GOA AND EUROPE: ON EMOTIONAL AND LEGAL BONDS

Two headlines in the last month are a good example of the irony at work in Goan politics. Following Portugal’s surprise win at the Euro 2016, one headline read: “Euro win unites Goa & Portugal” (12 July, 2016). The second headline a few days later read: “27,000 Goans with both Portuguese and Indian passports to be struck off poll rolls” (20 July, 2016). The first headline highlighted the emotional bonds between Goa and Portugal, with many of the comments by former Goan footballers emphasizing that the Portuguese football team had such a large support base here due to the “Portuguese rule” over different parts of Goa over a period of 451 years. The second headline drew our attention to the legal and diplomatic issue surrounding the vexed dual citizenship affair, and the current impossibility to hold both Portuguese and Indian citizenship at the same time.

If one were to look at the legal history, Portugal started recognizing certain tax-paying Goans as its citizens at least from 1826 when the Carta Constitutional was brought into force, reinforced further in 1910. The Salazarian Estado Novo despite its curbs on political organization did not restrict the right of citizenship of Goans. This was markedly different from what happened in neighboring British India where Britain refused to recognize even elite Indians as imperial citizens. It is interesting to note how following Portugal’s success on the football pitch, emotional ties are highlighted more by commentators than the legal ties, and when the question of legal issues emerge, the emotional ties are always kept out. It seems that the celebrations over football have nothing to do with this legal history that saw Goans first being recognized as Portuguese citizens, and after the Indian armed action, saw Goans reclaiming this right to work and engage with a larger European world.

To be fair, following or in the build-up to any big football match that Portugal plays, there are always reports that pour from the former ‘colonies’ about the support the football team receives and how it is the colonial history that provides this connect. However, parts of this colonial history which included the extension of citizenship to the colonies is not highlighted or willfully ignored. In Goa, the celebrations over such a victory additionally get hijacked by nationalism wherein rightwing groups declare that it is anti-national to cheer for the Portuguese football team. Thus, the history of colonial oppression is one that liberal as well as rightwing observers remember during such sporting events, as it is certainly odd to cheer a former colonizers’ football team in a post-colonial world. While the moderate or liberal commentators may marvel at the emotional display for the Portuguese team (in Goa as well as in other former colonies), the rightwing commentators would outright condemn it.

If the fascination with the emotional response to the Portuguese football team is marked by a selective memory of colonial history, the issue of dual citizenship is marked by a complete amnesia about the same. The legal history of the Portuguese citizenship of Goans is ignored and the issue is seen entirely through the lens of Indian cultural nationalism that seems to supersede everything. 

The rationale given to strike-off 27,000 Goans from the electoral rolls was that “as per the Representation of People’s Act and the Election Rules, one has to be an Indian citizen to cast one’s vote. Also, the concept of dual citizenship does not exist in the country [India]”. What such a statement does not account for is the fact that Indian laws were unilaterally imposed on Goa from 1961without any regard for the region’s history or without the assent of the inhabitants. With the normalization of diplomatic relations between Lisbon and New Delhi in 1975, Portugal gave the option to reclaim its citizenship to those who were residing in the former Portuguese India, as well as their children. Bearing in mind such a history, Jason Keith Fernandes, a legal anthropologist and Herald columnist argued that “if Goan migration seems to be turning into a one-way exit, it is because of the oppressive legal regime that the Indian state insists on. Goans are not obtaining Portuguese passports; they are merely reclaiming the Portuguese citizenship that they have always enjoyed… A legal regime honest about history would undoubtedly allow for a more dynamic movement of Goans between Goa and other places”.

 

In East Timor

The move to remove 27,000 Goans from the Indian electoral rolls also reeks of a sinister and short-sighted plan, especially since the assembly elections are round the corner. A demographic swing of 27,000 people who will not be able to vote either makes it easy for some or difficult for others in the forthcoming elections. Given that the legal question is not yet debated and settled properly, hasty moves such as deleting names off electoral rolls will further compromise Goan identity. Yet again the destiny of large number of Goans will be determined by some who are unwilling to safeguard those interests and dismissive of Goa’s legal history, making the mobility of Goans in and out of their own homeland difficult. Most probably the issue of allowing Goans to hold dual citizenship will remain unresolved as the issue would lose its political value after the elections, while liberal and rightwing commentators would continue to wonder why in Goa (as well as in other former Portuguese colonies) a football match can evoke such emotional responses.

It would perhaps not be out of place to say that the Goan support to the Portuguese football team emerges not only due to a shared colonial history, but also a legal history of equal citizenship embedded within the shared colonial history. Eder’s brilliant and fantastic 109th-minute strike should essentially remind us of this.

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

PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE CITY OF GOA

The piles of garbage across Goa remind me of an event in Goa’s history. Goa’s recorded history does provide us with instances that enable us to draw a parallel and see the disastrous effects of waste management when not checked properly and seriously. While my attempt in this essay will be to draw parallels with the past, it must also be stated that the problem of garbage management is a recent one associated with factors of rampant urbanization, large-scale use of non-biodegradable materials, and lapses on the part of the State.

After becoming the capital of the Portuguese Empire in Asia, the City of Goa or Velha Goa was ravaged by epidemics at least a couple of times. The fortunes of the City as a great entrepôt or a metropolis were impacted by these epidemics. The Goan scholar José Nicolau da Fonseca writing about the city in his book An Historical and Archæological Sketch of the City of Goa (1878) makes a mention of the devastating epidemic of 1570.

Along with the siege by Ali Adil Shah’s large army that led to food shortages, Fonseca argued that it were the unsanitary conditions then prevailing in the City that were responsible for the outbreak of an epidemic. “The city was in the first place surrounded by marshes and stagnant pools, emitting noxious exhalations, whilst little or no attention was paid to the hygienic conditions essential for the preservation of public health. The muddy banks of the river outside the city were generally covered with the detritus of animal and vegetable matter, which being exposed at low tide to the tropical sun underwent putrefaction, and thereby bred the germs of disease” (p. 150).

Moreover, Fonseca wrote that open defecation took place (with the permission of the Government) within the limits of the City, that there was a lack of access to potable drinking water (due to Governmental neglect), and that garbage littered on the main thoroughfares of the City so much so that “nobody was prevented from throwing any quantity of filth he chose into the streets” increased the devastation. Even before the epidemic, the dirty streets and lack of clean water had contributed to creating unhygienic living conditions.

If one drives around Goa, one is quite shocked (or not) to see piles of garbage dumped along the sides of roads. What is also alarming is the manner in which places close to habitation or water bodies are used as landfill sites. The garbage dumped at the Campal Parade ground in Panjim is a case in point. That garbage is dumped in an area that hosted exhibitions and events, or was an open space for the public is a shocking lapse on the part of the authorities, not to mention an acute health hazard. There are more examples in Panjim itself that enable us to see parallels with the conditions then prevailing in the City of Goa.

The area close to the new building of the Central Library at Patto is being used as a landfill for quite a number of years. Apart from a lack of planning or vision that the authorities and the city administration have displayed, there is also the danger of noxious gases poisoning scholars and general readers or fires causing permanent damage to an institution that houses some of the rarest books, newspapers, magazines, and manuscripts in Asia. Such a premier library should have had a prominent place as an institution symbolic of intellectual production in Goa and not enveloped by the stink and danger of garbage.

It is precisely such State apathy and a crisis of management that increases the danger to the lives of citizens and reduces the quality of life. Recently, O Heraldo reported that the newly operational Solid Waste Management plant in Saligao was functioning only up to half of its capacity. There were talks about transferring the garbage from Campal to the new plant in Saligao, but it is evident that bureaucratic insouciance and an attitude to pass the responsibility to some other department or individual would result in more garbage piling alongside roads and open spaces right in the middle of cities.

The case of the epidemic of 1570 and the rising problem of garbage management today seems to have striking similarities. For one, the then administration which had a duty of regulating and enforcing laws regarding public health had failed miserably. It can be argued that the present administration is also failing in a similar duty. Secondly, people then as today have no qualms in dumping garbage along the roads. There are also important differences in terms of technology and the manner in which it contributes to the generation and the disposal of waste. But it does appear that history is coming full circle. One may think if this is a case of ‘history repeating itself’ or if it is a case of cyclical history wherein things move from being good to bad and back to good again. For many would recall that public order and civic sense was prevailing in Goan towns and cities during the last few decades of Portuguese rule. Whatever may be the case, it cannot be denied that all of us are facing a major crisis of public health if the status quo in the functioning of public affairs is maintained. And perhaps thinking about such instances in the past might help us in being alert to problems of the present that are increasingly threatening us.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 20 July, 2016)

TROUBLED TIMES AND THE LIBERATION BUGLE

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)

SAVIORS, TAMASHA, AND DESPERATION: A VICIOUS CIRCLE

The commencement of the monsoons about a week ago seems to have caught the authorities and public works departments napping. The pathetic manner in which public amenities and resources are (mis)managed add to the frustration and desperation that the citizens of Goa feel, and have felt for a long time. The water-clogged streets of Panjim, Mapusa, and Margao are a manifestation of mismanaged governance. If such incidents happen time after time, year after year, then one wouldn’t be off the mark in categorically stating that Goa is a failed State – in the sense of an administrative and political entity. It has been failing for a long time now.

Since the State fails repeatedly in its duties no matter which political party is in power, it could be suggested that Goan politics has been stuck in a vicious circle for some time now. The vicious circle begins with the repeated failure of the State regardless of the political party at the helm of governance and the ensuing frustration and desperation of the citizens. This leader of a political party or of a social movement – often a charismatic figure – emerges as a figure whose leadership provides the momentum for the change in political fortunes. This leader, invariably as he, is presented as the only savior who can bring about radical and revolutionary changes. Often this charismatic leader gains visibility through the successful staging of ‘spectacles’ such as protest marches or massive rallies at election times.

The argument here is that contemporary Goan politics is about the mobilization of people – in a metaphorical sense – from desperation to hope, and back to the cesspit of desperation. The fundamental and structural problems in Indian politics – be they of caste, language, region, gender, governance, unemployment – are left unaddressed. Problems that drive people into the vicious circle of desperation – hope – desperation in the first place.

While the vicious circle of desperation – hope – desperation may oppress us, to counter it we see the emergence of activists groups and movements, small and large, that attempt to correct the failing State. They are concerned with giving more power to the ordinary citizens in the process of governance. For instance, if there are massive irregularities in land sale across villages, we see many citizen groups emerging that attempt to stop it. They petition the State or they drag them to the court in order to stop the irregularities. So far such movements, though numerous, have had a very limited impact on the functioning of the State and its bureaucracy because their access to state machinery is limited. Such movements have to depend on the goodwill of the political bosses and the bureaucratic machinery to legislate laws that will work in their favor.

Since the activism route does not really work, one has to go back to electoral politics to gain access to the bureaucratic machinery. The only way one can do it is by organizing spectacular rallies. For instance, the case of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Goa is quite illustrative. Members of AAP campaigned vigorously door-to-door before their massive public rally at Campal. Thus, the massive rally was a key moment both for the self-image of an outfit like AAP and also for others to take them seriously.

With Arvvind Kejriwal projected as a savior and the Goan State riddled with scams and corruption, AAP appears to be ideally positioned to give hope to the Goan masses. In Kejriwal, AAP has the ideal person who emerges from the bureaucratic system which has repeatedly failed the people, and who postures himself as someone who can run it efficiently; indeed, someone who can deliver basic amenities. Additionally he is also the activist who was frustrated by the bureaucratic system. The interesting thing about the AAP is that it acknowledges the problems existing in the State/bureaucratic machinery but emphasizes only the mismanagement and corruption of previous political parties. But this does not account for the fact that it is the state machinery that has seldom worked in the favor of the masses. Political parties come into power and then they are kicked out after a slew of controversies and scams, but the mechanisms of the state are longer-lasting. Bureaucratic machinery is more resilient than the fortunes of a political party.

It is necessary, however, to suggest that there is no point in indulging in utopian visions. There is a value to these visions as long as one also recognizes the urgent necessity of having options in politics; of having a cushion to fall back on in case grand political mobilizations fall flat on their faces. What is meant by having options in politics is akin to having dual citizenship (in the Goan context) allowing us to infuse Goan politics with regimes based on legal rights and also contribute meaningfully to the political systems that uphold these rights.

The word ‘tamasha’ in the title was used specifically for apart from highlighting the problematic role of spectacles, to also play on the two meanings of the word in many South Asian languages. In the first instance, a ‘tamasha’ could mean a performance for entertainment; in the second it could mean talk or actions devoid of any intrinsic meaning. Without recognizing that the State has failed on several counts and the people in Goa have no choice but to be stuck in a vicious circle, Goan politics will forever be a ‘tamasha’. The vicious circle, of course, may never be broken.

(A shorter version of this article was published in O Heraldo, dt: 22 June, 2016)