I am sorry I could not get back to you sooner because of travel/business but I was very conscious that I had to read your response to me and reply asap. However, on now reading your points to me, I got a distinct feeling that you were presenting, with great respect, an incredibly lightweight and confused argument in terms of both, logic and rhetoric on the issue of caste among Catholic Goans.
My reading of your 5th Feb post, to me, and your subsequent posts to others, suggests that, on the one hand, you do not think casteism among Catholic Goans exists as such, especially today. Yet you make the peculiar suggestion that we should put our money where our mouth is and help those in lower castes to achieve betterment, presumably, because caste exists and continues. On the other hand, you also seem to argue that old practices and traditions by the casteists are understandable and imply that they should be allowed to continue on the basis that there is no hard evidence that they are disadvantageous to anybody on a cause and effect premise/basis. I therefore have to ask you to please make up your mind to save us time to get on to substantive issues rather than waste time on vacuous banter. Either you accept that casteism exists among Catholic Goans today, or it does not. Whatever, your answer, surely, you simply can't have it both ways if you want to retain your credibility on this issue.
To my mind, The raison d'etre of caste is to unjustifiably privilege some over others and to set brother against brother. It is thus highly divisive and pervasive at all levels of society and there is no scientific and moral justification for its existence. I have spelt this out in some detail in previous Goanet posts on this topic. Nevertheless, casteism is very oppressive and dysfunctional by nature and this is the prime reason for me to want its eradication among our Catholic Goans. Minimally, it is painful to my sensibilities and my sense of Goaness of which I want to be proud, without the odious whiff and taint of caste. Secondly, the tenets of Catholicism are totally different from Hindu caste belief as Jose, George, and others have indicated. One has to be, transparently, one or the other. You simply can't have your cake and eat it Gilbert! If you can, please let me know your logic or secret in this respect!
And now to your request for "cause and effect." My brief is clearly not to educate you on research methods and methodology pertaining to sensitive social problems but you give me no choice but to have to spell out, at least some detail, whilst desperately trying not to be condescending.
Cause and effect criteria stem from the positivistic realm of scientific research and have served many forms of research very well e.g. causality in disease, within the dynamics of astrophysics, the basis of metallurgy and many others. We have benefited immensely through such research methods, even though there is never any absolute certainty when we use any scientific methods. Nevertheless, we need to support such scientific usage, where appropriate, whilst being aware of the strengths and weaknesses within such methodology particularly over experimentation and ethical issues. However, the paradigm underpinning the above is problematic in social research where so many problems continue to exist and are not amenable to cause and effect criteria. Alternative research paradigms have been used in parallel with the more narrowly scientific one relying on cause and effect criteria. These are non-positivistic. They are interpretive and illuminative of experiential meaning and understanding of phenomena in everyday life. These explore and examine complex human behaviour by examining many subjectivities and then objectifying them as rigorously as possible. Indeed, I do not see these alternative paradigms as contradictory to each other but as part of a continuum to help us understand the incredible complexity of the physical and social world we live in.
I am thoroughly familiar with and used the 'number crunching' methods for hypothesis testing, replication and the generation of statistical analyses in a range of fields. However, by and large, these are not adequate for complex social research. Themes like racism, casteism, dowry deaths, football hooliganism, religious fundamentalism, micro cultures in bureaucracies and in custodial institutions, cults and the like, are definitely better studied sometimes through covert entry/penetration into organisations within ethical limits, and through observation, participant-observation, in-depth open-ended interviews, and conversational interviews. All require much skill and rigour in execution and use. They fall within the anthropological tradition incorporating ethnographic work/principles. I became engaged in gathering data on caste among Catholic Goans when I discovered, to my absolute horror, how bad it was in Goa. And incidentally, so absorbed have I been that I have cumulatively spent fourteen months in Goa over a period of ten years and am thus quite aware of Catholic Goan casteism in Goa, East Africa, the UK and other parts of the West.
Nevertheless, let me sate your thirst, at least a little, for "cause" and "effect' to which you appear to be so wedded. I will also let you have a few bullet points you desire, even though, bullet points are never useful when generating cogent and critical arguments but they can, of course, be useful for summaries.
I have undertaken 92 in-depth interviews in Goa and elsewhere on caste and its ramifications. Such data was obtained from a wide cross-section of people. I undertook this personally, with assistants, on the internet, on the telephone, by letter and other forms of recorded communication. Here is some recorded data as excerpts, in bullet point form, from a huge data base I have generated:
- " We breathe caste in Goa. Unfortunately, we breathe it as naturally as we take in oxygen every moment of our lives but not through choice... It is apartheid and much worse because we discriminate against our own kind." [From a respected Goa based journalist]
- "Caste among Catholic Goans is endemic, especially in Salcete..." [From a Western researcher in Goa].
- "Caste among the Catholics is the greatest cause of animosity and tension among the Goans. We need to defeat it in any way possible... How sad that the Brahmins have a clear preference for non-Goan marriage partners for their children, even lowly educated whites, rather than excellent educated potential spouses who are Goan but not of the same caste" [From another respected Goa based journalist.]
- "Please don't let me ever set eyes on that woman.... she should have known her caste place and not cavorted with my brother...." [From a former good friend who had hidden his privately harboured deep caste feelings but blurted them out accidentally, in a rage.]
- "I have some so called Brahmin relatives by marriage and they always try to make me feel small to the point where we constantly get to blows... "[From an academic colleague in London]
- "I really am proud to be from Saligao...you know that is where the Brahmins come from in Goa. We are the real cream of Goa and not like the rest of the hoi polloi..." [From an undergraduate student, at a meeting in my study, at my very university in London. He had never been to Goa, but thought he was enlightening me! The bloke became the President of the Goan Association (UK) some years later and got a resounding slap across the face, from a committee member who got irritated about the President's proclaimed pedigree! Is the cause and effect self-evident Gilbert?!! But let me comment that the cause was pure caste stupidity, the effect, irritating, and the stoppage to this kind of nonsense summarily instantaneous!]
- A barely literate Bardez Brahmin woman told her highly educated daughter in law, that, notwithstanding all her education/qualifications, she, (the mother in law) represents "the purest kind of ghee people can make" Further, she required her to speak in a distinctive form of Brahmin Konkani and not the Mapusa variety!
- "Casteism has been so deleterious to us Goans that I often wish I could put the Brahmin lot in a ship and send it out into the ocean and see it sink from Marmagoa harbour..." [From another respected Goan writer based outside Goa]
- "My father is Chardo and my mother is Brahmin, thus we come from a respectable family and only speak Portuguese at home....when we are introduced to new people we always check where they are from...that is, what village and vaddo... In this way we can meet the right kind of people." [From a bloke on the internet seeking a matrimonial partner through the Herald Newspaper.]
- "My fiancée and I knew virtually nothing about caste among the Goans. Yet, I was staggered to discover, much later, how much pressure my future mother in law came under from Brahmin women determined to block the marriage whilst smiling sweetly at us in public." [Fom a graduate teacher in Canada, on his marriage.]
- "Caste in Goa is ipso facto brown racism against fellow brown people. It is utterly invidious because we attack our own kind" [From a former Goan headmaster]
- "The Catholic Church castrated itself historically in order to placate the Brahmins. It really needs some guys at the top with b...s to change things..." [From an utterly disillusioned priest in Goa]
- "There are strong elements of caste within the Catholic Church in Goa. It has allowed caste insignia in the form of different coloured capes and even usage of musical instruments like the dhol and tasso on feast days" [From a Goa based academic]
Well Gilbert, I could go on with some absolute gems, but I hope you can see the virulent and pathetic nature of caste among our Catholic Goans. How you can miss all this is pure mystery to me and to the committed anti-casteists in our midst. Are you awake or sleep-walking Gilbert? You may indeed argue that the methodology I have referred to above is not 'hard' science. This tends to be an initial reaction of those uninitiated into social science/sociological work. But, I am grateful for the questions you have raised. They have helped me to clarify matters further, and especially, to explain a little more about where I come from as a political and social activist against a range of social evils rather than the mere ivory-tower intellectual you have imagined. I was/have been active in the anti-Vietnam, anti-apartheid, and anti-racist movements in the UK. I was 'captured' in photo-surveillance by the American and South African authorities and intimidated for such activity. This helped my resilience and I therefore put it to you that, I would be an absolute hypocrite if I did not take on the humbug of Catholic Goan casteism within my own cultural and historical backyard, with all the intellectual and social resources available to me. Thanks to the comments I have received following my earlier criticisms about caste among the casteists within the Catholic Goans, I have now sharpened my focus a little more. My concern is Brown on Brown racism aka casteism among the Catholic Goans. Indeed, as I intend, the sooner the rest of the world hears about this dirty little Goan secret about casteism among some Catholics in Goa, we can go ahead uncompromisingly and fearlessly, and start to trim its edges, bit by bit, however long and hard the slog.
Let me finish by asking you a simple question which intrigues me Gilbert. What is it about the Catholic Goan casteists who feel so helpless to require caste as a crutch? Do they feel so inadequate and needy of a crutch while the rest of us cope perfectly well without one?
My response, in this article to you is clearly in sorrow. How on earth can a seemingly 'educated' and professional Catholic fellow like you (and I will include Basil Monteiro here) possibly defend the indefensible on caste? Can you not see that you could never have the moral highground against the anti-casteists who are trying to eliminate this scourge and evil which has bedevilled Catholic Goans for centuries?
Regards,
Cornel DaCosta, London.
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