Garden Restorations: Panjim’s Jardim Municipal, somewhere, beyond the green and the heritage, there lies a rainbow

The degraded state of the Panjim Municipal Garden, the Jardim Garcia d’Orta has been a sore point for some time now. However, on hearing news of the plans for the re-development of the park, my heart sank further. What new travesty would this latest venture bring? As if to prove these fears true, there was sometime last week, news of a confrontation with the powers vested with re-developing the Park. It appears that a number of the trees in the Jardim were slated to be cut, to make way for lawns and flower beds. Before the debate degenerates into an argument for the value of trees and a green lung, I would like to place the issue with a larger context.

Earlier columns have grumbled about the manner in which a Northern European understanding of the garden has colonized our mentality. In addition our understandings of the garden space have also been frozen within domestic frameworks, resulting in a narrowing of our garden-vocabulary. To place the Jardim in context therefore, we need to affirm that it was not just a ‘garden’ but a Public garden. Within the various types of public gardens one may find, the Jardim was an Alameda, a promenade garden meant for walking, and shaded by a variety of trees. Like Alamedas across the Iberian world, this garden too was (and continues to be) marked by commemorative monuments. The monument in this case being the column formerly dedicated to Vasco da Gama and now crowned by the Ashokan lions. The shading of the paths and the benches of this Alameda however were not randomly arranged, but followed, as is still visible if one looks closely, a formal symmetrical pattern. This feature of the Mediterranean garden drew from Islamicate sensibilities, that itself drew from the Roman. This formal arrangement however, was only the center of a much larger symmetry, represented by the buildings that enclosed the rectangle of the Jardim.

The Mediterranean public garden however, is not simply a space for relaxation; it is also a ritual political space. It is the symbolic representation of the public space, where the citizens gather, affirm their commitment to order in civil society and where the State affirms its commitment both to the citizens and to the notion of public order. This would be one way to think of the band-stand that stands at the centre of the Jardim. Every Sunday the Jardim hosted the band of the armed forces which played to the citizenry of Panjim who gathered there in their numbers, to see and be seen. In this ritual action, week after week, the notion of a civil society, and citizenship therein, would be reaffirmed, by State and citizen alike.

It is important to note this fact, a few days prior to the commemoration of the integration of Goa into the Indian Union. Very often forgotten in our celebration of the end of colonial rule, are the political specificities of the territory of Goa. Despite being a colonized space, Goa was nevertheless marked by citizenship. This status, peculiar to the Goan within a colonized sub-continent, emerged for the Catholic native elite from early colonial rule, and was open to all, regardless of religion from 1910. It is in this context that we should see and cherish this (and other Goan) public garden(s). We should also remember that this garden was a product not of some colonial mind, but of the local sons who were on the Camara Municipal. These local sons burned with the same zeal for independence, that Indian nationalists did, but owing to their political location as citizens, were able to articulate this desire within the confines of the Portuguese Empire.

Viewed in this manner, the Jardim Garcia d’Orta emerges as heritage garden with strong indigenous roots. These indigenous traditions of democracy and politics have however, largely been forgotten as they have been overlaid by the political traditions and understandings of the former British-India. This is perhaps nowhere as tellingly demonstrated as in the fate of the Jardim; first ravaged by the bureaucratic masturbation of the (British-Indian inspired) Forest Department’s tree plantation drives, and subsequently left to ruin as all wholesome notions of democracy have gone to mud.

The re-development of this garden and its structure, then, cannot simply be initiated de novo, nor can the debate be restricted to the need for a green space in the urban city. The re-development must necessarily be undertaken in the spirit of a Restoration. I capitalize the R here, for this Restoration is not to mean merely a physical restoration that one submits an edifice to, but a Restoration in the sense of a socio-political renewal as well. The Restoration must take the ritual space and history of the Municipal garden seriously, keeping the citizen once more at the centre of the development. If under the Portuguese regime the real (as opposed to the legal-theoretical) benefits of citizenship were restricted to the culturally equipped and bourgeois denizens of the city, then this Restored garden must ensure that those unfairly labeled ‘anti-social elements’ are not excluded. The garden as it did in the old days, must allow citizens to interact with each other, renewing both the use of the garden and civil society at large.

Incorporating this political dimension into our viewing of the garden as a heritage structure makes the word heritage bear more weight than it normally does. The formal stylistic arrangement of the park is no longer a mere aesthetic fetish, nor a fancy obsession with our past. It is a testament to a way in which we would like to see our democracy. It is also a testament to the fact that our colonial difference is worth embracing for it has something very valuable to contribute to the Indian democracy. In both these cases, the Alameda styling of the garden is critically tied to a definite kind of public and political culture. In addition, as opposed to the Northern European inspired garden of British-India, which stresses sun-kissed expanses that guzzle water, the Mediterranean inspired Alameda garden works with the local environment to provide the shade within which tropical life thrives.

If there is a debate around the development of the Municipal garden in Panjim, then that debate cannot and must not be restricted just to the issue of green cover and lung space. There is as I have laboured to point out, a much larger context within which it must necessarily be seen.

(Published in the Gomantak Times, 16 Dec 2009)

Credits
Image of the newly planted Jardim Municipal courtesy Dr. Paulo Varela Gomes

Image of scene in the Alameda Gibraltar Gardens from Wikipedia

Fight the Good Fight: A People’s Tribunal and an activist’s Epiphany

On numerous occasions well-meaning friends have come up to me asking me why I have railed, raved and ranted against some of the positions of the GBA. ‘They are trying so hard’ they’d say, ‘why not give them a little credit’. In a wonderfully self-reflexive and honest column in the Herald yesterday, Venita Coelho laid out what exactly was my (and others’) gripe with the positions that the GBA and associated groups and individuals had been taking for a long time, “It was all about land and land use – and not about people and the reality of their lives at all”. Welcome to my world Venita, we are now on the same page!

For another healthy slice of the reality of people’s lives, I would have recommended attendance at the Peoples’ Tribunal held on the “Restoration of Adivasi Homelands in Goa” organized by the Gawda Kunbi Velip and Dhangar Federation (GAKUVED). Over the two days at the end of the last month, close to 60 tribal persons from Goa presented their woes before a jury, indicating the wide number of problems they faced, none of which have been even remotely touched by the Regional Plan 2021 process.

The sorry fate of the tribals of Goa is primarily because of the invisibilisation that they have been subjected to. Goa is constructed both internally and externally by discourses that would see Goa as either Dourada (Indo-European) or Indica (Brahmanical). The originary myth of the first is that of the creation through contact with the Iberian west, the originary myth of the second is of creation through the peaceful extension of the land by brahmanical settlers. Both myths have a basis in fact and both have done much to deprive the tribal population of the rights of dignified existence. As a result of the operation of these two frameworks, the woes of the tribals have as yet never been articulated systematically, and the Tribunal was probably the first time such a systematic articulation was achieved. For this reason alone, the Tribunal was a momentous occasion.

It became clear, in the course of the Tribunal that there were at least three categories of problems that the Goan tribals face. The first emerged from among those who lived on the fringes of Goa’s forests. Like tribals in the rest of India, their interaction with the Forest Department officials is far from ideal. They are harassed by the operation of the Forest Department, their rights not settled and very often are illegally assaulted and interrogated by Forest department officials. The space of the Communidade emerged as the second arena of problems faced by the Goan tribal. All too often their names are not recorded in the Government’s land survey records as the tenant. This is despite their being present on, and tending to the land for at least two generations, and very often also having Portuguese-era documents to prove their title. Somehow, subsequent to the ‘Liberation’ their presence on the land, and their rights on it, were cleanly erased. As a result today, they are unable to claim Government benefits and schemes, unable to extend their homes, get electricity or water and are made to beg for permissions, not from the Government offices, but from the Communidades. The third category of cases is the threat of mining. Many of the tribals who are educated are first generation learners. Their primary skills lies in tending the land. this they have done for generations now. The extension of mining leases threatens to destroy their homesteads (and livelihood bases) either through appropriation for mining, through the illegal dumping of mining rejects in their fields and forests, or through the destruction of the fresh water aquifers that quench not only their thirst but all of Goa. Listening to this last category of problems, the audience realized with a shock that the large sightings of wild-life in Goa, and the large number of reports of crop destruction or at least straying into villages, was the result of the aggressive extension by industry into the forest areas. As is normally the case however, rather than deal with industry, it is the tribal who gets caught by the Governmental machinery.

In the context of the Regional Plan, it also became clear that there was wild confusion as to what was the status of their proposals. Would proposals in the light of recent information be accepted? Further, it became clear that there was no uniform system that was followed with regard to the articulation of the village plan. Interestingly some villages in Sattari that were in opposition to the Eco-I status of lands in their village had this decision taken in the chamber of their Legislator in Porvorim. Interesting!

On another front, one that would have been hilarious if it weren’t so tragic, it appears that most developmental schemes formulated by the Government have compounded rather than relived the condition of the tribals. One case in point was that of the Bandharas, that dam water in the rivers, but instead of proving any use, make impossible the traditional cultivation of the river bed. When Venita therefore realizes that planning is about people and their problems, and listening closely to what the facts on the ground, as articulated by the people say, she has hit the nail squarely on the head.

Both Venita and the representatives at the Peoples’ Tribunal would have agreed on one fact. That a mere gram sabha deciding the Village Plan is not enough. What is necessary is an honest collation of the factual conditions in the village, and the building of claims and decisions on the basis of those conditions. What was very clear through the representations however, and through the dossier submitted prior to the Tribunal, was that what was required was first a recognition of their land rights (rather than solely that of the landlords) and secondly a system for consultation with the tribal groups in villages across the State.

The next couple of columns will identify a few issues that emerged in the course of this Peoples’ Tribunal and deal with them at some length.

Before concluding however, we must recognise that Venita’s epiphany, and the Peoples’ Tribunal were made possible primarily because both the GBA and GAKUVED looked outside of Goa for inspiration. This is not to say that Goa is lacking of ideas, but that they have hit on a very vital ingredient for successful social mobilization; networking. All too often Goan struggles have refused to take lesson from similar struggles in other parts of India. The tragedy of the Regional Plan process is exactly this. Rather than looking across our borders for communities that have already invented the wheel, we attempted to invent it ourselves. In the process, we have failed to draw strength from across our borders. But, as Venita’s realization, and the Peoples’ Tribunal indicate, it is not yet too late and there is much that can still be salvaged.

One last point. It should be seen as part of a divine plan that the GBA consultation that Venita benefited from and the Peoples’ Tribunal occurred at around the same time. If networking and listening to the voices of the people are the lessons that we are being asked to learn, then surely, the renewed process towards a Regional Plan must see a networking between these two groups?

(Published in the Gomantak Times 3rd June 2009)