Pointing Fingers at Fascists

A fortnight ago I had occasion to visit and write about an exhibition at the Kala Academy that, in my opinion, amounted to trying to create a genocidal, Gujarat-like situation in Goa. Subsequent to its publication the essay was ‘commented’ on by the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti- the organizers of the exhibition, and a few others. The more substantial of the criticisms against the column accused me of being Fascist and preventing a peaceful organization from exercising their right to speech. This particular criticism is an interesting one to respond to since it is this single argument that often underlies a number of contentious issues.

Thanks to the Constitution of India, the right to the freedom of speech and expression is the fundamental right of every Indian. And yet, this right is not an absolute right allowing us to say and express everything that we think and feel. The same Article that guarantees us this fundamental right also places restrictions on this right. We may not exercise this right to speech and expression if it threatens to, among other things, impinge on public order or act as incitement to an offence. It was my opinion that the exhibition in exhorting Hindus (and Hindus alone) to hate Muslims and view every single one of them as a potential terrorist was clearly exceeding the rights under the Constitution and entering into the realm of hate-speech. There can be no fundamental right to hate-speech. To allow for hate-speech under the Right to Speech and Expression is to make a fetish of this Right to the point of its loosing its meaning. In fact it would be a fascist tendency that would argue that it has a right to hate-speech, allowing me to turn around and ask my accusers if they and not I are more worthy of the label they award me.

The criticisms also accused me of being a Hindu-hater for asking that their exhibition be banned. Nothing could be further from the truth; on the contrary most of my best friends are Hindu! The exhibition purported a concern for the situation for the Hindus in Kashmir, and truly there is reason to be concerned for the daily violence and bloodshed in Kashmir. It is true that a number of Hindu families have been forced to leave the valley and this is not just tragic but condemnable. But this is not a Hindu tragedy alone since it is also Muslim families and those of other religions that have been forced to leave the valley thanks to the frenzy of violence that engulfs Kashmir. To ignore this dimension of the problem is not to solve the problem, but to only compound it. Any solution to Kashmir must necessarily ensure that all these affected groups are returned in peace to their homeland. The violence in Kashmir is one that should concern any individual not just Hindus. It is the appeal to Hindus alone, thereby excluding others from even expressing concern, or denying their possibility for concern- as indeed is what my critics are doing to me- is what is disturbing about the exhibition and its organizers. What is disturbing about the appeal to a ‘Hindu’ consciousness is that it is based on the denial of all other identities- gender, caste, region, syncretic- and the recollection of historical wrongs that are sought to be redressed in the present. Thus, it wasn’t surprising that responses to the column dragged up the issue of the Inquisition and the destruction of temples in Goa. In doing so, once more the issue was constructed as only a Hindu issue. What these critics forget is that the primary target of the Inquisition was those persons who became Catholic and whose lives subjected to greater stricture than those who managed to retain, through negotiation with the Portuguese state, their religion. This historical recollection of wrongs then, is only a partial recollection, and it is this partiality that we must question to realize that there is something deeply problematic with the construction of a ‘Hindu’ consciousness.

The problem of ‘Hindu’ consciousness is not a unique problem though; it shares more in common with fundamentalist and radical Islam and Christianity that it realizes. Which is why, when we are called to contest Islamic radicalism and the manner in which these radicals begin to define Islam, we are similarly called on to contest Hindutva proponents who seek to tells us that they know Hinduism better than us, and Christian fundamentalists who pervert the religion in their bid for State power. Hindu-Muslim-Sikh- Isai, Sab hain bhai-bhai, went a now forgotten nationalist slogan. It appears that the moment to forge the Brotherhood anew is upon us as the fight with these dark fascist forces looms large on our horizon.

(Published in the Gomantak Times as 'Right to free speech is not Absolute' on 19th October 2007)

Accused of defamation and false propaganda

Following the publication of the earlier essay in the Gomantak Times, the Hindu rightwingers seem to have gotten very upset, accusing me of Defamation and false propaganda. The link to their response to my essay lies below, my public response will follow soon!


http://www.hindujagruti.org/activities/campaigns/national/hindu-genocide/fact.php

An Invitation to Hate and Genocide

This weekend I had the misfortune of visiting the most obnoxious exhibition. Set up by the Hindu Janajagruthi Samiti, the object of the exhibition was to ‘educate’ the average Hindu about the violence by Muslims on the Hindus of Kashmir and Bangladesh. I say ‘educate’ the Hindu, since every display of violence was followed by a caption addressed to the viewer indicating that if they were Hindu, then these visuals should make their blood boil, and tomorrow this violence could possibly be visited on them. If they were not moved, they were not fit to be - and hence not - Hindu. The theme of the exhibition purported to be the violence occurring in Kashmir, and yet, addressing the plight of the Kashmiri whether Hindu or Muslim was not its concern. On the contrary, the attempt through the exhibition was to ensure that local Hindus see the local Muslim as the natural and necessary enemy. What this exhibition is, therefore, is a very clear and deliberate attempt to create communal divisions in Goa.

Now I am not surprised by this display of anti-Muslim hatred, since one has gotten used to seeing this daily violence perpetuated for not being a certain kind of Hindu. For the Hindu right wing, it is not enough to hate only the minorities. Not being brahmanised upper-caste and minority hating is just as bad in their book. What is surprising is that this very blatant organizing of Hindus against Muslims (and by logical conclusion against the Catholics in Goa) is that it is taking place in the premises of the Kala Academy. Why the premier cultural institution of a secular state is allowing violent activities on its premises is a question that the authorities of the Kala Academy must immediately answer. The authorities can reprieve themselves of this abuse of authority only by withdrawing permission for this exhibition immediately. Worse, this is not just an exhibition; there was also a screening of inflammatory documentaries, followed by similar discussion sessions which were nothing short of unnerving.

Walking through the exhibition, the organizing women clamoring quite literally for the blood of local Muslims, was extremely unnerving. I fancy myself as a reasonably rational individual not given to acts of passion. And yet in this environment, I was strangely drawn toward pulling down the posters, destroying the projector and disrupting the meeting that was being conducted, knocking a few heads while I was at it. It was when placed in this environment that I finally realized what it must be like to be a persecuted minority, and especially a Muslim in this country. Every apparently innocuous saffron flag is in fact a threat, telling you that your time is coming and you had better be careful. If then I, as an individual who is not being directly threatened here, who has an escape route out of the country in terms of livelihood options, should respond irrationally and violently to such stimuli, how would a Muslim, already on the economic fringes of society, and subject to no less that 60 years of harassment respond to this threat? The object of the exhibition then, is twofold. It is first to tell the individual that you are Hindu (or not Hindu) first, and that every Muslim is your presumed enemy and you should ‘get’ them before they get you. The objective: The creation of a communal divide, and an invitation to violence. It exceeds this-one sided mobilization however, and also operates as a provocation to local Muslim groups. Of course, once the Muslims have been hounded enough to retaliate, all of society will turn around, refuse to see the provocation and shrug, saying “It is true, these Muslims are violent by nature.” A minimum of 60 years of such violence has produced nervous and insecure Muslim groups in India. 60 and more years of Hindutva aggression has created the communal bloodbaths of this country, and the current exhibition is a fantastic example of who and what is responsible for it.

This particular exhibition has been touring Goa for some months now and it is a sign of the power and arrogance of these groups that they dare to take over the Kala Academy, the space of the secular and sophisticated in our capital. This is nothing less than a final flexing of muscle before they act out their fiendish agenda. While we must guard ourselves from this venom, they must first be cast out from the Kala Academy and the Academy asked to explain how they got there in the first place.

(Published in the Gomantak Times, 2 October 2007)

The Wall as Antithesis of Goan Architecture

An architect friend once expressed his frustration with dialogue with a heritage enthusiast, “Ask them what they want in terms of building design and they say, ‘Indo-Portuguese architecture’, push a little more and what do you have? Nothing! There exists nothing beyond a vague idea”. This is perhaps true, for think about it, the famed Goan villa, is not an entity lifted directly out of Indian and Lusitanian style books, but one that incorporates, whimsically, a wide variety of styles, ranging from the classical to the Art Deco seemingly effortlessly. The problem with building codes, as it is with codified law, is that all too often, it is unable to communicate the core of the idea we seek to emulate, its essence. This essence is outside of the grasp of code, it lies in practice. And yet, as this judge faced with determining obscenity said many years ago “I know it when I see it”.

One has only to have a look at the home of the artists Rudolf Kammermier and Yolanda D’Souza to know that in their home has captured an essence of what it is for a building to be authentically Goan. It rises from the same red mud on which it is built on, its multiple roofs like the ant-hills that for generations of Goans represented the Mother Goddess. The force that sustained life in the region. The building conforms to no standard understanding of what the ‘traditional’ Goan home looks like, and yet, for having engaged with essences that they believe mark the lifestyle, the home emerges as instantly authentic.

This essay is not a paean in favour of the Kammermier-D’Souza home though; to another and more detailed essay much that honour be reserved. This essay seeks to deal with the anti-thesis of Goan architecture, one that can be identified as The Wall. Truly the boundary wall has to be the newest arrival into the Goan architectural tradition. While the great mansions of Goa are marked by boundary walls, they performed the aesthetic function of providing definition to the mansion and the utilitarian one of keeping animals out. They did not operate as we see the boundary wall operating today, the marker of various attitudes. Driving past the home of one of Goa’s rich, and former Town and Country Planning Minister, the multiple meanings of the boundary wall emerged as truth to a savant as the mind drew comparisons with the gigantic walls of the Red Fort. Those walls fulfilled a purpose, and these walls perform a similar function. They indicate the attitude toward power, absolute control, and non-transparent; and the manner in which this sort of wealth may be generated, through the constant grabbing of more and more land. But leave his sins be, what do these walls mark for more humble denizens such as ourselves? For this we may once more return to the city of the Red Fort. The experience of Delhi, especially its more upper middle class neighbourhoods, is of a city walled in on itself. Not only is every home walled away from the other, but each neighbourhood is walled off from other neighbourhoods and thus from the city. Rather than born from the lack of security in the city, these walls are in fact the reason for the lack of security in the city, marking the lack of concern for what goes on outside ones walls. Security primarily for me. These walls then, produce and are indicative of the unconcerned and anti-social individual. Not that they do not have a society, but their society is determined on who they allow in, or rather, who they keep out.

Walking through Machado’s Cove, one of Goa’s ‘prime’ localities one comes across this more or less commonplace home, but one distinguished by walls as high as the roof of the ground floor, and a gate just as large boarded up with plastic sheets to prevent one from looking inside. Strikingly odd, an inquiry as to the identity of the owner followed. The guard on duty indicated that, and this is no lie, the owner lived in Delhi. This wall then, was the anti-thesis of Goan architecture. The balcaos, the wide open windows of Goan homes, the lack of boundary walls meant primarily to block animals you will realize were features of our architecture. A society built on the sharing of experience, resources and property. Despite the factional infighting, and the land grabs by the privileged (yes even under the communidades) this was a society primarily founded on sharing, allowing for the urbane and urban environment of this state. The environment creates the individual and while you cannot prevent people from building higher boundary walls, you can be sure as to the kind of society it will produce. Follow the logic into policy and now lay the norm for Goan architecture.

(This essay is dedicated to the charming Lisel Britto, whose observation on Dona Paula made these thoughts see light of day)

(Published in the Gomantak Times, 17 Sept 2007)

Say A Little Prayer For Me: Panjim’s Parks And The Fate Of Urban Design

Sitting through the release of the memoirs titled From Goa to Patagonia, we were informed that the Panjim Municipal Garden had been lavished with particular attention by Dr. Froilano de Mello while he was Mayor of Panjim city. The man, it appears was responsible for the large number of bandstands that one sees in many parts of Panjim city. Bless his soul, for surely it must now be in need of your prayers given the sad state of urban works he initiated. If you are familiar with Panjim then you know that the bandstand exists no more in the Panjim Municipal Garden, it lies broken and ruined, as does the rest of the park. Lets not get into the blame game however, fact is that it is now only a whisper of its former self.

And despite all of this, I don’t know whether we should rejoice or just sink even further into despair with news that the garden is to be- hold your breath-rejuvenated. There are a great many problems with urban design as we see it evolving around us today. As should be obvious from the concrete monstrosity that is the New Panjim booming all around us, there is in Panjim, no urban design. The lone attempts at urban design seem to be the greening of the circles and road dividers in random locations in the city. These attempts are not only isolated, they are also superficial, attempting to invoke the idea of the tranquility of a garden in an urban space that is fast going cuckoo.

The manner in which the gardens are designed too leaves much to be desired. Rather than recognize that we live in a tropical climate and public spaces would be best served with shade, with plants that require minimal care and water, the designers go in for lawns that demand open spaces and guzzle huge amounts of water. Rather than rely on the garden traditions of this continent that range from the Sanskritic to the Persian pleasure gardens, we attempt to mimic the gardens of the northern climes that flourish with plenty of rain and shade. The result ofcourse is one that pays homage to the stylistic tastes of the great Indian middle class- kitsch.
The Panjim Municipal Garden before it invited the attention of the British-Indian (read independent India) babus who ruined it, ran on a simple plan. A central axis hosting the walk, a monumental column and a bandstand. Benches lay along this axis and the rest of the garden unfolded almost symmetrically around it, echoing the Moorish influence in Iberia. It appears at some point that the garden was marked out for the tree-planting quotas of the Forest Department, beautification programs by the aforementioned British-Indian babus and finally an attempt to make it more Lusitanian than it already was. The rest as they say is history.

The more serious challenge to this garden though is in the proposed plan to build a multi-level car park in the garden. The Goa Heritage Action Group has for sometime now been pointing to the heritage value of the garden. Be sure then that the car park will take that value away, for its heritage value lies not in the fact that it is a garden, but in the design of the garden, but in the relationship of this garden square to the buildings around it. The two constitute a single unit and to divorce the relationship of these built structures from the natural space located at its centre would challenge the whole heritage effort.

And yet heritage and aesthetics is not the most serious issue that challenges the location of a multi-level car park in the garden. This car park is obviously intended to address the lack of parking space within Panjim. Question is however, will it? One can with certainty argue that it will not, since what we will be addressing is the manifestation of the problem and not the problem itself. The problem lies in our equation of development with consumption, and the logic that a higher consumption of cars will lead to greater development. This logic left to run wild will result in an ever higher number of vehicles on the streets of our cities and villages, until we literally drown in a sea of these vehicles and their fumes. While on the issue of fumes, be it known that enclosed parking spaces have been shown to have dangerously high levels of vehicular emissions, allowing us to conclude that the same would apply to this proposed car park.

No sir, the solution to the parking problem in Panjim lies in reducing the number of vehicles moving within the city. And this project is best served by improving the public transport system within the city and the villages that surround it, so that one is not forced to rely on a private vehicle. Public expenditure on an improved transport system would work in fact work to reduce the household budget’s need for a private vehicle, putting that money toward other needs for personal development, which eventually is what development seeks to achieve. As we hammer out a new Master Plan it would be worthwhile if we rethought some of our approaches to development, allowing us in Goa to conceptualize a more organic and holistic model of development that builds on our unique strengths, rather than simply going the British-Indian way.

(published in the Gomantak Times, 3 September 2007)

Let them Eat Cake: The case of the Indian consuming class

Walking through the Alte National Gallery in Berlin, one comes across Wilhelm Trübner’s painting “On the Sofa”. There is perhaps no reason that this little painting should attract your attention except maybe for the audio guide that draws your attention to it. But thank goodness for that good machine and the curators who thought it fit that this little work should merit our attention. It dawned on me slowly that this work from 1872 has much to offer us. The painting features a respectably attired if plain looking lady sitting on a sofa. The painting seems to have interrupted the moment when she was moving the piece of cake in her hand toward her mouth. Indeed there is almost an air of obesity in her face. As if to highlight her priorities, a book, print facing down lies cast aside on the same sofa. What marks this painting though is the equal amount of detail that Trübner has put into the setting that this lady occupies. He depicts the carpet that the sofa and the table sit before, the wall-paper, the table cloth. What stands out in the depiction of these is the repeating motif of the bouquet of flowers. A real bouquet sitting on the table, the motif repeated on the wall-paper and a similar motif on the sofa cover.

Standing before this work of art I couldn’t help but get mildly annoyed. There was a vacuity in the gaze of this woman, as she stared stupidly into time and space, the cake forever frozen in her hand. There was no mark in her face or eyes that would interest us even mildly should she come alive. If this was not bad enough, one realizes that the motif of the bouquet that one’s eyes are drawn to is repeated in a most annoying manner. More than a century after its completion, what Trübner intended through this work is perhaps less relevant than what it suggests to us today. Given the strength of the emotions it awakens in us however, one could hazard a guess that what we experience was in fact part of Trübner’s hidden agenda.

Gazing at his work I realized that this art work captured perfectly the condition of India’s exploding middle classes. Like the woman with the vapid and vacuous gaze our middle class is more interested in becoming the undiscerning consumer that the market is encouraging them to become. Intellectual pursuits, as signified by the book, are indeed to be cast aside as irrelevant and pointless. Our sole reason for existence is to consume and indulge our senses to the maximum. “Eat cake” a French queen remarked many centuries ago, creating the background for a revolution. Contrarily today “eat cake” serves to delay the revolution as the games provided by the establishment serve to divert our attention from more serious issues. There is a concerted effort by the media and other forces of the market at dumbing us down. Take for example the requirement among radio stations that the Jockey speak only 4 times an hour for a max of 90 seconds each. While we are possibly better served by limiting the junk dished out by these intellectual innocents in the first place, what is concerning is that issues that matter are deemed to be boring and not appealing to the masses it serves. What this results in is the active cultivation of the idea that to be “smart” and intellectually engaged is uncool. Not the best condition for an active civil society.

But this intellectual lack is not the only thing that jumps out at you. The bouquet motif allows us another insight into the middle class condition. Trübner is clearly trying to evoke the luxury of the setting in the scene he paints and yet the repetition amply demonstrates a lack of imagination, rendering the effort wholly kitschy. The cultivation of kitsch per se, or the creation of a style that I personally find lacking in taste is really not the issue. What is the issue is the attempt to imitate a high style, and then the ignorant reveling in the tawdry image one has managed to create. Look all around our cities and the horrifying attempts to capture Euro hi-styles, or the uneducated attempts at capturing the Goan home in concrete. I rest my case.

A common middle class reaction is to cringe from admitting to being middle-class. And yet one should celebrate the achievement of this status. It indicates the achievement of a model that we have been striving toward for generations. At the same time however, we must recognize that the model we were striving toward, was not merely an economic state, but in fact also an intellectual state. One rooted in the appreciation of the intellectual achievements of the greats and the cultivation of the same in ourselves. As India hurtles towards developed country status, this is clearly not being achieved as we get caught in the market’s plan for us and instead of becoming bourgeois turn merely into non-discriminating consumers. There is much more that could be said, but space limits us alas!

(published on the 15th of August 2007, Gomantak Times)

Open Sesame: Acknowledging Caste in the Public Sphere

One of the speakers at the recently concluded Convention of the Goan Diaspora held in Lisbon chose to dwell on, among other matters in his address, on the pernicious evil of the caste system that continued to dwell in the midst of what was otherwise a relatively enlightened community. He was moved no doubt, by his observation of the social events that transpired prior to the commencement of the day-long deliberations of the Convention. To illustrate, almost every introduction at the Convention was quickly followed with the question, “and where in Goa are you from?” Now all of us Goans know that this is no innocent question. One asks this question primarily to assert the other’s caste, and then go on to place them in the appropriate social category. This placement may not necessarily be derogatory, but it will nevertheless factor caste into the decision. Who knows, but it is possible that this question is one that is possibly asked only by the upper-caste person, for surely, it is only when you have nothing to hide or be ashamed of that one really inquires into the caste of the other. But be this as it may, the fact is, that as a community, we were chided for still pandering to this pernicious and outdated evil.

This laudable concern was picked up by a member of the audience who then went on to argue, that indeed, we must ignore caste altogether, we must never acknowledge it. To acknowledge it is to continue this evil. It must be as if it never exists, quoth he. It is at this point that I began to get a little uncomfortable, and my discomfort was proved justified in the course of my conversation with this gentleman at the coffee-break that followed.

I don’t for a minute support discrimination based on caste, and yet I believe I am honest enough to acknowledge that it plays a part in the moulding of my predelictions, tastes and concerns. A member of the Catholic upper-castes, my very being is defined by the privileges that my caste-membership has ensured to me. And in the end, sophisticated and high-class markers are identified according to their proximity to upper-caste notions of appropriateness. If you don’t believe me, have a look at the Konkani our state supports. Which caste speaks this state version as if it were the Konkani spoken within the confines of their home? Yep, you got the answer. To get back to the point though, if one has acknowledged that one’s caste is significant in giving one the privilege that one enjoys, then to deny the existence of this privilege is to deceive the public. One is pretending to be equal, when in fact one is not. On the contrary, as compared to the individual who does not have that upper caste heritage, the upper-caste person has a decided advantage. Political correctness, and social justice concerns therefore, would demand a declaration in public debates of our caste background. This may sound ridiculous but if you give me a moment you will perhaps see my point. My argument is that when making claims in the public sphere, to elide the fact of caste would be to pretend that it does not exist, when in fact, it does. It operates even when we consciously seek to work against it. It is for this reason then, to encourage our audience to contemplate the role of caste and privilege in our claims and positions that I advocate the public acknowledgement of caste. Not a triumphal proclamation though, and not a mea culpa either, but definitely a statement of fact, to enable our accountability to the public.

To return to my gentleman friend though, it appears that his claim to ignore caste was motivated more by the anger that persons of lower caste were getting what he thought an unfair advantage in admissions to such institutions as the GMC. Given that the entire matter of reservations is too complex for the confines of this column I will leave this matter here. I will however use it to highlight once more the possibility that when we talk of erasing reference to caste, all too often what we are proposing is that we ignore the privilege it grants us and let it operate in secret.

(published in the Gomantak Times, 18th july 2007)