Pride
and shame, it appears, are two sides of the same coin. Invariably, pride seems
to be a logical solution when an individual recognizes that s/he is being
shamed by political institutions and establishments. In the past few weeks we
have had occasions to discuss the operation of shame and humiliation within
Konkani language politics. The discussion initially focused on a song by Alfred
Rose and made some observations about the type of politics in which the man and
his work were entrenched.
Since
Alfred Rose did not invent the type of politics that he often propagated, the
question is: who did? I believe that issues related to the shaming and
humiliation within Konkani language politics will become clearer once we
scrutinize the life and writings of Vaman Raghunath Varde Valaulikar. If there
was one individual on whose shoulders Konkani activists, until fairly recently,
placed the burden of single-handedly rescuing the Konkani language from untold miseries,
it has to be Valaulikar. No person, we have been made to believe, worked as
hard as Valaulikar for the cause of Konkani language and thus the Goan
identity. The attempts to celebrate the 125th birth anniversary of Valaulikar
as ‘Konkani asmitai year’ in 2002, exemplify this.
Valaulikar’s
written output was (or is) considered to be seminal in Konkani literature. This
he did, we are told, by not only producing Konkani literature of high standard
but also by stepping up to the challenge posed by Marathi-supporters; in fact
demolishing their every argument. What is important for our purpose is to focus
on the manner in which Valaulikar tackled the issue of shame felt by the
Catholic and Hindu communities in colonial Bombay, thanks to the accusation of
Marathi-supporters that Konkani was a form of ‘impure Marathi’.
In
his text, Konknni Bhaxechem Zoit or The Triumph of Konkani, Vaulikar tells
us that Konkani was derogatorily referred to as ‘impure Marathi’ by Marathi-speakers
and -supporters (p.47). ‘Impure’ obviously because, unlike Marathi at that time,
Konkani language had not yet incorporated Sanskrit inflections, prior to
Valaulikar’s project. While Valaulikar may have felt shamed and humiliated
because of his ‘impure Marathi’, it becomes quite a different story when one
considers that persons using the Roman-scripted Konkani had to bear a greater
brunt of such shaming – with repeated call for standardized orthography –
because the language that they used was not a Sanskrit-inflected one, like the ‘proper’
Marathi. Not surprisingly, Valaulikar’s response did not reveal the underlying
aspiration of his caste politics in which the brahmin groups like his were
trying to gain power and privilege in colonial Bombay. On the contrary he suggested
that Konkani-speakers needed to work for the development of the language to
give it world recognition (see Konkani
Bhaxechem Zoit, Ed. K. S. Nayak, Bombay, 1930). In other words, one had to
take-on to the challenge of Marathi-supporters by feeling pride in a Sanskritized
Konkani by speaking and writing in the Antruzi variant, rather than ask why
Konkani was referred to as ‘impure Marathi’. Or indeed ask why Hindus and
Catholics in Bombay felt ashamed of their own types of Konkanis.
That
he wrote in and championed the cause of the Nagri lipi and the Antruzi boli
was not a problem for Valaulikar. Neither was it a problem for him that the
Konkani in which he wrote his books was a new fabrication. As one of
Valaulikar’s interlocutors Balkrishna Waman Sawardekar quite rightly and
cheekily noted, “Shanai Goebab has, in his books, clothed Konkani in sacred
robes and as such it has assumed a very beautiful and chaste form. His is a
completely Konkani diction (sic) no
doubt but this is what has made it very unintelligible” (p. 19). Sawardekar
further asserted that this has resulted in Valaulikar producing a “fossilized
Konkani” (p. 22) (see The Language of Goa,
Panaji, 1971; originally published in the Portuguese in 1939).
Though
Valaulikar’s project responded to the derogatory attitude of the
Marathi-supporters and the Marathi language establishment in Bombay, it was a
project of consolidating Saraswat caste identity against the backdrop of many
other brahmin groups in colonial Bombay. The misguided ideas that Konkani is
the natural mother-tongue of Goans and that it is in the blood of Goans emerged
and consolidated with this project of Valaulikar.
While
there is no doubt that persons like Valaulikar and likes may have faced a few
instances of shame and humiliation of speaking Konkani, the non-upper caste and
working class groups of Goans must have felt unimaginably more. With the rise of
Nagri script (and by extension the Antruzi boli) as the sole official script of Konkani
in Goa in recent times this shame and humiliation for persons who do not embody
the ways and manners of being of the Nagri/Antruzi Konkani can only be said to
have increased manifold. Thus, the project initiated by Valaulikar and carried
forward by his ardent bhakts of
creating and imposing a singular Konkani language of high literary merit has
been a miserable failure for the bahujans and Catholics.
Valaulikar’s
career and the history of the nagri-scripted Konkani suggests that shaming has
been present in Konkani language politics for well over a century, if not more.
In such a grim scenario it is quite logical that Goans – who cherish their
respective forms of Konkanis – also make a demand for English. Though the
possibility of him being sarcastic is eminently plausible, Valaulikar advised
his antagonists – the Marathi-supporters – that rather than their obsession
with Marathi, they should “at least select a language which will give them the
maximum gains… [and they should] assiduously and diligently study the powerful
English language” (p. 35) (see Triumph of Konkani: A Translation of Shenoy Goembab’s Konkani Bhasechem Zoit, Tran.
Sebastian M. Borges, Margao, 2003). Sarcasm or not, access to the “powerful
English” is no doubt a sensible strategy out of the sorry mess that is the
linguistic politics of Goa.
(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 30 September, 2015)
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