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)

Closing the Doors to Democracy, Opening them to Tyranny: Responding to the Thomas-Faleiro Arguments – Part 2

In the initial part of this phased response, I had suggested that the Thomas-Faleiro argument represented both an opening up and a closure. The argument operates to prise open domains, currently under the traditional leadership of the Catholic communities, to the State. In this concluding portion of the response, I would like to suggest that the opening up is especially dangerous for the simultaneous closures that such a move would result in.

Allowing us to see this closure as a movement akin to suffocation, we should not forget that the suggestion for a State law regulating Church properties first emerged in the distinctly hostile (towards religious minorities) State of Madhya Pradesh, and Kerala where the Church has a major clout through its moral power in political history.

The initial attempts in these states now seem to have led to a nation-wide attempt to regulate the management of Church assets. This move is dangerous for a number of reasons. First, it repeats the primary mistake of the Indian polity, which is to see people as comprising essentially of monolithic religious groups, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Christians. Nothing could be further from the truth, since these communities are fractured by class, caste, language and many other factors. In the case of the Catholics, for sure there is no such thing as a uniform Indian Catholic. In Goa, despite our best beliefs, the Church is in reality fractured along lines of caste, class and language. While the erasure of these differences is necessary if a State is to create a monolithic ‘community’ over which it will legislate a uniform law, this action not only lays the ground for the communalism that this country suffers from, but also for the suppression of marginal and subaltern voices within these ‘communities’. The creation of the monolithic identity, leads to a closing of spaces for internal dissent and reform within these ‘communities’, empowering conservative tendencies within them. Take a look at the Muslims in the country, where progressively over time, the space for internal dissent and reform has been quashed given that conservative clerical groups are recognized as leaders of the community. Within the Catholic faith, it would in fact be the Clerical hierarchy that would see eye-to-eye with the Indian State (and its minions) on the matter of consolidating the community (even as it would oppose any control over its functioning). The former are congenitally blinded to this complex social reality, since they are committed to the spiritual fiction of being one united (and Catholic) Church. And yet this is not social reality, which is marked by numerous dissensions and divisions.

There is without doubt a need for greater transparency and accountability in the management of Church properties. I also agree that this management must be in conformance with Constitutional principles. The issue on which I differ however is that of the means of implementing this agenda. It is precisely because of its colonial heritage that Goa has a social and cultural infrastructure that allows for the radical realization of democracy through decentralization. The Portuguese structured colonial power in Goa through the recognition of the powers of villages to regulate village economies. The Church followed a similar pattern, leading to each village contributing its properties to erect and maintain the village church, establishing a trust, the Fabrica, to control these properties. Like the Communidades however, these Fabricas too were by and large controlled by the gãocars, village elites, often from the dominant families and castes of the village. When one speaks of Church property today therefore, one refers to not just property of the Bishop (as representative head of the Diocese) but properties of a plethora of individual churches who hold these properties as autonomous owners.

Religion is not merely a disciplining of the soul, but a disciplining of material practices as well. The Bishop exerts therefore a disciplining control over these Fabricas and their material transactions. To manage these affairs, the Catholic diocese in Goa has already got in place a management system that allows for decentralized control. This management system is regulated by a written (and published) Code. This Code refers to the provisions of Canon Law and shares in spirit and procedures the form of State Law. We should remember that Canon Law and State Law both have common roots in Roman law and are siblings in many aspects. The bases on which they depart, are the sources of power that ensure their continuity. The power for one is the power of the State, the other that of the Tradition and moral weight of the Catholic Church. A significant feature of the current code that governs the Fabricas is to liberate these bodies from the control that dominant castes in the villages had in the days of the Portuguese. The properties of village churches is now returned to the spirit of early times, and held by the community of the faithful together, represented by the local Parish Council. Nothing could be closer to the spirit of the Constitutional values of equality, accountability and transparency.

As should be obvious by now, a realization of the Thomas-Faleiro formula would ensure a closure at all of the levels above, laying the foundation for greater communalism, encourage conservative leadership, and smooth over the nuances of local history and in this process close the plural legal spaces that exist at the Catholic grass-roots, allowing for vesting of absolute power in the State. Absolute power as we know, corrupts absolutely.

Rather than this route therefore, what we require now is, in the presence of the Code, located within a venerable body of Canon law; the engineering of a grass-roots constitutionalism that will allow members of the parish to demand and realise greater accountability. Grass-roots constitutionalism being the fomenting and realization of Constitutional values within grassroots institutions. In short, while we need a reform of the management of Church properties, we should be clear that it is one that strengthens the laity, not the hierarchy and the State at the expense of laity. To pose again the question asked at the presentation of the Thomas-Faleiro argument, whose property are we saving, and from whom?

There are many of us in Goa who have pledged our strength to the movement for greater decentralization and democratization of power in the State. This battle with the State is necessarily part of one within Society as well. It cannot be therefore, that we argue for greater decentralization on the one hand (an opening up), and argue for centralization (a closure) on the other. Such an argument is logically fallacious, socially disastrous and opens the doors to tyranny of the State.

Thomas and Faleiro would do better to engineer their movement toward a strengthening of, rather than the closure of proto-democratic decentralized spaces that they are attempting. Their actions are in fact the result of out-dated legal understandings of society, designed further the imperial interests of the Indian State (and its beneficiary class) at the risk of doing great damage to the health of the Constitutional experiment that is our Republic. No, the Thomas-Faleiro proposals as they stand are not in the best interest of the average lay Catholic and should be opposed by any sensible mind, Catholic or otherwise.

(Published in the Herald, Opinionated, 4 Sept 2009)