Between Colonialism and Constitutionalism: Reflections on fifty odd years of being Indian - II

On the 19 of December this year, the anniversary of the successful completion of the Indian action to integrate Goa into the Indian Union, two status messages popped up on Facebook. The first read “61 Years of illegal occupation by rapist from Delhi. Some call it being liberated”; the second read, “The day Portuguese colonial rule was replaced by Indian colonial rule.”

Both of these messages demonstrate the unease felt by a segment of Goans (regardless of religious identity) with regard to the consequences of what the Indian nation-state calls “Liberation”. While somewhat uncomfortable with the first proposition, I was glad for the suggestion of the second message, because it put a good amount of the Indian nation-state’s relationship with Goa in context; that Goa, and Goans, were inducted into a colonial relationship with India from 19 December 1961. The sooner we begin to start seeing the relationship in this light, the sooner we will be able to remove ourselves from the sticky situation that the politics of “Special Status” will eventually take us.  I argue therefore, that counter-intuitively, confronting the colonial nature of the Indian relationship with Goa will save Goa from the disastrous politics contained within the Special Status move. To do this, I seek to make a distinction between the colonialism of the Indian nation, and the constitutionalism of the Indian state.

The first status message referred to above makes two points. The first proposes that Indian sovereignty over Goa is illegal, a possibly logical conclusion given that the Goan people were, never really asked what their options would be subsequent to this “Liberation” from Portuguese sovereignty. They were not asked in 1961, at the conclusion of the Indian action; and they were not asked in 1974 when the successors to Salazar’s Estado Novo conceded India’s claim’s over Goa. Problematising the legal status of India’s continuing claims on Goa should not however blind us to the fact, as it seems to have blinded the author of this status message, that the Indian action in Goa was in fact a liberation for a great segment of the Goan population. Once and for all, it broke the back of the native feudal structure that enjoyed a reciprocal relationship with Portuguese sovereignty. Portuguese sovereignty sustained this feudal structure, and the feudal structure sustained Portuguese sovereignty over Goa. It was the challenge to this feudal structure that enabled a great number of Goans to pursue careers and relish freedoms that they had till date not enjoyed.

There is a popular misconception that democracy was unknown in Goa until the Indians came and introduced Goans to this system of governance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Goans were familiar with democracy from the time Portugal, of which Goa was part, became a constitutional monarchy. This was a liberal democracy however, and its scope severely restricted. It was nevertheless a democracy, and this induction into democracy was only deepened as a result of the induction into the Indian Union that gave every adult the right to participate in electing the representatives of the state. It was this deeper democracy, enabled through the provisions of the Indian Constitution that broke back of Goan feudalism, and for this reason, the actions in 1961 were, as much as they enabled Indian colonialism, should also be seen as a liberation.

India then, comes to Goans as a double edged sword, liberative, and at the same time exploitative. The demands for Special Status, in its popular sense, seek to deal with the exploitative or the colonial manner of India’s relationship with Goa. This popular sentiment however, is being exploited by another understanding for Special Status, one discussed in the preceding column. This understanding, pushed by the political, economic and social elites of the State seeks greater autonomy to enable greater unaccountability of these elites. This latter demand for Special Status would set us against the liberative project of the Indian Constitution. Indeed, we should bear in mind, that a number of the demands that twine with Special Status today, are effectively demands that militate against the freedoms guaranteed as fundamental rights to the citizens of India. Presenting feudal pre-1961 as an ideal, they challenge the claims of “outsiders” to the gamut of rights enshrined in the Indian constitution.

One particular example is that where a number of pro-special status Goans exulted in the  destruction of the makeshift residences of waste-managers in Margão in the middle of the monsoon season. Challenging the accession of some people to basic rights today will ensure that the same rights are denied to those who now deny to outsiders tomorrow. The problem in Goa, especially vis-à-vis land, is that a power equation, in particular a colonial power equation, presided over by Delhi, that allows certain kinds of Goans, Indians and foreigners superiors powers over the common person is not being challenged. A Special Status agenda that limits ownership of land to Goans alone, will simply not resolve the problem that is rooted in the colonial nature of India’s relationship with Goa (and other peripheries of the Indian Union’s neo-colonial empire). A constitutional project however, is committed to see real equality, not merely procedural equality, realised, and would deal with this hitherto unchallenged power equation.

The response of the common person therefore, ought to be located in a commitment to the constitutional project. As suggested earlier, this constitutional project began in Goa in 1834, and it is necessary to recall this history if we are to simultaneously challenge the rhetoric of Indian nationalism while at the same time supporting a project of Indian constitutionalism. Such a project would see that there can be a concept of an India that is wedded not to national cohesion, and the suppression of rights that it is accompanied by; nor to a Goan nationalism, that is simultaneously based on suppressing discussion of local problems; but is wedded to an constitutional project, Indian or otherwise. Such a constitutional project would ensure that rights are taken seriously; as opposed to the current Indian national practice that does not take these rights seriously.  This is an Indian nation-state that does not respect the individual, whether it is the cases where women are denied the ability to lodge a complaint of rape and treated like it is their fault, where persons are routinely tortured, or people dispossessed to suit the developmental goals of its capitalist classes. Indeed, a movement on Special Status that is incapable of taking a nuanced position on the future of the mining industry in Goa is one that is not taking constitutional issues seriously.

In sum, the event in 1961 was not wholly without redemption. It was in fact genuinely liberative for a large segment of the Goan population, even as it trapped them within a colonial relationship of another, and continuing, kind. The response to this colonialism is emphatically not the current brand of demands for Special Status, but a commitment to the constitutional project that the Indian State promised, and any state should. It will eventually be a realisation of these constitutional ideals that will ensure that the future of Goa is a secure one.

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 16 Jan 2013)

The Portuguese language and the future of Goan Liberation

A popular rhetorical cliché used on the anniversaries of Indian independence, inquires if indeed, we Indians are really free. This cliché urges us to consider independence not as a single moment in time, but as a process towards realizing a utopian society free of all social evils and problems. It would not be out of place therefore, to ask a similar question of Goan liberation, and stress that liberation cannot mean a single moment in time, but must necessarily be seen as a process, of our deepening commitment to the democratic project.

The introduction of Indian democracy to Goa has been an interesting process. Unfortunately however, it has also meant the abandonment, or erasure of the Portuguese language in Goa. It should be stressed however, that the learning of Portuguese by the contemporary Goan, is not unconnected with the larger project of greater democratization of Goan society. On the contrary, the fulfillment of the democratic project is critically tied to more Goans learning and using the Portuguese language.

This stress on the Portuguese language is not to give this language a rightful place in Goan history, nor to legitimize the traits of those Goans who have a marked ‘Portuguese’ aspect in their lifestyle. Such an argument borders on recognizing Portuguese for its value as Portuguese, and does not hold much value from a cultural-nationalist point of view. An argument that would (and should) hold value from a nationalist position, is one that is tied to the manner in which Portuguese is linked to the arrangement of power in contemporary Goan society.

To wholly understand the significance of this argument, it is essential that we underline a well-rehearsed argument; colonialism in any part of the world, and this holds true for Goa as well, was not merely the result of unilateral foreign domination. On the contrary, colonialism persisted thanks to the participation of local elites in the colonial project.  Thus, as English ensured access to power in the colonial British-Indian administration, and education in English models of education ensured participation in the power forms of the British Empire, so too in Goa, the adoption of Portuguese was critical to gaining power not merely in the administrative and political sphere, but also in the social. Righting this balance of power is critical to the democratic project.

In colonial times the Portuguese language was so intimately associated with elite groups, both Hindu as well as Catholic, that the knowledge of Portuguese was, and continues to be, effectively a caste marker of the dominant groups in Goan society. Thus for example, at least among Catholic circles, despite the predominance that English has come to take as a marker of social mobility and status, to come from a ‘Portuguese speaking background’, continues to indicate one’s (longer) privileged location within the hierarchies of Goan Catholic society.  Furthermore, it is not uncommon to have it pointed out, that Portuguese was not a lingua franca within Goa but one largely used by the elites. In making this seemingly innocent factual assertion however, one is simultaneously also subtly marking the boundaries of Portuguese heritage within Goan society. Thus for example, as a result of this logic, it is overwhelmingly the lifestyles and material culture of the landed elite that have been focused on as representations of Indo-Portuguese architecture, while those of the more humble are largely ignored. These demarcations ensure a privileged focus on the lifestyles and material culture of just this small elite segment of Goan Catholic society, casting the rest into a kind of cultural barbarity. Take for example the manner in which the vibrant Tiatr tradition, primarily because it was not, and continues to not be, the entertainment of the Goan elites, is constantly shrugged off as ‘lacking standard’ despite the fact of its stellar role as a medium of social analysis and entertainment. To encourage a broader learning of Portuguese would effectively challenge this link between social status and the language. If more Goans become ‘Portuguese speaking’, it would make nonsense of the ‘Portuguese speaking background’ marker that we currently use, effectively frustrating, albeit partially, the manner in which social difference is articulated today.

More critically, and moving beyond the possibly restricted frames of the Goan Catholic, knowledge of Portuguese was critical to the maintenance of control over the State administration as well as State documentation of land rights. Not a few family, and caste group, fortunes were made by virtue of this restricted access to the language in colonial Goa. Even though English has now replaced Portuguese as a State language; as the continuous stream of persons perusing land records in the State archives in Panjim would indicate, Portuguese continues to be critical to being able to assert, and mask, claims to land. Today, when subaltern groups in contemporary Goa face even an greater threat of access to land rights, it would be a  strategic error to allow control of the interpretation of Portuguese language documents and laws, to be based in the hands of just the few, largely ‘upper’ caste, groups that have resumed learning the Portuguese language.

The popular history of the Portuguese period in Goa has largely been restricted to the gory tales of the initial conquest of the island of Goa, of the Inquisition, and the dramatization of the anti-colonial episodes in the territory’s history. To a large extent, this nationalist history dissuades Hindus from subaltern castes from studying the language. This has ensured that it is solely dominant-caste narratives that are incorporated into the histories of the territory, preventing alternative and liberatory narratives to emerge from a re-reading of the texts and narratives of the period of Portuguese sovereignty over the territory.  It is little known for example, that the knowledge of Portuguese is critical to the bahujan challenge to Hindu upper-caste groups’ monopolistic control of the Goan temples. This monopolistic control of the temples was forged in particular through these latter groups’ knowledge of Portuguese.

Finally, is the argument that rests on the recognition that the emergence of equality is facilitated when there is parity in representational power. While a number of Portuguese scholars work on Goan history and society, it is extremely difficult to find Goan scholars who work on explaining Portuguese society, and its history unrelated to Goa. When we are able to effectively build up this band of scholars, who can represent the workings of the Portuguese to Goa, India, and the world; and engage in Portugal’s press and academy, with their representations of Goa; then we would lay the definitive foundations for greater equality between the two spaces. To do this however, requires that the Goan learn Portuguese.

For these reasons therefore, the learning of Portuguese by the contemporary Goan, is an essential component of our democratic project that the action of the Indian Union in December 1961 sought to forward.

(Published in the commemorative section of the O Heraldo 19 Dec 2011)

The Tejpal Factor: Trigger finger of the colonial gun

You already know that the recently concluded Thinkfest, organized by Tehelka, was partly in the news for the wrong reasons. In addition to being hosted by alleged violators of the coastal zone regulations, and being backed by mining interests, serious charges had also been brought against the editor of Tehelka, Mr. Tarun Tejpal. One of these charges was brought by an anti-mining activist, Mr. Hartmann de Souza, who alleged that Tejpal had deliberately silenced a critical story on the illegalities involved in Goa’s mining industry. Subsequently, Tejpal got into trouble for making a suggestion that when people come to Goa, in this case guests at the Thinkfest, high on their priority was engaging in sexual and other sensorial excesses.

Tejpal responded to Mr. de Souza in a profoundly insulting riposte in the Hindustan Times, attempting to deny the charges of silencing the mining story; and denied the charges regarding his statement at the Thinkfest. In his rebuttal, de Souza piled one fact upon another to demonstrate the hollowness of Tejpal’s defence. One came away from reading de Souza’s response to acknowledge that there was indeed something sticky about Tejpal, Goa and the mining issue. What this systematic destruction of Tejpal’s fig leaf left untouched however, was the colonial thinking that Tejpal had demonstrated in his response to de Souza, and which seems to have manifested itself in his alleged statement at the Thinkfest.

Tejpal’s response to de Souza commenced with the title ‘Albert Pinto ko gussa kyon aata hai’ (What makes Albert Pinto angry?). For those not in the know, the title refers to the 1981 film by Saeed Mirza featuring the socio-political dilemmas that face a young working-class Catholic man in midst of the socio-economic turmoil of Bombay in the 1970’s and 1980s. Interestingly, while the film itself offers a critical and sympathetic look at a subalternsocial group that in addition to being a religious minority was further marginalized economically and politically, Tejpal’s title does the opposite. If there is a link to Bollywood in Tejpal’s title, then it is to the ‘Anthony Gonsalvez’ from the film ‘Amar, Akbar, Anthony’ (AAA). If Mirza’s film paints a realistic likeness of a community, AAA paints the Indian west-coast Catholic into a caricature. This caricature is not unfamiliar to us, Bollywood repeatedly casts, dismissively, the Goan-East-Indian communities  as jolly (read alcohol-charged) fellows, ready for the singing and dancing. One cannot really expect them to mount a serious argument, and they are at best given to spontaneous bursts of emotion; like children really. This reading of Tejpal’s title is borne out by the manner in which he structures his response, where he rebuts every allegation, only by mocking de Souza’s alleged inability to follow an argument, or his alleged collapse into hysterical anger. The underlying message of Tejpal’s response is unmistakable; you can’t take this de Souza fellow seriously, discussing with him being an experience akin to arguing with a child (or a drunk). This was a colonial tactic too. The white-man assumed a colonial burden of educating the childlike noble savages into civilization, and the techniques of democratic governance.

Tejpal then takes up another technique used by the white man in his colonial drive. One of the justifications for colonialism was the inability of the colonized native to effectively harness the resources of the locations they lived in. The colonizer was effectively doing them a favour by effectively exploiting the local resources for development. Tejpal informs us in his response to Mr. de Souza that “the house we bought was an old ruin in an inner village”. In his rejoinder to this riposte, de Souza informs us that there were also words like “I mean, look at Moira man, it’s a dying Goan village”. Tejpal would perhaps prefer if we did not rely on de Souza’s version of the conversation between the two of them, but it does not change the way in which we read Tejpal and his statement. The point of Tejpal’s argument is clear, he is doing Goa and Goans a favour by buying an ‘old ruin’ that Goans themselves (shame on them) do not value, and he is going to breathe life into it. Could the colonial logics be any clearer? The colonial master values (the delicate Goan architecture) what the local savage (the Goan so blindly destroying his own culture) does not. 

This logic of saving has been a part of the rhetoric of a good number of those who come into Goa buying Goan property, and oftentime home-bred Goans themselves. To make this argument is to fail to see the complex mix of reasons, the socio-economic and political reasons, why Goan homes are being pulled down. To blame the Goan is all too easy, but then this easy response is part of the colonial technique of simplifying matters so that the more complex argument brought on by the colonized seem like misplaced anger, and blind stupidity. We should not forget the histories of other colonized places, where impoverished persons of the local communities (be they the First Nations of America, or the adivasis of Central India, the aborigines of Australia) were first impoverished, and then made to sell to the colonizer what they would not have contemplated selling before. This process of impoverishment, and forced selling of livelihood and history, is not uncommon even today in large parts of India, not least in Central India.

Tejpal does not see himself as part of a colonial machinery. After all how could he, given that he sees himself as the good guy fighting against the evil forces of corporate greed. But perhaps Tejpal has not followed his own logic carefully. In his response he indicated that he pleaded with de Souza to make space for ‘complexity, in an intricately intertwined world.’ If we acknowledge this intricate intertwining that Tejpal suggests, then we must also acknowledge that while we fight the good fight elsewhere, we are also implicated in the evil conquests elsewhere.

The problem with the left-leaning Indian liberal is that they do not realize that they are as Indian as the Indians they fight on other fronts. Despite their battles, they share many traits of an Indian-ness, and they too are engaged in an Indian national project, though they differ on the tiny details of this project’s agenda. And so it is, when de Souza protests against the kind of colonial enterprise that Tejpal is associating with in the Goan context, Tejpals suggests that ‘I suspect, for him if it isn’t Goa it doesn’t count.’ What is this if not the kind of charge of anti-nationalism that gets leveled against all those who protest against the excesses of the Indian Union’s colonial project, whether it is in the mountains of Kashmir, the jungles of Jharkhand, or the banks of the Brahmaputra? Tejpal leveled this charge against de Souza three times, ignoring the personal history of a man, committed to another kind of Indian-ness.

The Indian left-liberal may oppose Hindu fundamentalism, but this is largely because they don’t like this ‘return-to-the-Vedas’ kind of Brahmanism that the RSS pushes. On other fronts, they will push their own particular brand of Brahmanism, a form that Pandit Nehru was particularly fond of. One could call this, ‘playing the white man’. On the one hand Kashmir is important because it stresses our Aryan roots, on the other hand Goa is important because as long as they continue to keep up this ‘piece-of-Europe-in-India’ story, they can continue to pretend they are white people. Let us not forget the alacrity with which the former play-spaces of the white masters were taken over by the post-colonial Indian babu; from Lutyen’s Delhi, to the Himalayan and other hill-stations, Pondicherrry, and Goa.

In light of the colonially loaded sub-text of Tejpal’s response to de Souza, one should not be surprised if Tejpal did indeed make those vile remarks in the course of the Think Fest. But we would do ourselves an injustice if we restricted our gaze to Tejpal alone. The larger issue is that there are so many Tejpal’s out there, busy pushing a contemporary colonial agenda. These Tejpals exist both within the ranks of the 'insider' as they do within the 'outsider'. The issue is, what do we do about them?

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 16 Nov 2011)

Letters from Portugal: Sabores do racismo

Writing in The Guardian some time ago, and dealing with the issue of racism in Portugal, Joana Gorjão Henriques, a Portuguese journalist wrote that ‘Even though Portugal has racial profiling, race crime and the daily subordination of black people by whites, most Portuguese would deny that their country has significant "racial problems" – that's what they have in America, France or the UK. Such attitudes are a hangover from the dictatorship years and the “luso-tropicalism” ideology created by the Brazilian Gilberto Freyre in the 1950s, which spread the idea that the Portuguese were better colonisers – and that ongoing British or French soul-searching over race was a result of “bad colonizing”.

This is the curious feature of Portugal, in that as much as they aver that things have changed since the bad days of the Estado Novo, and things have changed, some things still remain; perhaps not the same but they linger. But this is another matter, and perhaps we should stick to discussing racism.

The problem perhaps lies in the fact that when we (or ‘the Portuguese’) think about racism, we think of dramatic occurrences, ‘significant racial problems’. In doing so, we seem to excuse the small, hidden acts of racism that we effect on a daily basis, that lay the basis for the more significant acts to emerge. If we acknowledged these small acts, we would realize that racism inheres not in the dramatic acts, but in these small quotidian actions. Take for example the simple act in which we brush away the ‘coloured’ peddler of wares, or jump back, even if ever so imperceptibly, when a person of colour approaches us.

Bairro Alto, one of Lisbon’s more popular night-spots has a number of street-vendors who seem to have racially divided their occupations. If ‘the Africans’ sell you beads and trinkets, the South Asians sell you roses and toys that flash with light, and the Portuguese-Gypsies politely offer you ‘drugs’ of various sorts.

It is with this background that the reader should imagine me setting off, rather dandily, on one of my first evenings in Lisbon to a dinner party. Being ever so well-brought up, I had in hand a designer bouquet for the hostess. Stopping enroute, at the Jardim Principe Real, not too far from Bairro Alto, I approached (what I presumed to be) a lady to ask for directions. The response left me bewildered for what I received was a rather rude brush-off as she rushed away saying ‘No, no, no’. Scratching my head in bewilderment, it too me some time to realize that the bouquet in my head (and probably the colour of my face) gave the good lady cause to assume I was trying to sell her my bouquet! Or take the example when another lady, seemed somewhat nervous – she actually jumped back - when I approached her (admittedly in the less secure Intendente neighbourhood) for directions to my destination.

Two swallows admittedly do not make a summer, and this is not to argue therefore that ‘the Portuguese’ are racist. It merely illustrates some of the possible flavours of racism. Indeed, one should inquire into my own South-Asian racism, when my response to such racism is to point indignantly to my class location, given that our class locations allow us so often to operate as white. One could also inquire, whether like most South Asians from a certain background, I am also not reading race whenever my ego is bruised by someone whose respect I merely take for granted. And yet, each of these inquiries should not prevent the partner in these encounters to inquire if they too sniff the odour of racism in their actions.

To repeat a point and elaborate somewhat, racism should be understood as inhering not merely in the dramatic and violent acts that attract our attention, but also in the quotidian acts that draw from gut instinct, preconceptions, and unconscious reactions. It would be impossible to deny that any of us is not racist, given that the contemporary world order is still recovering from its colonial past, a past that was actively based on racial stereotypes. If we can recognize that in this game of racism, it is not just about aggressors and the violated, but also about all of us participating in a market where we use racist ideas as capital to build on in whatever form, then perhaps we can get away from these ridiculous suggestions that we are not racist and begin to examine what exactly are the ingredients that contribute to the peculiar flavour of our individual racism.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo 16 Oct 2011)

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)