Rethinking Special Status - I

I laughed, long and hard, and then laughed out loud some more on reading the aghast responses to the denial of Goa’s request for Special Status. The laughter was not because the demand for Special Status is unjustified, but because the response was so obvious! Our hopes were pegged on the assurances of Chief Minister Parrikar, and the electoral promises of Prime Minister Modi. It should have been obvious at that time that the Goans interested in Special Status were being taken for a ride. There is no way that a government composed of the BJP, a party committed to the RSS vision of an undivided India, and the creation of the history of a Hindu(only) India, will ever concede to the recognition of special-ness for any part of India that does not rest on Hindu-ness.

The impossibility of a BJP government ever conceding to Special Status is not, however, what I would like to focus on in this column. Rather, I would like to suggest that the denial of Special Status by the Modi government should be looked upon as a blessing in disguise. This denial opens up for us the opportunity to rethink what it is that we are demanding under Special Status, and how we are making this demand. In other words, what exactly are the principles that underlie the demand for Special Status, and what are the implications of each principle; that is to say, who benefits from the choices made?

Thus far most demands for Special Status seem to revolve around the issue of special economic status, and constitutional clauses to ensure that only locals can own land in Goa. In other words, the demand has been restricted within the bounds of Article 371 of the Constitution. I have argued in earlier columns that such a phrasing of the demand for Special Status ensures that it is really the landed and business elites in Goa who stand to benefit from Special Status. The vast segment of former tenants really do not benefit from this form of Special Status given that local landlords can still get into partnerships with external capitalists to allow for highrise apartments and other developments to allow for more of the wild speculative ‘development’ that has characterised Goa in the recent past. Similarly, grants from the Centre would appeal to the business and industrial elites and wold not reach the common person except through possible increase in employment.

If they are intent on ensuring that they do not get cheated in the process of being mobilised to demand for Special Status then it is critical that Goans put aside an obsession with form and identify the problems they seek to address by gaining Special Status. Thus far the debate has been about saving land, identifying land sold to non-Goans as the reason for cultural peril. This argument also blames Goans for selling land in the first place.  This is a particularly unhappy argument since it ignores the fact that the non-landed Goans who are selling land are doing so because this is by and large the only way through which they can make money. The argument does not recognise that these Goans operate in a context where a system of power is in fact loaded against them.

Put simply, the system of power that I am referring to is one where Goa, its homes and its landscape are fetishized by a Indian elite. Armed with greater economic and political power thanks to the fact of a different political history under the British Raj, supported by a representational system that privileges Goan property but disregards the Goans, these elite consumers from India are able to skew the market such that it often makes more sense to sell a property, than to sustain the property. Add to this the almost non-existent support provided by the state government to maintain homes, or even diverse employment possibilities within the state, as well as a solid public infrastructure. All too often then, the Goan who sells one’s property is in fact operating against a system that is solidly weighed against them.

The Special Status we demand, therefore, must be about meaningful political equality within the country and the right to reforge the political relationship with the Indian state. Further, unless we recognise the powers that operate to cause the insecurity within Goa, any demand for Special Status result in the repetition of the history of the past fifty odd years of Goa’s presence within the Indian Union.

While making this argument I would like to especially underline the fact that almost every postcolonial popular movement to save Goan identity ranging from  the Opinion Poll, Language Issue, Statehood, to the Regional Plan, has rested on the shoulders of the bahujan Catholic men and women of Salcete. Each and every one of these movements has appealed to their insecurity and each time their aspirations have been frustrated, largely because the demand for protecting Goan identity has been couched within the language of Indian (i.e. Hindu) nationalism. These demands have failed to assert that cultural demands, where Catholics are cast as not-quite-Indian are only a part of the problem. The other problem rests in the fact that there has been no systematic development that can empower the Goan population to gather both economic as well as cultural capital.

The result has been that the Catholic bahujan of Salcete in particular have been converted into the oxen pulling the cart that fulfils the interests of Goa’s landed and business elites. These groups have always managed to use these movements to increase the scope for their autonomy. Any demand for Special Status therefore, must be one that recognises that there is a great socio-economic diversity among Goans. This demand must recognise that different kinds of Goans require different kinds of support under Special Status, and that local elites need to be restrained from exploiting the situation.

One could also make the argument, that the failure to effectively articulate issues of social and economic equality both within and outside of Goa has in fact resulted in the kind of communalisation of Goan society that we are witness to today. The interests that were served were invariably of the upper caste and business elites, but the movements were always misrepresented as Catholic. This has pitted the vast bahujan majority against the Catholic bahujan minority.

If the movement for Special Status is to provide genuine benefit to the people of Goa then it must necessarily assert that the basis for this demand lies in recognising the insecurity and marginalisation that the non-Hindu, and bahujan minorities in Goa have faced since 1961, as well as commit itself towards a vision for economic justice. Such a twining of agendas would allow for us to also address the increasing communalisation of the Goan polity. The Special Status movement would need to make alliances with the Hindu bahujan samaj, who at this moment, have been largely seduced by Hindu nationalism. Indeed, there is good reason for them to be seduced, given that it was Indian liberation that ensured that they could escape the clutches of their landlords. Additionally, this Indian liberation has also involved providing space for the Hindu bahujan through the marginalisation of the Catholic bahujan rather than opening up new avenues for all Goans. The Special Status movement needs to necessarily reach out to the Hindu segments of the bahujan samaj to ensure that Special Status will meet the aspirations of both the Catholic and Hindu segments, and that development in Goa will be egalitarian. Such a reaching out would only be possible once we start asking deeper questions about Special Status, not limit it to the issue of ownership of land, or grants and tax breaks from the Centre, and recognise that the negotations for Special Status need to be directed both towards the outside, i.e towards Indian state; as well as inside, within Goan society.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 8 Aug 2014)

English Talks, Konkani Rocks! : histories, innovations and democratic public culture

The problem around Goa’s Medium of Instruction (MoI) did not begin this year, nor did it begin in the 1990’s when the backbone of education in Goa, the Diocesan supervised schools switched their MoI from English to State Konkani. The roots of this problem lie all the way back, at the turn of the nineteenth century toward the twentieth. This was the time when Konkani was being set-up as the ‘mother tongue’ for Goans through the hand of not only Varde Valaulikar (Shenoi Goembab) but other (Catholic) intellectuals as well. Indeed in his later years, Valaulikar got a good amount of support from Catholic intellectuals, making his effort secular in the sense that it was a project that cut across religious divides.

What has not adequately been discussed however is that beyond this cross-religious collaboration there was also a caste-class divide that compromised the secular potential of this Konkani language project. Valaulikar’s Konknni was seen by non-brahmin Hindus as a Saraswat Brahmin project, that presented the Saraswat dialect alone as the perfect form of the language; while the Catholic intellectuals who supported this project, saw value in this project as a way of civilizing those Goan Catholics (both in Bombay and Goa) who came from non-dominant castes and were largely working class.

This working class had no real need for a Konkani language project however. They produced abundant literature of all forms for their consumption, and worked Concanim into the cultural forms that gave them livelihood. Thus they produced Concanim music to the form of the Waltz, Rhumba, March, Swing and Jazz (among others). Concanim lived among them, as it did not for the elites who moved this political project. For the Catholic elites Konkani was a way for them to not only civilize their ‘lower’ brethren, but to also regain a cultural authenticity that the nineteenth century theorization of society told them they had lost. For the largely Brahmin movers of the project, Konkani was not only the primary tool to forge one single Saraswat caste from multiple Konkana jatis along the west coast, but also a political tool through which they could carve an area for their dominance. If Pune and Bombay belonged to the Marathi Brahmins, who insulted and ridiculed them, then Goa would be the Konkana base. These two trends are the basis of the eventual decision to recognize Konkani (in the Nagari script) as the official language of Goa.

In making this move, Konkani was cast into more familiar forms of Indian nationalism. As in the case of Hindustani, Nagari alone- primarily for its brahmanical origins, though ‘scientific’ arguments were also thrown in - was seen as Indian. As a result of the historical model for Hindi that Konkani follows, the burden of North Indian communalism weighs heavily on the Konkani project. With this formulation, the Hindu and Brahmin came to be seen as the font of cultural authenticity. As a result of the elite (and hence minority) location of this project, and its nature as a civilizing mission, official or State Konkani could not walk normally as a language. The Konkani language project was marked by multiple anxieties. Because of its minority location, it could not be popularized; it had to be constantly under the control of a minority group. Because it was a civilizing mission too, ‘deviant’ forms could not be permitted. Because it was not based on a living social reality but an imagined past, it could not look to the future.

When cast in this way, it is little wonder that State Konkani did not find sync with a large number of Goans, and especially the Goan Catholic migrant working class, who were (and despite the allegations of the BBSM and its ilk, remain) the lifeblood of this language and its cultural forms. For this group Konkani was so much theirs, it sat lightly, but no less cherished, in their basket of social capital. No fuss about it. It would pass on to subsequent generations as it had to them, without passing through school. School was for where they learned other tricks and trades. The official Konkani project is to make them Konkani in an official and nationalist sense, the Goan Catholic working class, already knows it is Concanim enough.

Once we recognize that there are at least two Konkanis at work in the Goan cultural sphere, things begin to make a lot more sense. We can see that the official and stunted State Konkani may in fact be killing a vibrant unofficial one. Recognizing the working class history of unofficial Konkani, would also point us in the direction where Concanim can be a vehicle for an inclusive secular culture in the State.

It seems that it is this history that Armando Gonsalvez and his collaborators have connected with in their ‘Konkani Rocks’ project. It has been interesting to see the manner in which this project slowly evolved from ‘Jazz’ to combining ‘Jazz’ with ‘Konkani’. The beauty of the whole project is that because it delves, quite unselfconsciously into lived (and living) Concanim history, there is hardly a contradiction in the project. It is fun and it draws the crowds, persuading us without being heavily pedantic that Konkani can and indeed is fun. Simply put, it ‘Rocks!’

In this project, Konkani is not a nationalist millstone round our collective necks. On the contrary, it connects both with cosmopolitan past, and a cosmopolitan future. Armando’s formulation, ‘English Talks, Konkani Rocks’ twines the pragmatic approach of the Goan working class perfectly. There is no need for either to be displaced since each language has its place, and fulfills a definite need. Furthermore, 'Konkani Rocks' returns to a history that many of us, not just those pushing State Konkani, have done much to hide and forget. These actions, of shame in our working class history, have done much to ensure a shame in Concanim. By holding it, albeit indirectly, as something worth returning to, 'Konkani Rocks' reminds us that the Goan Catholics working class past is nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, it was a period that generated the culture that we today recognize as Konkani.

That this formulation is also concerned with what the BBSM claims to be concerned with is obvious from a column Armando penned some days ago. He pointed out that ‘When I felt that my children were not so keen on learning the language [Konkani], I was all the more pained because I myself am not that good at it. Hence, instead of forcing the language down my children’s throats, I decided that the best way forward would be to attract them to the language, to pull them to their mother tongue, and what better way to do it than via music, dance and other cultural avenues. I presumed, correctly I think, that if my children would sing a Konkani song and dance to one, their interest in the language would improve drastically, and in this way their will to learn the language would be that much more fired up that without this cajoling.’

Rather than pull out some dusty folk-song and dance that the children may not identify with, Armando delved into a cultural tradition they could identify with. On the twentieth of August they drew from one of the most popular forms of recent history, the Big Band; and voila, Magics became!

Konkani Rocks is truly magic, and is a wonderful example of the role elites can play in pushing a more democratic public culture to greater prominence in society, by attending to popular histories instead of relying on civilizing missions that were inspired from the racist and colonial paradigms of the last millennium. It would be interesting to see how ‘Konkani Rocks’ manages to push forward a more democratic and sustainable model for Konkani in this State.

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 24 Aug 2011)

Breaking Secularism´s cast(e): The curious case of the poor Indian Muslim

In an opinion piece in The Hindu on the 3 March 2011, Vidya Subrahmaniam wrote of her discussion with a group of Muslims in Deoband about the reported validation that Maulana Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi, the controversy shrouded new Vice-Chancellor of the Dar ul Uloom at Deoband. These are her words;

‘I raised the Modi issue and was instantly put down: “We are not saying that Muslims should forgive Modi or forget 2002. But all of you in the secular media want the Gujarati Muslim never to get out of his grieving. Hindu or Muslim, the Gujarati is a businessperson, and that is what Vastanvi was trying to say.” The words stung but they were true. The Congress and the secular media wanted the Gujarati Muslim forever to fight Mr. Modi but neither was there to protect him.’

Subrahmaniam should be credited for her perspicacity and sensitivity. This fact should be obvious to many an observer of the unfolding of Indian secular democracy, but has by and large remained unspoken.

The fact is that in addition to being pilloried as a result of the Orientalist and subsequently nationalist histories of India, the Indian Muslim is held hostage by another force that masquerades as its friend, the ‘secular’ Indian. The key article of faith of the secular Indian in contemporary times has been to moan the fate of poor blighted Muslim. Reams of paper, rivers of ink and oceans of tears are spent in this cause, to the extent that the cause of secularism – in this case the welfare of all minority groups in Indian – has become less of a concern, and has been replaced by a singular concern for the Muslim.The problem with the Orientalist and subsequently nationalist understanding of India is that it has understood India to be originally Hindu. All those who came ‘after’ are seen as the non-Indian, or less Indian. In the terms of scholarly debate, they are the ‘Other’ to the Hindu ‘Self’. Given the locus of dominant Indian nationalism in North India, the Muslim was seen as the ‘Other’ to the Hindu state, and blamed for all the shortcomings of nationalism, most significantly of all, Partition. Ever since, the Indian Muslim has been bludgeoned to the desperate condition they find themselves in today. The argument here is not that concern for them is misplaced. The argument is that by focussing on the Muslim ‘Other’ alone, what these secular Indians do is reaffirm the central place of the Hindu in the national imagination. The problem with Indian secularism is not the Muslim, it is the central place of the Hindu in the national imagination. This problem can be rectified only when we start realising that India is more than Hindu and Muslim, but includes tons of other minorities as well, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Adivasis, Dalits to name just a few. Displace this binary relationship, recognise the pluralism of the Indian reality, and we would have progressed multiple steps towards combating the problems confronting Indian secularism.

The question that remains unanswered in all of this however is why does the ‘secular’ establishment in India fail to grasp this seemingly obvious fact? Why does it persist in this obsessive focus on the Muslim and reaffirm the central place of the Hindu? The answer is once more hinted at by Subrahmaniam in her observation that ‘The Congress and the secular media wanted the Gujarati Muslim forever to fight Mr. Modi but neither was there to protect him.’ In her formulation of the problem, Subrahmaniam falls into the regular trap of identifying the Congress as secular, and the BJP as communal. We would grasp the nuances better if we harked to the words of Khalid Anis Ansari, a scholar researching the Pasmanda movement.

Ansari points out that ‘…there are a few differences between BJP and Congress … even when in the ultimate analysis they defend the same caste/class interests. For one Congress is dominated by anglicised and elite Brahmins, the BJP on the other hand is controlled by Brahmins from the rural or middle class backgrounds.’

In this formulation, Ansari helps us get to understand the obsession with the Indian Muslim. If one reads the ‘BJP’ and ‘Congress’ as symbols for opposing camps in Indian politics, and not merely – as normally done – as representative of the electoral parties, then one can see Indian politics as the struggle between the anglicised and elite dominant castes, and the rural and middle class dominant castes. The first group sold on the idea of western modernity, is empowered by its access to western cultural capital and drawing its power from international hierarchies, seeks to make a modern ‘secular’ India on these ideas. The other group as yet unable to acquire this western cultural capital, drawing its power solely from local hierarchies, seeks to delay this transition to western modernity until they too are in the seat of power. In the battle between these two dominant caste elephants, it is the Muslim grass that suffers. As Subrahmaniam rightly realised, the Muslim is by and large a pawn in the battle for access to State power. The ‘Congress’ claims to uphold Muslim interests, and the ‘BJP’ in response attacks them. In response to these attacks the ‘Congress’ calls the ‘BJP’ communal, and restricts our understanding of ‘secularism’ to essentially the Muslim cause. In the meanwhile secularism as a larger ideal of the protection of minority interests against majoritarianism falls by the wayside. What complicates this picture is that the battles are not between religious groups, but between caste (and especially dominant caste) groups. As such when the ‘Congress’ espouses the ‘Muslim’ cause what it is primarily doing is espousing the cause of the dominant Muslim castes. Further, it is quite capable of absorbing those people into its upper echelons who can walk the walk and talk the talk, be the Muslim, Christian or Hindu. All that is required is the ability to behave like an anglicised dominant caste. The power of the ‘BJP’ on the other hand, given its rural and middle-class character, is largely based on the assertion of ‘traditional’ caste structures. Thus this group too can make peace with non-cosmopolitan Muslim (or Christian) dominant caste groups toward the larger end of preserving rural social orders and traditional hierarchies.

Two lessons emerge from Subrahmaniam’s observations. The first that the solidarity that large portions of the secular lobby in India show to the Indian Muslim are motivated by the desire to wipe out their contender for power. Second, is the lesson that these political divisions in India, are not so much about religion as they are about caste power and caste battles. It thus appears that we would make some progress towards secularism if we complicated the picture of secularism in India to look beyond the Muslim, and also accounted for the manner in which both groups seek to establish the norms for gaining power in this diverse country.

(First published in the Gomantak Times 9 March 2011)

La Vie en rose: Why the material is mystical

Some months ago, the current Commissioner of NRG Affairs, Mr. Eduardo Faleiro inaugurated a debate over the matter of the management of Church properties in Goa. Initially it appeared that a suggestion was being made that the State take over the management of Church properties, or at the very least have a say, supervisory control over this properties. Howls of indignant protest followed, most pointing out that to suggest that the State have such a power would be like setting the cat among the pigeons. These objections pointed out that the State machinery itself has ruthlessly presided over the sale of common properties impoverishing the common man in the State, and such an institution is likely to only complicate matters further. In light of this rather robust response, Mr. Faleiro presented a document to the Archbishop that suggested internal reform and vigilance.

Among the many suggestions, there was one that particularly caught my eye, especially because it seemed to one that had purchase in some of the meetings organized by Mr. Faleiro. The suggestion reads “Administrative committees, duly constituted, may be truly empowered, so that lay persons feel really responsible for the administration, as the Church are Christ's faithful and the assets of the Church are their assets. Administration of the ecclesiastical assets should be their domain mainly. If this happens, priests will be left free for what is their proper field, viz. apostolate”. An interesting suggestion is being made here, that priests have really no business administering property, since property is a material good and priests have committed themselves to the spiritual. As such, leave property to be managed by those in the secular and material world. A version of ‘To Caesar that what is Caesar’s, and to God…’

Superficially the argument makes eminent sense. It extends one of the principles of secularism, of separating the Church/religion/spirituality from the State/secular/material life. Unfortunately however, this logic works well only if restricted to the secular world, it does not work at all if one does not admit of this distinction between the material and the secular. On the contrary to apply this logic to the operations of a religion, would ensure that religion ceases to have any meaning at all. The mistaken assumption of Faleiro and the secularists is that religion is about ritual and the spiritual, and it has no connection to the material. Making this assumption, they can extend the principle of secularism as they do. However, religion admits of no distinction between the spiritual and the material. On the contrary, religion is about precisely how to guide one’s material life, and as such has everything to do with the material. It is not as if Catholic culture does not admit members of the laity to be models to be emulated. On the contrary, there are a number of such examples, and priests more often than not, operate in parishes across the world in active participation with lay individuals who are identified (either by them or by social consensus) as significant members of the community. However, Catholic culture nevertheless gives the priest, one trained in the scripture, thought and tradition of the church, a preeminent place in guiding the community in its life. And because there is no such thing as a purely spiritual life, and life is lived out in a material world, this pastoral guidance necessarily extends to how we must mould our material life.

However Faleiro’s suggestion is troubling not only because it turns the idea of religion on its head. His suggestion is troubling because it perpetuates other deeply disturbing, though admittedly popular, distinctions. This distinction is between that of the public and the private. One of the reasons for the early continental European separation of Church from the State, was not because these republicans were necessarily averse to Christianity. On the contrary, their public culture continued to echo Western Christian tradition. The separation was necessary because the Church, as a human institution, was closely tied to the feudal order that the bourgeois republicans were seeking to destroy. These liberals also forged the distinction between the public domain and the private. In the private you could continue with your religious (and other traditions), and in the public they cultivated the religion of the State. Feminists for a few decades now have pointed out the problems with this distinction, pointing out that this distinction serves only to blind the eyes of State justice to abuses that go on in realms that are marked out as private. Just as there is no distinction between the material and the spiritual therefore, there is no distinction between the public and the private. Echoing the phrase ‘the personal is political’, popularized by the feminists in this context, will make the overlap between Faleiro’s suggestion and this larger ‘secular’ tradition strikingly clear. [As an aside, I should mention that this proximity between the spiritual and the feminist argument should make some in the clerical hierarchy sit up, take off their bigoted blinkers, take notice, and start thinking!]

One of the reasons I seek to articulate this critique, is because this separation that is being pushed will have a perilous impact on public life. What it will result in, is the further reduction of religion to ritual. Most of us, already thoroughly secularized in our thinking, even if we consider ourselves devout, understand religion to be ritual. Ritual in religion is however, animated by a spirit that makes meaning of it all. When that spirit is divorced, ritual is emptied out, becoming what secularists and atheists hold it to be ‘empty ritual’. The danger of empty religious ritual is that it becomes a kind of a communal marker that is then pandered to, building up the foundations of communal tensions in multicultural societies. Shorn of the mystical element that gives it meaning, and in fact allows us to transcend narrow social markers, ritual becomes the basis for marking difference. We can already see this operating in the Indian polity. ‘Hinduism’ is emptied out of the ethical values it contains to become Hindutva, an empty shell of symbols and rituals that are believed to represent a community. Islam is similarly emptied of its ethical values to become the political agenda of the jihadi. Similarly Christianity. The State panders to these symbols, only exacerbating the problem, when in fact the ethical practitioners of these faith traditions would, in daily life, normally transcend these barriers.

This particular suggestion that Faleiro makes therefore, has multiple problems for which it must be firmly ignored. The larger point however, is of the problem with this binary ‘secular’ logic; that has more followers than just Mr. Faleiro. It is a logic that is so built of partitions that it fails to allow us to lead holistic lives where we can see the connections between each other. It is a logic that builds solutions on partitions, rather than transcending the divisions that are created or may exist. If the feminists suggested so many decades ago that the personal is political, may I now suggest that indeed, the material is mystical?

(Published in the Gomantak Times, 29 Oct 2009)

Closing the Doors to Democracy, Opening them to Tyranny: Responding to the Thomas-Faleiro Arguments – Part 2

In the initial part of this phased response, I had suggested that the Thomas-Faleiro argument represented both an opening up and a closure. The argument operates to prise open domains, currently under the traditional leadership of the Catholic communities, to the State. In this concluding portion of the response, I would like to suggest that the opening up is especially dangerous for the simultaneous closures that such a move would result in.

Allowing us to see this closure as a movement akin to suffocation, we should not forget that the suggestion for a State law regulating Church properties first emerged in the distinctly hostile (towards religious minorities) State of Madhya Pradesh, and Kerala where the Church has a major clout through its moral power in political history.

The initial attempts in these states now seem to have led to a nation-wide attempt to regulate the management of Church assets. This move is dangerous for a number of reasons. First, it repeats the primary mistake of the Indian polity, which is to see people as comprising essentially of monolithic religious groups, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Christians. Nothing could be further from the truth, since these communities are fractured by class, caste, language and many other factors. In the case of the Catholics, for sure there is no such thing as a uniform Indian Catholic. In Goa, despite our best beliefs, the Church is in reality fractured along lines of caste, class and language. While the erasure of these differences is necessary if a State is to create a monolithic ‘community’ over which it will legislate a uniform law, this action not only lays the ground for the communalism that this country suffers from, but also for the suppression of marginal and subaltern voices within these ‘communities’. The creation of the monolithic identity, leads to a closing of spaces for internal dissent and reform within these ‘communities’, empowering conservative tendencies within them. Take a look at the Muslims in the country, where progressively over time, the space for internal dissent and reform has been quashed given that conservative clerical groups are recognized as leaders of the community. Within the Catholic faith, it would in fact be the Clerical hierarchy that would see eye-to-eye with the Indian State (and its minions) on the matter of consolidating the community (even as it would oppose any control over its functioning). The former are congenitally blinded to this complex social reality, since they are committed to the spiritual fiction of being one united (and Catholic) Church. And yet this is not social reality, which is marked by numerous dissensions and divisions.

There is without doubt a need for greater transparency and accountability in the management of Church properties. I also agree that this management must be in conformance with Constitutional principles. The issue on which I differ however is that of the means of implementing this agenda. It is precisely because of its colonial heritage that Goa has a social and cultural infrastructure that allows for the radical realization of democracy through decentralization. The Portuguese structured colonial power in Goa through the recognition of the powers of villages to regulate village economies. The Church followed a similar pattern, leading to each village contributing its properties to erect and maintain the village church, establishing a trust, the Fabrica, to control these properties. Like the Communidades however, these Fabricas too were by and large controlled by the gãocars, village elites, often from the dominant families and castes of the village. When one speaks of Church property today therefore, one refers to not just property of the Bishop (as representative head of the Diocese) but properties of a plethora of individual churches who hold these properties as autonomous owners.

Religion is not merely a disciplining of the soul, but a disciplining of material practices as well. The Bishop exerts therefore a disciplining control over these Fabricas and their material transactions. To manage these affairs, the Catholic diocese in Goa has already got in place a management system that allows for decentralized control. This management system is regulated by a written (and published) Code. This Code refers to the provisions of Canon Law and shares in spirit and procedures the form of State Law. We should remember that Canon Law and State Law both have common roots in Roman law and are siblings in many aspects. The bases on which they depart, are the sources of power that ensure their continuity. The power for one is the power of the State, the other that of the Tradition and moral weight of the Catholic Church. A significant feature of the current code that governs the Fabricas is to liberate these bodies from the control that dominant castes in the villages had in the days of the Portuguese. The properties of village churches is now returned to the spirit of early times, and held by the community of the faithful together, represented by the local Parish Council. Nothing could be closer to the spirit of the Constitutional values of equality, accountability and transparency.

As should be obvious by now, a realization of the Thomas-Faleiro formula would ensure a closure at all of the levels above, laying the foundation for greater communalism, encourage conservative leadership, and smooth over the nuances of local history and in this process close the plural legal spaces that exist at the Catholic grass-roots, allowing for vesting of absolute power in the State. Absolute power as we know, corrupts absolutely.

Rather than this route therefore, what we require now is, in the presence of the Code, located within a venerable body of Canon law; the engineering of a grass-roots constitutionalism that will allow members of the parish to demand and realise greater accountability. Grass-roots constitutionalism being the fomenting and realization of Constitutional values within grassroots institutions. In short, while we need a reform of the management of Church properties, we should be clear that it is one that strengthens the laity, not the hierarchy and the State at the expense of laity. To pose again the question asked at the presentation of the Thomas-Faleiro argument, whose property are we saving, and from whom?

There are many of us in Goa who have pledged our strength to the movement for greater decentralization and democratization of power in the State. This battle with the State is necessarily part of one within Society as well. It cannot be therefore, that we argue for greater decentralization on the one hand (an opening up), and argue for centralization (a closure) on the other. Such an argument is logically fallacious, socially disastrous and opens the doors to tyranny of the State.

Thomas and Faleiro would do better to engineer their movement toward a strengthening of, rather than the closure of proto-democratic decentralized spaces that they are attempting. Their actions are in fact the result of out-dated legal understandings of society, designed further the imperial interests of the Indian State (and its beneficiary class) at the risk of doing great damage to the health of the Constitutional experiment that is our Republic. No, the Thomas-Faleiro proposals as they stand are not in the best interest of the average lay Catholic and should be opposed by any sensible mind, Catholic or otherwise.

(Published in the Herald, Opinionated, 4 Sept 2009)

Notes from after the Rally

The response at the rally held at the Azad Maidan last week, to protest the communal violence toward Christian minorities, was overwhelming. Yet, one can’t help feeling (to use a phrase from chemistry) that the equation was somewhat unbalanced. The incompleteness of that demonstrative moment we could attribute to matters both said and unsaid.

Of what was said at the rally, perhaps the most disturbing was the statement that we are members of the nation first and then members of our religious communities. Fact is, it is this insistence on the primacy of the nation is exactly the reason why we are in the mess we are contemplating today. The Indian nation was constructed on a curious mix of the Anglicized culture of the upper castes of India and technology. For those who had the necessary social capital, namely possession of the English language (and the associated culture), an upper caste history or identity, and an ability to engage in the technological ministrations of the nation-state, this national identity worked very well indeed. For those who did not posses these markers, and whose social capital rested either on a lower caste identity, or a religious or other identity, or indeed participation in a different economic and technological world, the nation-state’s primacy meant only slow and certain death. The rise of lower caste groups and religious communities protesting this upper caste control of the state was a natural outcome of this insistence on the nation-state before other identities. The demand of these groups was simple, do not ask us to be something that we are not. Accept us the way we are and let us be. The response of the nation-state in its turn was the saffron terror that is increasingly being unleashed to retain the hold of those upper castes in control of the state.

The argument being forwarded here is not to insist that we should necessarily place our religious identities prior to the State. On the contrary, the question being asked is; what happens to those people for whom this national culture – itself cast in the cultural language of certain (predominantly Hindu upper caste) groups – does not make sense at all? Thus as a Muslim, or indeed as a Goan who prefers my Konkani in the Roman script and the lilting phrases of Sashti Konkani, this primacy of a nation, that does not recognize my needs or mocks my existence does not make sense at all. Clearly the way out of the conundrum we are in lies in getting out of the nationalist rhetoric, and recognizing that we are individuals and communities that have a right to continuing our way of life, without having the nation-state or its extra-legal demon armies breathing down our backs.

Moving on, they say that you can always fight a known enemy. It is when the enemy is unknown that you have no clue as to what strategy to employ. And indeed, it was the issues left unsaid at the rally, that are the most troubling and disturbing. The rally was called by Catholics, to protest violence against Christians in various parts of the country and spoke of the need to end the madness. Through this framing of the issue, the Catholics came out looking like lambs bathed in wool, perpetual victims at the altar of communal frenzy. This may be the partial truth in other parts of the country, but it definitely does not hold good for Goa. In Goa, it is the Catholic who is part perpetrator and part silent accomplice to the systematic campaign of hatred against the Muslim. It is because of the knowledge of large-scale Catholic participation in this Muslim persecution, that it was possible for that Saffron activist to make a public call to Catholics and Hindus to unite and send them packing out of Goa. The laudable ethical position to take at the rally- one drawing from the laudable Christian tradition of confession - would have been to openly speak about this persecution that the Goan Catholic is actively engaged in. Unfortunately, no one spoke about the real issue, preferring to bury these real issues, under the outdated, sickly sweet talk of Indian secularism, where are all bhai-bhai. In the end problems are resolved only by speaking about them, not by ignoring their existence.

In this sense the rally was a total failure, because we failed to make use of a literally God-given opportunity to preach to the flock who had gathered entirely unconscious of their own bloody hand in the carnage that goes on around us.

The large presence of Catholics at the meeting however, was problematic at another level.

The manner in which we use our religious identity can be distinguished between two forms; religion as ideology, and religion as faith. In the first a religious identity is mobilized to create a universal identity that is primarily political in nature. This process erases internal differences to create an artificial and monolithic community. Like in an army, one responds to the call of the bugle, and does not, or cannot question why one is being summoned, or the cause one is being asked to lend one’s support for. On the other hand, one has religion as faith, where one contributes to a cause prompted by one’s belief in the ethics preached by religion. On what basis did the many participants attend the rally at Azad Maidan? Did they attend as members of a political identity responding to a call, or as members of a faith community protesting the perpetration of violence? To mobilize Christians primarily on the basis of ideology would leave us open to perpetuating the very violence we seek to protest. It is precisely religion as ideology that is relied on by both Islamic fundamentalists and the Hindu right wing to draw members to its causes. As Christians in India are drawn into this fire-storm, it would be useful to keep in mind, that there is a way out of the trap. This way (for the Indian and Goan Christian) would draw from Christian ethics, and protest violence regardless of the identity of the oppressed. When necessary it would be fully conscious and cognizant of our own contributions to persecution and violence. To be fair to the Catholic Church in Goa, it has since the time Archbishop Rev Filipe Neri Ferrao has taken over, initiated a variety of steps to bridge the gap between the Catholic and those of other faiths, including the Muslims. It is unfortunate though, that these necessary overtures by the Archbishop have not been welcomed by some within the body of the Church.

Despite this raising of the dilemmas arising from the rally held on the 16^th of this month, the fact that the rally was held was in itself useful. It should be seen as a necessary first step towards combating the rightist take over of the Indian state. What we should keep in mind however is that the solution is not going to come through heightened nationalism, but heightened respect for the differences of other groups. And secondly that if the Goan Catholic is truly desirous of peace in Goa, it must first make the overture of peace toward the Muslim community it has by and large been sinning against.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 24 September 2008 as "Azad Maidan Rally: Combating the rightist takeover)

[The Council for Social Justice and Peace, a forum of the Archdiocese of Goa, and the Inter-Religious Dialogue for Life, organised together a rally to protest the atrocities against Christian minorities in Orissa. Subsequent to the announcement to hold the rally, violence against the Christian groups in Mangalore and other parts of Karnataka broke out, allowing the rally to doubly express the concern of concerned groups, not just Christian. Helping out at the rally to collect signatures, I collected a small amount of Muslim signatures as well. The overwhelming presence of people attending was Catholic however. This rally was one of the larger rallies that Goa had seen, with the central square in Panjim literally engulfed by a sea of humanity.]