SHAKY SEMANTICS? A THOUGHT ON GOAN HISTORY

Languages evolve, words are borrowed from one language to another, and as time passes by some words acquire new meanings while others are abandoned altogether. What words mean can tell us about the things that they represent. Thus, for instance, a word like ‘communidade’ can tell us not just that it represents a system of land tenure, but also indicate that this system was either created or modified through the intervention of the Portuguese. But this process of deploying semantics for understanding and explaining the larger processes of history is not easy, fraught as it is with inconsistencies that may lead us to errors.

The occasion to have these thoughts was recently provided when I came across an interesting documentary on the Goan music and dance form manddo, ‘Amchem Cantar Aum Mhuntam’, by Ruth Lobo, a graduate of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. This documentary is available online (it was released on 15 September, 2015). The purpose of this article is not to review the documentary. Rather, I would like to focus on two comments that the documentary provides on the history of the origins of the manddo, in a bid to reflect how Goan history is understood in the popular domain.

The first comment is by the cardiologist and manddo-enthusiast, Dr. Francisco Colaco (also a Herald columnist). On the origins of the manddo Dr. Colaco has this to say, taking stock of the socio-political conditions prevailing in the nineteenth century,  “The manddo came [into existence] because Goa was going through troubled times. There was a feudal society…these people who belonged to the elite – especially the Brahmin and the Chardos – they wanted to live in a world of their own. It was a fanciful world that would bring them…consolation. So composers started composing and dancers started dancing”. Dr. Colaco further states that the mandde were sung at weddings where the bride had to sing, surrounded by the guests in the ballroom, where marriages were generally celebrated. According to Dr. Colaco it was from the arrangement of people or “mandavoll” in Konkani, the word manddo came into existence.

What we can immediately understand from Dr. Colaco’s comment is the importance of the historically accurate context for the emergence of the manddo. Indeed, it were the Catholic elite in the nineteenth century, who, imagining themselves as having a Hindu ancestry, created a form of art with the amalgamation of eastern and western characteristics. Thus, the song “Hanv saiba poltoddi vhoitam…”, though a dekhnni, sung by Catholics, which has a kalavant and a boatman as the main characters is a good illustration of the syncretic project and developed on similar lines as the manddo. Of course the fights amongst the Catholic Brahmin and Chardo factions, and also with the Portuguese government for power also provided the political context – the “troubled times” that Dr. Colaco alludes to – for the emergence of the manddo. For the manddo is an invention of the nineteenth century.

Immediately following the claim of Dr. Colaco, the documentary juxtaposes a counter-claim, by Prajal Sakhardande, who teaches history at the Dhempe College of Arts and Science, Panjim. “The word manddo comes from the word mandd”, he says. “Mandd is the village square – the sacred village square – where…shigmo and other performances took place. So it [manddo] has come from there. I do not believe it is mandavoll…”

One is a bit confused after listening to Sakhardande, because his interpretation seems to ignore all known historical facts pertaining to the origin of the manddo. One wonders what nineteenth century Catholic elites would have to do with the mandd, since the manddo even today is not sung on the mandd, neither has the manddo any ritual significance – unlike ceremonies performed on the mandd do. The manddo emerged in elite, landlord settings whether in urban centers like Margao, or in villages like Benaulim and Curtorim in Salcette. The mandd is especially used by bahujan and tribal communities for religious/ritual purposes. Of late Christian tribal communities – such as those in Quepem – have started working towards a cultural revival of the mandd, in order to assert a Christian-tribal identity. Thus, the mandd seems to be restricted to certain communities and ritual practices, and is related to historical processes that one can easily pin-point.

To be fair, both Dr. Colaco and Sakhardande use semantics to understand the history of the manddo. While the former grounds his understanding in known history, the latter seems to be giving merely an arbitrary opinion buttressed by a general desire to locate Goan authenticity in a pre-colonial Hindu past. Such a model of understanding history and culture was used from the nineteenth century by British orientalists and philologists, and civil servants. Following the popularity of Romanticism the assumption was that historical memory best survived in the grammar and semantics of languages, which can provide evidence for the history and culture of peoples.

The larger issue that we can broach here is that more often than not, Goan history is attempted to be pushed back in time, that is, to before the Portuguese rule. If such a popular narrative is existent, one needs to seek the possibility of its correspondence with known historical facts and reality. If such an exercise is not carried out what we have is a history that is overpowered by mythical narratives. A good example will be of how Goan history always begins with the myth of Parashuram. Rather, as we have seen in the case of the manddo, there is a way out of avoiding the mythification of history.

See also 'Dancing to the Same Old Tune', here.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 13 April, 2016)

TEMPLES AND MAHAJANS

Post-colonial Goan politics has always been about playing the Hindu bahujan against their Catholic counterparts. Fear of the Hindu bahujan is repeatedly instilled in Catholics using the bogeyman of Marathi and merger; the Hindu bahujan are constantly made hostile by falsely stating that the government panders to every Catholic demand, and by stoking communal sentiments about forced conversions, the Inquisition, western culture, food habits and so on and so forth. Of course, both these sections are quite often pitted together against Muslims. In all of this the hegemony of the Hindu upper-caste is left untouched. This pattern is amply clear if we look at the Konkani language agitation in the past, and the present mobilization of the Bharitiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) and RSS, along with some Marathivadis. Note also the manner in which Nagri Konkani in the Antruzi dialect (which is the dialect of the Saraswats) is still the official language of Goa.

The movement by the Forum for Rights of Children in Education (FORCE) launched in 2011, took a clear stance against this hegemony. More recently, the issue of replacing the old idol at the Marcaim temple in Ponda is on the boil, and is rightly termed as a “Mahajan v/s Bahujan” issue. Of course the antecedents of these two movements are not recent. The demand made by FORCE – that of government funding for English medium primary schools through an act of legislation – can be traced to the resentment over the imposition of Nagri Konkani as medium of instruction (MoI) from 1994. The conflict between the “Mahajans v/s Bahujans” also has a history, with bahujan communities repeatedly trying to gain greater access and control of the temple properties and management, currently in the control of the mostly Saraswat Mahajans. The Nagri Konkani writer N. Shivdas, for instance, has been part of movements to gain access to such brahmanical shrines.

With a judicious and cautious use of the imagination, if we try to put these two movements together, it can be argued that it is not just the temples across Goa that are jealously controlled by Mahajans, but also the ‘temples of learning’ (pardon the metaphor), thus sustaining their hegemony in Goan public sphere.

Allow me to explain a bit more. By demanding that the Mahajan Act, or the Regulamento of 1886, be scrapped, the bahujan communities are in effect asking for a greater control of temple resources, the upkeep of which uses their labour and devotion. They are asking for the freedom and liberty to exercise their choice of deciding how the temples are to be run. Similarly, the movement launched by FORCE is also a movement that demands the freedom and liberty to make a choice to educate children in the language that the parents deem fit. This choice, as we all know, is currently held hostage to the irrational and casteist worldviews and politics of the BBSM-RSS combine – in other words, ‘Mahajans’ of the temples of learning. Isn’t it after all the futures of bahujan children that are being held hostage by these ‘mahajans’?

It is a similar form of power and hegemony that FORCE and the temple movement at Marcaim are fighting. However, we need to point out and understand some shortcomings within such movements.

In relation to the movement spearheaded by FORCE, there are some crucial gaps in their political mobilization that have come to light. Despite many views asserting that FORCE’s demands are not just the demands of the Catholic community, FORCE was cornered into being an organization which represents the demands of Catholics alone. As O Heraldo’s group editor Sujay Gupta recently observed, “…when the government was clearly trying to split the movement for rights of all [emphasis added] children by catering to – or ostensibly catering to – just minority institutions, FORCE allowed this to happen by not pointing out that the government was trying to shift the goalposts”. In other words, there was complacency in FORCE’s mobilization of making more and more allies.

Thus, one can observe that FORCE failed to sustain a consistent articulation that its demands are beneficial for the whole of Goa. Although the bahujan movement at Marcaim does aim for larger political gains beyond the control of temples, yet these aims are not articulated as such; or at least not discussed in the Goan press. The ongoing debates only highlight the potential impact that the Marcaim temple movement could have on the next elections. Limiting (or allowing to limit) the Marcaim issue or the movement by FORCE to shifts in electoral politics would mean that we set our eyes on short-term goals. Both FORCE and the people leading the Marcaim temple movement should think of themselves as fighting similar ‘Mahajan’ control and hegemony.

In the past, we have seen some notable – though short-lived – attempts to unite Catholics and bahujan Hindus through an alliance of the Marathi Rajbhasha Andolan and Romi Konknni Andolan. Perhaps, the only way lasting change can be brought about is by a sustained attempt over a number of years to build solidarity between bahujan interests across religions, that is, assert universal caste and class interests over other sectarian ones. It is in such solidarity that the hope for a common, nurturing, and secure society lies. 

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 30 March, 2016)

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)

PROPAGANDA AND HISTORY: THE LAST DAYS OF THE ‘ESTADO NOVO’

The Facebook page Memórias da India Portuguesa regularly posts old photos and videos of Goa largely produced during the last few decades of Portuguese rule in Goa, Daman, and Diu. While the visual value of these images is indeed rich, there is hardly any history-related engagement with the same. Since these images are only recently collected together from diverse sources, in effect constituting a historical archive, issues such as engagement with the propaganda within the archive can be subjected to a scholarly analysis.

One of the videos that Memórias shared was a documentary produced by Time magazine in 1953, under the ‘March of Time’ series. This rich archive produced from 1935 to 1967 was recently restored by HBO Archives. It is said that Time magazine wanted to create a new form of visual journalism, a cross between docudrama and journalism. ‘March of Time’ thus used re-enactments and reportage, often leaving people completely baffled and unable to make sense of their films.

Keeping with its style of reenactment-journalism, the episode on Portuguese Goa opens with the director of ‘March of Time’, Dwight Godwin paying a visit to Goa’s then Governor-General Paulo Bernardo Guedes. Owing to the fact that nationalist movements were prominent around the 1950s, and due to the immense pressure that was exerted on the Portuguese by the Indian state and the international community, Godwin’s first question to Guedes was not surprising: “We’ve been told,” he said, “that here in Goa the level of [economic] prosperity is very good…do you feel it is true, sir?” Guedes replied, “É verdade”, adding that Godwin should ascertain for himself if it were indeed true.

And then for the next fifteen-odd minutes, the documentary rapidly projects the economic and social condition of Goa. There are visuals that show the port of Mormugao where “flags of all nations fly in the harbor…just like in the sixteenth century (sic)”, the export of Manganese ore, as well as the mining operations in one of the mines. Although the narrator of the documentary remarks that manganese mining and exports are done in a labour-intensive manner, it nonetheless does not affect the potential of the Goan economy. The import of luxury goods and a very busy customs house impresses the documentary-makers – even if they do not approve of the smuggling that is clandestinely carried out across the border with the territory of neighbouring India.

Though one might suspect this rosy picture of the economic condition of Goa in the 1950s, it must be stressed that no serious historical research has been carried out to ascertain the conditions during this period of time. And as such, the glimpse of a Goan farmer, Caetano, his wife, and their four children, working in the paddy fields is quite interesting and useful. For one, the documentary claims that, like many other farmers in Goa, this farmer is content in being a citizen of Portugal, and is also able to provide two modest square meals for his family – which is better than the then prevailing conditions in India. The emphasis that the documentary places on citizenship extended by Portugal is not a misplaced one, as Portugal recognized the citizenship rights of all Goans after 1910. Yet saying that farmers in Goa were content with Portuguese citizenship might be far from the truth, as most of the agrarian labourers worked on lands that did not belong to them. Until the reforms introduced by Dayanand Bandodkar, the hold of the bhatkar class on Goan land-ownership was almost absolute. Which is why when trying to understand colonial propaganda, one not only has to question the obvious colonial motives involved, but also the class of natives whose control over resources and alliance with the colonial regime worked together to subjugate common people. Thus, one can also speak about class and caste oppression within Goan society under colonial rule, and not just foreign colonial oppression.

Another important glimpse that the documentary offers is that of the African soldiers from Moçambique stationed in Goa. While very little is known about these soldiers from Africa, their presence is sometimes not even acknowledged properly. This is understandable as Goan history is often hijacked by Indian nationalist concerns, and those who are marginal to this worldview are simply ignored. Even histories of race are marginal to the nationalist historiography, perhaps the reason why we do not see African soldiers in Goa as integral to Goan history. Thus, the visuals of Moçambiquan soldiers singing (or being made to sing) their native songs, due to homesickness or nostalgia, allows us a small glimpse of the African thread in Goa’s history.

To be fair to the documentary-makers, not everything in the documentary furthers Portuguese colonial propaganda. For instance, as far as the naval and armed forces stationed in Goa, the documentary remarks that the army “though larger [in comparison to the navy] is a token force”. While Goans have often heard stories of horror perpetuated by the Portuguese on pro-India freedom-fighters, the meager policing resources at the disposal of the colonial state might suggest a different reality.

The documentary ends with Godwin paying another visit to Guedes, after his tour around Goa. Godwin comes to the conclusion that “there does not seem to be any feeling of colonialism amongst the Goan people”. To which Guedes responds, “Goa is not a colony but a province, like any other province, of Portugal”. It is true that Portugal changed the nomenclature of Goa to an ‘overseas province’, but we cannot be sure what it exactly meant for the people living in such circumstances. Colonial propaganda, therefore, cannot be simply rejected, and neither can it be accepted at face-value, claiming that it represents the true images of Goa’s past. But within the claims and counter-claims of propaganda, there is a lot that can be unearthed.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 2 March, 2016)

ROADS, RECKLESS DRIVING, AND ACTS OF AGGRESSION

The alarming rate at which accidents are on the rise in Goa is an issue of major concern. While the number of victims in road accidents keeps on rising, repeated attempts to bring about policy decisions and laws seem to be destined to fail. This article is not a dissection of why these aforementioned measures fail. Rather, it will try to dwell on how we, as Goans, relate to each other whilst making use of roads. Think about it this way, why would the person behind you honk incessantly despite there being no place for you to give way and despite the fact that you are driving at a decent 50 kmph? Why is it that people in cars and on bikes rarely wait to allow pedestrians to cross the road? And why, when tables turn, does one indulge in the same behavior?

Goans with memories of having good roads and good traffic sense would today be quite rare. What would not be rare is the constant usage of the phrase “angar yeilo/yeta” to describe reckless driving. Interestingly, this is the exact same phrase that is used to describe physical aggression: “to mhojea angar yeilo”. So if one thinks about the two contexts in which this Konkani phrase is used, one can argue that driving on roads in Goa is an aggressive act. Thus, whilst on the road, we are either subjected to aggression or we inflict aggression upon someone else. These acts can be reckless driving wherein the vehicle driver endangers the life of others; in other circumstances, it can be loud and incessant honking, or using the full beam at night, or not recognizing the rights of other motorists and pedestrians to share the same space as you. And in the last instance, it can even be the use of verbal abuse and physically scuffling with others.

The next logical question to ask is why are roads sites of aggression in Goa? To answer this we would need to focus on power and privilege, as the architect and urban studies scholar Vishvesh Kandolkar does. Writing not so long ago, Kandolkar argued that one of the reasons is the privileges afforded to them by the Indian caste system that empowers ‘elites’ and/or high-end car owners to flout traffic laws as they do. To that we can also add the fact that as many are denied power and privilege in their social and political sphere, reckless driving can be a manifestation of this lack, enabling non-elites to momentarily feel a sense of power and privilege. As a result they assume themselves to be always in the right and above the law.

If we briefly focus on the history of who could afford cars and scooters in Goa, it would be apparent that privilege has a lot to do with why roads are sites of aggression. The wealthy and the landed class in Goa were the ones who could afford cars and scooters, back in the days when buses and bullock-carts were the more accessible means of transportation. I do not want to claim that only the wealthy and landed classes purchased cars in Goa, because others would as well. Many of the cars were purchased as a business investment, for providing transport facilities or taxi services. Generally, the one who invested would be driving the car and earning a living. However, cars purchased and used solely for the convenience and conveyance of the family members was a privilege that was only available to either those who owned land or those, due to employment in Gulf and on cruise liners, could afford cars from the ’80s. In other words, one could feel a certain entitlement – in the sense of owning the roads and driving on them.

With liberalization of the Indian economy and the availability of loans to the middle-class in the service sector, more and more Goans were able to acquire vehicles. This, in itself, is not a bad thing as more and more people could acquire prosperity. However, one cannot but help thinking if an anciently entrenched form of privilege along with a sense of entitlement is the only way through which we understand how to use roads. In other words, an ‘elite’ behavior and understanding that ‘I’ and solely ‘I’ am right – the other is not, is the only way we know how to behave on the roads and relate to each other. Ultimately, due to the virtue of owning a car or a scooter, ‘I’ do not recognize the right of others to share the same public space because ‘I’ think that ‘I’ am entitled (and above the law) and that everyone else should make way for me. Like in other public spaces such as parks, ‘we’ as a community have until now not been able to lay our collective claim on it. Only some of us can, while others resent it. There is always a friction which causes us to display aggressive behavior.

This is not to suggest that aggressive behavior is solely the cause of accidents on roads. Factors like sleep-deprivation and bad roads can also be major causes. However, the acts of aggression exhibited on Goan roads make the experience of moving from one place to another unpleasant and frustrating. This aggressive behavior on roads does not allow us to value human life, as it should be. While the efforts of the state, such as wider roads and more policing (which actually leads to harassing the citizenry) have not borne any results, checking our aggressive behavior could be a start at fixing the problem.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 17 February, 2016)