Carvalho’s voice must be cherished not merely because she is brave, but because, as her argument above demonstrates, she has the gift of foresight. She understands that the arguments we use today, can just as well be used by elements of the far-right. Indeed, she makes this argument against those protesting for a ban of Dum Maro Dum because of the similarity in tone shared by the shrill remonstrations against the film and those often raised by the Hindu right; a perfect example being the recent demonstrations against the works of Prof. José Pereira.

There are many who believe that opposition to the Hindu Right is sufficient, and that in face of this larger enemy, we should hold our peace against the bigots in our midst. As Carvalho argues, this position is pointless. The Hindu Right are not necessarily products of some peculiarly ‘Hindu’ perversion but the result of attitudes that are running strong through our society today. What the Hindu Right has been protesting as an insult to Hindus and Hinduism, the Catholic bigots have been protesting as an insult to the ‘Goan identity’. On the other hand you have the local ‘feminists’ who may wind up producing a scenario not very different from what a Taliban-mentality may produce. In his review of the situation, Cecil Pinto pointed to the rather bizarre signs held up by those protesting against the disrespect shown to local women.

The demand for intervention of the State is particularly scary because of the manner in which the Goan State has been relating to the law especially in the course of the Kamat administration. Public demands are often used to support, or used as a precedent to support, the willful use of law to support a situation where anarchy can reign. Thus on numerous occasions, Mr. Kamat has pleaded inability to act when he should because of ‘public protest’. And yet, perhaps displaying a sympathy for the Hindu Right, has stood by while statal authorities effect de facto bans on works and events objected to by the Hindu Right.

Carvalho also points out the deep hypocrisy shown by the members of the legislative assembly, who protested against the film, even as Goa continues to be officially marketed by the State as a tourist destination for ‘fun’, where Goa is in fact marked by a sinister nexus between Ministers and drug lords, and the Goa represented in the film may not in fact be too far from the Goa that has been actively created by our political class.

One cannot help but extract once more from Carvalho’s impassioned prose:

‘Women's groups are up in arms that a movie will distort the image of women. Let's look at how well women have fared in Goa in recent history. When a young woman alleged that she was raped by a wanna-be politician, he had enough clout to delay his own interrogation, the powers-that-be asked what she was doing out so late. When Scarlett Keeling washed up on our shores, so obviously physically brutalized, the case was dismissed as one of drowning. Only Fiona Mackeown, her mother's relentless intervention forced the government to re-open the case. The Government insisted Fiona Mackeown was out to tarnish the image of Goa. In fact, all she wanted was a mother's justice for her daughter - a woman's justice.’

There are some who have correctly pointed out that the film does display a certain kind of colonial gaze that the ‘Indian’ has toward Goa. Goa, and the (largely Catholic) Goan, can be used in a manner that is best described as colonial. The space and the identity exploited for the benefit of another. However, they seek to use this valid observation to perpetuate an internal colonialism, by arguing for the ‘Special Status’. Clever monkeys.

What we must recognize is that it is not just Goa, and the Goan, that is marked out for the colonial relationship vis-à-vis India. There are numerous other groups in India marked out in this manner. Kashmir and the Kashmiri is one such group. There can be no denying that the relationship of the ‘Indian’ with Kashmir is colonial, and the Kashmiri is often actively depicted as the ‘terrorist’. If Goa has been depicted in this particular film as lawless, then Bihar is almost always represented as a gangster paradise, populated by boors who if not gangsters are docile workers. The list could go on and on.

We would perhaps be better served if we used this controversy to reflect on the manner in which certain segments of the Hindi film industry in Bombay actively create stereotypes that justify the treatments meted out to segments of the Indian population. There is a definitely a colonial relationship that is being articulated for the colonial Indian Republic that justifies unequal treatment for categories of Indians and we need to wisen up to this act.

The response however lies not in banning the film, nor does it lie in the dubious demand for ‘Special or Separate Status’ which is in fact merely the precursor to the demand for what will be the devastating demand independence. The response lies in addressing the less glamorous, but definitely more fruitful path of seeking to build a respectful and just society, not just within Goa, but through the Indian Union. The response to those who feel offended by the film’s depiction in Goa would be, those of you who have sneered at the Bihari, bad-mouthed a spirited woman, or hated a Kashmiri, let them cast the first stone.

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times, 4 May 2011)

Opening the Third Eye: Goan History after Into the Diaspora Wilderness

This column last week challenged the notion of Goa Indica as being an incomplete cliché, incapable of capturing the nuances of Goa’s history. Because it sought to do battle with the idea of Goa Dourada, an idea promoted by Portuguese imperialism, the contours of Goa Indica are suffocatingly nationalistic. Manifesting in local rhetoric, Goa Indica had to deny the Portuguese impact, and look for an independent Goan identity prior to the Portuguese. As a result, it fell into the Indian nationalist trap of looking at history from a brahmanical point of view. This ignored, almost entirely, the history and experience of the non-dominant sections of Goan society, especially those Catholic groups that were the non-dominant (or subaltern). To be sure this was not a malicious overlooking, but the result of the position from which this history was being written. Where the Catholic faith was seen as a Portuguese injection into Goa, how could anything that these groups possessed, be capable of yielding a ‘pre-Portuguese’?

This forgetting of the subaltern Catholic is however, gradually being redressed, and thank goodness for it. The movement for the recognition of the Roman script and the cultural productions associated with it, the celebration of Cantaram with the recent Konkani Rocks concert, are moves that seem to be slowly addressing this grave lacuna in the crafting of the Goan identity. To this happy move, was recently added Into the Diaspora Wilderness, a book written by Selma Carvalho about the Goan ‘diaspora’ in the British Empire.

Carvalho’s book is a must read because it shifts the focus in the telling of Goa’s story in many ways. Already in the ‘Short Introduction’ she indicates a few changes in the way in which she looks at Goa. She is critical of “[A] miniscule section of the Goan population (who) sat indolently in the grandeur of chandeliered reception halls”. This book is not about their story. This is a story of those who moved away. Those who could not see the otherwise much celebrated “quiet eloquence of rural Goa: the peace, tranquility, self-sustaining village life in which one seeks solitude”. This is the story of those who could not bear the 'desultory, isolation of the vaddo...the eerie silence of the night...The empty, hollow sense that nothing could germinate in the village which could take one beyond its boundary”. And it is because it is a story of those who moved away, it is not a story that is tied to Goan land and histories of gãocarial connections to land. It is a story that is forged by the traveler, in particular the otherwise-mocked tarvotti, the sneered-at Gulfie, whose travels “have profoundly shaped our cultural mores.” These stories take us across the seas, into Africa and are twined with British Africa, and the Anglo-Saxon world. Carvalho is fully aware of these shifts she is making, evident when she says; “Very often, when the story of the Goan migration is told, it is done from the vantage point of Goa. It is as if Goans went to these countries but somehow remained unaffected by what transpired in these distant lands, as if they existed in a political and cultural vacuum. The reality is, there were transformations taking place every step of the journey, transformations which have inevitably affected the collective Goan psyche.” This story then, makes the profound point that has to be made again and again, and again before it becomes part of Goan commonsense; the Goan psyche was profoundly influenced by experiences outside of Goa, and these Goans were subaltern folk, who left Goan shores in search of financial sustenance, often to escape the suffocation of a caste-ridden, hierarchical and unimaginative society. There is a third shift she effects. She speaks of Goan times, under Portuguese sovereignty, but there is barely a reference to the Portuguese. In doing so, she prompts us to ask if when looking at the histories of the Goan subaltern, the Portuguese were perhaps not the main referent? Perhaps this obsession with the pre-Portuguese past is just a red-herring that disappears when we start looking at the histories of the subaltern Goan? In other words, the crafting of a Goan identity need not centre (as Goa Indica also does) around the Portuguese. They were merely one small, if significant, chapter in a larger Goan story.

Carvalho rescues the stories of a number of persons for the telling of Goan history; the otherwise uncelebrated Caitans and Joãos, who no doubt went to their grave thinking they were nobodies. But Selma also tells these stories twined with her own. Like Maria Aurora Couto before her, Selma too tells a daughter’s story. This positioning of both these Goan raconteurs within the bosom of family is perhaps not coincidental. Like Selma points out, Goan migration was often pioneering, going into uncharted waters. For these groups, subaltern in the larger global hierarchy, security and upward mobility came not from State or Company, but via the support from family and the connections generated through creating familial relationships with each other.

One wishes though, her narrative had dealt with caste a little more critically than it does. By virtue of telling the stories she has, she is forced to mention caste. But having done so, she falls into the old Goan Catholic trap of not discussing caste in public. We pretend innocence about it. As a result, she mentions caste, but fails to attempt a critical discussion of it. This failing is nowhere as obvious as when she discusses its presence among the Goan communities in Africa. Thus for example in the case of the relationships that Goans in Kenya had with the future of a postcolonial Goa she refers to the fact of the two sides (pro-India led by J.M. Nazareth and pro-Portuguese faction led by Dr. A.C.L. de Souza) being motivated by caste battles. Having done so, she refuses to elaborate on the name of these castes or elaborate on these divisions.

But perhaps this silence is also because through her writing what Carvalho is also attempting is a rescuing of the dignity of the groups she writes about, from the humiliation they normally experience. The discussion of caste could perhaps wait another day, when we are more secure in, and less apologetic about our identities. Carvalho however, also seems to uncritically accept other hierarchies, for example that of the white (Anglo-Saxon) man who crafted the British Empire. While acknowledging the role of the Goan in lending vital support to this Empire, she does not seem to be critical of the manner in which it moulded the Goan psyche. Did being the Imperial overseer create racial prejudices that we do not acknowledge? Where there are possibilities to take this forward, she unhappily lets these threads fall. At times, one could not help in wondering, whether the twining of the Goan story with that of Empire, does not make the Goan somewhat nostalgic for this time of Empire.

Finally, even though it is a wonderful read and a critical contribution to Goan historiography and literature, the stories that Carvalho narrates are often snapshots strung together from disparate settings. There is none of the thickness of description that is the demand of the ethnographer. Very often, the story has only begun when it very frustratingly ends. One wonders therefore, if her book would not have been better served through more focused elaborations of selected theaters of Goan migration. But then on the other hand, this is perhaps only the first of more productions that will fully elaborate the untold stories of the subaltern Goan abroad? It would be a shame if Selma Carvalho, with her charming prose, resolute voice, and unflinching gaze stops at just one book.

(First published in the Gomantak Times 1 Sept 2010)