Over the past
few weeks, I have been reading with much interest a
few letters addressed to the editor of O
Heraldo. These letters, in one way or the other, argued for the necessity
of ‘liberation’ for Goa. While Victor Ferrao,
the Dean of the Rachol Seminary sought a “second liberation”, others rather
felt that Goa needed a proper or true
liberation. These letters were sparked off, as one may remember, by the highly
objectionable statements made in the press by some freedom fighters, calling
for punitive action against Goans who have registered their births in Portugal.
Calls for
liberation coming in the wake of such statements by the freedom-fighters (FFs)
can tell us a few things about Goan politics. To begin with, we need to understand
that the FFs have an authority and legitimacy in Goan politics that is
generally not questioned. Their role in the anti-colonial movement against the
Portuguese Estado da Índia (EI) is
what gives them this legitimacy, to such an extent that they have come to
epitomize freedom from colonialism. Thus, when Ferrao asserted
that there were “several un-freedoms” that the FFs refused to acknowledge – and
thereby also played on the word ‘freedom’ in FFs – it enabled us to see the
regressive role that some of these FFs play in contemporary Goa.
The letters
addressed the sorry state of Goan politics and the manner in which the State in
Goa had mismanaged governance and public
resources. It is in this context that one needs to see the calls for liberation
being pitted against the image of the FFs. Contemporary calls for liberation
are a challenge, I argue, to a nationalist understanding of Goa and its history.
Liberation in the
Goan context is used to describe the departure of the EI after the military annexation
of Goa to the Indian Union. Thus, Goa and its people were understood to have been freed
from foreign dominance, and also to have arrived at a culmination of history with
their integration into the Indian nation-state. The FFs have, or claim to have,
actively contributed to this integration. Thus according to the nationalist
version of history, liberation as a project, or as a movement in history, is
understood to be complete, with no necessity for further work or improvement.
The departure of the Portuguese, coupled with the arrival of the Indians, was
equated with the liberation of Goans. And yet we see renewed calls for
liberation.
What we need to
recognize is that anti-colonial movements that led to the formation of many
nation-states across the colonized world also came as a promise for progress
and modernization, apart from mobilizing to overthrow foreign yoke. The
colonial state could not ensure the progress and betterment of the people
because it oppressed and enslaved people. The colonial state denied rights to
people in their own land. It also obstructed the cultural efflorescence of the
people, and imposed Western culture on them. Such
a position was articulated by TB Cunha, noted for his contributions to Goa’s anti-colonial movement.
However,
progress and betterment is precisely what the nation-state that emerged from
anti-colonial movements have failed to give to the masses. Even if the
nation-state has been able to bring about modernization it has been at the
expense of the lives and livelihoods of the marginalized masses. We have
recently seen this in the manner in which land is sought or is grabbed in
Tirakol, Mopa, Vanxim, Betul, and elsewhere across Goa, the brutal police
action on peaceful protesters, unending scams that deplete the State exchequer
or public money by many thousands of crores, and the mammoth mismanagement of
public resources and properties.
Thus, to many it
does feel like, rather than having the freedom to live and earn a decent
livelihood, one
is still colonized by the nation-state and its partners in the name of
development. In such a contemporary scenario, the presence of FFs who hark
back and depend on a legacy that is constantly failing us in the present is
rendered meaningless. What is the point of having FFs if we do not have
freedom? This is why calls for liberation today make more sense than
celebrating some (imagined) national glories.
Which is also
why calls for liberation should also be seen along with another more famous (or
notorious) movement called ‘Liberation Theology’. In this context, liberation
is cast as an emancipatory project. Begun as a movement within the Church in
Latin America after Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez published his seminal text A Theology of Liberation (1971),
‘liberation theology’ sought to address the poverty-stricken lives of many in Latin America due to an unjust social system, and rampant
capitalist development. The poverty in Latin America made the Church there face
a crisis of its own relevance in that society. Fr. Gutiérrez argued that such a
moment was precisely the time that the Church had to change by putting the poor
and the oppressed first and actively supporting their struggles – the poor
after all were at the center of the Christian message.
Listening to
calls of liberation coming from various quarters one could argue that the State
as well as the Church in Goa needs to put the poor, the marginalized, and the
oppressed at the center of politics and planning. The State more so as in a
secular, liberal democracy the welfare of the citizens is entrusted to the
State. With the State opening the doors to rampant development, the common
masses and the marginalized will be further pushed in the corner and the calls
for liberation will only grow.
(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 6 July, 2016)
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