Letters from Portugal: First impressions of the Metropole

The colonial adventurers who travelled to the ‘Orient’ often had strange and bizarre stories to tell of the ‘exotic East’. Today, when we do not find these realities we assume that their demise resulting from modernity and development. However, these ‘realities’ were oftentimes figments of these westerners’ imaginations. Strangers to foreign lands, they tried to make sense of the differences they experienced as best as they could. Comparisons were made to what they already knew from home. Worse still, at times they were ill, sometimes violently so, and wrote in a delirium, or recollected their experiences from the time of the delirium. None of this, you will agree, makes for a coherent or dependable travelogue.

Things are not easier for the modern traveler. When we travel, we suffer the discomfort induced by culture shock and jet-lag. The speed of contemporary travel, when we can dine at home, and lunch half way round the world heightens our nostalgia for home. Finally, we are hostage to the frameworks that have already been put in place for us by those who have come to our land, or gone before us to foreign lands. The Goan who travels to Portugal is hostage to all of these challenges. There is definitely the nostalgia for home, but there is also this colonial baggage that we carry.

We recollect that statement originally intended for the now vanished City of Goa, ‘He who has seen Goa, need not see Lisbon.’ And then, we actually take it seriously! We come to Portugal, with these ideas buzzing in our heads and promptly seek to place the images we encounter, into little Goan boxes.

My own first trip to Portugal took me to the University town of Coimbra. The journey from Lisbon to Coimbra took me past the margins of the river Tejo. Fortunately I am not the only one to have imagined these margins to look like the beloved Khazans of Goa. Unfortunately though, the other person who made the comparison was another jet-lagged, home-sick Goan. Over the days spent in Coimbra, huffing and panting up the roads that led to the University perched on a hill over the old town, comparisons were made to the old Lyceum in Panjim´s Altinho. The aesthetic of many of the University buildings was so similar, and our Lyceum similarly perched on a hill. Added to this was the period of my visit. Travelling in June, the season was nominally summer in Portugal. But the weather that year was strange. We had almost daily torrential downpours that pulled wet curtains over the sun. Given the warmth that otherwise prevailed, the hill slopes around the university, like some tropical jungle, sprung verdantly to life. This fortunately, was no nostalgia-induced hallucination. Much of that foliage was in fact tropical. A good amount of tropical vegetation both from America and Asia that first moved in the course of the colonial ‘adventures’ now find themselves very much at home in Portugal.

It is perhaps when the traveler puts down roots; or stops to remain in the land for a while longer; when her interactions with the local turn from casual to quotidian. It is then perhaps that the old boxes suddenly seem insufficient. That is when a fresh struggle begins, to find new words to express a reality that does not quite fit the mould.

(A version of this blog was first published in the Herald dated 20 Feb 2011)

The Monte Festival and how the Portuguese got it right

‘To many people in the official circles in Portugal,’ the informant whispered, ‘Goa is a bad word. They believe,’ he continued, ‘that they have burned their hands once too often.’ The reference was to the histrionics of this column’s favourites, the ‘freedom fighters’ and Hindu right-wing elements in Goa. But surely it takes two hands to clap? My own response was to fiercely (and somewhat triumphantly?) whisper back that ‘If they have burned their hands, it is because large sections of Portuguese officialdom have almost never gotten it right when dealing with Goa!’

This column has pointed out in earlier installations that the Portuguese nationalist element in fact supplements the Hindutva element in Goa as they work together (and always unwittingly) to screw things up in Goa.

To portray the ‘freedom fighters’ and the right wing elements as determined to protest every Portuguese event in Goa is not helpful. It is not helpful because by uniformly vilifying this group it shuts the space for dialogue. More importantly it prevents learning as to where we are making mistakes in the forging of a new post-colonial relationship between the two spaces. There have been some Portuguese sponsored events in Goa that have almost never been at the receiving end of negative attention from the champions of Hindutva. One such event is the annual Monte Music Festival conceptualized initially by Sergio Mascarenhas, then Delegate of the Fundação Oriente and supported by a host of local institutions.

This column has from time to time been charged with the mistake of over-reading issues, and this particular column may well possibly join that list of mistakes, but perhaps the risk is worth it. While the Hindutva gangs are a visceral threat to the people and peace of Goa, it is necessary to also see where they exercise restraint, so as to open up portals of understanding and dialogue.

When contacted personally after his participation in the episode where the visit of the Sagres was denounced in Vasco, one of the participants elaborated on the reason for his opposition. He pointed out that his opposition to the Sagres’ visit was motivated by the fact that the event of 1510 was sought to be commemorated by a unilateral celebration. There was no though given to a combined program that could revisit, or move on from 1510. The event required us only as audience, he suggested, not as equal participants. If the nature of his protest was entirely unacceptable, his observation was perhaps bang on target.

On this front the Monte Music Festival is a perfect example of what the Portuguese establishment could do to create a space for equal interaction. It does not unilaterally push ‘Portuguese culture’ but creates a platform where both ‘Indian’ and ‘European’ are put on proud display. Audiences for one genre, usually stay on for the performances of the other. The audience it creates then is the subject that Goan history has produced, an individual capable of transitioning between the worlds of the ‘East’ and the ‘West’.

The conceptualization of the Monte Music Festival used existing cliches of Goa as the ‘meeting space between the East and the West’ ‘Europe and India’. There is, it should be said, nothing wrong with clichés. As long as they do not suffocate other ways of thinking, they can be useful places to begin thinking from. The Monte festival is a wonderful example of how a cliché can be used to produce a valuable, and valued, cultural production. The problem however is when the cliché begins to limit rather than allow for elaboration. Thus for example, when we think of the ‘Indian’ segment of the Music festival, does it limit itself merely to India or to a wider ‘Indian’ sub-continental culture? The suggestion is that the Monte festival should actively think of including artistes and musicians from Pakistan and Bangladesh at the very least, if not from Nepal, and Afghanistan further afield. These spaces are not outside of the ‘Indian’ space. Not only do they share aspects of the same tradition, but continue to inflect the space of ‘Indian’ classical traditions. Consider for a moment, the fact that while actors from ‘Hindi’ films are wildly popular in Pakistan, a good number of Pakistani musicians and rock bands are wildly popular in India Republic. One particularly interesting example would be the productions from the Coke Studio in Pakistan. This project melds the ‘traditional’ classical traditions of Pakistan, with a range of contemporary and ‘western’ musical instruments and arrangements.

To make this suggestion of border-crossing to the Monte festival should not be seen as radical. The Western music presentations at the festival have often crossed political borders within Europe, and also presented, from time to time, American artistes specializing in ‘European’ classical music. To extend such political blindness to the Indian subcontinent would only go to enrich the offerings and value of the Monte festival.

Dialogue, it will be agreed, is much preferable to the option of standing on our little soap boxes and carving out audiences with defined boundaries. We are too small a people to be carved out into fields desired by the Hindutvawadis, and Catholic bigots. To recognize a point our ideological opponent is making could help toward emasculating the brigands on both sides and create more space for dialogue. After all, as the Monte festival annually indicates, dialogue creates such wonderful mo(ve)ments.

(This post was first published in the Gomantak Times 9 Feb 2011)

Paving a Road to Hell: Highways, Safety, Life and the Indian Republic

Addressing the Goan public on Republic Day, one of the many bits of paternal advice that the Governor of our State chose to impart was with regards to roads. He lamented that there were over 300 young deaths on the roads every year. The widening of roads he therefore argued, (he meant the controversial highway expansion project) was necessary to take care of the ever growing vehicular traffic and to contain incidents of road mishaps.

It’s a wonder that the Goan public are not already tired of the truckloads of gratuitous advice that they get from all quarters. These various patriarchs seemed convinced that the Goan public is like some misguided barque of youth that need to be guided into calm and responsible waters. Fortunately for this Goan public however, a good amount of their actions are actually sensible, far-sighted, and it is these patriarchs who would be better served by wider reading.

The cause for deaths on Goan roads is not their narrow width. On the contrary, if the narrow roads contribute to anything, it is to limit the number of deaths one would encounter if the roads were any wider. It is a rather simple fact of physics that the faster one’s vehicle is moving, the greater the impact and the greater the extent of injuries. Narrow roads, and the fact of people and animals moving across them, serve to slow down traffic and make these roads people and life-friendly. Wider highways on the other hands are veritable death-traps. They allow for faster movement, and when in such fast moving vehicles, it makes more sense to ram into the animal or vehicle that makes the mistake of being in your path, than swerving to try and avoid this obstruction. You can swerve to avoid an accident best when traveling at a slower pace. As inconvenient as it may be then, the increasing number of vehicles on Goan (and Indian) roads probably works to our advantage, by reducing speed and saving lives. If there is a reason for the number of deaths on Goan roads, then it must be credited to the high speeds at which we attempt to travel. Blame this on the increasing capacities of vehicles and the misguided sense of style and liberation we get from being in or on fast vehicles. And so sorry Mr. Governor, but you need to marshal better facts, if you are to convince this unruly, troublesome Goan public that they should not be opposing the highway expansion project.

While on the subject of speed, I was recently made aware of the reasons for the low speed limits on bridges; 40 in the case of the Mandovi and 30 in the case of the Zuari. It turns out that if you have an unceasing flow of traffic coursing at high speeds over the bridges the bridge too starts to sway with the speed of the traffic. This eventually leads to stress that the structure has not been designed to deal with and sooner or later one winds up with rather catastrophic end to the bridge. The speed limit is obviously there for a purpose. Speed however is something that we seem to take as a fundamental right and it is hard to drive on either of these bridges without getting some speed-crazy maniac trying to overtake you or honk the living daylights out of you.

To return to the issue of highways though, what we need to recognize is that highways are not built primarily for local people to traverse through the State, but for larger vehicles – commercial carriers- to get to point A to point B as fast as possible. This is not to make a nativist argument, but to point out that this process is not without impact on the populations that fall on the route of these super-highways. Thus highways may connect people, but they also separate them. They divide villages into two portions and to a large extent prevent normal communication between these two segments of the village. No longer is it possible for a person to walk across the road to visit the shop or chapel or temple across the road. Underpasses are prone to flooding, overhead bridges inconvenient for the physically challenged and the infirm, and they are often spaced too far apart to be convenient for a pedestrian. Not only do highways separate, they also evict persons. Entire lifetimes that were spent building a home, or tending to an orchard are destroyed as quickly as you can ‘land-grab scam’.

The kind of super-highways that the Goan public is being pushed to accept makes sense in the vast unpopulated spaces of the United States. They make sense in places where people have been forced to stop walking and get into vehicles for every single requirement. This has ofcourse come with its own curse of social anomie and high death rates on highways. Highways also invariably come with undemocratic forms of government. It is all part of a package deal.

For these and other reasons, it is therefore strange that the Governor chose to urge Goan members of the Indian Republic to acquiesce to highways on Republic Day…but of late, most strange are the logics of the Indian Republic.

(A version of this blog was first published in the Gomantak Times 2 Feb 2011)

Wheat from Chaff II – An eye for an eye, but no teeth please.

A fortnight ago this column strayed from its usual path of picking on Hindu right-wingers to focus on the Catholic bigot. The varied responses to that column justified the decision to take up the issue of the Catholic bigot. Rich and varied have been the response, some supportive, indicating that it was something that needed to be said, some sympathetic pointing out that the Goan Catholic elite are a group that history has left behind, while others were frankly piqued and peeved. It is the last that are perhaps most instructive and useful to construct a counter.

Before moving on to these piques though, it should be pointed out that the earlier column was not about the Goan Catholics, nor about the Goan Catholic elite. It was more specifically about the bigots that populate both these groups. A supportive response rightly highlighted that while the column provided ‘picture of a part, or even a good part of this elite…there was another relevant part (of the Goan Catholic elite) that was anti-Salazarist, active or quietly, and that though even professionally dependent on colonial rule had the courage not to compromise with it.’ To be sure there were these brave persons, whose examples we cannot and must not forget. Indeed, these women and men are the examples we need to hold aloft. However it needs to be pointed out that the bigotry of the Catholic elite was not merely tied to Salazar. Salazar was only one facet of a larger problem that colonial values created in Goa. In contemporary Portugal Salazar is conveniently made a bogeyman for all things bad, so that to stone him allows contemporary Portuguese to self-exculpate themselves from post-colonial faux pas completely. To brutally paraphrase the Urdu poet Faiz, there are greater evils in the Lusofone world than Salazar.

This defense of the past column to affirm that it was not calling all Goan Catholics bigots stems from the fact that the largest piques resulted from this particular misreading. These posts inquired why the column was ‘baying for the blood’ of ‘Goan Catholics in Goa (who) today are a shrinking minority. Jason can get around and finish the job he has set out by crucifying the remaining.’ This is a somewhat bizarre response since a shrewd appraisal of the situation would point out that when a community can identify its bigots, and effectively deal with them, it creates the space to protect the larger community from external attack. This response was indicative of the manner in which the sense of persecution or marginalization (the fact of which this column has consistently argued for) contributes to an inability to introspect and address problems within. It is in this sense then that Hindutva (or any other majoritarianism for that matter) prevents minority groups from addressing issues of inequality and injustice within it. When pushed to the wall, the dominant groups within a minority invariably manage to suffocate internal challenges to the status-quo. Thus the critique of a bigoted mindset among Catholics was castigated as a challenge both to Goa and to Catholics itself. As argued in the earlier column, given the representational dominance of the elite, it is elite representations of Catholic Goan-ness that get frozen as the representative of an entire community. It was also within elite Goan Catholic contexts, that this peculiar brand of bigotry was produced. To this extent then Catholic bigots (like bigots in any group) are not harmless but act as foils for majoritarian attack, and also work together with this right to undermine the non-dominant groups within their fold.

There is also a need for us to challenge notions of a homogeneous and unified Catholic community. Just as there is no single Hindu community, but a Hindu community fractured by region, caste and class; just as the Indian Muslim is a fictitious character, similarly the ‘Goan Catholic’ too is a largely fictitious entity. This is not to deny that there are factors and features that bind different groups together as Catholics and Goans. This is merely to point that this unity is not total. It is fractured by the existence of caste, class, region and goodness knows how many other factors. The last column was castigated for dragging caste unnecessarily into the issue. This was surprising given the last column argued that Catholic bigotry was not restricted to a class or class, but can be, and is present, among all groups. I would like to extract two comments here. The first, ‘I am a sudra fighting for the Goan cause.’ And a second, ‘Not sure which Bamon rubbed Jason Keith Fernandes on the wrong side for him to paint all Goan Catholics with his dirty muck calling them bigots!’ These comments tell us that there is more to caste among Catholics than we care to admit. Both these comments assume the blemish-free nature of Sudras and non-brahmins, and assume that it is always Brahmins or Bamons who are trouble-makers. This column has time and again argued that Brahmins do not hold a monopoly on brahmanical thinking. However, given that the brahmanical frameworks work to their advantage, like other dominant castes, they have a tendency towards it.

Speaking of bigotry among Goan Catholics is important because their bigotry often masquerades as a call to ‘Save Goa’. It prevents any opportunity for internal debate as they present the Hindu right as a far greater threat and call for ‘unity’ in the face of this attack. In both cases there is a reason to fight, both for Goa, as well as Christian security in India and in Goa. But we should not allow the bigots to colour our choices and strategies. These bigots would not have us work with other minority groups or create a genuinely democratic politics. Thus in Goa, they would have us spurn choices to align with the cause of Muslim persecution in Goa, or to work with Dalit and tribal causes in both Goa and other parts of India. They will not contemplate the possibility that Goa's emigration/migration problems could perhaps be partially addressed through better and respectful labour conditions. The bigot would have us believe in our superiority merely because we are Catholic and embody (forgotten) Portuguese values. Indeed they would use discontent with the present to produce an idyllic and blemish-free Portuguese past, which indeed it was not. The bigot would have us confuse uniformity (of opinion) for unity. And in these embattled times, this is no option at all.

(P.S. The reference to 'Save Goa' is not a reference to the 'Save Goa Movement' that existed fas a coalition of groups or a brief moment in recent Goan history)

(A version was first published in the Gomantak Times 19 Jan 2010)

The African in Goa: Village Goa beyond the Gãocaria

Every month the Xavier Centre in Porvorim hosts History Hour, a platform for local (national and international) scholars to discuss their works. In doing so it provides happy stimulation for a diverse audience. Last Friday the Centre played host to the release of Beyond the Beach: The Village of Arossim, Goa, in Historical Perspective. The work of Dr. Themistocles D’Silva, the book is a history of the village of Arossim from which Dr. D’Silva hails from.

The work is clearly a labour of love from one of its native sons, perhaps born from the nostalgia that émigré sons feel for their motherland. Dr. D’Silva’s work however also continues a longer tradition, that initiated by his father, Justino da Silva. Justino da Silva, was an archivist of village history, having laboured over the genealogical charts of the prominent families of the village. In his presentation of the work at the Xavier Centre, Dr. D’Silva pointed out that he hoped that his book did not remain an isolated work. On the contrary, he pointed out that there was a need for greater numbers of us to put into writing the histories of our villages, increasing the documentation on the rich histories of Goa beyond the beach. Such histories also go beyond the Goan histories obsessed with the sixteenth century and the Portuguese governance of the territory. Indeed, in the course of the presentation Dr. D’Silva pointed to the urgency of the task given that many of the older generation and their memories are passing away, and that private archives fall victim to the ravages of insects and weather. On this front perhaps Dr. D’Silva was being kind to the custodians of these archives. Though Goan society has produced a number of luminaries, the same intellectual drive that powered these luminaries is not necessarily passed on to the next generation. Many archives have no doubt been discarded into dust heaps and kitchen back-yard fires.

What is most interesting in this book, is that Dr. D’Silva has written it by combining the various influences that have moulded him as an individual. In doing so, he brings to the fore a central problem in the manner in which we think about the Goan village, and thus Goan identity.

A member of the village elite of Arossim, his book locates the village gãocaria (or Comunidade) as one of the points of departure for his narrative. This is not entirely out of place; the Comunidade was a powerful institution in our history and to speak of a village history without delving into the history of the Comunidade would produce a dull, incomplete history. However to speak of the village from the point of view of the Comunidade alone does not exhaust the history of the Goan villages, since there were (and are) a number of people who while living in the village, were not gãocars of the village. What would the history of the Goan village look like if we were to write a village history from their point of view? The threads that Dr. D’Silva draws out gives us a hint into this possibility.

Dr. D’Silva points out in his book a fact that has by and large been left unsaid and unspoken in the public sphere about the Goan village. This fact is of the presence of African slaves within our village communities. The few voices that do mention the presence of the African are Dr. Savia Viegas, Adv. Valmiki Faleiro, and Margaret Mascarenhas in her novel Skin. While speaking of the presence of the African slave in Goa, Dr. D’Silva manages to point out to us that the Goan village was not an idyllic, happy setting for all. These slaves were ill-treated sufficiently to make them want to escape. And escape they did, into the jungles of British-India where slavery was abolished much earlier than it was in Portuguese-India. Dr. D’Silva made reference to the fact that the failure of their master’s to provide a nutritious diet to the slaves forced the latter to poach for fish from the village ponds at night. He also pointed to the fact that these African slaves and their descendants lived at the edges of the villages, pointing to their social marginalization.

When we speak of the African slave’s presence in Goa’s villages, we must recognize that their descendants married local men and women, or if they did not marry, in any case produced babies with local persons. This gives to a good amount of Goans, a history different from those of the gãocars – who in any case could not have been a majority of the population. When speaking of the Comunidade we often create – as did Dr. D’Silva - for the Goan, a Hindu pre-history. If we recognize the presence of the African’s as a part of the Goan village – by not being obsessed with gãocarial histories – we create a Goan with an African history. And what a different, richer and more exciting history that would lead us to!

The entire row over a proposed mosque close to the site of the former World Trade Centre resulted, among other things, in a couple of discoveries about US History. It was pointed out that by virtue of the presence of African slaves in early USA and the site of New Amsterdam (subsequently New York city), early American history includes the history of peoples who professed an Islamic faith. True many African slaves were baptized when they were brought to Goa, but as the Hindu-past obsessed histories tell us, mere baptism does not drive away former influences. In addition to these African slaves, Adv. Valmiki Faleiro has pointed out the presence of Chinese labourers (who worked the railway line that passes through Arossim) and of their marriage to local people. In addition, we have the presence in pre-Portuguese Goan history of the many Muslims who converted to Christianity to save their lives and properties.

All of these people contribute to the histories of Goan villages, which we, befuddled by Gandhian idiosyncrasies, often erroneously believe to be where the real Goa resides. To effectively write about these histories, or to even realize that they exist, we need to move beyond the framework of the Comunidade centered histories that we still take as the central focus of our local history writing. While largely within the frames of this traditional perspective, Dr D’Silva was possibly able to move beyond this traditional framework because of the fact that he is not trapped by traditional social-science ways of writing about Goan history. Or the fact that he has clearly spent a good amount of time in and interacted with the politically inclusive trends of thinking about society within the United States.

For his effort we must thank Dr. D’Silva, buy his book, and then go write our own village histories!

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 12/ 11/ 2011)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Social-engineering and Re-education camps: Preparing the killing-fields in Goa

‘The way anti-national elements within the country are cropping up, there is need for re-nationalisation’.

My blood curdled when I read these words, reportedly made by a prominent Goan at the ceremony in the town of Vasco-da-Gama held to purify the waters of the Arabian Sea. The sea had apparently been polluted by the presence of the Portuguese naval ship Sagres. The gentleman in question is used to a somewhat bombastic turn of phrase, and perhaps his own social location (‘upper’-caste and Hindu) blinded him to the connections that other persons not so comfortably located (‘lower’ caste and non-Hindu) make when they hear such phrases. Let us contemplate for a moment then, the analogies that could be made to similar statements from history and their contexts.

Take as a first example the Chinese experience of the Cultural Revolution launched by Mao in his effort to regain power over Communist China. In his attempt to maintain hegemony over the country and remain in power Mao insinuated that the revolution was being infiltrated by liberal bourgeois elements that would threaten the recent successes of the communist revolution in China. In the turmoil that followed this move for power, large numbers of persons were sent for re-education. This process of ‘re-education’ included the exiling of persons to distant parts of China where they were engaged in hard labour, and publicly humiliated, submitted to torture and public lynching, sometimes killed. The Cultural Revolution was an unsafe period in China where persons who were skilled above the average were targeted by the mob, where personal vendettas were carried out justified by the ideological language of the revolution, and where minority groups were forced into assimilation programs. Thousands were killed, maimed or their life-chances destroyed as a result of the Cultural Revolution that insisted, as was insisted in Vasco, that there was a threat to the country and a need for re-education.

A second example, once more from Asia is that of the Khmer Rouge. Originally inspired by communism, the Khmer Rouge sought to create a nationally appropriate form of the ideology for Cambodia and create an agrarian utopia. The result of this was a project of social engineering which unfortunately, and not unsurprisingly, turned into one of the worst genocides in human history. About two million Cambodians are estimated to have died in the in waves of murder, torture, and starvation, aimed particularly at the educated and intellectual elite, but included other groups – including ethnic and religious minorities - as well. As was suggested in Vasco, re-education was attempted by the Khmer regime, that like in China subjected persons deemed to be against the regime, to hard labour, humiliation, torture and death.

The Cultural Revolution and the regime of the Khmer Rouge are just two of the horrific examples from Asia. In both cases dominant groups within the country subjected vast numbers of innocent persons to torture and death for failing to meet the national ideal as articulated by these groups. These groups were those groups that could not, according to the logic of the dominant, be re-educated. All horrific experiments like the two presented for contemplation begin with innocent ideas and grandiose statements like those made in the town of Vasco-da-Gama. It is for this reason that we should not brush this episode under the carpet but take it very seriously indeed.

India is no stranger to experiences like those in China or Cambodia. The Muslim populations of India have been subject to such experiments as well. One does not have to look far, but only toward the experience of Gujarat, where Gujarati Muslims were demonized over a long period of time. As a result when the proper environment was created it was possible to kill them in the thousands since they were no longer seen as human beings, but as enemies of the State and society. We all know of the days in the early 80’s and before when Muslims were seen as being unpatriotic for allegedly celebrating when Pakistan won cricket matches. How innocent that Indian nationalist annoyance seems today when compared with the violent killing of Muslims that took place in Gujarat in 2002.

The statement made in Vasco-da-Gama belongs to the kind of imagination that converted Modi’s Gujarat, Mao’s China and the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia into a horrific examples of human savagery. What was scary about the sea-purification episode in Vasco-da-Gama was that it targeted not only the Portuguese, but local Goan Catholics as well. It put the Goan Catholic who may culturally identify with some aspects Portuguese, on the same level as the Kashmiri who demands Azaadi, or the Indian Muslim who is deemed to be rooting for Pakistan. This is a matter of concern that we should not take lightly. It is only a troubling portent of darker times to come.

(A version of this blog entry was first published in the Gomantak Times 29 Dec 2010)