Itinerant Mendicant: In the Court of the Virgin

The Sanctuary of the Virgin of Monserrat lies in the Monserrat mountain some thirty-eight kilometres outside of the Catalonian-Spanish city of Barcelona. This sanctuary is home to a Benedictine monastery that legend holds was built around the image of the Virgin Mary seated with her son Jesus in her lap. The monastery was reportedly built around the image because when the monks tried to move the image, they found it impossible to move beyond a certain distance, and were thereby convinced that it was the divine wish of the mother of Christ that her image remain where it had been found. In some traditions, this image of the Virgin is understood to be a replica of an original that was carved by the hand of St. Luke himself. Interestingly, the image portrays the mother of Christ as a dark-hued lady, and is one of the Black Madonnas scattered across Europe.

However, it is not an itinerant’s reminisces of a fabulous shrine that concern this column, but the comparisons that one could make with the sub-continent having visited this European Catholic shrine. Reading books on Catholic practices in Goa, one comes across endless reams seeking to demonstrate how similar some of the practices of Goan Catholicism are to Hinduism, and how some of the Goan churches seem to operate like temples. In such a context, what would it be like to compare a European church to a Hindu temple? It was exactly such an opportunity that presented itself subsequent to this visit to the shrine of the Virgin of Monserrat.

Anthropological studies, especially of South Indian temples, have demonstrated how the temple is not merely a “religious” space, but the centre of a polity over which the deity is understood to be the sovereign ruler. Within this understanding, the temple is the palace of the deity, where royal rituals are carried out, and “devotees” are in fact subjects who go to petition the ruler for favours, just as today we visit politicians for similar boons. Based on the kind of patronage the temple enjoys, the temple complex could range from a simple shed, to an agglomeration of structures, including tanks, courtyards and other buildings.

With this understanding in place it becomes easier to see how the shrine of Monserrat operates very much as a Hindu temple does. The complex consists, not merely of the shrine that houses the image of the Virgin, but includes, like many Hindu temples do, a series of courtyards. Situated at varying levels, the three courtyards at Monserrat, like the Hindu shrine, offer even from the outside various levels of access to the deity within. Much like Hindu temples it is in these spaces where pilgrims gather, and locals offer up performances, be they human towers (castellers), or local dances (sardana) that are held to be “in honour” of the Virgin.

The Virgin is not merely an object of veneration of the Catholic cult, but has also been incorporated into Catalonian nationalism. Thus, on September 11, 1881, Pope Leo XIII declared the vVrgin of Montserrat patroness of Catalonia. As if to further underscore the icon’s status as a sovereign figure, in 1947 the icon was installed into a larger work of art so as to appear as if the Virgin was seated on a throne. As a result, one gets the impression quite like that of the Hindu deity who is installed as the sovereign presiding over its royal court, the central figure capturing one’s eye, commanding awe and respect. Given the icon’s reputation as a miracle worker, in a manner reminiscent of the parikrama, the shrine in Monserrat allows for pilgrims to que up, caress the globe in the Virgin’s hand, and exit from the opposite side, where they can light candles either in thanksgiving for prayers answered, or as further petitions.

The object of this comparison however, is not to demonstrate that there is a Hindu logic that underpins the operation of the universe, but to demonstrate that Catholic churches and their rituals in Goa, are in fact just as Catholic as in any other part of the world.

(A version of this post was first published in The Goan, dtd. 29 June 2013)

The Itinerant: From Pais Vasco to Panjim

If you were a student, living in the mid 2000s in Oñate, a mountain town of the Basque country, then your entry into San Sebastián would be via train. As you pulled into the station, and then subsequently headed out of the station into the city you would pause for a moment. Was there not a faint resemblance to Panjim city? Did it not feel as if the train station was located where the Patto development now is? Did the bridges across the Rua do Ourem not correspond to the bridges across San Sebastián’s Urumea river?

The resemblance of Panjim to this Basque city can be quite confounding. Not only do both cities lie at the mouths of rivers, but they both also encompass a stretch of beach that is actively used by its denizens for recreation. Add to these coincidences the Miramar palace that sits above the city’s famous beach, echoing Panjim’s own Miramar. Like Panjim, the city too is marked by a number of elegant promenade spaces. This latter feature however, dates back to the royal patronage that it enjoyed in the not too distant past, laying the basis for much that is spectacular in the city.

What makes San Sebastián truly breath-taking however is not the drama of its geographical location, a combination of being encircles by beach, river, sea and hills. Neither is it the food; Basque tapas (pintxos) are arguably the finest in Spain. Nor is it the spectacular architecture that constitutes a good amount of the centre of the city. What makes the city breath-taking is when you realise that a good amount of effort and energy has gone into making the city accessible to users of non-motorized vehicles. It is perhaps this reaching out in multiple senses that makes this city all the more enjoyable. 

It is, however, more than spatial features that create the sense of similarity between these two widely separated towns. Indeed, both San Sebastián and Panjim share an uneasy relationship with the country within which they are today located. If Goa superficially rests easy within the embrace of Mother India, then the same need not necessarily be said for San Sebastián. Part of the restive Basque country (Euskal Herria), one could, in the period of this itinerant’s visit, find much graffiti on the streets that testified that not all Basques thought themselves Spanish. Slogans like “Gora Euskadi” cheered on a sense of a distinct Basque identity, while other slogans (Euskal Presoak Euskal Herrira) dragged ones attention to the fact that all too often political prisoners were incarcerated outside of the Basque country, so as to make visits by their families a complicated affair.

Another feature that both San Sebastián and Panjim share is that they both enjoy more than one name. San Sebastián also has a Basque (Euskera) name Donostia, while Goa’s capital is known as Panjim in English, Ponnje in Konkani, and Pangim in Portuguese. What perhaps distinguishes San Sebastián from Panjim, is that the former city, following a feature common in the rest of the Basque country, provides space for both versions of the name. This usage is a result of Spain’s efforts to accommodate a variety of regional identities, and indeed nationalisms into the idea of the Spanish nation-state. Now here is something that one would want to see replicated in Goa! This replication would make sense given that in recent days there has been some talk of sharpening the similarity between the two cities. If this is a project that is to be taken seriously, then this is not a project that should end with physical infrastructure. On the contrary, this is a project that must include an agenda that will balance the skewed directions of Goa, and Panjim’s cultural policy.

(A version of this post was first published in The Goan on 23 March 2013)

Letters from Portugal: Embracing the Philippine heritage

If you were travel up to north India, say to cities like Lucknow, or Agra, and had conversations with the ‘small’ folk, or just people who had lived for generations, and whose lives did not involve some kind of grand rupture, you would hear references to a Rani Todiya, or Mallka Todiya. Rani Todiya is used by such folk, as a marker of time; invariably of the good old days, when things were cheap, when life was simpler, when there was a rule of law. What is interesting however, is that these folk are not referring to some Satyayug deity, but of the Queen-Empress Victoria; the Victoria being compressed to Todiya. What is interesting about this term for Victoria is that not only is her reign the marker for the good times, but it is also evidence of the manner in which she had been internalized. Not only was her name transformed into a vernacular form, but her position in society, as ‘their’ or ‘our’ Queen, was also to a large extent internalized. The Empress Victoria reigned over an entire psycho-social edifice, an edifice that transcended the seven seas, incorporating native-rulers, castes, panchayats, producing in this manner, the British Raj. The Raj to that extent was very ‘Indian’, as much as Rani Todiya was our queen. This may come as a surprise for those who have been raised on the nationalist intellectual frameworks in use in schools. Frameworks that suggest to us, that there was always an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ between the British and the Indians. What these frameworks forget to mention however, is that when Todiya was made our Queen, it was not just she who had a right over us, but as is necessary in any form of kingship, we too had a claim on our kings (and queens).

In a similar manner then, what we in Goa, given the spectacular disinclination to teach our history in schools, have largely forgotten, is that in addition to claiming the Portuguese kings and queens as our own, we can also rightfully lay claim to three Spanish kings. From 1580 until 1640, the Portuguese crown was united with the Spanish crown, allowing for two separate kingdoms, but just one King; a situation that ran its course under the three Hapsburg Phillips of Spain.

With such a history in mind, the Goan traveling in Europe has not merely a Portuguese link with that continent, but larger European link. When traveling in the Netherlands, one thinks not merely of the Dutch opponents of the early Estado da India Portuguesa, but also of the fact that the Netherlands were once upon-a-time part of the Hapsburg domains. Domains lost in the course of the wars that broke out in the continent in the course of the Reformation. Similarly, when one travels to the one-time imperial capital of Toledo in Spain, one does not start when one sees those large double-headed eagles clutching the arms of the Hapsburg kings in their talons. On the contrary, the emotion that one is faced with is that of pleasant surprise when encountering the familiar. For did we not already see this motif in Old Goa, proudly recording the sovereignty of Phillip, king of all of Iberia?

The journey to Portugal was not, as this column so often points out, to reconstruct some empty colonial saudadismo with regard to Portugal. On the contrary, the trip to Portugal was to figure out if there were other ways in which our relation to this country could be rearticulated in a contemporary context. This contemporary context would not include only the examination of the manner in which we can relate as South Asians, members of the Indian ocean world, and as Indians, to Portugal.  This movement would also mean embracing its complex (sometimes obscured) histories and giving them new relevance and meaning. In the course of this embrace, we are not bound to the nationalist interpretations of this history that the Portuguese may feel obliged to produce. On the contrary, we can legitimately rewrite this history from our own point of view. Embracing this history, making it genuinely our own, allows us, in the manner that Mallka Todiya was claimed by her Indian subjects, allows us to make similar claims on the heritage of the Philippine emperors. This claim of inheritance should not ofcourse only be narrowly read, or shortsightedly utilized, but more properly embraced, so that we effectively become citizens of the world, a marked characteristic of the Goan (often an emigrant into this large world).

Some may find this suggestion of embracing an Imperial heritage, especially by former subjects of the Empire, problematic. There is no denying that such an embrace is problematic. However, we should recognize that this embrace, while possibly problematic, also comes with its fair share of empowerment. It allows the contemporary resident of the global South, to go to foreign lands, in the knowledge that these lands that must today be crafted into home, were in earlier times, also home. This embrace also allows us to transcend the binaries of 'us' and 'them' and recognize commonalities that unite us outside of the frames that we normally use to see ourselves; constructing in this manner a common humanity.

Speaking of embracing this larger heritage, and seeing ourselves outside of the frames we normally use, most people would be surprised to realize that urinating on the street is not particularly a crass Indian habit. All too often, one is apt to find contemporary descendants of Philippine subjects, be they male or female, easing themselves on the streets, especially late at night over the course of the weekend. Come to think of it, this is not, and was not a practice unfamiliar in the former realm of good Rani Todiya either!  Some uncommon embraces it appears, can engender uncommon perspectives.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 22 June 2012)