Why don’t you see Fascism?

The bye-elections to select the representative for the city of Panjim are being seen as critical given that it will determine if the BJP-led coalition will continue to govern Goa, and will also determine the career of the BJP candidate Manohar Parrikar. It is for this reason, therefore, that most people are on edge and apprehensive about the outcome. Some of the tensions involved in this election were made evident in the article written by advocate F. E. Noronha and published in Renovação, the newsletter and magazine of the Archdiocese of Goa. In this article, Noronha all but urged the electorate to reject Parrikar at the polls, arguing that a Nazi-like atmosphere had arisen in Goa.

A newspaper article reported that Vijay Sardesai, leader of the Goa Forward party which is a member of the ruling coalition, dismissed this article as “hyperbole”. Sardesai is reported to have indicated that he thought the argument “a clear cut case of exaggeration. In Goa, where is the fascism? Which community is being discriminated or acted against by the state, through the state machinery?”

This report confirmed my own evaluation of the problems with the Indian polity, and the inability of elected representatives and politicians to either appreciate the nature of what exactly is at stake at this particular moment in Indian politics, or to ignore the implications in their drive to obtain political power.

To begin with is the sheer arrogance with which Sardesai dismisses Noronha’s argument. As a member of a Hindu dominant caste, Sardesai is in no position to idly dismiss others’ concerns.  How would he, who is under no threat - of life, or culture - be able to determine what is hyperbole or not? Rather than dismissing the concerns of a member of a minoritized group, he ought to have said, “yes, I hear you, and I will see what I can do to resolve this matter”. This dismissal is particularly callous given that Sardesai rose to power through the support of the many Catholic groups. 

It appears that Sardesai has either no idea how fascism actually operates, or is being disingenuous given that he has pledged his support to Manohar Parrikar’s election bid from Panjim. In any case, since Sardesai reportedly inquired which community is being discriminated against by the State, let us take him seriously and provide a response. This response will demonstrate the manner in which fascism has been growing, systematically pushing groups out of power and minoritizing them.

It needs to be noted that fascism does not emerge fully-grown, like some Athena from the head of Zeus. On the contrary, fascism grows through small, deliberate steps. One need only look at the discrimination against the Roman script of the Konkani language. Ever since 1981, when the Official Language Act (OLA) was legislated by the Congress party, the Roman script has been the target of hostility by the state-supported Nagri Konkani lobby. Not only have literary works in the Roman script been ignored for awards, these works have not even been admitted to competitions on the grounds that the Roman script is not an officially recognised script. This is the face of creeping fascism where the chief tool through which a social group, viz. that of the Bahujan Catholics, expresses itself is systematically and deliberately side-lined and suffocated. Indeed, given Sardesai’s claims of representing Goemkarponn, or Goanness, one would have expected him to take up the long-standing demand of such groups as the Dalgado Konknni Akademi, and the Romi Lipi Action Front to ensure that the Roman script is officially recognised. But this is not the only example of systematic minoritization and threat. There has been a stream of anti-Catholic abuse by persons not just from outside of Goa, like Sadhvi Saraswati, but persons within Goa such as Subash Velingkar, Uday Bhembre, with people like Naguesh Karmali having actually participated in the destruction of property as in Fontainhas in 2002. In all of these events, state governments of varying parties have literally looked on passively. One should also not forget the effective suffocation of the production of beef in the state a process initiated by the MGP in 1978.

One would have hoped that Sardesai would use his position in the ruling coalition to push forward agendas, like the official recognition of the Roman script, that will halt the systematic minoritization of various groups within Goa. However, Sardesai’s rhetoric demonstrates a troubling similarity with Hindu nationalists. Take, for example, that not only has Sardesai reportedly dismissed Noronha’s argument as hyperbole he has also dismissed “certain sections of Goan people” as being irrational. He suggests that such concerns are the result of “scepticism, pessimism among certain sections of Goan people” rather than rational opinion articulated after careful study and observation. Given that these comments were made in the context of Noronha’s article, one can safely assume that Sardesai means Catholics when he refers to “certain sections of Goan people.”

As should be obvious from the discussion above, fascism in our state is not limited to the actions of the BJP alone. Rather, it has had a long gestation period. Nevertheless, it is also true that the presence of the BJP, especially at the Centre, has allowed for the animosity towards non-Hindu groups to be asserted viciously. In this context we should take into consideration the words of the economist and former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis. Speaking in the context of the recently concluded French presidential elections Varoufakis pointed out that it was important to rally around the problematic figure of Emmanuel Macron precisely because it was critical that the racist and right-wing Marie Le Pen be defeated. Speaking to those who did not see a difference between these two problematic figures he pointed out that one needed to be aware of the implications of what happens when a “fascist, racist party” gets its “hands on the levers of the deep state, the levers of the police, and of the army.” This article will appear too late for it to have any impact on the outcome of the election to the Panjim legislatve seat. However, the larger point that needs to be made is to underline how fascism operates, and how it is, in fact, very much a threat in Goa.

(A version of this text was first published in the O Heraldo on 24 Aug 2017)

The Brahmin Double in Goan history

In his article, “The Brahmin double: the Brahminical construction of anti-Brahminism and anti-caste sentiment in the religious cultures of precolonial Maharashtra” ([2012] 2014), Christian Lee Novetzke discusses the cases of the Marathi bhakti poets Jnaneshwar and Eknath. Novetzke’s argument is that the image of Brahmin reformers is not as cut and dry as it is made out to be. Rather, he argues that these reformers were embodiments of what he calls “the brahmin double”. The brahmin double is the strategy through which a brahmin pokes fun of, or critiques other brahmins who are cast as bad, evil, or bigoted. In doing so, the brahmin operating as the good part of the double “provides one important way to separate Brahminism and Brahmins”. That is, the audience fails to see that the problem is not with individual brahmins alone, but also with Brahmanism. By deflecting critique toward individual brahmin figures, and not the system that produces brahmins and brahmanical structures, the good brahmin ensures that Brahmanism continues its grip over Indian society. Novetzke points out that a classic feature of the Brahmin double is that it always offers reform of Brahmanism, and never radical critique. Thus the Brahmin double ensures that there are superficial changes, even as the status quo is maintained.

Reading this argument, it occurred to me that recent Goan history offers great examples of the “brahmin double” over various generations. A previous column discussed Varde Valaulikar’s response to Raghunath Talwadkar. Valaulikar’s proposed that the Saraswat caste embrace the Konkani language as their mother-tongue while Talwadkar opposed this proposal pointing to the language’s association with lower classes, and castes, and with “defiled” Christians such as José Gerson da Cunha. As pointed out in that column, Valaulikar’s response was not to condemn Talwadkar’s blatant casteism. Rather, he offered the suggestion that in fact the Catholic missionaries had learned Konkani from brahmins, and that da Cunha himself was a brahmin. In this equation, Talwadkar gets castigated as the bad brahmin, and Valaulikar effects the “brahmin double” move by ensuring that brahmin hegemony is not challenged, but rather paves the way for the Saraswat caste and associated caste groups to assert their claim over the Konkani language.

Another argument that I made in the earlier column was to point to the fact that Valaulikar’s project was carried forward by men like Uday Bhembre. To this extent, Uday Bhembre, and his associates, are contemporary embodiments of Valaulikar. Bhembre was a hero of the Konkani language agitation, a legend of his time. He was lionized as the man who went into the meetings of pro-Marathi activists and shouted out loud that Konkani, not Marathi was his mother tongue, at certain risk to his bodily integrity. The more important legend for my argument is his response when asked by pro-Marathi activists; “How can you claim Konkani as your mother tongue when your father claims Marathi as his mother tongue?” Bhembre’s famous response was “But don’t you know that my mother and my father’s mother are not the same person?” In the course of the Konkani language agitation, Bhembre was playing the Brahmin double, and his father, Laxmikant Bhembre, and other brahmins, were cast as the bad brahmins, who could not see that Konkani was the mother tongue of Goa. Through his actions Bhembre junior ensured that he deflected attention away from the fact that the Konkani that he and his companions were pushing was in fact not a Konkani of the bahujan masses, but the Antruzi dialect and the Nagri script, both associated with Valaulikar’s project of brahmin hegemony in Goa.

Today, with the kind of association that Bhembre is making with the RSS against the demands for the recognition of English as a state supported medium of instruction, you have younger Saraswat men who are effecting the strategy of the Brahmin double. Responding with horror to Bhembre’s suggestion, they point out that there are more Hindus than Catholics studying in diocesan schools that have switched from Konkani to English medium. What is interesting is that these arguments do not fracture the meaningless labels of “Christian community” and “Hindu community” invoked by Bhembre and others. This is not surprising given that this group is actively engaged in Hindu reform, a process which neuters dalit-bahujan assertions, and consolidates disparate caste groups into a single Hindu community usually under brahmin leadership or direction. Their rhetoric and activism is never really one of a radical rejection of caste hegemony, but of managing the anger against their caste group and its leadership of the political community Goa.

Another touchstone to use for evaluation would be their response to the demand that the Roman script be recognised on par with Nagari Konkani. These secular Saraswat will agree that there is a need for a more “bahujanised” Konkani, but will not budge when it comes to giving equal rights to the Roman script. Thus, what they are doing is trying to make Nagari Konkani, the vehicle of Saraswat hegemony in Goa, more palatable to the bahujans, even while they completely ignore the real issue of Romi Konkani.

It is important to underline that it is not my argument that these men are performing the strategy of the brahmin double deliberately. Very often our actions are determined not by our conscious selves but determined by the milieu in which we are raised. The response, therefore, is not to necessarily condemn these men. Our response ought to be to always be aware of the manner in which the social structure asserts itself, and thus question brahmin saviours, and make these saviours aware of the pernicious politics that they reproduce.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 4 Sept 2015)

Goans, Films, and their worlds – Putting Nachom-ia Kumpasar in context

I am always afraid when I go to watch a film that features Goa or Goans, because of the host of problems that plague their representation. These problems were more than painfully obvious in the recent films Finding Fanny (2014) and The Coffin Maker (2011). As in these films Goa is invariably depicted as a land of natural beauty, a veritable paradise. This representation hides not only the challenges being posed to its environment, but also the profound cultural conflicts that are ripping resident communities apart. For their part, Goans are depicted as fun and pleasure-loving folk, non-achievers given to drink, of easy virtue, and marked by childlike simplicity. Such a representation effaces the fact that far from being easy, Goan communities, Catholic and others, are in fact marked by strong moral codes that regulate sexual behaviour.

It was thus with relief that I concluded my viewing of Nachom-ia Kumpasar (Let’s Dance to the Rhythm), the latest Konkani language film directed by Bardroy Barretto. A musical, the film is bereft of the problematic and insulting clichés that guide so many Indian language films about Goa and Goans, and is a must see since it is a fabulous contribution to Goan, and Konkani language, culture.

There are two tensions that guide the narrative of the film. The first is the love affair between the crooner Donna and the musician and composer Lawry Vaz. This love affair provides the meat for the entire film, regaling the audience through the 164 odd minutes of the film. The other tension, however, and in my opinion the more interesting, is that of the complicated relationship between the Goan, and in particular the Goan Catholic, and the Indian state. Indeed, I would argue that the love story is merely a foil for the more assertive political complaint.

The film begins with a grouse; that Goan musicians who contributed substantially to the unforgettable melodies of the Hindi film industry were, and still have, not been given their due. Despite Goans contributing to writing, composing, and arranging the music, the credits invariably went to the established names within the film industry. But this is not all; at the conclusion, the film informs us that the brilliant music that poured out of the Goans in Bombay since the 1930s was forced to suffer a sudden and abrupt death thanks to the Prohibition that was imposed in Bombay by the chief minister Morarji Desai in 1950. Prohibition ensured that the night clubs in the city had to shut down, forcing the destruction of the cultural life of the city that these Goan musicians had contributed vibrantly to. This cultural life has been lavishly documented by Naresh Fernandes in Taj mahal Foxtrot: The story of Bombay’s Jazz Age (2011). With no avenues for live performances, these musicians took up employment in the film industry. Once again, despite their role in producing the cult hits that went on to define the soundscape of Hindi film music, these musicians remained unacknowledged. The final words are particularly poignant: “After a final flourish in the 70s, the curtains slowly came down.There was no finale. No calls for an encore. And no applause.”

In presenting this complaint to the larger public, the film makes a more profound contribution than it may have realised. It is articulating a long held, but rarely voiced, opinion that the contributions of Goan Catholics to India are often ignored, and their cultural life not considered valid, or even legitimate. What the film does is to make obvious that the ignoring was not unconscious but in fact a systemic activity. To this extent it draws attention to the injustices that have governed the operation of the Indian state, where some communities are marginalised and erased, even as their works and efforts are appropriated by the North Indian upper-caste groups who seem to have emerged as the ultimate beneficiaries from the creation of post-colonial India.

A common response to political complaints that are articulated by marginalised groups, and especially in the case of Goans who voice protest about the way in which they are represented, is to dismiss the complaints. What Nachom-ia Kumpasar also does, though perhaps unconsciously, is to mount a rejoinder to the filmic representations of Goans. If the film Bobby (1973) set up a standard for how Goan, and Catholic, women in India were understood, then Nachom-ia offers an alternative way in which to deal with extra-marital sexual relations. As indicated earlier, the film revolves around the love story of Donna and Lawry. However, unbeknownst, to most characters in the film, until it is far too late, Lawry is in fact a married man. This crushes Donna, even more so when she realises that Lawry has not only been hiding the fact of his marriage, but persists in the affair while also hiding the fact that his wife is pregnant. It is only when Lawry is congratulated by members of the band that he and Donna belong too that Donna realises that she has once again been duped by the man she loves. The tears that Donna sheds, the portrayal of the conflicts that Lawry encounters, and the statements of a variety of characters in the film, clearly indicate that love leading to marriage is the ideal within the community that Donna and Lawry inhabit. Rather than offer up a caricature of a community, the film engages with the conflicts that often crop up in communities, whether Goan or otherwise.

The other element of the caricature of Goans and Indian Christians that the film engages with is the relationship of Goans to alcohol. Just as in the lives of most Goan Catholics, alcohol is present throughout the film, be it when persons are drinking at home, at feasts, or in the public space of the tavern. The naturalness of alcohol in social life, as well as the virtues of drink in moderation, are in fact actively highlighted by the presence of the lone alcoholic in the film. The fact that he is the sole alcoholic makes the eloquent point that while drink is ubiquitous in the Goan lifestyle, not everyone is an alcoholic. The advice that this alcoholic gives Donna when she begins her own disastrous descent into alcoholism makes the relationship between the Goans and alcohol very clear. In the words of the character played by the tiatrist Prince Jacob, one drinks for one of two reasons, either out of happiness, or due to sadness and the desire to forget. Forgetting, he advises, is not possible through alcohol. This moment, that draws its gravitas from the Latin maxim in vino veritas, ensures that alcohol and alcoholism in the film are not merely tropes employed to titillate, but are evidence of community wisdom and advice. It is also worth noting that the alcoholic is humanised. He is not a drunk just for the sake of being drunk. That he is able to offer Donna such sage advice means that he has turned to alcohol for particular reasons. This is in sharp contrast to Bollywood representations of Goan alcoholics where one only understands them as being buffoons who drink for no apparent reason.

The manner in which this advice was communicated to Donna via the otherwise comic figure made one more feature of the film strikingly obvious: the power and strength of the tiatr. Those familiar with this Konkani language drama tradition will recognise the extent to which the film is provided substance by the formulae of tiatr. The tiatrist and comedian John D’Silva plays the role of Logic, Lawry’s aptly-named manager and sidekick, through the whole film, while Prince Jacob, a well-known practitioner in the genre, does a brilliant job of playing the alcoholic. While both tiatrist play supporting roles, it is in fact their performances that guide the film and gives it depth and solidity. D’Silva demonstrates his versatility and the capacity of tiatr by operating as more than just the comedian. He also effects a smooth transition to the manipulative manager who gets Donna to sign an unfair contract that will prevent her from singing with anyone besides Lawry. Speaking with those involved in the production of the film I was given to understand that D’Silva was also responsible for shaping the screen play to ensure that it spoke to diverse Goan audiences and did not remain entirely an “intellectual” exercise.  This engagement with the film and indeed the success of the film points to the vitality of tiatr.

It is through these tiatrist and the multiple Konkani speaking actors in the film that one is also witness to the breadth of Goan Catholic Konkani language forms. The Konkani is peppered with words that have Portuguese origin, but have over time been hammered into shape to become uniquely Konkani. Sadly, in recent times this diversity has come under threat through the acts of the state of Goa. Since the recognition of only Nagri-scripted Konkani as the official language of the State of Goa, in 1987, the state has supported only the Nagri script and Sanskritic version of the Sarasawat Brahmins in the territory, and suppressed all other forms of the language. Introducing the audiences to the diversity within the Konkani language spoken among Goans is a highly laudable feature of this film.  A particular target of ire was the language form that gave birth to the tiatr and cantaram, which used words of Portuguese origin, and was written in the Roman script. More recently, voices have been growing in protest against this suppression. In referencing these language forms the film has become one more tool for those struggling to gain recognition for Konkani in the Roman script.

If there is one short coming of the film it is the fact that the lead actors are not Konkani speakers. Their discomfort with the language is obvious and jars against the fluidity with which the other actors speak the language in all its nuances and inflections. A case in point is the stellar performance of Meenacshi Martins, who plays Donna’s mother. In addition, one suspects that it was this unfamiliarity with the language that ensured that the emotional range of these actors and their engagements with each other was not elaborated but restricted to monosyllables and facial gestures. This shortcoming could have been overcome by casting experienced tiatrist in these lead roles.

The location of this film’s storyline in both Goa and Bombay is another issue linked with the recognition of tiatr and other cultural forms of the Catholic labouring castes and classes from Goa. For a long time tiatr artists in Goa were not recognised by the government of Goa given that most of these artistes were based almost entirely in Bombay. As Nachom-ia so clearly shows, Bombay was the space where the labouring Goan Catholics seemed to have been able to assert themselves outside of the suffocating shadow of the landlord, and the social positions that caste and the comunidade system meted out to labouring groups. Celebrated by dominant-caste Goans as the embodiment of village democracy, the comunidade system ensured the communal management of village lands by an oligopoly of dominant caste families to the exclusion of everyone else. While claiming descent from the founders of the village, these oligarchs saw other villagers as merely living in the village, rather than constituting the village.  The position of marginalised castes was ritually inscribed and marked at every event of village life. It was to also escape this ritual and quotidian humiliation that so many Goans migrated to Bombay and further afield.

What is interesting is that it was exactly at the time that the labouring Goan Catholic in Bombay was churning out music, film, literature, and a range of novel cultural forms that pro-Indian Goan nationalists like Tristão de Bragança Cunha (1891 – 1958) and Luis de Menezes Bragança (1878- 1938) were haranguing Goans for their inability to engage in vibrant cultural production. The former of these two nationalists has today been integrated into the pantheon of Indian heroes as ‘The Father of Goan Nationalism’. In fact Bragança Cunha’s analysis of the problem in his famous tract The Denationalisation of Goans (1944) has become the bedrock of the delegitimisation of the cultural practices of Goan Catholics.  Bragança Cunha argued that Goans, and especially the Goan Catholic had become denationalised as a result of adopting a culture that was imitative of the West. In the face of the kind of cultural production that marked the life of the labouring Goan Catholic in the city of Bombay these assertions are bizarre! If taken seriously they can only mean one of two things. First, as was the case with the rest of their upper-caste and landed elite brethren, these two nationalists ignored and disparaged the cultural innovations of the labouring Goan. The other possibility is that the intended audience, and the subject, of their nationalist rhetoric were the Goan Catholic elite alone. In either case what is revealed are the limitations of the current deities of the pro-Indian Goan nationalist pantheon, and their irrelevance in the face of the vibrant cultural life of the labouring or bahujan Catholic.

The tragedy is that this space was destroyed even as the labouring Catholic began to gain in confidence and recognition First, as the film argues, by the Prohibition that marked the beginning of the end of Bombay’s cosmopolitanism, and secondly through the manipulations in Goa that ensured that the language and culture of these labouring Catholic was excised from the realm of state recognition precisely through reliance on the skewed analysis of the type offered by Bragança Cunha. What Bragança Cunha and his ilk had done was to adopt a racist understanding of what culture and Indian-ness meant and scripted anything seemingly connected with Europe outside of this definition. This scripting did not bother them unduely because these nationalists were able to assert their Indian-ness by falling back on their upper-caste identity. That it was a nationalist Gandhian ideology at work in the Bombay of the 50s and Gandhians in Goa who masterminded the displacement of Konkani in the Roman script from official recognition should give us ample proof of the upper caste Hindu hegemony that Gandhian ideology underscores. In addition it should warn us that the contemporary problems that minority groups in India face have roots that lie deeper than the current obsession with finger pointing at the BJP alone.

The final accolade that the film deserves is for casting the spotlight on Lorna, that icon of Goan culture. It is widely suggested that the love story of Donna and Lawry is based on her relationship with Chris Perry. The final segments of the film, which suggest scenes from Lorna’s rapturous return to the Goan stage, indicate just what a phenomena she was and continues to be. Lorna is an icon of Goan culture not merely for the songs she gave, and continues to give, life to, but for the kind of sexuality that she embodies. Her voice does not contain the sickly saccharine and shrill sweetness that marks so much of Hindi film music and embodies virginal, self-effacing purity. Her voice is an earthy one that can roar if there be need for it. The woman that her voice gives life to is conscious of her sexuality and vocal about her desires. It is this kind of mature sexuality that Palomi Ghosh, the lead actress who plays Donna, fails to capture. Rather than the strong woman of Lorna’s life story, for the most part one sees the depiction of a slightly nervous, giggly girl. This is such a shame. One wishes that the lady is memorialised through the naming of a public institution or space after her. Failing that, this film will be one that will memorialise those artists who despite their substantial productions and innovations seem doomed to be kept out of the Indian and statal imagination.

Nachom-ia Kumpasar is a great film devoid of the humiliating clichés that are the stock of Indian filmic depictions of Goan Catholics. The film achieves this feat not because it emerges from within the community, but because it engages politically with the history and the ethos of the community and unapologetically airs a long-held grievance.

(I would like to thank the members of the Al-Zulaij Collective, especially R. Benedito Ferrão and Dale Luis Menezes for their comments on earlier versions of this text. I claim ownership of all errors in the text.

A version of this post was first published in Round Table India. My thanks to them for the opportunity.
The text was subsequently translated into Konkani by Dale Luis Menezes and published in the March 2015 edition of the magazine Gulab.)

The academic, economic and emotional politics of Konkani

To,

The Editor,

Navhind Times.

We write this letter to indicate that we found the article “Konkani Bhasha: Its Academic, Economic and Emotional Viability”, that appeared in your newspaper on 17 Aug 2013, lacking in terms of conveying the real story regarding the health of the Konkani language.

This article which ostensibly discusses the future development and status of Konkani, including the forces that work for the strengthening of the language, has nowhere, not even once, made a mention of the Roman script, nor of the cultural and literary productions in that script, nor of the institutions engaged in giving the script and its productions new life. Allow us, therefore, to present an alternative narrative about the academic, economic and emotional politics of the Konkani language.

The article commences with a paean to Shenoi Goembab (Varde Valaulikar), in an attempt to situate him as the origin of the literary development of the Konkani language. While there can be no doubt regarding Varde Valaulikar’s contributions to Konkani literature, it should not be forgotten that he was but one of the many supporters of the language and cultural production in it. Notably, while the article makes a case that it is just a small segment of the Konkani-speaking population that is attempting to safeguard the language, reality is entirely to the contrary. The Konkani language acquired its first mass base largely through, but not restricted to, the literary efforts of working class Goan Catholic migrants in Bombay, and the simultaneous articulations of the language on the stage through the associated arts of Tiatr and Cantaram. Tragically however, this literary tradition has been stifled by the policies followed by the official Konkani language establishment since the adoption of the Official Language Act of the State. Nevertheless, Konkani continues to thrive via Tiatr and Cantaram, not merely in the State, but in various parts of the country, most notably Bombay, as well as globally, once again in places where Goan Catholics have migrated in search of employment. Tiatr shows, festivals and competitions receive widespread public patronage and run houseful on a regular basis, in towns as well as villages of Goa. So popular are these performances that it has also led to a thriving business in the sale of CDs and DVDs of these shows. While on the topic of the cultural productions of the Roman script, allow us to highlight the contribution of Romans (Konkani language novels in the Roman script) writers to Konkani literature, amongst whom Reginald Fernandes was the most towering figure, and is believed to have written over 200 books.

Also worth mentioning is the role played by the Konkani language establishment, especially the Goa Konkani Akademi (GKA), in stifling the Konkani language as embodied in the Roman script, and the dialects other than the Antruzi variant identified with, and claimed by, the Saraswat caste.  The GKA has since inception been formed largely by members of the Saraswat caste, and caste-groups and individuals allied with this caste. If anything, this only further contributes to the limited narrative that the article proffers about Konkani and its alleged proponents.

The article quotes Pundalik Naik speaking of the apparently uphill battle that the GKA has waged to raise Konkani to this dubious level of merit. What is not highlighted is the perhaps grimmer battle that this institution and its allied partners have waged against persons writing in the Roman script. Whether in the Kala Academy or the GKA, contributions in the Roman script used to be rejected for competitions, on the basis that Devanagari alone was the official script, and hence the Roman script could not be recognised. As if to add insult to injury, subsequent to these discriminatory rejections, and clearly without reading these works, submissions in the Roman script were routinely dismissed as “lacking in standard”. Rather than attempt to support litterateurs who used the Roman script to achieve these levels of standard, these persons were starved of state support, as they were forced to work in Devanagari and the Antruzi dialect exclusively. With official Konkani’s highly sanskritised form and rejection of Konkani history, we would like to highlight that this was akin to requiring Hindi litterateurs to write in English! Myopic measures of this nature are precisely what have curtailed the growth of literary traditions when, in fact, the rich diversity of Konkani in its many scripts and dialects should be lauded for the fertile possibilities they allow for multifarious growth. The Kala Academy, however, thankfully appears to be changing its policy, as obvious from a recent notice dated Aug 27, 2003, that it has extended the scope of its annual literary awards to include works in Konkani in Devanagari as well as Roman scripts.

Furthermore, the official guardians of the culture of the State systematically went out of their way to ridicule Tiatr suggesting that it similarly lacked standard. This, despite the fact that reputed scholars like Pramod Kale, Rowena Robinson, and Goa University’s Rafael Fernandes have recognised the dynamism of the tiatr form.

The story of Konkani since Liberation, and especially since the adoption of the Official Language Act, has therefore been a history of the destruction of an organic and vibrant language in order to prop up the artificial language dreamed up by a small segment of the Goan polity, more obsessed with Brahmanical purity and pedigree than the health of a polity and a language. Not only does this serve to limit literary and linguistic possibilities based on caste and class, but it also undercuts avenues of growth outside of the limited imagination prescribed by such intention.

To its credit, the essay does refer to the Chief Minister indicating that “it is important that we include various dialects in our writing.” However, this stray phrase would not make much sense to a reader unfamiliar with the quiet but intense battles being conducted behind closed doors. Further, this recognition by the Chief Minister has come about as a result of intense efforts not only to reviving organic Konkani, but also to give it political recognition. Yeoman service in this regard has been rendered by the Dalgado Konknni Akademi, Romi Lipi Action Front, and the Tiatr Academy of Goa, three multisectarian fora that have acknowledged the problems that have been caused by the exclusionary strategies of the official Konkani language establishment. As a result of their efforts, one can notice a certain renaissance as artistes long starved of state support now have a sense that their language is not something to be ashamed of, but one they can be both proud of and productive within.

We would also like to point out that the whole idea of a single “mother tongue” has been severely criticised in more recent scholarship, pointing to the fact that the real geographies of any language are much more complex. Indeed, it has been the insistence on colonial, racist, and out-dated notions of a single mother tongue that has resulted in the complicated tensions between those who prefer to use Marathi as public language, and those who prefer to use Konkani, and the wicked suggestion that the demand that state support be offered to schools that provide primary education in the English language is anti-national.

Giving that these essential facts were missing from the article, we believe it risks misrepresenting the complexity of the Konkani language in Goa. As such, we would appreciate it if the editor gave prominent space to this letter as a way of recognising the diversity of the Konkani language, and especially the presence of the Roman script, and non-Antruzi dialects.

Jason Keith Fernandes, Taleigāo – Goa

Dale Luis Menezes, JNU Delhi/ Quepem – Goa

R. BeneditoFerrão, Porvorim – Goa

(A version of this letter was first published in the Navhind Times, in the My Take section, on 2 Sept 2013)