THE ‘MOTHERS’ OF GOA

Every few months the issue of identity emerges in Goa, and vociferous debates and discussions undoubtedly follow. One can observe a certain tendency wherein political issues are reduced to issues of Goan identity. This is done by emotionally appealing to the masses that their existence solely depends on protecting an abstract idea – the Goan identity. This abstract and loosely-defined idea assumes different forms around events, symbols, and objects as the political and ruling classes see fit. One way in which these emotional appeals are made is through the idea of ‘mother’.

In the last couple of months, one such issue where ‘mother’ was invoked was the diversion of the waters of river Mhadei. In these debates, one of the statements claimed that the river Mhadei is the “mother” of Goans. The logic, one presumes, is that the Mhadei river forms a crucial, life-giving link for Goans. Without the river feeding its waters to the Mandovi in Goa, it was argued, there would be no Goans, and Goa will turn into a parched desert. As such, Goans need to band together to halt the developmental plans of Karnataka. Although it is true that the river might undergo drastic changes – or even disappear – if the waters are diverted away in other parts of Karnataka, the logic of the opposition discourse elevates the physical existence of the river to an abstract idea. The point is that those who are trying to mobilize Goans against the proposed plans on the Mhadei are using an emotional appeal to drum up populist support, rather than ensuring that the legal, technical, and environmental arguments are strengthened and due process followed.

This is not the first time that politics in Goa has been defined through the metaphor of ‘motherhood’. The debates surrounding the Konkani language and Goan identity are the best examples of how political discourses in Goa are couched in terms of ‘motherhood’. From the ’60s one witnessed an emerging view that Konkani was Goa’s sole language. In these terms, the relationship of Goans to the Konkani language was projected to be one that a mother and child shared. To not protect (and therefore not be loyal to) one’s mother was a betrayal of Goan identity. At this point one needs to pause and ask: which communities have benefitted from this kind of politics? Has the politics of ‘identity through motherhood’ enriched the political discourse in Goa? Arguably, not. One can observe that no proper resolution of Goa’s identity issues has ever come about in the last 50-odd years. On the contrary, one witnesses ever more contestations regarding Goan identity.

The identity politics surrounding the ‘Konkani mai’ or ‘mai bhas’ – the Konkani mother – benefitted only a few. The votaries of Romi Concanim have been left out in the cold, as the Official Language Act of 1987 only recognized Konkani in the Nagri script as official. This is not to argue that the language politics has turned out what it is today only because Konkani was elevated to the status of a ‘mother’. However, it can be observed that casting Konkani in a singular notion of ‘mother’ to Goans led to the exclusion of the other languages of Goa.

And this probably is the problem with identity politics that has a narrow focus on one particular event, symbol, and object while excluding other similar objects, events, and symbols. It is through this kind of politics that one section of the Goan people is pitted against another. If some years back political parties and cultural institutions claimed that Konkani was the defining element of Goa’s identity, in more recent times the people of Goa are being rallied around such symbols like the coconut tree, the coconut, and now even a river.

A couple of years ago, Kaustubh Naik, a research scholar, called for an “unburdening” of Goa’s language politics from the notion of ‘motherhood’  precisely because of the current exclusive nature of the language politics in Goa. With the political discourse around the Mhadei issue being framed in terms of ‘motherhood’, one wonders if certain patterns of such politics will also repeat as they did in the Konkani movement. For one, we can think about how the masses will be emotionally rallied, while the rights of many communities that directly depend on the river for sustenance will be systematically compromised. One is not clear why the Mhadei issue is tethered to Goan identity. Why it isn’t simply an issue of the right to water of the people of Goa and Karnataka? Or an ecological issue wherein diverting the courses of rivers can have drastic impact on the environment and therefore on the present and future generations of people?

The pattern of identity politics in Goa’s recent history in fact indicates that the mobilization of the masses for the purpose of safeguarding identity – often by the political and dominant classes – does not transform into a concrete action for securing rights of non-dominant communities. In this conceptualization of the ‘mother’ the issues of life and livelihood are divorced from the political discourse.

What is worse is that in this manner the masses of Goa are lead from one identity crisis to another. The actual problems are not addressed and the social, economic, and cultural realities of many sections of the Goan population are erased or elided. We must, therefore, be on our guard against such tendencies of misusing identity politics.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 31 January, 2018)

THE NATION AND THE MARGINS

The almost month-long ‘anti-national’ saga played out from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the newsrooms in Delhi has brought some problems within India’s national identity forcefully and violently to the fore. The public spectacle that was created out of the alleged seditious speech of some student leaders of JNU has damaged the thin veneer of secularism and liberalism that Indian nationalism claimed to represent and embody. Thus the questions of what does it mean to be ‘Indian’ and who can be rightfully Indian is now being debated furiously in the national press and the national centers of power and learning. Though these debates seem to be reinforcing the ideals enshrined in the Constitution of India, one can arguably see the superficiality of these if we think about the JNU incident from a politicized Goan Catholic perspective. After all, were not Goan Catholics suspected of being ‘anti-national’ decades before this event?

Let’s start from the beginning. Goa was not a part of the Indian state in 1947. Thus, Goa was not part of the founding moment of the Indian state and the debates surrounding the formation of the Constitution of India and the linguistic re-organization policy. Thus also, the Indian identity of Goa and Goans had to be fitted in almost 15 years after the establishment of the Indian state. This identity was largely negotiated through linguistic markers. Though tourism also played a part later on, I will not dwell on it in this article.

Let us consider how the Konkani language in the Nagri avatar was recognized in the ’70s and ’80s by the Indian government and its national body of letters – the Sahitya Akademi. Konkani as a language had to produce a classical and Sanskritic past in order to be recognized as a legitimate Indian language. This was a blessing for the proponents of the Nagri script as the superficial similarities with the script would easily allow them to latch onto a Sanskritic norm defined by Indian nationalism. So in effect, what we have here is a nation that would only accept the Konkani language as belonging to the illustrious lists of ‘national’ languages only if it had a justification in a Sanskritic culture and past, as Rochelle Pinto observed, while participating in a session on ‘Rewriting Goan History’ at the Goa Arts and Lit Fest, 2015. Thus there was a scramble to find and publish Sanskrit classical texts that were rendered in Konkani. The Konkani renderings of the Ramayana and Mahabharata were obtained from the Municipal library of Braga, Portugal, and published in Goa. And what is also interesting is that somehow the Konkani language could produce such a Sanskritic heritage only thanks to the Catholic missionaries, who had written down these renderings in the Roman script, in the sixteenth century!

This Sanskrit-privileging linguistic culture and policy in India was also very much disrespectful of the diversity and history of the Konkani language. We have over the years witnessed the scorn that is poured on Romi Konkani and the cultural artifacts that are produced in that script. Romi was (and is) considered ‘foreign’ (read as not Indian) and hence it is argued that it had no space in the cultural/literary life of India. Thus, the largely (but not entirely) Catholic users of the script were asked to give up Romi in favour of the more Indian, though artificial, Nagri variant. In the ’70s and ’80s, people like the Gandhian Konkani litterateur Ravindra Kelekar was quite blatantly making such arguments.

Unfortunately, the project to expand a Nagri and Sanskritic culture, like other national projects, was not an innocent one. It was marked by a considerable degree of cultural violence against the Catholics in Goa. Catholics in Goa – especially from Bahujan backgrounds – were subjected to casteist and communal abuse. Further, they were told that they were culturally inadequate, or carriers of a culture that was fundamentally flawed and impure. All for the purpose of making Goan Catholics better Indians.

Merely demanding that the Roman script and its cultural productions be recognized within the culture and constitutional rights of the Indian state earned Goan Catholics the ire of the Hindu upper-castes, and it also led to Catholics being branded as ‘anti-national’. In fact it is not just the Roman script, but Catholic food-habits, dressing, and life-styles which have come under tremendous attacks for being deviant to the established Indian norm.

So, the issue is not simply about who is a ‘patriot’ and who is an ‘anti-national’. When groups in Delhi that are aligned to the left and center-of-left political ideologies, in other words the traditional guardians of Indian secularism, claim that the Hindu-right has no business in issuing certificates of nationalism and patriotism because they are nationalist and patriotic enough, it seems that there is no regard and concern for the pernicious effects of Indian nationalism on several thousands of communities for over half a century. The marginalization that Indian nationalism creates needs to be confronted; and precisely at a time like this, when the confidence of the secular-liberal Indian elite is jolted. Goans have to think about the nation through their own experience rather than passively accepting a national discourse.

The fact that none of these ongoing debates would consider the Goan Catholic experience as important would tell us how blind they are to multiple experiences in different parts of India. Once again, what it means to be Indian and nationalist/patriot will be defined by those who are unaware of and uninterested in our experience. The question ultimately is, do we have a choice and a say in this national politics?

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 16 March, 2016)

THE HYPOCRISY OF GOA’S PROTESTING AWARDEES

By JASON KEITH FERNANDES, DALE LUIS MENEZES, AMITA KANEKAR, VISHVESH KANDOLKAR, and KAUSTUBH NAIK

In the context of a number of Sahitya Akademi awardees across India returning their respective awards in protest against the growing intolerance in India, in Goa around fourteen Sahitya Akademi awardees together with Padmashri awardees Maria Aurora Couto and Amitav Ghosh came together and issued a joint statement on 15 October, 2015. One would be struck by the hypocrisy contained in their press note released were it not for the fact that their politics of intolerance is so blatantly displayed all over the same note.

In their statement these local notables condemn “the rising trend of intolerance in the country which threatens freedom of expression…[and] the age-old liberal and all-encompassing philosophical traditions of this country.” One would take this concern seriously were it not for the fact many of these notables have been complicit not only in acts of intolerance themselves, but also physical violence.

For some years now there have been demands from many quarters that Konkani literature written in the Roman script also be given governmental recognition. But Sahitya Akademi awardees like Pundalik Naik and N. Shivdas, who have presided over the Goa Konkani Academy, have not felt it necessary to take up this cause and ensure that a Konkani tradition with a longer history than that in the Nagari script one is recognised. On the contrary, all of these protesting SahityaAkademi awardees and Padmashri Couto have watched silently while Roman-scriptKonkani has been officially ignored and excluded from all kind of state recognition, including awards and grants.

In addition, these persons have maintained a studious silence while their associates, such as Uday Bhembre and Nagesh Karmali, have engaged in the most vicious hate speech against the Catholic community in the course of the Medium of Instruction controversy (that has raged from 2011), when Goan parents demanded the right to determine the manner in which their children are educated. Where was their concern for the alleged liberal traditions, and traditional bonhomie, of Goa then?

To make matters worse, these same notables watched silently when in 2005 Naguesh Karmali, a member of this verygroup of protestors, led a violent mob in destroying public and private property on the grounds that such property was encouraging Portuguese (read as Catholic) culture in Goa.Given that Goa has had a long and historical relationship with Portugal, doesn’t the violent smashing of manifestations of this relationship amount to an act of the very same rabid communalism that these worthies profess to protest against?

In light of these inconsistencies, and the equally amusing announcement that they will hold on to their awards until the meeting of the executive committee of the Sahitya Akademi, it appears that these awardees seem more interested on jumping onto the bandwagon of political trendiness, than for any desire to stand against the growing intolerance in the country, and indeed, Goa itself.

We would like to stress that while it is true that the government of Mr. Modi has definitely presided over a rise in intolerance in the country, the roots of this intolerance lie deeper in the country’s history. As we have already pointed out, a number, if not all, of these Goan awardees are complicit in this intolerance. Their complicity is further evident in the manner in which they phrase their protest within the language of Hindutva. Why, for example, are the recent acts compared to ‘talibanism’, instead of calling them Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism? Talibanism is a phenomenon situated outside the country, when Hindutva is the problem actually at hand, given that Kalbargi, Pansare and Dabholkar lost their lives as a result of their opposition to this ideology. Indeed, Hindu nationalism has been a problem since before Indian independence. In referencing the Taliban, these awardees continue the refusal to recognize Hindu nationalism as the single greatest cause of concern in this country since 1947.

In conclusion, we would be more convinced of the genuine concerns of these state awardees from Goa if we heard them also protest the exclusion of Konkani in the Roman script from legislative recognition, also the violent condemnation of the Goans who are simply asking for English as a state-supported medium of instruction for their children, and also the lack of implementation of constitutional guarantees for education and jobs to historically discriminated-against Goan communities. Such protests would go further in establishing norms for the respect of fundamental rights, and the establishment of law and order in our state and country.

(First published in DNAIndia (Web) on 23 October, 2015)

THE SHAME OF SPEAKING KONKANI – III

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)

THE SHAME OF SPEAKING KONKANI – II

The writing of a second installment to my article ‘The Shame of Speaking Konkani’ (published a fortnight ago), is partly for emphasizing the problem at hand and partly fortuitous.  I say fortuitous because, in response to my article, Damodar K Kamat Ghanekar wrote a letter to the editor (4 September, 2015) and had a rather interesting anecdote to narrate in the same. The manner in which the abovementioned anecdote is narrated further allows us to see how shame and humiliation operates within Konkani language politics.

Recounting an incident which happened some 40 years ago, Ghanekar mentions how he came across Alfred Rose and his wife conversing in English in Panjim. When Ghanekar inquired whether it was really Alfred Rose, he indicates that Alfred Rose became painfully uncomfortable so much so that one could “well imagine the contortions of embarrassment [emphasis mine] on his face [Alfred Rose] which I [Ghanekar] still remember”.

There is something deeply unsettling about recounting a person’s embarrassment in a public place with such gleeful abundance. In Ghanekar’s telling, Alfred Rose not only appears to be a deeply shamed person but also a hypocrite. However, there is nothing hypocritical in what Alfred Rose did. In fact, as I have pointed out time and again it is quite normal for persons to use two or more languages to negotiate through their daily life. So why did Alfred Rose feel so embarrassed by the encounter with Ghanekar?

Unfortunately, I do not have an exact answer to this. This is because as students of history well know, we are confronted with only one side of the story. And, as we are aware, it is often the victor who recounts the story. Further, rather than being embarrassed about speaking in Konkani, Alfred Rose was allegedly embarrassed for speaking in English. It is highly unlikely that Alfred Rose’s English skills were the source of his embarrassment; surely his English was as good as his Konkani!

Presumably, Ghanekar approached Alfred Rose in Konkani, for if it was in English than we would not have had any problem. My suggestion here is that Ghanekar was using an Antruzi variant of Konkani and this, I believe, is the key to the source of the embarrassment. The problem is that the Antruzi boli, located within an upper caste location and politics, is the source of much shaming and humiliation to anyone who fails to adequately reproduce the speech and ways of being of this dialect. The failure to live up to the Antruzi dialect does not simply cause embarrassment, but also causes much pain and anguish – resulting in the silence of many in Goa.

Such a situation has been noted by some other writers as well. For instance, an anecdote recounted by Jason Keith Fernandes in his doctoral thesis seems to be apt in understanding the embarrassment (or silence) that Alfred Rose experienced. Fernandes recounts, “In the course of our conversations [with a priest] around Konkani, this priest indicated a strong friendship he enjoyed with a Hindu gentleman. At one point however, the priest recounted that he was reproached by his friend: ‘Why is it that you never speak to me in Konkani’ the friend asked. To this question the priest responded that he felt ashamed, since his friend’s Konkani was so perfect, so pure, whereas his own was the ‘impure’ version that the Catholics speak”. At the risk of stretching the anecdote that Ghanekar provides ad absurdum, I would like to suggest that Alfred Rose was doubly trapped as the language politics that Alfred Rose subscribed to privileged only Konkani, and being called out for speaking in English by a person speaking Antruzi Konkani meant that there was no hope for redemption!

And what are we to make of the abundant glee with which Ghanekar recounts a 40-year-old anecdote of sarcastically indicating to Alfred Rose that he should do as he preaches? The clever way in which Ghanekar slipped a line from Alfred Rose’s song in the conversation – “Tika [Konkani] shellant heddun menn diunk zai” – is another way in which the shame of speaking Konkani is perpetuated. While Ghanekar’s encounter with Alfred Rose had resulted in “contortions of embarrassment” 40 years ago, the recounting of the same in the columns of a newspaper without any sensitivity or understanding has surely contorted many a Goan face with embarrassment today.

It is not surprising that in trying to prove the hypocrisy of Alfred Rose, Ghanekar reinforces a similar diktat that Alfred Rose does in his song Anv Konkani Zannam – to restore the pride in Konkani. Though Alfred Rose actively propagated some key tenets of the Nagri/Antruzi politics, he seems to have not escaped the shaming due to Konkani. After all, didn’t he say that we should feel proud about Konkani?

To reiterate, I strongly believe that Alfred Rose was not being hypocritical. On the contrary he was a product of his times as well as a victim of it. But to think that Alfred Rose was merely embarrassed for being ‘caught’ speaking in English is to not recognize the pain and suffering behind the “contortions of embarrassment”. By denying the real pain and suffering we perpetuate the shame and humiliation. As a linguist/lexicographer of Nagri Konkani, Ghanekar at least ought to have known this. 

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 16 September, 2015)