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When film-making gets a bigoted edge... Goa's anti-colonial stir retold By Frederick Noronha JUST BEFORE December 19, 2004 -- on the eve of another anniversary of the end of Portuguese colonial rule in Goa -- an unusual controversy erupted in the State of Goa. The State's government, run by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, had inspired, sponsored and circulated a film which it wanted to be shown in schools across the small region of 1.4 million. This video compact disc (VCD) was created in 2002, and has only now being widely circulated and adequately noticed. Purported to be a "documentary" on Goa's Liberation struggle -- as the anti-colonial drive against the Portuguese is known here -- this movie claims to impart a patriotic message. While it does offer a narration of the campaign against colonialism, it also promotes a bigoted view of the past, stokes some hardly-subtle ideas of religious hatred, and could only end up creating further suspicion in a state otherwise known for living in relative peace and amity. To be fair, Goa's history has been rife with religious, caste-based and ethnic intolerance. Early Portuguese rule -- not the entire duration -- was one phase of intense intolerance. But should history be raked up selectively, with dubious intent? What is the political goal of highlighting a slice of the past? Should taxpayers' money go to interpret history only through the lenses of religious hate and conflict? Above all, were the battles of the past only or primarily about religion, as India's contemporary religious right is trying to project? BEYOND THE TRIVIA Incidentally, the film doesn't open with the customary censors' certificate. But let's not get caught up in the trivia. Goa's government claims the film has been duly passed; this is not really the issue. Specially is one recalls how the Central Board for Film Certification -- earlier called the Central Board for Film Censorship -- was severely politicised during the six years that the BJP ruled India, so much so that documentary, and not fictionalised, films depicting the reality of the Gujarat carnage were blocked during this period. Says the start of the film, almost defensively: "This film is based on facts gathered from various books on history specially those dealing with the freedom movement and liberation of Goa. Authenticated reports on the freedom movement have also been gathered from freedom fighters of Goa and Maharashtra who participated in this glorious movement." So what does the film really depict? Take a scene from the VCD. It opens thus. There's the sound of guitars-strumming Western music. To a scenic if stereotyped shot of people dancing on one of the tourist boats, the commentary introduced the region with the usual cliches: "Yeh hai Goa... khubsoorat..." Then it talks about the region as being a "pavitra" (holy) region. Cut to the shot of a temple. Quickly we're told about the "hamla" (attack) and aggression committed by colonialism. It's time for a picture of a church. Subliminal messages come across through the screening. It depends what you want to see in it. Non-BJP political parties in Goa have spoken out against the projections of the VCD; those who see Goa's history as one based solely on religious conflict have come out in defence of the VCD, citing specific historical instances as a justification. But that's not the issue. This VCD needs to be seen in its wider context. Can we believe that this all is just a coincidence, and not the obvious game-plan of the ideology of hate and conflict that has come to rule Goa by a mix of intrigue and deceit. That too, in a state while never ever gave the BJP a mandate or majority to rule, but where a mandate is being manufactured through every trick in the book? To the backdrop of violence and screams, silhouettes of Portuguese soldiers are shown damaging Hindu religious icons. Guns entangle with temples in the fast-changing visuals. We're told: "hazaron mandir" (thousands of temples) were broken, and bhajans and kirtans were stopped in colonial times. Like any stereotype, this is based in truth, but not the whole truth and just one side of the picture being selectively narrated. Conversions to Christianity in Goa are shown as being due entirely to violence, trickery and fraud. Needless to say, this is another persistent theme of the BJP-RSS and its ideological allies, who believe people, even today, are being tricked into changing their religion, and need to be "protected" with legislation and the government machinery against changing it. CRUCIAL FIRST ONE-THIRD It's the first one-third of the "documentary", supposedly about Goa's Liberation struggle, which needs to be closely studied by those concerned about the dangers of communalism spread by the state. Hindus are being shown as attacked while at prayer, women are shown as being assaulted and abused, and the symbol of the cross is shown repeatedly in a manner that not only projects it as evil but also reduces colonialism to the level of a religious war. These are not just plain crosses. Some seem to reflect the glint of light in an almost threatening manner. Or is the subliminal message so strong, that one cannot help feeling this way? In its defence, the ideology behind this VCD has argued that it has depicted reality, that colonial rule was indeed harsh and often violent in Goa, and that many of these 'facts' have been documented. While all this may well be true, and religion and colonialism was combined into a lethal mix in the past, should the government of a secular state continue with such trends? Is not this an attempt at preying on the realities of the past with a dubious political agenda for the present? It surely needs to be adequately understood for what it is. If you look carefully, one would find the cross depicted some 34 times. Portugal's undeniable misuse of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth century is no excuse whatsoever for its continued misuse in the 21st century. As the BJP struggles to -- so far unsuccessfully -- build up a winning Hindutva "vote bank" in Goa, targeting a contemporary religious symbol is a dubious game to put it mildly. Can we overlook the fact that the Portuguese took over large parts of current-day Goa simply through treaties with neighbouring rulers? Or that they worked out a successful modus vivendi with local elites (of all religious groups) in the latter part of their reign? And that critical segments of the Goan economy were in Hindu hands for significant parts of the colonial period (native merchants and also village officials like the sinay, kulkarni and potekar or tax collector)? But is history a matter of settling scores among religious groups, and blaming 'the other side' for the 'wrongs' of the past? This is history as the Goa government's VCD shows it: Fear is writ large on Hindu faces, while Catholic priests are shown some shadowy garb which is better suited for the Ku Klux Klan. Conspiratorial colonial plans are seen as being hatched outside and around the religious monuments of Goa's Christians. This is a depiction which surely shape the perception about a significant section of Goa (Catholics form 26% of the population here) whose Church has changed significantly -- and often, in a positive sense -- ever since the Portuguese control over it ceased in the aftermath of the demise of colonial rule here. Portuguese soldiers are depicted laughing sadistically while locals are tortured. Shivaji and Sambhaji are shown as fighting the "atrocities" of the people in Goa; never mind that neighbouring rules like them did have pacts with the Portuguese along the way. The Ranes are, again, depicted as great patriots, a theory blown to the smithereens by research undertaken both inside and outside the Goa University itself. LEVELS OF NEPOTISM At another level, this film also teaches us about the levels of nepotism that rule Goa today too. Look out for relatives, kith and kins, and extended clans, as 'history' is deployed as a tool to reshape who we see as heroes and who we want to project as the villains of the past. In scenes depicting the Portuguese ruler's political misuse of religion -- it's a historical fact that the governor's stave was placed in the hands of St Francis Xavier, in a desperate attempt to ward off the invading Marathas -- the camera focuses on the statues of Infant Jesus and Ignatius Loyola in the Bom Jesu Basilica, at Old Goa. Similar is the case of a scene depicting the capture of the Terekhol fort. What exactly is the message being sent out? Doesn't this all actually fit in quite well with the stated historical position of the RSS and the Hindutva movement that "Hindus" have been oppressed in their "own homeland" of India for many years. Or that the RSS "is only asserting the natural rights of Hindus and correcting historical wrongs"? Haven't we seen in cases ranging from Gujarat 2002 to Mumbai 1993, that in an otherwise tolerant India the majority community can be provoked into violence only when they are themselves made to feel insecure and threatened? For a state government which plays favourites, favouring some sections of its population over others while placating a few from all sides with tokens of recognition or blandishments that change attitudes, is this yet another way of justifying the unjustifiable? There are other unusual aspects: this violence-filled CD was, interestingly, circulated to Goa's schools, "requesting" them to screen it and report compliance! What comes across as defensive too is the BJP government's choice of a "committee for modalities and scrutiny of the documentary Goa's Freedom Struggle". Just like the case of the Manohar Parrikar-led BJP government -- which uses a few convenient minority community MLAs, among them some of the most controversial ones, as token representatives simultaneously used also to cobble together the much-needed majority -- likewise this film was put together under a committee which has a significant number of token figures of Christian origin. In keeping with the embrace-and-extend style of converting critics into friends that chief minister Parrikar has shrewdly deployed to stay on in power -- first indirectly through end-1999 and then in person since late-2000, one can find a similar strategy used in this controversial film. Former Press Trust of India journalist and ex-freedom fighter Flaviano Dias, a long-term trade unionist, heads the panel. Another former freedom fighter Naguesh Karmali, who also sees his own politics as left-of-centre, is on the committee, and both were outspoken in its support when the controversy broke over it. Their work focussed on the script, whereas the most controversial parts of the film remain its visualisation and the manner in which scenes and fragments of the truth are juxtaposed across each other. RSS Goa leader -- Subhash B Velingkar, here in his capacity as "social activist" and "educationist" -- is obviously a figure whose ideology plays a key role on the final product. In the VCD too, a 'balance' of sorts is sought to be projected simply by giving lip-service to the role of individuals of a Christian background, who were incidentally involved in the campaign against colonialism from among the earliest phases. There's the Cuncolim revolt, the Pinto's Revolt, T B Cunha, Juliao Menezes and a number of other figures who played a role over the past hundreds of years. Somewhere it gets mentioned, rather patronisingly, that "even" Goan Christians contributed to the freedom struggle. BOTH SIDES USED RELIGION There are other issues that need to be noticed too. In the case of the Cuncolim this film projects the issue as a conflict based on religion. But was it? Writing in another context, the noted Indo-Portuguese historian Dr Teotonio R de Souza says the battle at Cuncolim in 1583 wasn't primarily about religion. He writes: "My analysis suggests that both the Portuguese rulers and the native dominant class of Cuncolim were using religion for their own vested interests. Religious beliefs were not the main issue, but the economic and political implications of conversion were seen as a threat." See http://www.goacom.com/culture/history/cuncolim.html Ironically Souza adds: "The religious feelings of the ordinary people were excited to obfuscate these main implications and to kill the missionaries." He warns against the traditional Catholic religious explanation for the event. Now, the boot seems to be on the other foot, with history getting mythologised by another set of players, also for political purposes. Souza explains how the Portuguese found collaborators in Goa: "It was so in Goa at the time of its conquest by Afonso de Albuquerque. The Hindu population seems to have been unhappy with the Muslim overlords, and the representatives of the dominant Hindu class thought that they could use the Portuguese to regain its earlier dominance. However, besides other factors of Portuguese policy there were the underlying intra-societal conflicts that contributed towards sabotaging the aspirations of the dominant Hindu section." Timmaya, who suggested the conquest of Goa to Albuquerque, was hoping to be a kind of jagirdar, following the conquest of Goa. He was motivated by his being dispossessed by his own brother. Souza argues that such "exploitation of brother by brother" holds the key to actually understanding colonial Goa. He points to references in the early Jesuit documentation to persons in Goa wanting to be converted in order to escape the disabilities they experienced in their traditional social structure. Souza studies the process how how the "bulk of the village inhabitants (were turned into) tenants and introducing greater degree of commodity relations" and links this to the upheaval of the time. This came amidst times of disintegration of the traditional village communities of Goa, and their diminishing self-sufficiency. Souza explains: "If Cuncolim led the revolt against the Portuguese in association with its neighbouring villages, this fact needs perhaps to be understood against the background of its own economic development and interests that were affected by the new tax impositions and administrative-religious controls of the Portuguese.... The village also had other important economic resources. One of these was its permanent bazar at the end of more than one caravan routes connecting it with the mainland through the Ghats of the Ashthagrahar province." He goes on to say: "One should analyse against this background the reaction of the dominant class of Cuncolim to the destruction of its temples and to the attempts of the Jesuits who sought to establish Christianity in Cuncolim and its satellite villages of Assolna, Velim and Ambelim in 1583.... It is important to see their hostility to Christianity in terms of threat to their established economic and social privileges connected with the temples and bazar.... The demolition of the temples implied deprivation of religious and cultural traditions that sustained an established social structure and its underlying economic base." PAST OF RELIGION CONFLICT, STRIFE Undeniably, Goa's past was one of religious conflict and strife. But this needs to be projected in context. The Portuguese came here much earlier than the British, French or Dutch, at times when religious intolerance was a little more acceptable to the ruler. Their bigotry lasted for the first part of their rule here; while in the 'eighteenth century, they were about as religiously bigoted (or not) as the British were in the rest of India. The Inquisition wasn't targeted at the Hindu, but primarily against those Catholics (or neo-Catholics) who weren't seen as Catholic enough. Rewriting Goa's colonial history as one of religion-based strife is not just ahistorical and simplistic, but it also seeks to play a game of extending the life of religious intolerance from the sixteenth and seventeenth century, right into the 21st century. Not just that, it is demeaning to the very ideals of the struggle against the anti-colonial struggle, to depict it in such narrow terms, which it certainly wasn't. Much of the rest of the VCD, apart from the 'religious conflict' based depiction, is a glorified depiction of the anti-colonial struggle. By reducing this narration to crude simplifications, it obviously doesn't do much justice to a complex story -- one that was a key part of global history and the history of colonialism in Asia. But such concerns are at a different level, compared to those which threaten to build misunderstandings among people of different faiths. Some freedom fighters have protested, but only over the relative emphasis given to the role played by different groups in the campaign. Former chief minister and maverick politician Dr Wilfred DeSouza (who has vacillated between shrewedly supporting the BJP government and aggressively opposing it) has, perhaps sardonically, suggested that the VCD plays up the role of of the freedom-fighters, while near-obliterating the job done by the Indian Army. Portuguese rule ended only when the latter marched into Goa on December 18-19, 1961. Some have suggested that the film hurts the sentiments of Christians in Goa. But all the perspectives simply miss the point. In a nutshell, this is a film which needs to be seen by everyone concerned about the state of secularism in India today, just so as to realise the damage that can be wrecked by politicians in power who believe in blatantly taking sides. Politicians who are willing to wreck untold damage on relations of the present and future, in the guise of tackling issues about the past. Of course the truth needs to be told; it has been told, and a critique of the colonial past in Goa has been going on for quite some time now. Much of this criticism has come from a range of people, regardless of their religious affiliations. Till date. People's faith or the religion of their birth did not prevent them from telling the story like it is. But partisan pretences could surely reverse such a reality. Goa's BJP regime, with the dominant figure of chief minister Parrikar running it virtually as a one-man government, has pushed its little-understood ideology of the politicised Hindu Right (not to be mixed up with the religion of Hinduism), tried to claim a larger-than-life role for the RSS in Goa's freedom struggle, and at the same time placated groups of freedom fighters. Significantly, the aging latter group has been anyway increasingly marginalised after 1961 (and also markedly incorporated by the continuing largess of the state) would probably be mostly content with a last ditch initiative to claim their place in the sun as their role in contemporary Goa grows to become obviously irrelevant. War cries of 'Har har Mahadev' and persistently highlighted slogans such as 'Bharat maata ki jai' (Victory to Mother India, incidentally also an integral part of the RSS shakha) could help restore the image of the RSS and its politically-linked parties (earlier the Jan Sangh, now the BJP) as patriotic forces in India. It needs to be noted that after a conspicuous near-total absence of such forces in the Independence struggle of India, the RSS and its affiliates belatedly sought to rehabilitate itself by taking part in the Goa anti-colonial struggle. This probably explains the early communalisation of electoral politics in Goa, since the 'sixties itself. But its actual role vis a vis the claims it makes in fighting Portuguese colonialism has already been questioned. Likewise, the blatant move to give pensions to RSS-linked individuals by the past BJP government at New Delhi has already come under fire. There are many issues here; it's not just a question of a single VCD. It's a whole question of how a State and its administration behaves at the start of the 21st century. This is a film that every Goan should watch, for us to understand the intent of the politics of hate that try to snatch even greater control of Goa's educational system, media and police force. Clearly, such an endeavour attracts provisions of the law. What makes it more unusual is that the state government is behind this VCD, which openly acknowledges chief minister Manohar Parrikar as its inspiration. Perhaps some lawyer would be better placed to explain how such a VCD would sit against the provisions of the law -- including the Indian Penal Code's Section 153A (for promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion...), Sec. 153B (for repeatedly making imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), Sec. 295A (for injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class), Sec 298 (for uttering words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings) and Sec 505 (for statements conducing to public mischief). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- GOANET-READER WELCOMES contributions from its readers, by way of essays, reviews, features and think-pieces. We share quality Goa-related writing among the 7000-strong readership of the Goanet/Goanet-news network of mailing lists. If you appreciated the thoughts expressed above, please send in your feedback to the writer. 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