Tales of oppressors and oppressed

By Selma Carvalho

The liberal narrative has always been the story of the voiceless and the vulnerable. As such, it demands there is an oppressor and an oppressed, the villainous and the victim. Those of us, who don the liberal mantle, are bound by an unspoken code of ethics to be faithful to the narrative; for one thing, it assures us of a loyal audience among our peers, and it makes for the more compelling story. Who wants to engage in a conversation where there are no heroes, no victims, no sense of liberal moral outrage?

But what if history doesn’t always unfold that way? What if history is at times collaborative instead of confrontational, where collective good is not immediately evident and evolution necessarily demands the destruction of ideologies which are no longer relevant?

One emerging narrative is that of the Gawda community. Living as tribal clans in various parts of Goa, the community has largely been voiceless. So, we can only be supportive, when at last, it is finding a voice. I don’t claim to have profound knowledge of the issues confronting this community, but neither am I completely ignorant of their lives. As a child, I watched them pray faithfully, sitting on the floor of the village church. The few pews, at the back of that whitewashed baroque church, had been donated by the landed classes (my grandfather amongst them), and these families laid claim to them. So every Sunday, the Gawda sat, literally at our feet, their heads bent in uncomprehending benediction before an indifferent God.

Who can deny the humiliation this community has faced? They clustered around the church square living in small huts. Marriage to a Gawda was inconceivable although sexual liaisons did take place. They led socially segregated lives, subject to all the abuse people (social, economic and political) face when they are different from the mainstream and the dominant. This then, is part of their historical narrative which will find voice in art, literature and political franchise.

In the recounting of our tales however, we don’t have to create a grievance narrative perpetuating a sense of victimhood. Grievance narratives by their very nature need an arch villain, and in the case of the Gawda community, Gawda activists seem to have decided that arch villain is going to be the Catholic Church. Accusations made by activists through various platforms (websites, articlesand at the recently concluded Goa Arts and Literary Festival) point a finger at the church, as being instrumental in destroying their culture and conniving with upper castes in the usurpation of land. I quote from one such activist, Joao Fernandes: ‘In any civilization, the elite section of society always tries to imposeits culture on everyone. So also is the case with organised religiousinstitutions. They try to impose their religious practices on less powerfulreligious institutions. The elite assert superior status for their cultureand religion with the claim that their culture and religion come from Godwhile that of the tribal and downtrodden come from the devil. And with thisbelief the former attack and destroy the later. However, in reality, thetribal culture is far superior as it is in close association with nature.”

Thanks to effective spin doctoring by India’s left leaning activists, we are led to believe that tribal cultures are somehow pristine but under assault from capitalism and modernity.That, left to themselves, they will be leading morally upright, bountiful lives, while being conscientious guardians of the environment. In reality, tribal communities feature low on almost every quality of life indicator: health, education and employment. In addition, generally, tribal communities are afflicted by alcoholism, domestic violence, gender inequality and a high rate of infant mortality.

A proper assessment of the church’s role would reveal that it has been at the forefront in bringing education to the Gawda community. Thanks to church schools, it has transformed an agricultural society into one that is literate and employed in diverse sectors. It is now almost impossible to distinguish the Gawda community from non-Gawda populations. This sense of inclusion is due to the dedicated efforts of the church. The Gawda is an integral part of prayer groups, committees, the fabrica, choirs, sporting events and local theatre sponsored by the church. All this has been crucial to assimilation.

Why accuse the church of destroying a culture? A process of transformation necessarily means leaving behind cultural practices which are of little use to modern societies. Their memory maybe recorded and commemorated but their daily practice is irrelevant. Cultures are not static, they are in a constant state of evolution. People have an instinctive urge to embrace the new in their pursuit of progress. The role of the church is to be applauded not lamented. (ENDS)

 

Source: The Goan, January 17, 2015

Leaps of faith

By Selma Carvalho

Britain may not immediately spring to mind, when it comes to discovering ‘lost manuscripts’, particularly of the Middle Eastern variety, but that is exactly what authorsSimcha Javobovici and Barrie Wilson of the recently released book The Lost Gospel, claim to have found in the archives of the British Library. To be fair, this lost manuscript entitledThe Ecclesiastical History of Zacharias Rhetor, purchased by the British Library in 1847, has been studied before and dismissed as fairly unimpressive. But Javobovici and Wilson, having done a fresh translation from the ancient Syriac into English, have inferred disturbing new revelations about the life of a man, we all know as Jesus Christ.

According to The Lost Gospel, Mary Magdalene, far from being Christianity’s most cited prostitute, and Jesus, being celibate, were actually married and had two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Magdalene has long been rescued from her role as chief temptress of the Bible, by scholars, and it’s a given today that, whether married or not, she played an important role in Jesus’s ministry. If The Lost Gospel, hasn’t exactly caused a theological storm, it’s because for decades now, scholars have been chipping away at the veracity of the Vatican’s four approved gospels.

The discovery of the Nag Hamadi scrolls in an Egyptian cave in 1945, dealt a staggering blow to Jesus’s supposed divinity. It’s common knowledge, that early on, the Church ruthlessly suppressed alternative versions of the Gospels, carefully culling and crafting a historical Jesus who conformed to a certain theology, and the myth of a dying and resurrecting God. But the Nag Hamadi scrolls spoke of a real life Jesus rather than a divine spectre ascending into the clouds, a concept reinforced in popular culture through movies like the Last Temptation of Jesus Christ and Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.

What is encouraging about modern Christianity (let’s forget about the Inquisitions of medieval memory for a moment) is the curiosity rather than antagonism with which it treats new information about the Bible. Ever since Darwin propounded his theory of evolution, and the Church grudgingly admitted that there was no inconsistency between evolution and Christianity, the Church has been shying away from literal interpretations of holy texts. Unless you are a bible thumping Jehovah’s Witness or a deluded Born Again Christian speaking in tongues, no one truly believes the world was created in six days or that it will end with Armageddon. Christianity has gone through the oil presses of reformation, science and secularism, which has forced Christians to accept the Bible for what it is - at best a quasi cultural and political history of the Jews.

The ability to distance oneself from literal interpretations of religious texts is particularly relevant for the times we live in. In a brilliant op-ed in the Huffington Post (An Open Letter to Moderate Muslims), Ali Rizvi calls on Muslims to engage with the idea that the Koran is not the word of God. He writes, ‘the first step to any kind of substantive reformation is to seriously consider the concept of scriptural inerrancy’.

Let me say emphatically that Islamphobia exists and that it is ugly. But Muslim fundamentalism also exists. Two disparate concepts can exist on a continuum simultaneously. And Muslim fundamentalism doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it isn’t just the angst of disenfranchised Muslim youth, lost boys looking for a cause; it exists very specifically within the context of a literal interpretation of the Koran.

Any criticism of Islam, cannot just be shouted down with charges of racism and Islamaphobia. Religion is not a race nor a gender nor a sexual orientation. It is a human construct, an ideology, and challenging ideology is the fundamental prerogative of the human race. Put the word religion in front of the most barbaric acts in the world, the worst sort of homophobia, gender discrimination and political abuses of power and chances are, someone will legitimize it. Even hardened feminists, become spineless, mealy mouthed apologist when it comes to challenging the burka, for instance. Instead challenges to the burka are now neatly labelled as ‘racist’ and ‘oppression’ by the west. This scenario has its exact counterpart in India, where a sweeping neo-nationalism is so completely interwoven with Hinduism, that mythology is being reinvented as historical reality.

The most progressive societies are those that move away from religion, and embrace evidence instead of myth in building their moral fabric. Rules set out for society, 2000 years ago, are irrelevant to our lives today. They are a futile and repressive exercise in moral absolutism and an insult to the functioning of civil society. To believe in the validity of religious texts, their infallibility or their relevance, is the worst sort of delusion embraced by humans. (ENDS)

Source: The Goan, Published December 20, 2014

A fragment of Autobiography

By Selma Carvalho

On October 9, 2014, at a Dominic Winter auction, a Goan antiquarian made quiet history; not the sort which is immediately celebrated but whose significance grows with time, and will become particularly relevant when Goa decides to honour its greatest modernist artist with a museum. He purchased Souza’s original typed notes and two accompanying drawings, which were eventually published as Words and Lines (A Fragment of Autobiography)by Villiers Publications (1959).

The dribs and drabs which exist as commentary on Souza’s life is lamentable. Even more lamentable, is that ‘A Fragment of Autobiography’, is almost always taken as the starting point when reconstructing Souza. Autobiographical content is prone to all the licenses one takes, when writing about oneself and, a critical analysis, is essential when trying to make sense of an artist’s life.

On April 12, 1924, a smallish house on the hillocks between Arrarim and Sonarbhat of Saligao, groaned with the misery of Lilia-Maria’s birth pangs, and peeking his head into the world was Francis Newton Souza. Lilia-Maria Cecilia Antunes came from a family hovering between poverty and aspiration. Her mother, Leopoldinha Saldanha, widowed, took in lodgers, and one of her lodgers was Jose Victor Piedade de Souza, teaching at the nearby Mater Dei school.

Jose and Lilia, or Lily as she was known, became lovers, and possibly this had much to do with caste inhibitions, they became star-crossed lovers. In the early months of 1922, a twenty-three year old Jose and a nineteen year old Lilia got married.  Thanks to Souza’s biography, we remember his father’s family only as ‘chronic drunkards.’ Drunk or not, his grandfatherAntonio de Souza was a man of considerable merit. Originally from Siolim, he was the principal of a small school in Assolna, set up in 1893, by the Sociedade da Benevolencia e Instrucao.

Why had Souza condemned his grandparents as drunkards? Even before a close member of Souza’s family confirmed an estrangement between Lily and her husband’s family, it becomes fairly obvious upon examining Souza’s birth records. When on May 8, 1924, the family assembled at the Saligao Church, just as they had done fourteen months earlier for their daughter Zumera’s christening, what was glaringly noticeable was the absence of the Souza family. Not a single Souza is named godparent for either child. F N Souza’s maternal grandmother, Leopoldinha Saldanha, became his godmother.

According to Souza, his father died three months after his birth and his mother plunged into unimaginable despair when her eldest daughter, Zumera also died, a year later. ‘My mother, my grandmother, my aunts and all my relatives mourned bitterly,’ he wrote, and morbidly wished it was the boy, who had died instead. It is highly unlikely, in a Goan household, that they wished in earnest for the boy to have died, but his father’s death did have a detrimental effect on his mother; it left her destitute. The absence of a male figure gave rise to a complex relationship with his mother, which he raised to a form of divinity, alluding to it bordering on the unseemly. In the poem, ‘Mother of God’, he reflects on the relationship, writing ‘My body and mind took the shape of divinity but my act differed from the Mother-fucker Oedipus.’ Tragic loss of spouse replaced by a son, is a familiar mythological theme: the new replacing the old, winter and spring, death and resurrection, and Souza, a new comer to 1950s bohemian London, was in the business of creating myths.

Souza only hints at the abundance of women in childhood. Just how crowded had his life had been in those years? There was his uncle Cyril, studying to be a stenographer, but it was the women who loomed large; mother, grandmother (a fairly tall woman of ‘easy going’ disposition) and three aunts -Blanche, Matti and Bridgit. Elsewhere, Souza shows his frustration with this gaggle of women, when he writes, ‘there was nothing for me to do even among the women in Goa.’

‘Shortly after my sister’s death, I had a severe attack of smallpox,’ Souza wrote. This attack would give rise to the charming but entirely apocryphal story surrounding his name. The story goes that in childhood, a bout of smallpox nearly killed Souza, and his mother having propitiated St. Francis Xavier’s goodwill in saving her child, added Francis to his name. There is little doubt that the poxscarred him, as years later, he would sketch a self-portrait depicting those hollow pox marks as tiny crosses. But the name, Francisco was already on Souza’s baptismal records just days after his birth. It runs in the family, as in his paternal grandfather’s name, Antonio Francisco de Souza.

To his credit, Souza tried to set the record straight in a 1994 interview with his then mistress Srimati Lal, admitting that Francis was always on his birth certificate, but by then the public had become so enamoured with the almost biblical image of a desperate child, clinging to his mother, saved by divine intervention, that this clarification gained little traction. Souza went to his grave with the story intact. Christopher Wood wrote an eulogy in the Guardian insisting that it was smallpox which earned Souza the name of Goa’s most revered saint. (ENDS)


Source: The Goan, Published November 22, 2014

Indian penal system has failed to detect nationality law violators

By Teotonio R. de Souza

Formerly known as the Estado da Índia,  Goa  was regarded as an integral part of Portugal (as distinct from a colony) under Portugal’s Constitutional Amendment  of 1951. Earlier it was colony, under tutelage of a Ministry for Colonies. This ministry was later renamed as Ministry of Overseas Territories (Ministério do Ultramar).  This change was put in place when Portugal was asked by the UN General Assembly to provide a list of its colonies for the purpose of mandating its self-determination in keeping with the UN Charter. http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter1.shtml

On 19 December 1961 India invaded and annexed the territory. The annexation was not recognized by Portugal and by the United Nations until 1975, until Portugal re-established diplomatic relations with India in 1975. The recognition of Indian sovereignty over Goa was backdated to 19 December 1961. Portuguese nationality law allows therefore those who were Portuguese citizens connected with Goa before 1961 to retain Portuguese nationality, while the acquisition of Indian citizenship was determined to be non-voluntary at the time of Goa’s annexation by India.

Anyone interested in the ongoing debate about “foreign” legislators in Goa, should not fail to read carefully the Portuguese Nationality Law 37/81, of October 3 and its amendment by Organic Law 2/2006, of April 17 [ http://bit.ly/1iRXtRP ].   The article 28 of this law could benefit those who acquired Portuguese nationality and continue residing in Goa, but if Indian law considers its nationality as automatically revoked by the acquisition of any other nationality, its application seems to stand nullified.  The Article 28  refers  to Conflicts of foreign nationalities, and states that In positive conflicts of two or more foreign nationalities relevant is only the nationality of the State in whose territory the person has his or her habitual residence, or otherwise the nationality of the State with which he or she maintains a closer connection.

Obviously, Portuguese nationality law seeks to respect rights and wishes of its citizens, both present and the past ones through jus sanguinis, in cases where the jus soli  may have ceased to justify, as in the case of  Goa after the Indian occupation, legally recognized by mutual accord. It is now the exclusive responsibility of the Indian post-colonial authorities in Goa to enforce its laws. Penal laws are not moral laws, and the Goans may wish to circumvent them to suit their interests, unless they are effectively prevented from doing so.

What has failed apparently is the Indian penal system in its effectiveness to detect the violators of the Indian nationality law. In extreme cases, countries like the USA announce from time to time attractive capitation prizes to those who willing to denounce wanted “criminals”.  In the absence of a parallel procedure in India, Goa had to wait till very recently for other incentives to denunciations. These came from the political rivals who lost in the elections for the legislative assembly.  Now that the precedent has been set, the panchayat network could activate closer residential informants. We may be close to watching new developments.

To conclude, we might ask if Portugal has no legal obligation towards its citizens abroad, including those in Goa. Perhaps, it may be forced to rise to the occasion, if it finds over 40,000 (suggested to be concentrated in Salcete) dormant Portuguese nationals, many of them occupying  responsible public offices, forced to seek shelter in  Portugal, after being ferreted out by the Indian authorities.

A new wave of “retornados” may come as a shock to Portugal reeling under economic crisis. It is presently exporting nearly 10,000 citizens every month according to some public media reports.  Only then Portugal may cry out for the helping hand of India to regulate seriously its citizenship offer to Goa.  And Lusophile Goans may learn to stop living in post-colonial Goa with colonial minds. (ENDS)


Source: The Goan, Published November 30, 2013