The Muslim and the Catholic in Goa and India

This column is being written from Delhi where I have just completed a tour of North India with a bunch of Americans. It was while on this trip that I realised, with a fair amount of horror, the extent to which the Indian national identity is built on the idea of the image of an all-encompassing gentle Hinduism and an evil and barbaric Muslim. Despite the overwhelming Persian influence on this region, brought by the Islamic Turko-Afghans, at almost every site the tour guides stressed a ‘Hindu’ linkage where the Muslim emerged only as a destroyer of the wonder that was India. More often than not these stories twisted facts around to emerge with the Muslim as the villain of the piece.

Visibly agitated, I was asked the question if whether having a Muslim guide would have given us a different perspective. Thinking through this question I realized with sinking heart that this would not be a solution, since the nationalist narrative has effectively worked out the space for the Muslim. There is the good Muslim as represented by Akbar who is supposed to have Hinduised himself, and the bad Muslim represented by Aurangzeb who apparently violently asserted an Islamic identity over a syncretic option open to him. Whether they actually were or were not as this history represents them to be, is not really a choice open to the common man: we have to accept them as such, and then either praise or vilify the appropriate Emperor.

Arriving in Delhi this realization was further affirmed when I flipped through the brochure of a prominent centre for Islam in India. The Centre continues within a tradition that understands ‘Indo’ as code for Hindu, accepts the proposition that Islam is from outside and can never truly be internal(ised) but asserts at the same time that one can be a good Indian Muslim. This assertion, it should be pointed out, works for a particular class of Indian Muslims—the upper class/caste—who stress their foreign origins, and derive social distinction vis-à-vis the lower caste Indian Muslims from it. Further, their emphasis on clarifying the “true” meaning of Islam creates a space where their access to the text is privileged. This emphasis on the text of Islam, rather than the happy soup of lived practice inspired by the message of Islam, in fact creates the necessary background for fundamentalist Islam. In sum this acknowledgement confirms their place as leaders and representatives of Indian Islam and denies any space for lower class/caste Muslims to stress their vision of what it means to be Islam, a vision that could possibly escape the fundamentalist readings of what it means to be a Muslim.

In Goa, the Muslim shares a similar fate. There is a similar celebration of Hindu nationalist myths with the Muslim either erased or cast as the bad guy. The celebration of Indo-Portuguese art is a good example. The term Indo-Portuguese in fact operates as code for Hindu-Catholic and celebrates their union. The term leaves no space for the influence of the Islamicate in Goa, which though plentiful is expelled. The celebration of Indo-Portuguese art therefore casts the Muslim as the eternal outsider to Goa, while creating Goa as the legitimate space for the Catholic and the Hindu. This equation operates for only a certain kind of Catholic though, the upper-caste Catholic. The upper-caste Catholics are able to link up with the Hindu imagination for the nation through stressing their Brahmin, Kshatriya backgrounds. At the same time a textual interpretation of the religion stresses their distinction from the lower-caste Catholic masses. Both ways it leaves the lower class/caste Catholic without an option. It delegitimizes the easy mix of local and Catholic belief that marks Goan Catholicism and also leaves a lower-caste Catholic with no way to link up with a nation that is imagined primarily in upper-caste terms and pride in racial origin.

For years now the Muslim problem in India has been imagined as precisely that: as a problem of and by Muslims. Increasingly though we are coming to realize that this problem is the result of the history of Hindu nationalism and impacts equally on all communities that are not Hindu and upper-caste, or do not share in this exclusivist vision accepting a subordinate role within the narrative. In Goa our belly-gazing has still not allowed us to realize what exactly is going on, but for those who are willing to see, the writing on the wall is pretty clear!

(This essay is dedicated to Khaled Anis Ansari thanks to discussions with who I have been able to view the Indian Muslim community from a radically new perspective, which has allowed me to relook the Goan Catholic community as well.)

(Published as "A Celebration of Nationalist Myths" in the Gomantak Times, 30 January 2008)

Economic History and the Independent Goan

Last fortnight this column made a plea for a serious attempt at constructing an economic history of Goa; a history that takes as its starting point the recognition of Goa’s late entry into global capitalism. Responding to the argument a friend pointed out that it was not enough to point out that the local capitalist was also a possible loser as Goa was forcibly prized open as a market for India and the world. It was necessary to also look at role the local bourgeoisie will play when the ‘victims of history’ try to ‘compel’ the State into actions that would secure their interests. What would their stand be and for what reasons? Would their class interest be in keeping British-Indian bourgeoisie and global capital out, creating a protected enclave for themselves, or will they continue to play second fiddle to these forces? Common sense would instantly suggest that local capitalists would choose the latter option, and yet I believe that a detailed and researched answer may possibly yield a more complex reality of the manner in which local capitalists operate. This reflection would also open out options open to us for strategic association to stem the neo-colonial practices that current developmental solutions in fact represent.

Right now though I would like to ignore the local capitalist and focus on the manner in which Goan identity emerges through its historical location. The Goan it is believed, by both local and external capitalist, is an unreliable worker. They are lazy, soçegad and disappear at festivals since they loving partying. An earlier approach I adopted to moving past this obviously negative portrayal of the Goan was to locate this representation in the politics of post-colonial India. The British saw the Portuguese in exactly the same terms, since the Portuguese were great miscegenators the Goan was also tarred with the same brush, and the British Indian inherits this way of looking at Goa. Economic history however would also allow us another, not particularly divergent reading of this scenario. Understood theoretically capitalism emerges to release labour from the holds of such social structures as feudalism. In releasing labour though, it provides its own punishing way of encapsulating them once again. Historically capitalism has emerged through the dispossession and impoverishment of labour, a perfect example being the depopulation of the English countryside to create the urban industrial hubs of the Industrial Revolution. Capitalism thrives and sustains itself on the insecure and impoverished worker. It is only in this condition that it can effectively sustain itself, when faced with the worker ensconced in a variety of social relationships and capable of sustaining oneself outside of the industrial economy the capitalist machine falters.

Goans will never tire of indicating that in the Portuguese days there was no poverty. This of course is a myth; it was poverty that forced the migration of Goans into the broader world. But while there was poverty, there was also a relationship to society and land that allowed for basis sustenance and survival. It is this security of the Goan labourer who refuses to be pulled out of the comfort of the social and ecological safety nets that the capitalist cannot deal with or understand. We have to recognize then, that the project of the industrialization of Goa – as so tenderly forwarded by our Governor- demands the necessary destruction of social and ecological security of Goa. These are not necessarily conscious evil plans, but the necessary logic by which capitalism must reproduce itself. At the end of the day the supposedly lazy and unmotivated Goan turns out to be the smart cookie who engages with industrial employment on her own terms. She uses it to supplement an existing income and provide forms of temporary escape from the embrace of existing social networks that also need to be challenged. The capitalist system ofcourse cannot deal with such independent actions, predicated as it is on predictability, which is why it is the Goan’s choices that must be castigated.

Slowly but surely voices are emerging that are sounding the call for a rethink on the developmental policies of the State. These calls and voices are not anti-developmental since we are all obviously imbricated in the fabric of the global economy. These calls represent demands for a more democratic method of planning, a method of planning that respects local cycles and independence, and that is insistent that existent wealth must not be cast away merely to suit the demands of blinkered bureaucrats.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 17th January 2008)

Economic History and the future of Goa

While there have been many attempts to write a social and cultural history of Goa- histories that either stress or refuse the difference with British-India (the territory that often passes off under the name of India), there has not as yet been any serious attempt to write an economic history of the territory of Goa. This history, if it is to capture the nuances of Goa, would have to stress difference, rather than stressing the economic condition of colonization and the sad tired stories of bleeding the territory dry. Of course, this difference is not to paint the colonizers as the good guys, since they may come out looking just as bad. Difference would have to be stressed in this history to draw attention to the differential manner in which Goa financially integrated into the Indian nation-state.

The primary difference that marks the economic history of Goa is its late entry into industrial capitalism, very much like its colonizer Portugal. Goa entered industrial capitalism only in the 1950s with the opening of the mines, a particularly degrading industry that can be held responsible both for the ecological wasting away of its society, as well as its deliberate intellectual retardation. What were the mechanisms of making it big before this? One either was a member of the small aristocracia de coco,aristocracies dependent on returns from agricultural surplus, primarily coconuts; or one traded in opium or slaves and built the capital for other ventures; or one migrated, got on to the ships, worked one’s fingers off, sent money back and erected the homes that mimicked the grand style of the ‘aristocrats’. It appears that of these various types, it was really those involved in the illicit opium and slave trade of the days who were able to make the fortunes that would allow them to seize the opportunity to swing into industrial capitalism when the opportunity first presented itself.

It is not as if British-India did pass through a similar trajectory. It did also have similar groups, and yet its early entry into industrial capitalism, the nature of its comprador class and the sheer necessity to survive created a class that was built to a large extent also on the selling-off of land to obtain freely tradeable capital. This process of the privatization of land saw the impoverishment that one associates with British-India, a process that was by and large absent in Goa, allowing the Goan poor (and there were lots of them) to live off the common resources and fend off starvation at the very least. What we witness today, in the large-scale sale of land in Goa, is partially the attempt of those Goans who did not make the boat in the 1950s to create enough capital to get into the capitalist game, and survive in the contemporary world, clearly titled in favour of private resources and tradeable income. The tragedy is that for most of them, it is way too late, industrial capitalism has given way to globalized capitalism, which the British-Indians have managed, via their colonial history, to be a part of. It is not just the peasant, clerk and professional that this history impinges on, but also the local entrepreneur and small capitalist, a fact that was recently made obvious to me when a member of the GCCI complained that the DSIDC would prefer to cater to the larger capitalist from British-India than the small Goan fry.

In the highly charged debate that is rightly concerned with what is going to happen to our state, all too often the implications of our economic history is not taken into account. Goans remained by and large therefore tied to this heritage of a late entry into industrial capitalism. As such the problem Goa faces is not necessarily the migrant labour but the British-Indian capitalist who makes pawns of the migrants, the Goan peasants and working class. They do this of course, not consciously, since they are really playing out – to put it vulgarly- their class-determined historical role. The local State, though, can still be captured by these victims of history, and the State of Goa compelled to play a role that recognizes the peculiar vulnerability of residents of the State, and put in place an economic system geared towards them rather than the depradations of the British-Indian and global capitalist, both of who continue to play the role of a colonizer as they play the local market for labour and land. To not recognize this historical difference will be to doom the majority of the residents of Goa into the poverty that has and will continue to mark India, with a slim majority joining the ranks of the global capitalist.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 4th Jan 2008)

Development as Freedom: Notes on another Liberation Day

Given the Indian passion for ritual it would have been appropriate to reflect this day on the Liberation of Goa. This is what I had originally set out to do, though not exulting wildly about the fact since I am not nationalist and in any case believe that our society is better served through critical reflection rather than blind celebration or absolute rejection. It turns out however that the day will nevertheless be commemorated through a concern for the freedom that was promised to us, first on the 15th of August and then on the 19th of December and now seems so much further away today that we would ever have imagined.

You are obviously thinking in the direction of the opposition against the SEZ and the IT Park that has filled concerned public discourse, as well as my column, in recent times - no surprise there. Amartya Sen introduced us to the idea of Development as Freedom, a truly liberatory concept in the developmental world obsessed with abstract economic statistics and figures. Sen pointed out that our efforts should more properly be focused on enabling the individual to realize oneself, giving her opportunities to go in directions she chose, and fighting any social or economic impediment that stood in her way. The focus was then turned away from the anonymity of the economic superstructure to the intimacy of the individuals needs. This would enable development without any of the poverty created by this earlier focus on larger systems.

One would have thought that Goa with its admirable statistics would have been the perfect stage to play out this approach to development, creating a decentralized state that went out of its way to aid the individual. But no, it appears that every model of development that is fashionable in Delhi must be thrust down the Goan throat as well. And thus we have the SEZ and the SEZ-in-disguise, the IT Park. While much opposition to the SEZ is being generated, its camouflaged twin has not received much attention. The arguments I forward against the alleged IT Park would hold for the SEZ as well though.

To what end the idea of the centralized industrial Park? First, economic efficiency where scarce infrastructure can be mobilized to benefit industry clustering together; second to aid such activities like pollution control; and third to enable administrative efficiency, especially if you want to give industry financial benefits, or you want to create a synergistic environment. The entire idea however falls flat when one realizes that the era of physical centralization has long past. It is today possible, especially in the case of IT and ITES (ostensibly being set up in the IT Park) to operate from anywhere in the world, India servicing the US, Japan and Germany simultaneously, because of the centralization possible through networking. Efficiency has reached an entirely different scale and our Government is still fixated on colonial imaginations of control. But this realization allows us to figure out what exactly is going on. One realizes that the colonial logic of extraction for the benefit of a few still continues. What the SEZ and the IT Park represent is a form of island development where infrastructure is restricted to a few square metres and will never really filter out to the general public. The fortress-like boundary walls of the IT Park being clearest evidence of this intention. Sen’s idea of development would have sidestepped this idea of development to privilege a model of integrated development that would allow for the local to establish IT and ITES industry in their very backyard. All that they need is an upgradation of the already existing infrastructure of electricity and internet connectivity. The idea of the SEZ constantly displays its antagonism to a model of all-round development and yet it appears that the powers-that-be do not realize this. Small is not only beautiful, it is increasingly demanded if one is to march in step with the drum-beat of globalization. If mass provides quantum, the small provides quality. The current opposition to SEZ is not misplaced politicization and bickering but the voice of the people that they know the strengths and potential of their land and society. A sensitive administration would heed this, not only in its own interest, but in the larger interest of a more effectively developed Goa. If they persist though one wonders whether they share much more in common with the Estado Novo and the British Raj that they replaced?

(published in the Gomantak Times 19th December 2007)

Replacing the IT Park for Central Park

This column has consistently raged the establishment of the IT Park for months now, and yet I do not find myself reassured by Monserrate’s latest move to join forces with the opposition to the IT Park. In addition to the displacement of people from the land that was to host the IT Park, what was deeply troubling about the location of the IT Park was the vision of urban development that it carried along with it. In truth it seemed hardly any vision at all, since in addition to the pea-brained suggestions that the occupants of the park would generate their own water and electricity, the idea of urban development it envisaged was really that of continuous urban sprawl. Which is why it is important that if the IT Park is to be displaced it be replaced with an alternative that coherently articulates a sensible and sensitive urban plan.

Panjim is widely regarded as a charming city and much of its charm lies in the fact that it is bound together through a grid of roads and the fact that park land was amply distributed through the city to remove the monotony of continuous built space. Further, the Goan rural environment is prized as a viable retirement option for many around the world, primarily because it has a definite urban environment. What marks the Goan space as special then is the unique relationship between the open and the built, the concrete and the green. And yet it is this very relationship that is being ignored and undermined through such projects as the IT Park.

Central Park is New York is a fine example of what the now contested land allotted for the IT Park can become. Spread over 843 acres the park offers a vital recreational space to the residents of the city. One has only to delve into the history of Central Park to realize the similarities that between the contested land in Taleigao and New York. The Park caters to a highly mixed used, being used at one point of time to accommodate New York’s elite set as they went out to see and be seen, for livestock to graze, it’s a prized possession for athletes who use its open spaces and jogging tracks, allows new-age dabblers to go forage for wild food as well, and sustains a tourism as well! The land allotted for the IT Park has been contested even before the proposal for the IT Park, as residents of the villages around the plateau were being pushed out by the new residential developments cropping up in Dona Paula. Land that was being used for grazing, firewood and farming and other spiritual and religious uses was being reused by the emerging middle class without necessarily taking into account the prior uses of these earlier residents. The IT Park would have only compounded the socio-economic conflicts that were slowly beginning to emerge. Converting the contested land into a huge park that meets multiple uses would help in resolving the socio-economic tensions between the old and new users of this land, as well as stem the problems that would emerge from the kind of urban sprawl that is presently proceeding unchecked. A wooded parkland that hosts two working farms, cattle grazing grounds, a proper playground for the young to play in, paths for joggers and walkers to amble around in conjures up an urban idyll that many cities would kill for. Merely take cue from New York’s Central Park, Delhi’s Lodhi Gardens area, Bangalore’s Cubbon Park to realize that if the quality of life is a marker of development, then having a large urban park in your neighborhood improves your quality of life.

Perhaps what is required now, after Monserrate’s assertion, is for the varied types of residents and users of the contested site to come together and assert a plan for the land that would take into consideration their unique needs. Further they would need to articulate an organization, like the Central Park Conservancy, a not-for-profit organization that runs Central Park that would manage the park land, assuring that the same piece of land can cater to recreational uses, livelihood generation, as well as the spiritual needs of the communities in the area.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 5th December 2007)

Symbols, Temples and the Goan Connection

This column is written from the in-the-middle-of-nowhere Bihari village of Maksudpur where the wedding of a dear friend is about to take place. Maksudpur may today be an insignificant dot on the map, but the buildings in this village testify to a possibly significant past as a centre of military might and revenue collection. The brief for this column has often been that it be focused on Goa, contributing to issues local. For this reason one may wonder what distant and Bihari Maksudpur has to do with Goa. Some Goans enamoured of their mythic (and) Aryan past would like to see an argument develop that stresses the Bihari (Gaud desh) and Goan (Gaud Saraswat) connection. Unfortunately for them though, this is not the argument that will develop. The argument I seek to develop though is nevertheless one that haunts the Goan and their relation to Indian authenticity.

Maksudpur that was once presumably focused on its fort -destroyed in the earthquake of 1934 - is now firmly focused on the Kali temple that is the family deity of its Raja. And this is not the only temple though, but one of a few dozen temples clustered around this central temple. What is interesting about this Kali temple though is that the goddess resides in a mansion that comes straight out of colonial British-Indian tradition, completely neo-classsical in style. And this is not the only example of an important deity residing in a European neo-classical temple, such an example being present once again in the Bihar town (and former zamindari) of Darbhanga. There is similarly an interesting temple in Bangalore that looks more like a Greco-Roman temple than a Hindu temple. To return to Maksudpur, parts of the interiors of the temple sport Indo-Sarcenic pillars and arches, employing the Mughal idiom that the British Raj used to legitimize its rule in India. No matter how weak the Mughal emperors following Aurangzeb, the recognition of the Emperor was central to the legitimacy of local powers continuously vying for power in the subcontinent. Which explains why even the Marathas (supposedly sworn Hindu enemies of the Muslim emperor) when in control of Delhi never contemplated dethroning him, but rather controlling him. The British recognizing the value of the Emperor and Mughal custom attempted to harness these symbols of legitimacy. Mughal custom defined power and legitimacy to such an extent that temples too adopted many of these symbols of power, as one sees in the architecture of the Maksudpur temples and temples across the country, in the jewelry of the deities and their other symbols of power. The Mughal court of course likewise borrowed from temple vocabulary in their attempt to indicate just who was boss.

What all of this indicates to us is a much more complex relationship between local culture and power than we normally recognise. As symbols of sovereignty temples borrowed from the royal courts and similarly royal courts used the imagery of temples to shore up their legitimacy. This understanding smashes to smithereens the idea of an authentic and pure Hindu culture that stands discreetly apart from the Persian influences in this country. Members of British-Indian Hindu elite will recount stories of their ancestors with Persian names and trained in Persian and Urdu and not in Sanskrit- options made out of choice and not force. The recognition of this mixing is not unique and rather routine, even though conceptually the tendency is to often go back to discrete Hindu and Muslim categories. We need to recognize that reality has never really had space for these discrete and authentic categories, but on the contrary recognizing and pressing forward the mixed as the favoured child.

In Goa much is made of our temples which look like secular, Portuguese-influenced mansions. Oftentimes this fact operates as a matter of shame- indicating our lack of Indian authenticity, our apparent cultural corruption. What we should realize is that this is not a unique phenomenon and that the secular- both European and Persian- has influenced temples across the land to create various local Indian idioms. In Goa where political power vested in the Portuguese it was only natural and normal to mimic the styles of the ruler. Recognition of this would help us appreciate the context of Goan temples, and arrest the multiple attempts to ‘purify’ them. If however the changes continue, no matter, cultures must necessarily move on if they are to remain alive. However if we recognize this principle of the exchange between secular and religious, it would help us see more clearly what political ideology influences us and just how we are attempting to remake ourselves, since the temple while the residence of the deity is also a testament of our cultural selves.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 21st November 2007)

On How To Stand With The People: Lessons for the Regional Plan

Subsequent to the announcement of Mr. Sardinha’s election as the MP for South Goa, the Chief Minister saw it fit to declare that “On SEZs I am with the people. Whatever decision has to be taken will be in the interest of Goa.” Where else would he be though, if not with the people? And how will he gauge what the people want? The media and the Congress also agreed that the election victory was a vote in favour of their government. It never ceases to amaze me how the national media is able to state with conviction what the results of our frequently held elections mean. With conviction they are able to affirm that yes indeed, X or Y is what the election result means. Their pronouncement is upheld as truth, the final answer to what the people think and want. Political parties and leaders have for long been claiming the same, but it is perhaps only with the explosion of the private media that these claims have now come to be treated as gospel truths.

As much as these pronouncements may be treated as sacred truths though, the fact remains that these are only possible interpretations. There is a need to emphasize this tentative nature of these pronouncements for a variety of reasons. The first is the practical, there is no possible way that one can state with certainty that this particular election result was a vote in favour of the Congress. This is true especially in the Goan scenario where there is really no choice between who is going to rob you senseless and sell out your interests, and where one might as well play tic-tac-toe and determine who you will vote for. The second is the more crucial in that these interpretations of election results are used in fact to deprive the people of a say in decision-making that will have a crucial impact on their future. Thus for example, Sardinha’s victory could be taken to be the approval of the people in favour of SEZs and the opposition to it the voice of a minority. The mere fact of an election, and a pronouncement by the - invariably status-quoist – media ensures to deprive the operation of the State of democratic content. If these interpretations cannot be considered the voice of the people, how then are we to determine this voice?

The answer lies partially in reevaluating CM Kamat’s statement, “Whatever decision has to be taken will be in the interest of Goa”. Who and what is this Goa? Does Goa reside at some abstract central (pun entirely intended) level or at the local level at which even the slightest changes – impoverishment as a result of a grandiose developmental schemes for example- are more dramatically felt and are best responded to? Very clearly if we are sincere about the “interest of Goa” then we need to identify this interest at the point it is most vulnerable at; the village and the city ward.

Unfortunately despite a Constitutional mandate to continuously consult the local, vested political interests in most parts of India have ensured that this truly democratic vision is not realized. Take for example the classic case of the Regional Plan where the Goan articulated her interest but is now being frustrated from realizing it. They wished their voice to be heard in the planning process and this is being ‘considered’ under the provisions of the Town and Country Planning Act. And this is where the fraud lies. The Town and Country Planning Act (TCP) is quite clearly unconstitutional given that it flies in the face of the democratic requirements of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution. The TCP has no provision for a positive role for the citizen participation the way it stands now. It conceptualizes the citizen in vague terms such as “the public”. Furthermore, this “public” can only bring objections to the plan, thus casting the citizen as essentially a negative player in the process that can be effectively realized only through ‘experts’. Further, the Act places no burden on these experts to go and understand the local scenarios that crucially impact on plans by talking with the citizen and learning from them. On the contrary, the citizen is expected to trek to a governmental office to examine a Plan that is written in a language understood only by experts. Where then is the capacity to hear the voice of the people when it is not allowed an opportunity to coherently articulate itself?

If this Government is serious about being with the people then its first act, following this election, would be to halt the deeply flawed and duplicitous process of framing the new Regional Plan. It needs to scrap the existing TCP and formulate a planning Act that takes into consideration Constitutional mandates and allows for the voice of the people to be coherently articulated, not merely interpreted by unaccountable minions of the status quo.

(Published in the Gomantak Times, 15 November 2007)