November
2015 would be an unfortunate month for Goa. Not simply because Fr. Bismarque
Dias, a fire-brand activist, was found dead under mysterious circumstances, but
also because the Goan government behaved
in an atrocious manner in handling the investigation as well as the law and
order situation following the peaceful protest on 21 November, 2015. At a time
of outpouring of grief and emotion from the people of Goa, and at a time when
politics in Goa is in dire need of ‘Kindness’
(to borrow Fr. Bismarque’s word upon which rests his 2012 election manifesto)
one would be quite surprised – or rather, shocked – to see vicious
anti-minority statements made in public by members of the Bharatiya Bhasha
Suraksha Manch (BBSM). With the government increasingly growing unpopular in
the eyes of the Goan people, it seems quite certain that members of the
RSS-backed BBSM are making hay while the sun shines.
Simply
put, the BBSM’s agenda is to block the grants-in-aid to English as a Medium of
Instruction (MoI) in primary schools in Goa. In trying to safeguard ‘Indian
culture’ (whatever that means), members of the BBSM think that it is the
Christians in Goa who are responsible for the demand for English made by
parents across the caste and religious divide. It has been quite clear for some
time now that the BBSM is an openly rightwing group. Its hostility to
minoritized groups is very evident. In
the recently-held BBSM press conference, Arvind Bhatikar said to the ruling
BJP party in Goa, “Your voter is Hindu. You are in power because of Hindus.
Remember this and stop appeasing the minorities”.
This
issue I think cannot be framed as one of increasing communalization, as one can
see that the BBSM is always clever enough to keep token figures from the Hindu
bahujan samaj and the Catholic community in their press conferences and
photo-ops. Neither can the vicious hostility to Goa’s minoritized groups can be
understood as an issue of increasing “intolerance”. If this was the case,
persons like Naguesh Karmali and Pundalik Naik (staunch members of the BBSM and
Nagri Konkani litterateurs) would not have aligned with the RSS-backed BBSM, while
at the same time protesting the Sahitya Akademi’s silence on the recent murders
of writers and rationalists.
So
the question is, how do we then, understand the comments that are made by
Arvind Bhatikar and the members of the BBSM? The most important way is to see
how Brahmanism operates in maintaining its own power. It is no secret that both
the RSS and the Nagri Konkani camp (from which most of the Konkani “stalwarts”
are drawn) are tightly controlled by brahmins. The Nagri Konkani project itself
is the project of the Saraswat caste hegemony. In this context, it would profit
us quite a lot if we invoke the comments of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar who observed,
“Is it reasonable to expect the secular Brahmins to take part in a movement
directed against the priestly Brahmins? In my judgment, it is useless to make a
distinction between the secular Brahmins and priestly Brahmins. Both are kith
and kin. They are two arms of the same body, and one is bound to fight for the
existence of the other”. Clearly, the rightwing brahmins in the RSS and the
secular brahmins (who, like Uday Bhembre and Arvind Bhatikar, have so far been
projected as ostensibly ‘secular’ and ‘progressive’) have come together under
the umbrella of BBSM – and one can only presume that the reason to do so is to
maintain each others’ existence.
I
am not the first one to see similarities between the methods employed by
right-wing Hindu groups and those that are employed by cultural purists like
the BBSM – a major chunk of whose leadership consists of the “stalwarts” of the
Nagri Konkani camp. Kaustubh Naik argues
that in Goa the Nagri Konkani camp functions as a “local culture police” much
like Hindu right-wing groups. This local culture police want to “impose a
singular identity by carefully erasing all cultural differences to ensure the
hegemony of a dominant social group”, i.e. the “Hindu Saraswats” according to Naik
(The Goan Everyday, dt: 29 September,
2015).
Where
is the minority-appeasement in such a scenario? If repeated struggles by the
Goan people, for greater equality in political life and for a greater
recognition of their individual and community rights, are diligently scuttled
by dominant caste groups (with of course tokens from the Christian community
and the Hindu bahujan samaj), then, once again, where is the appeasement? In
the context of ‘minority-appeasement’ one cannot help but draw parallels in the
manner in which Christians in Goa are made into a scapegoat like Muslims in
many parts of India. By making Christians of Goa a scapegoat for a demand that
clearly is not confined to them alone, a bid for maintaining caste hegemony is
cleverly disguised as a concern for Indian culture – and, most importantly,
Indian languages.
As
serious as the nature of the comments made by BBSM’s Arvind Bhatikar is, they
are also very routine and banal. One must not be fooled into believing that
such comments are an exception to the rule, or an aberration. For all parents
who are concerned about the future of their children, the need of the hour is
not simply to ensure full recognition for the grants to be given to English as
MoI, but also to challenge a vicious ideology that would deny people the right
to choose.
And
all said and done, even if we call this ‘minority-appeasement’, it is only
going to do Goa a lot of good.
(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 9 December, 2015)
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