Goa’s Chief Minister, Laxmikant Parsekar, has been
receiving flak ever since he took charge from November 2014. Not simply due to
the faulty policies that his government seems eager to force down the throats
of the Goan people, but also due to controversial and sometimes silly
comments in the media.
However, over the last several months we have been
witness to a modicum of clarity and good sense displayed by the same Parsekar
on the issue of consumption of beef in Goa. In March this year, Parsekar issued
a statement saying
that there cannot be a beef-ban in Goa, as
beef is part of the diet of a lot of people in the state. Since the issue of
whether Muslims, Dalits, Christians, and Adivasis living in India should or should not consume
beef is being raked up with alarming frequency, Parsekar did not shy away from issuing
another statement earlier this month. Modifying his views a bit due to the
existing political climate in North India and the debates surrounding the ‘rise
of intolerance’ in India,
Parsekar said,
“I don’t feel the people of a community eat or use beef to hurt sentiments of
others. It is part of their cuisine or preparation and we also accept the fact…”
What one can also add to Parsekar’s statement is that rather than offending
anybody, many Catholics (for example) feel quite awkward and embarrassed to
serve pork and beef dishes at their own functions, thanks to a desire to accommodate
the sentiments of their Muslim and Hindu friends. One can see that Parsekar is
quite consistent in his views on beef-eating vis-à-vis the minoritized
communities and to state something as plainly as he did is frankly quite
remarkable.
But Parsekar did not stop at asserting that there
was no intent for hurting sentiments by the consumption of beef. The problems
in Parsekar’s comments arise when he tried to link the current situation of
intolerance in rest of India
to the tolerant ethos of Goa, which many
believe existed for centuries. He said, “This maybe a tiny state, but our
speciality is that Hindus, Catholics and Muslims can live together in harmony
and peace. We know the importance of respecting each others’ feelings.
Therefore, such issues are never blown out of proportion as in other state”.
Reading such a view one should be ideally left with a few wrinkles on one’s
forehead.
The question is how valid is the idea that Goa was always tolerant? While raising this question,
allow me to also stress that Goa seems to
witness a relatively ‘peaceful’ atmosphere as the ‘othering’ of minoritized
groups like Christians and Muslims operate through means that appear as not
overtly violent.
If we consider the politics of the Konkani language
organized around the legitimization of the Nagri script as the official and de facto script of the culture and
language of Goa, this vision of Goa having a long tradition of tolerance
immediately fractures. By now it is common knowledge that a sizable population
of the Catholic community has been excluded from the Goan public sphere. What’s
more is that the people who asserted the right of Roman-scripted Konkani as
legitimate in the Goan cultural and political sphere were (and are) frequently
at the receiving end of vicious hate speech. Though I have said that this is
common knowledge, yet it does not seem to have seeped into the common-sensical
understanding of many prominent intellectuals and politicians in Goa. For why else would many in Goa celebrate the fact
that many Nagri writers threatened to return their Sahitya Akademi awards,
despite the fact that these very same people have presided over a regime that
continues to marginalize and impose savarna hegemony over bahujan Hindus and
various Catholic groups?
To further focus on the harmonious existence of various
religious communities in Goa, one can ask about
the extent to which Muslims are represented in Goan politics. Although there
are many Goan Muslims, there is hardly any representation of that community in
Goan politics from 1961. In a sense, one can observe the invisibilization of
the Muslim population in Goa, as, right from
1961, the leadership of the community is solely in the hands of others. I think
this is very serious as there is hardly anyone who will represent the needs and
interests of the community, as for example in the fields of education,
employment, and food habits. And since we are on the topic of political
representation, I am reminded of the Pratap Singh Rane cabinet of 1980, wherein
a sizable number of key posts were given to Christian MLAs, and apparently the
mood prevailing then in Goa was that the government had turned into a
Christian-controlled one (Kristanvancho
sorkar). That a significant number of Goans at that time (which is not that
long ago) felt uncomfortable with so many Christian MLAs in the Legislative
Assembly, should ideally make us realize that the narrative about Goa’s harmony is a wee bit farcical. One would find many more
such incidents.
So while Parsekar is absolutely right in
asserting that consumption of beef is not linked to any desire to offend, the
rising tide of ‘intolerance’ should not be viewed as an aberration to the
normally tolerant and harmonious ethos, whether in Goa or India. In fact, if we
think hard enough one will be confronted with a longer history of small and big
incidents by which minoritized communities have been consistently and systematically
subjected to discrimination. To not recognize this history is to miss a chance
at furthering a truly egalitarian society.
(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 11 November, 2015)
Please also see a reaction to this article by Vikas Kamat and my rebuttal to it here.
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