THE HOUSEHOLD-OFFICE AND THE APPROACHABLE POLITICIAN

If Goemkarponn unites all Goans one would wonder why a Goan is an outsider in a village/town other than his own. Perhaps, Goemkarponn and other Goan identities contain mild xenophobia towards those it calls its own. Girish Chodankar, the Congress candidate in the just concluded Panjim by-elections, was termed an “outsider” by his opposition. One would be forgiven for assuming that Chodankar hailed from a place beyond the borders of Goa; it turns out that he is a bhailo in Panjim only – he resides in Margao!

Obviously, it was impossible for Chodankar to carry on with what we now know was his unsuccessful campaign without addressing the issue of him being a resident of Margao and not Panjim. Therefore, he issued a statement, which circulated on social media, assuring the voters of his full-time presence in their constituency. Chodankar’s full statement deserves scrutiny: “The people of Panjim are ready for a change. They have one doubt, however. I reside in Margao, and being from Margao they (the people of Panjim) are concerned that they will have to come all the way to Margao to meet me. They have asked me…if I will shift to Panjim. When I told them that I will shift to Panjim, they told me to publicly declare that after winning the election I will shift to Panjim. I would like to inform all my voters from Panjim that I have humbly accepted your request and I will immediately shift to Panjim after being elected…Moreover, the people of Ribandar because they have to travel to Panjim, have requested me to be present in Ribandar once a week. So there will be an office in Ribandar, in addition to the one in Panjim”.

Listening to Chodankar’s statement, it struck me that the people of Ribandar could also make similar demands of wanting their MLA to be resident in their area. After all, they too are equally entitled to meet their MLA as per their convenience, as are the people of Panjim. If indeed Chodankar would have his offices in Panjim and Ribandar, the question still remains of the need to move house to Panjim. Couldn’t he travel daily to Panjim or Ribandar? Wouldn’t it be the same as residing in Panjim – traffic snarls and commute hassles notwithstanding? The answer to this is obviously, no. It isn’t the same and convenience is not the only factor in this equation.

In India, as in Goa, power is brokered and negotiated at multiple levels of governance (the Panchayat, Zilla Parishad, Municipality, etc) and through caste and class relations. Those who occupy power at each of these levels are figures of authority that not only display their power and discharge their duties through their public offices, but extend their sphere of influence to the physical location of their households as well. Such a mode of functioning is reminiscent of the manner in which kings and feudal lords would rule over their territories from their household – their courts were contained within it. They did not have a separate office as such to conduct the affairs of the state. The residence of the emperor/king/feudal lord doubled as the court; there was no separation as such between these two spheres. The commoners as well as the other officials who had to approach the ruler, for any matter, had to essentially come to the abode of the ruler. In such a system, one is personally indebted to the ruler-lord, for it is through the personal attention of the ruler-lord that one is provided with relief and bestowed with justice.

The non-separation between the private and public spheres within the political culture of Goa also indicates the manner in which common people are forced to relate to those who rule over them. Even if Goa is operating within a system of democracy that stresses individual liberty and freedom of choice, there is a good reason to believe that the age-old feudal order is still thriving as political reforms haven’t brought about a change in the social relations amongst Goa. For instance, in modern and liberal forms of governance people don’t need to constantly knock on (literally) the doors of public servants and elected representatives for personal favors – even for trivial purposes. The people would, ideally, approach the concerned department or office in the bureaucratic system. In Goa, one observes that the bureaucracy is the least approachable and mostly requires a nod from the authority figure to swing into action.

A couple of months ago the current government issued a circular barring government officials from visiting the homes of MLAs for official business. As well-intentioned as this circular seems, it was issued with the intention of stopping government officials visiting the opposition MLAs. The uproar that was created in the Assembly and the government’s easy capitulation only indicates how crucial the household-office is in politics. Even if the opposition MLAs today argue that they need to meet officials in their homes due to a lack of proper, officially-designated meeting places, the same opposition MLAs never stopped receiving people in their household-offices when they were in power. When the ‘cult of the personality’ takes over the governance, the bureaucratic system becomes an extension of a durbar. The modern politician, therefore, assumes the role of a traditional lord, and the voters become the traditional clients.

A shift away from this patron-client relation in the political culture would necessitate that we recognize that the individual needs to exist without depending much on figures of authority. Rather the promise of every election – of one person, one vote, and one value – needs to be realized to its full potential.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 1 September 2017)

COMMUNAL HARMONY AND THE DESECRATION OF CROSSES

While reading Living Together Separately: Cultural India in History and Politics (2005) edited by Mushirul Hasan and Asim Roy, which aimed to problematize concepts like syncretism and communal harmony, I first encountered the metaphor, living together separately. Perhaps, it is an apt metaphor to think about Goa’s encounter with communalism.

The vandalism of Christian religious structures – especially crosses in cemeteries – in the last few weeks have shaken Goan society. Even before this began, Goans had become fearful that communal tensions would rip the fabric of its society – especially since the desecrations took place after the virulent hate-speech by Sadhavi Saraswati, who called for beef-eaters to be publicly executed. It did not help matters much that the law and order establishment in Goa, in the name of a fair investigation, staged a farce for public consumption. The response, by and large, from many Goan public figures was to assert Goa’s ‘age-old’ communal harmony; indicating how Hindus and Catholics have lived in perfect harmony despite all odds. In other words, they stressed Goemkarponn as a bulwark against the RSS/BJP-type of Hindutva.

Goa’s Hindu-Catholic model of communal harmony is similarly structured as the Hindu-Muslim unity propounded by Nehruvian Indian nationalism. In this sense, Goa’s model of communal harmony tends to reproduce many problems associated with Indian nationalism and secular liberalism. To assert Goa’s age-old communal harmony is to assume that there was a pre-existing religious harmony – in the sense of ‘unity in diversity’ rhetoric so common in India. This religious harmony is assumed to be centuries old and under growing threat due to the recent rise of Hindu fascism. In other words, the problem of communal disharmony appears to be recent one.

However, this assumption of Goa’s eternal communal harmony ignores many of the events in the past that have led (or are leading) to the present situation of uncertainty and fear. For instance, almost all would scoff at the suggestion that the rise of Hindutva in Goa predated the rise of the BJP. But if one looks at how Hindu nationalism was actively promoted by many Goans in the past, even under the Portuguese rule and ostensibly against the same Portuguese rule, one can see a longer process of communalization at work. The erstwhile weekly, O Bharat, published in Portuguese, Romi Konkani, and Marathi editions, contained many articles in its Marathi edition that encouraged cow-protection. Many of the articles published in O Bharat in the 1930s suggested that Goans should stop the consumption of beef, as Hindus considered cow to be sacred; additionally, the cow provided with food items like milk and hence it was too valuable to be simply consumed for its meat only. These facts should essentially make us question our beliefs about our own communal harmony.

Connected with the idea of Goa’s ancient communal harmony is the idea of religious syncretism. We have the very well-known instances of the zatra of the Goddess Shantadurga at Fatorpa and the feast of Milagres Saibinn at Mapusa where both Hindus and Catholics throng. However, this cross-religious devotionalism or syncretism is not something that affects the course of communal politics. It doesn’t affect politics in Goa precisely because, barring a few exceptions, communities divided by caste and religion tend to keep to themselves. If observed closely, one can see that this cross-religious devotion is largely led by bahujan communities within Roman Catholicism and Hinduism from which the elites within these two religions keep their distance.These are the groups that are, by and large, marginalized in politics as well; another reason why a bahujan-led cross-religious tolerance has very little effect to stop the increasing communalization in Goa.

Underlying this so-called religious syncretism are fractures of caste and class that manifest in various ways. For instance, the first election held in Goa after the end of Portuguese sovereignty is a good measure of how deep these caste and class fractures ran in Goan society. While the MGP’s stunning victory was due to the consolidation of various Hindu bahujan groups against Hindu upper-castes (and also against their bhatkarshahi), it did not mean that a political system was created which protected the interests of various marginalized groups. What followed this initial victory were not just internal schisms in the bahujan movement, but also the marginalization of the Catholic and Muslim voices as well as the many Hindu bahujan communities that had once propelled the Dayanand Bandodkar-led MGP to victory. Where was Goa’s communal harmony when the divisions between various communities were systematically being further encouraged?

Another problem with the idea of communal harmony is the visible exclusion of Muslims, leaving only a false Hindu-Catholic binary and subsuming several communities within the rubric of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Catholic’. Goa’s ‘age-old’ communal harmony can be said to foundationally exclude members ostensibly of the same political and cultural community. Why should we settle for an ideology that often misguides and offers very little in return? Why should we settle for less? The possible way out would be to reject these false equations that straightjacket Goan identity and culture.

There is no doubt that Goan history contains evidence of many progressive values, however, it is equally true that oppressive cultural practices and divisiveness also reside within Goa. This hasn’t been tackled adequately and a superficial reiteration of Goa’s communal harmony whenever dastardly acts like the desecration of crosses occur wouldn’t make the problems go away. It would profit us much to start from the fact that we live together, but separately.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 16 August, 2017)