Out with the old? Advocating a measured approach to built heritage

That we ought to tear down ‘ugly’ and ‘old’ buildings was the suggestion of Mr. Armando Gonsalves in a recent column in the O Heraldo dated the third of May. Mr. Gonsalves was careful to specify however that when he recommended this demolition, he did not mean ‘heritage’ structures, but buildings that have come up in post-Liberation Goa. Among some of the buildings that Mr. Gonsalves recommends that we pull down, is the building that houses the Department of Health in Campal, as well as the Junta House in the centre of Panjim, that is home to a number of Government offices.

The Dept. Of Health, Campal.

These suggestions are hugely problematic ones to make for a variety of reasons. To begin with, there is the assumption that the idea of beauty is one that is universally held by all. The argument assumes that there is something that one can look at and immediately pronounce, ‘ugly’ or ‘beautiful’. Unfortunately, this is not quite the case. Because, as is well known, but little reflected on, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder; beauty is not intrinsic to an element, but depends on the appreciation of the beholder. Thus, beauty is reckoned by a canon, or code or rules. If we do not know the rules to appreciate the building, or image, then we would simply fail to realize in what manner the building is an interesting, or uninteresting contribution to built heritage. Thus for example, one may look at the Junta House, or indeed the Department of Health, or the similarly styled Department of Education building in Panjim city and marvel at their ridiculousness. However, if one sees them within the context of modernist design that they were being articulated from, then they become very interesting buildings in themselves. Add to the fact that these are government buildings and the State that built them, whether it was the Portuguese State (as may be in the case of the Junta House) or the Indian State, and you realize that a statement was being made. These buildings were not meant just to house governmental departments, but were built to make a statement. Of new times, of the will and determination of the State. Once again, for these reasons alone, these buildings gain an interesting perspective, and grow in beauty in the eyes of the beholder, as well as the heritage activist.

Dept. of Education, Panjim.

If we have so far been unable to appreciate the beauty of these (and other like) buildings however, it is perhaps because of the odd contours of the word ‘heritage’ that is being provided both by Mr. Gonsalves as well as others within the area of built heritage in Goa. What Mr. Gonsalves at any rate is doing in his argument, is to limit the scope and terrain of heritage to solely buildings built before the ‘Liberation’ of Goa. While it is surely not his conscious attempt, what Mr. Gonsalves is doing is to stop Goan history with the period of Portuguese sovereignty over Goa. The rest of Goa’s architectural evolution, does not really matter. This is not an uncommon position unfortunately, and the process of selling Goa (both by State and non-State actors) as a Portuguese-Indian paradise has compounded this trend. Unfortunately, what is often seen as Indo-Portuguese heritage are often the homes of the more privileged members of Goa’s colonial society. Even more unfortunate has been the manner in which buildings from before Liberation, often articulating international styles like Art Deco have been stripped of their ornament and distinctness, to be rearticulated in a new form that seems to be slowly emerging, figuring azulejos, pastel earth tones, and harking to a rural ideal. Post-Liberation architecture, from the homes of people who got rich via tourism and earnings from the Gulf, to the apartment blocks erected by the fledgling real-estate developers, tells us a critical story of the rise of formerly subaltern groups, out of a restrictive social environment, to a more liberating one. These buildings, as ‘ugly’ as they may appear to us, even when we understand their internal vocabulary, are a proud moment in Goan history, and we cannot simply brush them aside and order their demolition! To cast only a particular genre of Goan built heritage as heritage, would result in our effective freezing of a definite kind of social relations, one that sustained the colonial presence in Goa, and this would be simply obscene!

Rearticulating an urbanTaleigao Indo-Portuguese style

More than obscene however, they will lead to a whole lot of social strife, because the association of Goa with Indo-Portuguese styles alone, and this freezing of time sometimes relied upon by heritage enthusiasts, is opposed not just by the Hindu nationalists, but a wider swathe of the Goan population than we would imagine. Take for example the incredible support that Mr. Monserrate, the MLA formerly of Taleigão, gained for projects in the constituency that scandalized one segment of Goa’s population. These projects, aimed at destroying the rural structure of Taleigão, by inserting roads and the like, was supported primarily because the rural setting, a particularly privileged locale for the Indo-Portuguese aesthetic, is not particularly appealing to those native-Goans who form Mr. Monserrate’s vote-base. That Mr. Monserrate nevertheless used elements of Indo-Portuguese design, drawing on conventions of certain kinds of European design, and interestingly rearticulated these in the projects that he initiated, however, is another matter, and one that points us in the direction of lessons that we ought to take note of.

Mr. Gonsalves’ arguments are scarier than they prima-facie appear to be, because they draw on a logic that once approved for use in the manner in which we determine which buildings can stay, and which have to go, the logic can be extended to other areas of social life as well. Take for example, the fact that Mr. Gonsalves suggests that the building of the Department of Health ought to be demolished because it does not fit in with the rest of the ‘Heritage’ zone of Campal. The logic that lies below this facile suggestion is that if something, or someone, does not fit in with the larger group, out they go. This sort of exclusivist logic is the very basis on which the vegetarian ghettos of Indian cities have, and are, been formed; where difference is absolutely not tolerated. This is the logic that eventually led to the European Holocaust that saw the calculated murders of Gypsies, homosexuals, Jews and Communists; simply because they did not fit in into the larger scheme of things. This is ofcourse not the intention of Armando Gonsalves who has led many a charitable and philanthropic event, but these are the implications of the logic that he has perhaps unwittingly used in making his suggestions.

Mr. Gonsalves also makes the error of assuming that if the buildings are ‘spanking new’ then they will replace the older buildings that he finds ugly, with a more interesting urbanscape. His assumption is that “Architecture was not such a developed art a few decades ago”. The sad truth is that, none of this is true. Architecture was just as developed a few decades ago, as it is today. There were some buildings that were perhaps more provincial or clumsy followers of international trends, and others that manifested international trends interesting. But we would know this only if we developed our understanding of the vocabulary that architects and designers have been using. Furthermore, some of the problems with the built environment in Goa, as in other places, is not simply that they are ugly, but because increasingly, every architect seems to want to make a statement; because street facades are not being maintained, because the skyline (or the roof façade of the city) is increasingly out of control, and the sense of scale is being violently disrupted, the larger sense of order that we experienced is being lost. The answer to our built heritage woes therefore, is not necessarily to pull down anything that is old, but to spend some more time figuring out what exactly is the problem, educating ourselves in larger issues of urban design, management and styling, and once we do that, to address the issue advisedly.

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times dtd 16 May 2012)

Wheat from Chaff: The Catholic Bigot, the Hindu Right and Goan Citizenship

‘Ghar ki murgi dal barabar’ (the gravy of the home-bred chicken tastes like lentil soup) and ‘the grass is greener on the other side of the fence’ in addition to the obvious, also seem to capture perfectly a widespread social tendency. Very often we are so bothered with what is going-on on the other side of the fence that we forget to adequately focus on issues that crop up within our ‘own’ backyard. Oftentimes it may seem that I am so caught up with decrying the histrionics of the Hindu Right, both in Goa and elsewhere, that I forget to focus adequately on the Catholic bigot (CB). There was however, no way I could ignore this bigot given a number of emails I have recently been subject to, which seem determined to painfully flesh out every nuance that the CB holds.

Despite the fact that I often time focus on caste and class location as a way of identifying social tendencies, I would like to identify the CB not with caste or class – though these definitely play a role – but with a mindset. Perhaps belonging to the Catholic club allows one to forget one’s social location and think like the bigots, given that these bigots ruled the Goan roost for a long, long time. Thinking like them, who knows we might persuade them and ourselves that we are like them?

At the risk of committing a grave historiographical error, let us locate the origins of the Catholic bigot in the circles of Goa’s colonial Catholic elite. These ladies and gentlemen used Portuguese as a way of distinguishing themselves, not just from the lower orders among the Catholics (who spoke Concanim) but from the ‘Hindus’ as well. The Portuguese language was, as is the case with certain varieties of Konknni, their caste marker. With the rise of Indian nationalism across the border with British-India however, they persuaded themselves to think better of their caste brethren in the Hindu fold. Nevertheless the fact that they were not Catholic or linked to the Portuguese colonial power structure in the same social network ensured that they always thought of their upper-caste cousins across the religious divide as the poorer, less civilized cousin. Indeed, a good amount of the Hindutva animosity that the Goan Catholic has to deal with today is linked to this cultural superciliousness. We should not forget however that the non-elite Goan too suffered from this superciliousness, at the hands of these CBs. Given that these elite groups effectively represented themselves as the paragons of Goan Catholic culture, they wound up giving all Catholics a bad name. A case of pretty houses, but such bad manners!!! This cultural superciliousness however, is one of the significant burdens that a number of Goan Catholics unwittingly carry, even though their own personal histories are not twined with those of those who originated it.

These CBs for the most part loved Tio António Oliveira Salazar. The days he presided over Portugal (and this included Goa) are indeed the glory years in CB imagination. Those were the days, we are told, when ‘we’ had genuine law and order in Goa. Order equaled the oppression of the ‘lower’ social orders and ensured a situation where everyone knew their ‘place’. This is not to say that the CBs were the only one who loved Tio António, but let us leave the colonial Goan Hindu elites alone for now. The problem with social oppression however, is that you are oppressed yourself, even while you oppress other people. Add to this our noxious caste hierarchy and you wind up with an elaborate ladder of social oppression that rests critically on constant humiliation. Thus, it is possible to find a good number of CBs from outside of the absolute top of the social ladder, merely because it was so much fun to spit on someone lower than you and pretend like you were one of those at the top. Nothing, it appears, salves a wound better than the spit you hurl at others.

Another feature of the CB is their self-love of their social backgrounds; their ‘Good’ and ‘old’ families. Their self-understanding is of being cultured, which however is in fact the mere ad nauseum repetition of social traditions of the past, and the display of inherited furniture (and other heirlooms) that keep diminishing with every passing generation. So concerned are they with keeping up appearances, an integral part of a social system based on scorn for the inferior, that innovation is by and large discouraged by the CB. And hence, they continue to churn out provincial Doctors, Engineers and Lawyers, most of who are marked by their singular inability to innovate or engage with new ideas or arguments, wedded as there are to their own blinded and devastatingly outdated ideas.

Given their love for Uncle António Oliveira’s Estado Novo the Indian annexation of Goa was a devastating blow for the CB. Their entire vapid social order of privilege and oppression came crumbling down in an instant. Their anger against the Indian State and post-colonial Goa then is not the anger at the illegality of Indian action, or the Indian State’s bias towards National Hinduism, but the anger that the unjust system that generated their privilege, was shut down. They do not, indeed cannot, recognize that the Indian State’s otherwise illegal and unethical action was in fact ‘Liberation’ to a new social and economic order for thousands of Goans otherwise chaffing under domestic feudal rule.

It is for this reason that the objections that so many of them – both overseas and within Goa – raise to the sabre-rattling of the Hindu Right are so pathetically funny. A particular gentleman sitting in the far reaches of the East comes to mind. A regular Dom Quixote he tilts against every imagined Indian aggression, seeing Nehruvian conspiracy in every little thing. The poor man fails to realize that through his inane babbling he does greater harm to the cause of minorities (and this includes Hindu minorities) faced with the growing might of National Hinduism. Indeed, when the ancients pronounced that it is better to have a clever enemy than a stupid friend, they probably had this Goan Quixote in mind! The problem of the CB with Hindutva (or National Hinduism) is at the end of the day cosmetic. They have a problem with the cultural manifestations of Hindutva, for example the ban on beef, or the restrictions or ban on the consumption of alcohol; but not with the power relationships that Hindutva proposes; namely control of the lower social orders and their service to the dominant castes of India. Little wonder then, that the CB’s of the capital city have often re-elected a representative whose promises often sound like those of the Estado Novo.

There is a genuine problem that most non-dominant caste Indians face in the coming decade. Within Goa this threat manifests itself as the delegitimization of all that is seen as Catholic. There is also a problem that the nature of Goa’s integration into the Indian Union continues to pose for the Goan. Because of the manner in which India is defined as Hindu, being Catholic is a favoured identity choice for many Goans who are not offered many options, or indeed ignored, by the Indian State. However the real danger that they (we?) face, is that given the dominance of the CB in the sphere of cultural representation, in articulating our valid dissent, we may unwittingly choose the route of the Catholic Bigot. This would be a tragedy, because what we would be doing would be to only engage in useless polemics (a favourite pastime of the colonial Goan elite), and lend our muscle power to the definitely anti-democratic social imaginations of the CB.

May God save the Catholic…and grant you a good year!

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times on 5 Jan 2011)

Learnings from the Peoples’ Tribunal: Common Property, Communidades, Temples and Churches

A critique leveled against this column last week, when it entered into the debate on the ‘Political Economy of the Church’ was that it ignored the issue of the lands and properties controlled by the temple committees in the State. It was pointed out, that the temple committee’s in the State are like the Church, also custodians of vast properties, that are effectively held privately, under the ridiculous proposition that they are private temples, and hence in that sense family properties.

To respond to this issue, we need to address a fundamental myth about communal institutions in Goa, be they the Communidades or the Temple Trusts in the State. Since perspective, or the position from which we understand the issue, is also important, let us adopt the perspective of those who are edged out of the whole equation, be it Communidade or Temple; the tribal communities of Goa.

In the course of the recently held Peoples’ Tribunal for the Restoration of Tribal Homelands, the institution of the Communidade emerged as a major location of conflict with regard to the livelihood rights of the tribal groups of Goa. In a large number of cases before the tribunal, it turned out that despite have Portuguese-era documents that attested to their rights in the land, the names of tribals in possession of, and husbanding properties, were not present in the Survey Records dating from the 1960s (that is under the Indian dispensation). In some cases, illiteracy has resulted in some people having no documents at all to prove their presence on the land. The result is that they are by and large unable to avail of any government service related to the land, since they have to get a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the Communidade office. The Communidade in most places (both New Conquests and Old Conquests, and the majority of the stories came from the New Conquests) is run by dominant caste groups, who either dissuade them from pursuing the matter, or tell them to buzz off. In any case, the Communidade officials do not cooperate with the tribals to establish the fact that they have in fact been tenants of the Communidade, and are thus entitled to the rights that come with such a fact. As a result, when these Communidade lands are sold by the Communidade or acquired by the State, the tribal communities who are either wholly or substantially dependent on land have no stake in the process or benefit from the sale.

The case of temple properties is somewhat similar. The temples are claimed as family temples by a handful of upper-caste groups and vast properties cornered by these groups, while the tribals, to whom the deity originally belonged and who tend the properties of the temple, are reduced to persons who are merely tolerated. Once more rights are denied in pretty much the same way as in the case of the Communidades.

How did this situation come to be? The situation it should be noted is universal. In almost every society that makes a transition – through colonialism – to a capitalist society with written rules, the less resourceful groups get pushed out. They get pushed out because the colonizer does not speak with them to ascertain their rights in the whole process. It is the dominant group that represents the working of the social system and the rights of various groups. In this process, they either outrightly exclude marginal groups, or underplay the rights that they had in the working of the system.

In Goa thus far we have been treated to the myth that the communidades are composed of gãocars who are members of the ‘founding families’ of the village. This story should hold as much water in today’s world as the idea of ‘old families’. All families are as old as the other, what we mean when we say ‘old family’ is that the family has been powerful for a long time. Similarly ‘founding families’ are those clans/ caste groups who were dominant in the village at the time. The rest of the village groups, were subservient to these dominant groups, but definitely not without traditional rights. It was these rights that got excluded at the time of the framing of the Foral of Afonso Mexia in the early 1500’s and formed the basis of the Communidade system.

Much later in time, the Portuguese realised the need to regulate the Temples and formulated the Lei de Mazanias. Once more, upper caste groups were able to take control of the process and through relying on the already established myth of ‘founding families’, and the fact that they were literate and able to manipulate records, argue that the temples (and their properties) were family temples.

The release from Portuguese rule should have ideally led to a release from the mistakes of the Portuguese (feudal) past into the socialistic future we were promised. However this was not to be. As mentioned above, the Survey of the 1960’s has in fact made life even more difficult for Goa’s tribal groups, since their Portuguese era land documents, held valid under the Portuguese are no longer recognized by judicial authorities. Even worse, the possibly liberative recognition by the Portuguese State embodied in the Code of the Communidades, that the village lands were not owned by the State, but were the property of the village, was not recognized by the Indian State. Liberation from the point of view of the Goan tribal then, has yet to come.

What is the solution to this problem? Tribal activists argue that the answer lies in the recognition of their right of private property over the lands that they were tenants to, or rely on. My personal position stems from a recognition of the situation that in fact existed prior to the Portuguese arrival, a system that was de facto in place over large parts of Goa, until the capitalist expansion began hardly 3 decades ago. There can be no private ownership of land. Land does not exist to be owned. Land is the property of the village in which every member of the village (gãocar or not) has an equal right to benefit from. Land unused by a family, returns to the village pool, to be re-allotted elsewhere. This is not a utopian system, it exists in the North-east protected under the very same Special Status provisions of the Indian Constitution that are desired by some for Goa.

This argument is NOT an argument against private property. It is an argument in favour of a tendency toward equal access to land, and against the notion of ownership of land, while respecting the right to occupy land. It is also an argument that privileges democratic control over resources (like land) that are already seen as common property.

To return to the issue of the Church and property, we must recognize that the contemporary Church has taken some steps toward democratizing the operation of local Churches, and access to its resources. Caste based confraternities and fabricas have been done away with, at least on paper, and the operation of the local Church opened up to all caste groups. What is required now is to push for these on-paper-reforms to be equitably enforced (without animosity to formerly dominant caste-groups). This is an example that Goan temples riven with inter-caste disputes would do well to adopt.

Under this circumstance, it does not appear as if greater governmental control will resolve anything. What is required is for either effecting changes in governance structure to make the institution more representative of village communities. And subsequently ensure that these institutional changes don’t remain on paper. This task requires a social movement not governmental control. If anything, we know that putting our faith in the government will result in more sale of common property for dubious ‘public purpose’ schemes.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 17th June 2009)

Booking a Trip to Goa 3 - Goa; A Daughter's Story

Part 3 of the originally single essay that appeared in the December issue of See Goa.

Goa: A Daughter’s Story

There were demands when Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy appeared in the bookstores, that it be sold with a statutory warning for those with weak wrists. A similar warning should be issued when recommending Goa: A Daughter’s Story for a read; the book is not as heavy as A Suitable Boy, but it still is one ferociously heavy tome!

Written by Maria Aurora Couto, when the book first came out in paperback, it proved to the world that there was a market for serious writing on Goa. It also sent every Goan bigname scurrying to the bookstore to figure if their family name figured in it (and Gip’s critique of Goan society was proved right!). It sold like hot cakes and that it has subsequently been reissued in paperback is a testament to its readability.

On the surface, A Daughter’s Story begins as the story of a daughter, namely Aurora, speaking of her father, who she clearly adored, and in later pages of her mother, by all accounts a strong woman. The book goes beyond this realm though and details the passionate relationship that Aurora has with her motherland as well. It documents the story of her relationship with the land and its waters, her arrival as the wife of an IAS officer soon after the Indian police action in 1961 that united Goa to the Indian Union. If Gip on the one hand was inordinately critical of the empty intellectual lives of his contemporaries, Couto exalts the same society for the manner in which it embraced intellectual currents from the West, the ideals of the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, and incarnated them within Goan society. A Daughter’s Story is a wonderful way to engage with some of the debates that have seized Goan minds and will continue to dominate some of their conversations for a while.

Available in entirety at http://www.readseegoa.com/portal/modules.php?name=Home_Block_B&art_type=general&myaction=show&myid=1069