INDIAN CITIZENSHIP AND GOAN BELONGING

The passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) has exposed the Indian state’s trust deficit with its people. As it stands today, one needs to prove that at least one parent is a legal citizen. Being born in your country is no longer enough to belong in India! For Goans, this amendment may be in direct contradiction to the Goa, Daman, and Diu (Citizenship) Order, 1962, which granted them Indian citizenship.

The CAA ostensibly aims to give refuge to persecuted non-Muslims from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. While the protocols and modalities of establishing persecution and refugee status are unclear, many commentators observe that the new amendment is a backdoor approach of accommodating the lakhs of Hindus identified as foreigners after the Assam NRC exercise.

The original law, the Citizenship Act, 1955, was enacted with the express purpose of recognizing all people as citizens within the newly-constituted India. This law liberally granted citizenship to people especially since India was a new nation formed after the demise of British colonialism. The liberal outlook of the law was in sync with standard democratic practices across the world. Thus, in India citizens were recognized on the basis of birth, descent, registration, and naturalization. Subsequent amendments to this Act (by Congress and BJP governments) restricted the liberal outlook of the law.

After the annexation of Goa, Daman, and Diu, the Indian government issued an order, appended to the Citizenship Act, 1955. Similar to the original law, the order extending Indian citizenship to Goans was also liberal in its outlook. Thus, the order states, “Every person who or either of whose parents or any of whose grand parents was born before the twentieth day of December, 1961, in the territories now comprised in the union territory of Goa, Daman and Diu, shall be deemed to have become a citizen of India on that day.”

Though India had granted citizenship to Goans in 1962, the diplomatic tussle between New Delhi and Lisbon over the sovereignty of Goa, Daman, and Diu continued till 1975. India, in 1962, recognized that the problem of sovereignty and citizenship did not have a clear solution. Hence, the 1962 order left the option open for any person in Goa, Daman, and Diu to maintain the preexisting citizenship by notifying in writing to the administration or any other authorities.

In 1975, under the leadership of the then president of Portugal, Mario Soares, who was keen to normalize relations with India (following decolonization in Africa and East Timor), Portugal recognized India’s sovereignty over Goa, Daman, and Diu. This treaty, signed on 14 March 1975 recognized India’s sovereignty by backdating it to 1961. By normalizing diplomatic relations, both Portugal and India recognized that Goans were Portuguese citizens and that the transfer of sovereignty did not extinguish preexisting citizenship rights. These rights could be preserved, redeemed, or renounced. At least in the letter of the laws and treaties, the option to choose was with the individual.

Following the wave of decolonization in the 1970s, Portugal ensured that the right of preserving or redeeming Portuguese citizenship was not eroded once Portuguese territories were incorporated into newly-independent (and expanding) nations like India and Indonesia. By enacting the Decree-Law 308-A/75 of 24 June 1974, Portugal kept the option open for Goans to redeem their right of preexisting Portuguese citizenship.

Goans effectively became Indian citizens because a new territory was incorporated into the Union of India (a legal provision available in the Act of 1955). Descent or naturalization did not apply to the Goan case due to the armed intervention of the Indian army. Conversely, in the case of Portuguese citizenship, Goans can legally claim birth or descent because the Portuguese state, at least from the early twentieth century if not earlier, recognized birth and descent as legitimate means of granting citizenship.

Both the Order of 1962 (India) and the Decree-Law of 1974 (Portugal) operate based on the will of the individual (or at least that is the essence of the letter). While the Indian law required an individual to give in writing to refuse Indian nationality, the Portuguese law requires an individual to reclaim his citizenship by providing the appropriate documents establishing descent to (former) Portuguese citizens. The Indian law assumes the silence of the individual as tacit acceptance of Indian citizenship, while the Portuguese law assumes that an individual or his descendant would like to reclaim preexisting citizenship at any moment in time.

The CAA contradicts the legal history that the Union of India shares with Goa and Goans since 1962. The state of India cannot ask Goans to prove their citizenship as the legal basis for Indian citizenship is not birth or naturalization but conquest. If at all the Indian state can ask any question regarding citizenship, it is if Goans want to opt in or out of Indian citizenship. More than 50 years after the armed annexation, such a question is a fait accompli. Nevertheless, it does not change the fact that Goans can enjoy multiple legal rights of citizenship that nation-states should proactively protect.

As we have seen in the diplomatic relations between New Delhi and Lisbon, citizenship in Goa is tied to national and internal politics. Goans need to think of their citizenship rights in broader terms. They must also think of citizenship historically. The benefits of citizenship depend on knowing how citizenship was recognized in the past, what is its status now, and what it should be in the future.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 8 January, 2020)

THE POLITICS OF THE UNDERLINGS: A QUICK HISTORY

There is no doubt that the issue of the ‘migrant’ in Goa exposes the more significant problem of caste conflicts. Last month the issue of non-Goans changing their names to Goan ones made quite the stir, primarily because of electoral frauds and benefits of government employment are at stake. The blame mostly fell on the Banjaras, a traditionally nomadic community. In recent times, some sections of this community have achieved social and economic mobility. Nevertheless, a large part of this community still fares poorly on many human development indices.

With the inclusion of non-Goans through legal (or at times, an illegal) change of names, many fear that Goans will be marginalized in getting government jobs and in elections. These fears might be baseless. Nowadays, voting rarely has any consequences for government formation, and getting government jobs is a matter of ‘influence’ as a recent news report indicate. However, the noteworthy aspect of the debate was the protest by the Bhandari Samaj against migrants changing surnames.

While clippings of newspaper notices informing the public of name changes, mainly to Catholic surnames, have circulated for some years now, the present issue was about the “misuse” of the Naik surname. The Bhandari Samaj, who are among the Goan users of the said surname, contended that “outsiders” had no right to use the surname. In the debate aired on local TV, a leader of the Banjara Samaj argued that their folklore preserved a memory of the usage of ‘Naik’ as a marker of identity, and hence there was nothing wrong in changing their names to Naik.

Historically speaking, the term ‘Naik,’ which is a rank or title, has an interesting genealogy. In seventeenth-century documents, persons bearing the name or title of ‘Naik’ were usually associated with military service, sometimes even becoming rulers. Thus, kingdoms across the western coast had chiefs or governors or commanders called “Naique,” as they are recorded in Portuguese documents of the Estado da Índia. The Nayaka kingdoms of South India, which were established after the fall of the Vijayanagara empire after 1600s, were originally military commanders in the service of the rajahs of Vijayanagara. From Shivaji onwards, peasant and subaltern caste groups claimed a kshatriya status; their successful capture of state power across the Deccan and South India helped them to claim a new identity and a new way of life.

In Goa, at least since the nineteenth century, many non-Catholic subaltern groups have made claims to a higher kshatriya or particularly a Maratha warrior status. The formation of a group like the Bhandari Samaj, or a conglomeration of subaltern groups like the Bahujan Samaj owes its success to the history of subaltern caste mobilization. Shivaji and Sambhaji, as Maratha warrior figures par excellence, have a deep cultural resonance for these subaltern groups. We also have the example of the Kalavant Samaj that successfully mobilized since the nineteenth century for a better way of life, culminating in the formation of the Gomantak Maratha Samaj. Each instance of upward social mobility shows clear evidence of an adoption of a new group identity, as the scholarship of Anjali Arondekar and Parag Parabo demonstrate.

The Banjara Samaj appears to claim a kshatriya status. Thus, genealogies and folklore that link them to warrior lineages, such as Rajput, are cited for better living conditions, especially education and employment, for its members today. It is not surprising, therefore, that two groups claiming Kshatriya lineages—through the rank or title of ‘Naik’—should come into conflict when the issue in Goa is ostensibly one of ‘migrants.’ Which migrants, one may ask? Apparently, those who are upwardly mobile or at least claim upward mobility!

What the subaltern groups did in the nineteenth century and what the Banjaras are trying to do now is not different at all from upper caste groups. The Saraswat and Kayasth jatis mobilized similarly for a higher status in British India in the nineteenth century. The census that the British compiled pitted one group against the other, and not necessarily one caste against the other. Thus, the Saraswat jatis were competing with other Brahmin jatis in Maharashtra as valuable resources like government employment were at stake, and not just ritual honors in temples. Vaman Varde Valaulikar’s life and writings testify to this internal jati conflict.

The issue of name change is also not a new one. For instance, Muslim subaltern groups did the same thing since the nineteenth century. The butcher caste group adopted the surname Qureshi, the name of the tribal group from which the Prophet hailed. These groups adopted new (surname) identities to reclaim their humanity in a society that had marginalized them.

In our past, as well as in our present, we notice claims by several groups for higher status. These claims are tied to a desire for better material conditions in life: housing, jobs, education and so forth. Today we observe the success (however marginal) of many communities who had claimed a higher status and dignity a century or more ago. It takes that long to better one’s condition!

As history shows, the issue of the ‘migrants’ that is currently witnessing heated debates has its roots in claims to social mobility rather than identity. Hence, those who feel concerned with this issue of ‘migrants’ need to think of social justice and mobility more than identity.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 4 December, 2019)

MISPLACED PRIORITIES: PROFIT AT THE EXPENSE OF GOA

Of all the misplaced priorities of successive Goan governments, the most recent is the Vibrant Goa summit. The summit aimed to attract investment in the areas of pharma, tourism, IT, and real estate. Even a cursory glance at the industries that the Goan government is promoting should make the alarm bells ring. For it is precisely these industries and their unregulated promotion that causes economic, social, and cultural problems in Goa.

The problem with the government’s promotion of such business schemes lies in the non-recognition of the environmental cost on Goa and its people. Some weeks back, a tanker carrying the poisonous naphtha chemical, docked at the port in Vasco, drifted and ran aground in Dona Paula, posing a severe threat to the lives and livelihoods. We are still anxiously hoping that the poisonous chemical will not leak in the Goan waters, which are already polluted by MPT’s coal handling. The tanker drifted because the October retreating monsoons brought with it the cyclone Kyarr, causing much damage to life (in addition to trees and animals) and property.

The government’s response to disasters, whether man-made or natural, is inadequate. Governmental authorities do not display the initiative that one expects of their government to regulate and prevent disasters. It is not the first time that a ship has run aground. The infamous MV River Princess at Candolim and the barge hired for a wedding reception at Arossim have cause irreparable sand erosion at both these places. Cyclone Kyarr is not the first time that cyclonic winds have battered the coastline of Goa as well as caused floods. The government’s preparedness is almost nonexistent, which is to say that in times of crisis Goans can only depend on good fortune and the divine.

When the government is so inefficient to provide disaster management as well as the usual utilities like clean water (recall that Ilhas had no drinking water for 8-9 days in August and Ponda for even more this year) and regular electricity, it is beyond ridiculous that it promotes business and investment in Goa. How do you expect people to work if they do not have clean water to drink?

A note also on the Vibrant summits, the brainchild of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and a ‘Gujarat model of development’ is in order here. The claims of economic boost through the Vibrant Gujarat summit are at odds with the realities on ground. There is simply no accountability of the investment brought in by the thousands of MoUs signed in Gujarat. Compared to Goa’s 17 MoUs, Gujarat Vibrant summits have signed thousands of MoUs with business houses since its inception in 2003. The most recent assessment of the Vibrant Gujarat summit, with about 28,000 MoUs, confirms that it has not delivered on its lofty promises. And so, the question emerges: why does the government, assisted by the business community, engage in such shambolic ‘development’ and business practices?

The answer is startlingly simple: profit at any cost. By ‘profit,’ I do not only mean ‘greed’ of individuals but also a systemic problem wherein the social and political order rests on the extraction of natural resources by displacing the poor communities and an absence of fair redistribution of wealth. Demands for job creation or abysmal employment rates are then used as a smokescreen to promote businesses that do not care about worker rights and welfare. The government also does not display any seriousness in protecting worker rights. The result is an economic system that can collapse at any moment with catastrophic effects. Hence, it is a systemic problem that causes the most damage. Here’s how.

The government makes laws, such as those that create Special Economic Zones (SEZs) or Investment Promotion Boards, which give businesses incentives like tax breaks and a free hand to operate how they choose. Through its policies, such as trying to attract investment, the government abdicates its regulatory role—otherwise business houses refuse to participate in ‘boosting’ the economy. The government, as well as the business houses, circumvent the will and consent of the people on whose lands or in whose immediate vicinity these industries are established. Ignoring the irregularities, or rather actively promoting them, leads to massive losses to the exchequer. The exchequer also loses cash if the projects fail as the government, through a contractual binding, frees the business houses of all liabilities. In the case of the failed SEZs in Goa, the Goan government owes damages worth crores to the private business houses!

The systemic promotion of profit through law and policy is today, unfortunately, sustained by electoral democracy. Most people participate in the electoral democracy for basic amenities such as water, electricity, roads, and job security. But the result is opposite: both the government and business houses fail to deliver a stable economic system. Hence, the blame that individual voters are responsible for voting for the wrong guy by taking bribes, even if it is the case, does not explain the cause of my present situation. The vote of the honest voter also results in a systemic failure. Every government in power does the same thing, without fail.

Thus, we need to change our thinking about profit and economic growth. Stock market statistics are not a sign of progress and prosperity. As long as businesses demand unfair incentives, and as long as the government (party affiliation notwithstanding) humors such demands, the economic and social ills will continue unabated. Both the government and business houses must think of a ‘slower economy of life,’ meaning not a slow down of economic progress but a stable system that offers redistributive justice.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 6 November, 2019)