APOLOGIES AND OUR PAST

Recently, Sudhin Dhavalikar of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) demanded an apology from the current Prime Minister of Portugal, Antonio Costa, who is of Goan origin, when the Goa Legislative Assembly moved a motion to felicitate him. Costa should apologize, said Dhavalikar, for colonial injustices. The RSS soon joined Dhavalikar and demanded an apology not only for colonialism, but also for conversions to Christianity. It would not be out of place to revisit past instances of demands for apologies due to the manner in which Portuguese colonialism is used as a stick with which to beat Christians in Goa.

In June 1980, the name of Camões was mired in controversy. This controversy erupted, it seems, for a number of reasons. These included the cultural programs organized to commemorate the Fourth Death Centenary of Camões, the installation of a marble medallion bearing the image of Camões on the Ashoka Pillar in the Municipal Garden in Panjim, and the invitation extended to the last Governor-General of Portuguese India, Manuel Antonio Vassalo e Silva to attend the celebrations. Owing to the fact that diplomatic relations were normalized between Lisbon and New Delhi in 1974, the decision to commemorate the Fourth Death Centenary of Camões and to invite Vassalo e Silva seems to have been approved at the highest governmental levels in Portugal and India.

The Nationalist Citizens Action Committee mobilized the protests against the celebration of a Portuguese literary and national icon. There are no prizes for guessing what these protests were against – Portuguese colonialism and the indignities, injustices, and oppression of four-and-a-half centuries. In the ensuing melee, the one event that actually grabbed headlines was the apology that Vassalo e Silva was made to offer, after a demonstration that stopped him from paying his respects at the Martyr’s Memorial in Panjim. As one of the newspapers at that time reported, “The former Governor General yielded to the demand for [an] apology when the demonstrators told him that they had no objection to his placing the wreath but only if he expressed regret for the indignities committed on Goan people including freedom fighters by the erstwhile Portuguese regime”.^§

Vassalo e Silva was forced to apologize despite the fact that he believed that “[t]he liberation of Goa was in the interest of Goans. Though Portugal ruled Goa for 450 years, this territory had always remained a part and parcel of India, irrespective of some people who might feel otherwise. It was also in the interest of Portugal that Goa should go back to the hands of Goans”. Similarly, George Vaz, a member of the Communist Party of India, made an important observation which can help us in understanding why Vassalo e Silva held such an opinion: “General Vassalo e Silva … when he was the Governor General of Goa, was secretly associated with the left movement in Portugal, which finally overthrew the Salazar dictatorship; a movement which ushered in the liberation of most of the African colonies of Portugal … General Vassalo e Silva represented that section in Portugal which had hailed the Liberation of Goa”.^§

In fact, during the days surrounding the controversy, the “humanitarian approach” of Vassalo e Silva and his love for Goa were highlighted. Writing to the editor of a newspaper in June 1980, D. W. Desai observed, “If there would have been any other representative [of] an imperialist country to govern Goa, Goans would have suffered horrible bloodshed. In spite of this fact, many Goans are kept [in the] blind to the good deeds of this good man.  [Goans] are prejudiced by his picture as is exhibited by some politicians who wanted only to create ill-feeling towards [the] Portuguese regime” [emphasis added].^§

From Navprabha (Marathi daily), dt: 5 June, 1980. Workers of the Panjim Municipality are pictured removing the marble medallion bearing Camoes' image. 

The 1980 demand could appear to be ‘secular’, with the protests against Vassalo e Silva led by the Nationalist Citizens Action Committee; and the Camões-medallion incident being condemned by the Bharatiya Depressed Classes League, Goa Unit, and the Congress-I.  Much like today, it would not be surprising if the protests in 1980 also had a subtext of hurt at the history of Christianization in Goa, as is today clearly expressed by the statements issued by the RSS. Thus, even though we might observe secular political outfits and Bahujan organizations leading the protests in 1980, the movement nevertheless was trapped within a nationalist understanding of Goa’s past, wherein Christianization and Portuguese colonialism are viewed to have caused the destruction of the culture of Goa.

The multi-faceted figure of Vassalo e Silva and the complex history in which he was situated, exposes the hollowness of demands for apologies. For surely, one apology tended by a former functionary of the colonial regime should have been enough, right? But apparently that is not so. The business of apologies has an insidious relationship with nationalism and how Bahujan identities are manipulated for devious gains. Given that Indian nationalism in Goa has always pitched itself against an enemy, first against Portuguese colonialism, and then against Goan Christians as continuing that ‘colonial’ legacy, it is by ignoring and/or distorting certain facts/events in history today that the Hindu Bahujan are perpetually pitched against their Christian counterparts, and as a substitute for Portuguese colonialism. This is perhaps how brahmanical power and communalization thrives in Goa.

 Due to his association with the Portuguese left, Vassalo e Silva may have believed that an apology may have been apt for past colonial rule. However, such apologies end up condemning Christians in Goa, marking them as enemies, and pitching Hindu Bahujans against them for crimes that are more ‘imagined’ than real. It is time to recognize this fact.    

^§ Quotations from The Navhind Times, dt: 10 & 11 June, 1980. 

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 3 February, 2016)

WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS: THE AGENDAS OF ‘SECULARISM’

With Pramod Muthalik of the Sri Rama Sene threatening to set-up his base in Goa, the last two weeks have seen spirited debates about the place of ‘secularism’ and ‘communalism’ in the public sphere of Goa. To add to the conundrum, Goans have been at the receiving end for their own elected representatives making sexist and anti-women remarks, with very little done to curb the Hindu right. This is not the first time that such remarks have been made that have blatantly abused the dignity of the minorities and women living in Goa. As such, asking the same questions or reacting in the same manner as done in the past does little good. While it is certainly true that such tendencies should be vehemently protested and opposed, this column would like to suggest that a rather critical look at the history and politics of Indian secularism would provide fresh perspective into the problem.

Since the Indian nation-state was founded on secular ideals, it is important for us to know how this came about. The present understanding of ‘secularism’ is an ahistorical and timeless one. In other words, a term like ‘secularism’ is believed to have a universal and unchanging meaning across time and political realities. It is this very fact that Shabnum Tejani in her book Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History, 1890-1950 points out. If today the binary opposition of ‘secular’ with ‘communal’ is well established and entrenched in our minds, Tejani demonstrates that in a longer historical context this was not the case. She notes that between the years from 1928 and 1931, a broad range of political opinion considered Indian nationalism as a “unity of the (Hindu) majority” with any challenge to this understanding by marginalized non-Hindu and Dalit communities being branded as communal.

Shifting the focus from a concern of religion to a concern of caste, the abovementioned study has shown that the creation of a liberal democracy in India was shaped by an imperative to create a “definition of a democratic majority as broadly Hindu”. Tejani also states that the reason why ‘secularism’ became important in Indian nationalist thought was due to the fact that “the architects of the new nation-state – overwhelmingly middle-class, upper-caste Hindu men – saw it as providing a counterpoint to challenges posed from the margins by Muslim and Dalit communities”.

Immediately, what we can recognize is that ‘secularism’ as an ideology was used as a bulwark against sharing power and privilege with the minority and disempowered groups. The problem of ‘communalism’ and the apparent challenge it poses to ‘secular’ ideals is not just confined to hard-line right-wing persons like Pramod Muthalik. Part of the problem also lies with secular-liberal Hindus in the context of how they understand ‘secularism’ and its place in the Indian identity and how these two ideas are uncritically conflated. For many secular Hindus (as well as Christians) the ideal of ‘secularism’ is only threatened when right-wing groups create a ruckus. The inadequacy of ‘secularism’ as an ideal as well as an analytical category is seen when anti-women and anti-minority remarks are made by persons who are not perceived to be of the extreme right.

Take the recent comments of Sudin Dhavalikar, the PWD minister in Manohar Parrikar’s cabinet. His comments about pubs, drinking, and short skirts not being compatible with Indian culture, were largely seen as sexist and anti-women. The point I am trying to make is that such comments are not just anti-women, they are also anti-minority. How? In Goa, Catholic women wear skirts and consumption of alcohol (along with meat such as beef and pork) is a necessary component in celebration in all Catholic households, indeed their everyday diet as well. Why hasn’t this being perceived as going against the tenets of Indian secularism?

Dhavalikar’s case and the reaction to it is a recent one. One can also excavate the case of the Romi script and hold it up to the assertions of ‘secularism’. When the demand for the Romi script was made, Goan Catholics were seen as anti-national, their demand was considered as “emotional” and hence irrational, and the demand was viewed as a very threat to the ‘secular’ fabric and unity of Goa. The Goa government is yet to recognize Konkani in the Romi script as an official language, despite the fact that Goan Catholics are not the only users of the Romi script in Goa. Why isn’t the denial of the Romi script to the people of Goa a problem for ‘secularism’? Why don’t we beat our chests and cry hoarse about the loss of ‘secular’ ideals? It must be noted that whether it is Muthalik, or Dhavalikar, or the Romi issue, or even the Medium of Instruction fiasco, what is threatened is either Indian culture or the unity of Goa/India or both.

If the ideology of ‘secularism’ worked as a tool to obstruct the sharing of power with Muslim and Dalit groups in the context of the Indian nationalist movement, I would suggest that a similar situation occurs in Goa as well, wherein power is not adequately shared with groups such as Catholics and Muslims in Goa. That Hindus are a majority in Goa and control most positions and institutions of power is a fact that gets erased when ‘secularism’ is debated in the Goan public sphere. If we are really serious about maintaining peace in Goan society, power needs to be shared with minority groups, and greater representation needs to be granted to marginalized groups across religion, caste, and class in Goan society and politics (and not just confined to electoral representation). It is not just enough to throw out Muthalik and his ilk. What do we do about Hindu majoritarianism that has been a part of Indian ‘secularism’ for such a long time?

See also 'Not Skirts or Bikinis, but the very Idea of Goa is at Stake' by Rochelle Pinto here. 

(First published in  O Heraldo, dt: 9 July, 2014)