LET A THOUSAND KONKANI(S) BLOOM
Of "myths", hegemony, dominant groups and language in Goa
In mid-April 2005, the Jesuit priest-linguist Pratap Naik sj of the
Thomas Stevens Konknni Kendr at Alto Porvorim raked up a big debate
with his talk titled 'Konkani: Myths and Facts'. At Goanet's
request, he posted the summary to cyberspace. See
http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/2005-April/026860.html
Goa University sociologist Alito Siqueira responds with his personal
views on the issue, in a letter to Dr Naik. This post raises
crucial, yet often neglected, issues of caste, and de-legitimisation
of certain forms of Konkani, among other issues. It also continues
an eager debate already underway on the specialist Goa-Research-Net
mailing list. Numbers in the text refer to Dr Naik's arguments
available at the URL above.
Dear Pratap,
I enjoyed your presentation on Friday, April 15 (2005) as you competently
confronted more or less popular perceptions of Konkani with established
proposition from the domain of linguists. As you ended, like one of the
persons who reacted to you, I too wondered: You have identified and spoken
on some tress, but where is the forest? I was a bit taken aback by the
strength and passion you stimulated in your audience though not so much by
the substantive issues raised. I have been thinking about all this since.
This letter to you is catharsis of sorts for me and much more than
that too. I cannot but take you seriously also because I have
empathy with your concern and demand that a thousand Konkanis should
bloom and that in the current dispensation Sashti, Malwani, Romi,
etc. have been short-changed.
I identify with you when you began with explaining 'myth' expressing some
fundamental 'truth' (meta reality) and so also that they nevertheless
represent interests, political interests. On the other hand 'myth' is also
opposed to 'fact' (reality). 'Myth' therefore elicits highly ambivalent
meanings. Myth can mean an utter falsehood and, on the contrary, a sacred
truth. It is this deep and profound play between that which is not real and
is at once meta real (yet to be real?) that gives myth its power -- an
indispensable necessity for human aspiration and survival.
In your presentation you chose to limit yourself to only one meaning of myth
i.e. the Myth of Konkani as opposed to the Facts of Konkani. What was the
proposition that informed the construction of most of the 'myths' you
identified? It seems to me your underlying thesis -- correct me if I am
wrong -- is that "Konkani has been and is an instrument of Saraswat
hegemony". I go along with that too. However to me the many myths you
identified that support the hegemony proposition are as much myths in the
more profound (meta reality) sense and not in the sense that they are
contrary to facts. Let me explain with some illustrations:
Myth IV.7 is 'Shenai Goybab awakened in us the Konkani identity'.
You challenge this by arguing that Goybab's influence was on only
one particular community. Valid as this is, it is also true that
once the Saraswats aligned their own identity with Konkani, like any
dominant group they also sought to create a pan-Goan Konkani
identity by offering their language dialect as the most refined
marker of that identity. That is, at a time when the politics of
creating geographical boundaries demanded unique cultural identity
markers it is precisely the Saraswats who used their Konkani to win
the support (arrive at a consensus or compromise) of non-dominant
groups around Konkani as language and culture of the region.
This was indeed a movement of resistance against the effort to erase
any identity for this region by submerging it in Maharashtra.
Clearly it was the dominant community that had to lead such a
movement of resistance and it was done rather successfully.
Today Goa as political and cultural entity -- however much contested and
unfinished it may yet be -- owes its existence in large measure to the
construction of Konkani as a language and culture and the origins of this
lie in the works of Goybab.
(The seminal works of Orientalists such Cunha Riviera or Dalgado important
as they have been, seem to have lacked an organic relationship to the
community that could have exercised such dominance).
Hence Goybab emerges as the icon of this identity. The fact that Goybab may
not be popular and that his writings are unfamiliar even to some of best
known Konkani writers is simply not at issue. (How many of the workers who
died for communism read Karl Marx or for that matter how many of those who
swear by Christ read the Bible or even the New Testament for that matter).
An icon's ideas are diffused through the people even while the people may
never know the origins of the idea they live by and with. If Goybab enjoys a
mythic (meta real) status, it is indeed well deserved.
Like so many other hegemonic language movements, Konkani, in the
hands of the dominant groups, too finds itself using the tropes
(styles of discourse) provided by modern evolutionary theory,
perhaps best exemplified in theories such as those of racism. The
existence of a 'pure' (Myth I.7, I.16) or standard (Myth I.8, I.15,
Myth II.2) or quality (Myth II.2) forms as opposed to corrupted
(Myth I.10, I.12), drawing extraction from high pedigree (Myth I.1,
Myth I.3), long lineage (Myth II.4,5 & 6), the superiority of the
written over the oral (Myth I.9 -- a rather too obvious give away of
the hegemonic groups and Myth II.1 which also suffers from this
trap), and a more recent addition, due to the compulsions of
democracy, exaggeration in numbers (myth I.2 and myth II.3)
The point is not whether these statements you termed myths have historically
or linguistically (or, by any other science) been verified. Rather the
manner in which these statements are deployed is what we need to look at.
They all go to bolster one proposition: One language, one script and
one literature will unite Konkanis (Konkani speakers -Myth IV.11)
and that the obvious, natural and only legitimate candidate is what
we now call the standard and official Konkani. This is precisely how
the hegemony of the dominant is sort to be sustained.
The fact that a number of writers and award winners are not from the
Saraswat community only goes to show the partial success of the hegemony.
My favorite example of the partial success of the hegemony is the story of
my student friend (once a seminarian) who speaks, reads and writes competent
Sashti and communicates with his wife and mother in that language. But with
his three children (aged between four months and six years) he insists on
speaking English. He told me that when his children go to school they will
learn the pure Konkani (as against the illegitimate language left with him
through conversion) and besides his children need to know the language of
their time (English) and by speaking to them in that language he was giving
them a head start. (as he saw it, his choice of language with his children
was a win- win choice).
Hegemony works precisely in this way i.e. where the subordinate groups
willingly (?) consent to the values of the dominant groups and thereby
surrender their own history and subjectivity.
I recall as a child, my father often reminding me that our Konkani
was not 'pure'. (Interestingly, if I remember right he has never
really understood why the 'pure' Konkani could not be written in the
Romi-script and must be written in Nagri. As an adolescent I did
make an effort to mimic what I thought was 'Anturzi' and felt proud
that I by talking the bare minimum could occasionally hide my less
than pure Konkani and so also my identity.
But away from such poor consolation there was always the haunting question:
why did I have a less than pure cultural lineage as compared to some others.
Sure I could learn but then there is always a difference between the one
that learns and the one that naturally performs by sheer virtue of birth and
that difference hurts. (Sure enough too, my own disposition and hurt was
also brought on by my own low self-esteem. But than, I have seen this
hesitancy even among the best of us, i.e. those who have the best markers of
personal and social success and so also recognition for their work in
Konkani. Somewhere at some point the experience of a void pops up -- the
lack of pure Konkani.)
I have since learnt that the problem lay not with the language but rather
the way in which it has been constructed: that underlying such constructions
of purity, lineage etc. being superior is a racist development paradigm
inherited from the Enlightenment. In particular that national (and regional)
concepts of culture that seek to present unity are doomed to surrender
hegemony to dominant groups who have the wherewith all to acquire consensus
from non dominant groups.
The argument for a unified and uniform language -- or identity for that
matter -- is itself suspect. That identity remains contested, incomplete and
unfinished and must remain so, How else shall we live otherwise? That purity
is the mode of ensuring sterility. The hegemony that Konkani suffers is, in
turn, the hegemony of the Enlightenment over the non-Western peoples. That
challenging the hegemony in Konkani is therefore challenging also the
intellectual discourse that make such hegemony possible.
Saraswat language hegemony must be challenged and contested because it
relies on tropes that are outmoded and irrelevant -- I have suggested rather
racial in their connotation and denotations -- and so also because it
debases a significant section of the 'Konkanis'. This in no way denies the
contribution that the hegemony did achieve. And, that was much, including
providing us the space through which today we can contest that very
hegemony. A concern expressed is that this line of thinking is that this is
divisive. But then I also see it as uniting by making spaces for some of the
sentiments and groups that have hitherto been excluded as mentioned by
Narayan Dessai in his thesis and so also as you have elsewhere identified in
Ramnath Naik's 'Goveachea Bhashavadamagil Karashtqan'.
The relationship between identity hegemony and resistance is articulate
succulently by historian Dr Teotonio R de Souza, relying on Boventura de
Souza Santos:
When someone speaks about one's own identity, reactions to hegemonic
relationships in a society are necessarily implied, or there is
always an implied feeling of subordination. In fact, someone in a
hegemonic position rarely cares to raise questions of self-identity.
The questions arise from those who seek self-assurance and
recognition from the hegemonic group or groups. From a successful
response to the questionings results usually a foundational
interpretation that transforms the limitations of self-image into a
surplus of self-projection.
Such foundational interpretations are produced by creative and
inspired native figures that seek to represent their people. Tagore
did it for India, and apparently also for Bangla Desh, where also
his poem was chosen to be the national anthem. Camoes and Fernando
Pessoa did it for Portugal. We in Goa could think of Varde
Valaulikar (1877-1946) or of T.B. Cunha (1891-1958) as
representative figures of Goan identity builders.
Their cultural creations seek to surpass time-limitations, absorbing
the entire past and projecting the image into a limitless future.
The resultant identity appears then as a solid construction with
roots into mythical and un-dated past, and with an assurance of
resisting challenges of the present and the future.
*From: Goan Identity: One, Many or None /By Teotonio R. de Souza/*
http://www.goacom.com/goanow/2001/jan/goanidentity.html, Accessed on
April 1 2005.
In confronting what you called myths with facts, you seem to ignored the
other profound meaning of ?myth? as meta reality. You presentation came
across to me at times as similar to the performance of some rationalist
movements: They try to debunk sants and saints by organising shows where
they reveal that the miracles performed by these religious people are simple
or not so simple tricks (fictions) performed by magicians.
In so doing, they hope in vain that the common man will give up his 'belief'
and surrender to science and reason. There efforts are in vain because they
seem to completely deny the existence of myth as 'fundamental truth' (meta
reality). In this sense, in our time, Science is the greatest myth (in both
senses).
In so far as you did not analyse the myths of Konkani as meta realities, you
came across to me as having ignored the seminal contribution of linguistics
to our understanding of myth. You therefore may have been more of an
activist rather than a linguist at work during that particular performance
on April 15. (Some suggested that you were belittling Konkani -- certainly
you have worked too long in, for and about the language to have even the
remotest interest in doing so. If at all there was any belittling it was
that of linguistics and myth.)
Let a thousand Konkani(s) bloom! I am sharing this letter with others who
may be interested in theme that we are discussing.
With regards.
Alito Siqueira
PS: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write to you and for
listening to me.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alito Siqueira was born in Africa and returned to Goa
early, where he has taken a keen interest in issues, concerns and the
complexities of the place. He has been at the Goa University's sociology
department since the mid-eighties. A true teacher, Siqueira is very
provocative in encouraging his students in think along unconventional lines,
and his understanding of grassroot Goan issues is both encyclopedic and
impressive.
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