01/04/2017 GOENKARPONNMAKESMECRYGoanObserver

Goan Observer

APRIL 01-APRIL 07 2017, GOENKARPONN

GOENKARPONN MAKES ME CRY
By GOAN OBSERVER TEAM APRIL 1, 2017 LEAVE A COMMENT

HAPPIER TIMES: Many BJP workers from Margao left the BJP to join
the Goa Forward. They have now come full circle as Goa Forward has
joined the BJP government it once criticised so vocally

The eminent historian reveals his involvement with the formation of

Goa Forward and his contribution to defining Goenkarponn. He
however laments the fact that even modern Goans have failed to
shed their caste prejudices.

By Teotonio R. de Souza

IN EARLY September a year ago, I published my reflections on Goan

identity under the caption Goenkarponn simplified. Anyone
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searching for it online along with my name will not fail to find the
published version. In response to it I received a message from Mr.
Prabhakar Timble on September 10, 2016, thanking me for my
reflections. He also attached files containing 24 points of the key
commitments, and a list of 26 Indian (including Goan) historic
personalities that would inspire and guide Goa Forward, a party he
had just founded.

Prabhakar Timble added to the above

message: We are in the process of
preparing our detailed agenda for
different sectors and sections. For this,
we have started meeting the
stakeholders and interest-groups such as
the Chambers of Commerce, industry
associations, NGOs and social activists.

TIMBLEPONN: The We will keep you posted on the detailed

definition of Goenkarponn agenda once the same is finalised. We shall
is too simplistic prompting
be glad if you could write about our key
the author to call it
Timbleponn after the commitments in your regular columns.
president of the party. In
fairness Prabhakar Timble,
Following the outcome of the elections a
the President of Goa
couple of weeks ago and the formation of
Forward was the first to
resign when the party the new Government I feel vindicated
MLAs extended support to about my published reflections about
the BJP.
Goenkarponn adopted by Goa Forward as
its election banner. With all due respect
to Mr. Timble and his old-age political adventurism, I would not
hesitate now to name my fresh reflections on Goenkarponn
simplified as Timbleponn, with Vijaiponn as what we call in Goa
faddem, thrown in by the seller for a good measure after a good
buy.

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Over the years, many of us may have come across Teach Yourself
books with appealing titles, like Learn German without Tears,
Calculus simplified, etc. My earlier article followed an interview by
Mr Prabhakar Timble on a local channel. He was speaking about the
new political party that he was going to lead, named Goa Forward.

GOA FORWARD

AMONG other ideas, Mr Timble shared his new party programme. I

listened with delight to his definition of Goenkarponn. We were told
that it was not simple, meaning possibly not linear or logical, but
emotional reality.

So far so good. One even prefers today to measure EQ or EI, rather

than IQ. But granted all that in favour of emotional intelligence, as I
myself acknowledged at the beginning of a conference about Goan
identity at the Goa University in 1999, organised in collaboration
with the University of Sorbonne Bordeaux, the academic
component cannot be entirely ignored in defining identity, specially
by someone known to be an educationist and wishing to enlist
university students as agents of social and political change.

The scholastic wisdom in which I was trained emphasised two

essential elements in a good definition, namely (1) it should be brief,
and (2) it should be adequate. These imply that a definition should
not be longwinded, and should not need another or more
definitions to define the definition. I felt that Mr Prabhakar
Timbles definition of Goenkarponn fell short of these
requirements.

Now that I am re-writing Goenkarponn simplified, I would not

hesitate to retitle it Timbleponn. No ridicule is meant, only a
serious critical homage, mixed with some humour, knowing well my
Saxtikar relations and friends who are made of a better stuff than

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the crest-fallen Good Friday faithful. The programme of Goa

Forward needed many clarifications before the elections to satisfy
Goans of diverse wishes and thinking, as admitted by Mr
Prabhakar Timble himself. He stated that Goenkarponn included
multilinguism and multiculturalism among many other things.
These are central concerns of Goans today.

Within the short time allotted to an interview with a local TV station,

Mr Timble touched upon the MoI issue and referred to a committee
appointed to study it against the new concept of primary education
as defended by UNESCO. It was shocking to hear that the concept of
mother tongue was no longer relevant, and that it could be replaced
with the language of the ayahs among others. Curiously, the
Portuguese did not protect Konkani at primary level because for
them Konkani was the language of the servants (criados).

I believe that neither multilinguism nor multiculturalism can be

left to the interpretation of an international body, such as
UNESCO, which has shown no capacity or will to enforce its model
concepts upon European countries which continue imposing their
national languages upon immigrants, with hardly any question of
concession of grants to them at any level.

Language and religion constitute the twin-soul of any culture. After

the colonial meddling with the Hindu religion of the Goans, the
Konkani language is all that is left of Goan culture. Is that also
negotiable, and cant the State government enforce laws to
safeguard its survival? One could investigate UNESCO criteria and
grants for protecting world heritage. When did that policy start and
what is the relative number of monuments left behind by ex-colonial
powers and included in the world heritage list vis-a-vis the
monuments of pre-colonial times? What does that suggest?
Obviously, a preference for colonial heritage and their past

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glories. One could extend the analysis to other discriminatory

bodies associated with the United Nations.

How innocent or effective has been

the running of the International
Criminal Court (ICC) vis-a-vis the
war-lords of the West as compared
with the non-Western political
DISCRIMINATION: An unfortunate
leaders? Quite a few of the world
aspect of Goenkarponn is the acute
powers in the West should have caste distinctions among Goans
been guests of the ICC for the which purses them even to countries
genocidal wars under their to which they migrate.

regimes, but they seem to be

beyond jus cogens, if non-signatories of the Rome statute of 1998.
Only the African leaders have been at the receiving end, and some of
them have shown their guts in opting out of it. Who will bell the cat?
Will Mr Timble follow their pedagogy to lead Goa Forward?

Despite my few caveats I admired Mr Timbles courage in leading a

timely cause. Hopefully forward would not mean shifting the
gears to fast forward, and would restrain the usually enthusiastic
Saxtikar from diving head first, after some extra shots of urrak
which they may be stocking in large amount in the face of the
ongoing threats to coconut tree plantations. If need be, they may
share cashew feni with the Bardezkar and the Goenkar of new
conquests where no equivalent threats have been announced. But for
that Goa Forward will need to weld all Goans together, and shun any
traditional intra-regional prejudices.

Following the election results Mr. Timbles young turk moved faster
forward leaving Timble behind and everyone else aghast! Probably
the recent visit of the Portuguese prime minister of Goan origin and
with Margo links inspired the BJP in Goa to follow his cue. Portugal
Frente or Portugal Forward, a coalition of the centre-right

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parties in the most recent elections in Portugal had gained

majority, but the Saxtikar Antonio Costa took away their victory
from their mouth by forming a coalition with the left parties,
something that no one had achieved before in the history of
Portuguese democracy.

PEELING THE GOAN ONION

FOLLOWING my reflections on Goan identity mentioned above, I was

asked in 2008 to write again on the same theme. I produced an essay
entitled Identifying identities with a reference to Peeling the
Onion, the recent autobiographical and polemical novel of Gnter
Wilhelm Grass, recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature. That
is exactly how I see the Goan identity with its many wrappings.
Some of these make me cry, due to the ambiguities and
contradictions involved in the process of the historical growth of
my people.

Our personal destiny is greatly shaped by developments of our

collective history that are not of our choosing. Mine was no
exception and some important life decisions became dependent
upon the best available opportunities, but hardly of my choice.
Conceived in Kalyan, where my father worked for a British military
camp just before Indias Independence, my mother returned to our
home-village in Goa to give birth. It was only in 1995 that I could
find the right conditions to re-orient my life. Recovery of Portuguese
nationality was then an option. Similarly, the recovery of Indian
nationality as an OCI in 2007 was another option.

Those were hard and thoughtful decisions, and reflect my way of

integrating consciously, freely and appreciatively the major
elements that have contributed to shape my identity as a Goan. In
the past I would view these same elements as being forced into my

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identity. Now I feel that I have come to terms with my identity and
feel proud of it. That is a process I wish for every Goan.

The post-liberation generations, and most visitors and recent

settlers in Goa, are not sufficiently clear about what precisely makes
up the Portuguese cultural legacy. Many outsiders (bhaile for the
native Goans) come imbibed with Salman Rushdies imagery of
Goans who love to light candles to the kababed saints and
tandooried martyrs which they preserve reverentially in the home
oratories. At the close of the Portuguese colonial regime in Goa,
after nearly four and half centuries of intense and sustained
battering of the Portuguese law, church rituals and inquisition
threats, on a small enclave, Goans could not escape adopting overt
and covert cultural habits that distinguish them from the rest of the
inhabitants of the subcontinent.

To illustrate the reaction of the Goan Christian elite to liberation, I

cannot resist quoting a somewhat lengthy paragraph from Rushdies
The Moors Last Sigh depicting a character modelled after Mario
Miranda: Whenthe Indian Army entered Goa, ending 451 years of
Portuguese colonial rule Vasco was plunged for weeks into one of
his black-dog depressions. Aurora encouraged him to see the event
as a liberation, as many Goans did, but he was inconsolable. Up to
now I had only three Gods and the Virgin Mary to disbelieve in, he
complained. Now I have three hundred million. And what Gods! For
my taste, they have too many heads and hands On the night of
Indias independence, the red mist came over him in a rush. The
contradictions of that high moment tore him apart. That celebration
of freedom whose engulfing emotions he could not avoid even
though, as a Goan, he was technically not involved he drank vinho
verde in quantity and at speed, sunk in darkness.

IMPACT ON GOANS

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THE impact of the Portuguese brand of Christianity could also be

felt on ordinary rural Goan Christian women. For instance, they
all love to put flowers in their hair just as any Goan woman
would, but they take them off when leaving home. I asked my
mother once why she did that, and she explained: Kristanv bail
ghara bhair fulam mau na (Christian women dont wear flowers in
their hair outside the house). I discovered a reason much later, in the
course of my research. In the course of the 16th century the church
provincial councils had decreed under severe penalties that
Christian women should discontinue a practice of divination
whereby they would stick flower petals with saliva to the left or right
side of a temple idol and wait to see which petal would fall first to
decide if a wish would be granted or not. Banning the use of flowers
in the hair while outdoors could help prevent the temptation to
continue an old gentile practice.

For these and other lapses and re-lapses many Goans were hauled
before the Inquisition Tribunal and punished at autos-da-f during
two and half centuries of its operation in Goa. We can only imagine
from a distance in time the intimidation and terror it may have had
on men and women torn away from their families and kept in the
dungeons of the Inquisition. Several of these never returned to their
families, or perhaps some did after serving six to ten years as forced
labour in galleys or gunpowder factory.

The Provincial superior of the Goa Jesuits, my co-villager from Moir

and a trained psychologist, Fr. Tony da Silva S.J., analysed many
years ago, in a seminar I organized at the Xavier Centre of
Historical Research in 1992, the permanent impact such
inquisitorial intimidation left upon the Goan psyche or Goenkarponn
for times to come. We are experiencing the unwinding in some of
the social excesses that we have been witnessing in the post-
liberation era.

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I wish to recall another incident that left me baffled many years ago.
It was the statement of an orthodox Hindu Brahmin from Pune. He
came to Goa in the wake of the liberation as the Director of Goa
Historical Archives and stayed in that job till his retirement about 20
years later. Like many other such non-Goan officers that were little
welcomed by Goans and were labeled as deputationists, he too
decided to live his retired life in Goa. Dr. Gune acquired a house near
Mangueshi temple and believed that he could continue his hobby as
astrologer (jyotishi) and earn to complement his pension.

My great surprise was to hear him

say, some three years later, that he
had decided to leave Goa. He was
disillusioned with Goan Hindus,
whom he denounced as
different, a milder way of

CHOURIZ PAV: What unites all saying that they were corrupted
Goans is their common obsession by the Portuguese influence. They
with Chouriz Pav which is the
did not meet his requirements of
Indian equivalent of the hamburger.
Hindu orthodoxy! Until that
moment I had only noticed (like
most Goans do till today) the differences between Goan Hindus and
Christians. I needed a Hindu from outside Goa to bring the
similarities among Goan Christians and Hindus to my notice. Goa
had been in its past history, at least since the 11th century under the
Kadambas, linked to a widespread network of Afro-Asian seaborne
trade, and of hinterland trade with the Deccan through ghat passes.

The integration of Goa into the Portuguese eastern empire after 1510
catapulted it into an unforeseen scale of operations. As
headquarters of an early modern European empire from 1530, Goa
exposed its inhabitants very early to the challenges of modern
globalization.

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If the early decline of the Portuguese failed to sustain this process,

the economic pressures and the cultural acquisitions permitted the
Goans to avail of the opportunities presented by the British empire
in the neighbouring territories, particularly since the establishment
of the rail link. Ironically, the allegedly harassed Hindu community
of Saraswats (one-sided historical perspective conveniently bandied
around for political gains in post-liberation times) sustained the
fiscal-commercial structure of the Portuguese in Goa, and the Hindu
dubhashis effectively served their diplomatic needs in Asia as
extensively documented by Dr. P.S.S. Pissurlencar in his Agentes da
Diplomacia Portuguesa na ndia (1952).

Without such vital support the Portuguese colonialism in Goa would

have been short-circuited and burnt out very much earlier than it
did. But the self-interested collaboration of Goan Hindus gave lots of
time for masses of poor Christians, allegedly protected by the
Portuguese Christian rule, to make a bee-line as emigrants to eke out
their living in British India. I will come back to this trait in my
parting shot at the end of this essay.

CHURCH IMPACT

IT SHOULD never be forgotten that it was the structure of the

Portuguese Church Padroado throughout Asia, manned largely by
native Goan clergy from the 19th century onwards, that gave the
scattered Goan emigrants the emotional sustenance they needed
away from their homeland. The Padroado parishes in Bombay and
the village kudd dedicated to the patron-saints of the respective
parishes in Goa were the visible and effective props in the process of
adaptation to painful socioeconomic challenges faced by Goan
emigrants. The church connection also helped develop the musical
talent of many Goans, and the westernized culinary skills opened job
markets for many Goans in British India. Sad to say also, the
tradition of an international slave market where females and males

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from different countries were bought and sold (and that made
Portuguese Goa famous through the writings of the Dutchman
Linschotten and other contemporary foreign travellers) contributed
to the exodus of many Goan women who earned their living with
prostitution in Bombay. If language is a core component of any
social identity, it may surprise us to find that Goans preserved
their language even during the colonial period, and barely 5 per
cent of Goan population could read, write and speak in
Portuguese according to the last census of the colonial regime.
These included ethnic Portuguese serving in Goa and about one
hundred families of mestios and luso-descendentes.

However, close contact with the Portuguese clergy during the early
centuries after conversion, elementary training in the parish
schools, and compulsory primary schooling in Portuguese since the
50s, resulted in the absorption of a hefty proportion of Portuguese
loan-words into the spoken Konkani of Goan Christians. Fuj-da-put
(filho da puta), bonku (bom c), fodricho (foder), etc. became common
folk utterances alongside besanv (beno), maldisanv (maldio), etc.
Such linguistic colonialism, despite the colourful ingredients,
greatly endangered the healthy growth of Konkani language and
many decades of sustained efforts became necessary after 1961 to
restore its linguistic-cultural legitimacy and standards so as to make
it acceptable as the official State language in 1986 and to permit its
entry in the Constitutional schedule in 1992.

GOAN CASTE SYSTEM

WHETHER we like it or not, no discussion on Goan identity can be

complete by ignoring the caste system that dogs the Goan society.
To konnalo? (to which family does he belong?) is a question which
a Goan usually asks or intends to ask, be it in Goa or anywhere in the
world. Goans married to non-Goans and living in non-Goan
ambiance may care to ignore the caste linkage, and even in Goa

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today money and power call the shots. However, deep in the
unconscious a Brahmin knows he is a Brahmin, a Chardo resents
being a Chardo, and the same old trap works. Spoken Konkani
retains grammatical inflections and vocabulary preferences that
identify castes, such as aila and eila, taka and teka, sokoilo and
khailo, etc.

Despite all the haute couture and other external shenanigans that
Goans have acquired over time that makes them presentable global
citizens, the Goan identity has yet to break out of its caste-shell. A
glance at the archives of Goanet, (the oldest global Goan Internet
discussion forum) should confirm my point. Thus caste remains a
challenge for Goans for yet another millennium. It is what the
Portuguese would call a pedra no sapato, a cultural irritant that we
need to learn to freely detach from the requisites of our personal
and collective identity. Until we can eradicate it, we can hardly call
ourselves global Goans. We will remain puny caste-bound Goans
doing relatively well globally.

To conclude this essay on Goenkarponn that makes me cry, I shall

not forget an interview of Vijai Sardesai to Prudent Media. He sought
to convince his interviewer that Goenkarponn includes trust, and
that despite his strategic shift to a rival political party for which
he had no good word during the election campaign, he would not fail
to serve Goenkarponn. Probably he meant Goenkarponn of a certain
caste that has a long history of political pragmatism in Goa. Soon
after the Portuguese conquered Goa they registered some of the old
Goan customs (of the higher castes) in a so-called Foral de Afonso
Mexia (1526). Among those customs we can read about various types
of oaths and swearings (Konkani soput). Did the trustworthy Goans
need them?

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