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in Navhind Times, Sunday, 4th December 2005
http://www.navhindtimes.com/stories.php?part=mag&Story_ID=120340
Invasion by Alien Cultures?
by Mario Cabral e Sa
The wonders culture can cause! Rather, the misconceptions cultural
gendarmes can generate and thrive on! These are topics no longer for
socio-anthropologists, but the way things are happening in Goa or reported
as happening in the daily newspapers, are themes for specialists in
behavioural sciences, for therapists of mind sets.
The Anjuna Flea Bazaar, its more sophisticated derivate, the Saturday Night
Bazaar which at the moment is still looking for a venue having had found
several village leaders prepared to welcome it with open arms. The fisher
folks on the littoral are prepared to rough it out in make-shift shelters
and rent out their houses to flea-bag tourists for the duration of the
tourist season. The latter are a strange blend of genuine inconformists, who
find refuge in narcotics, promiscuity and on the less bleak side, good,
innovative music, some of it fusion of various cultures, Indian, Jazz,
Celtic. All this indicates the arrival of new blends of culture on which
assorted petty traders, innkeepers and none-too-few vagrants make a living.
The gendarmes of shud culture seem to have nothing against this massive
contemporary invasion of alien culture.
But speak of Fontainhas and you have unfurled the red rag before them. They
get furious and menacing. Fontainhas, the gendarmes say, reeks of Portuguese
culture and hence it must be wiped and from the face of the earth. What of
it if one reminds them that the red peppers of the lovely coddis only we
Goans know to make, are made from the lal-mirchi the Portuguese brought to
India? When they seek relief, much against the doctors advice, in a
soothing puff of their favourite tembri or cigarette, do they remember who
brought tobacco to India? Or take a bowl of fruit salad and they will find
in it mossambis the Portuguese brought from Mozambique, the papaya from
Malacca, grapes from back home. Do they puke when they realize it?
Fundacao Oriente, they argue, is spreading Portuguese culture. In fact,
Oriente has been hibernating for some time now, perhaps to shield themselves
from the wrath of desh premis in its neigbourhood. Our Hare Krishna Sadhus
and Sadhvinis, on the other hand, are saving the world taking Hinduism to
the heart of the American!
Isnt it time we all realized that cultures cannot be corralled in a stable?
That they are meant to be spread, absorbed, pollinated. They make the world
a much richer and enjoyable place to live in?
Let us not get into history right now. Because that will only exarcebate the
irrational and the blind-folded. But think in your sane moments who is at
the root of the sins of omission and commission you are losing your tempers
over and use whatever intelligence you still retain in your cranial space.
Regret it if you must, albeit it is too late for it, that the Hindu grandees
who were furious with the Islamic Bijapuris, invited Albuquerque to take
Goa. Even brilliant mathematicians and calculators err once a while. And
that, obviously, was the case.
About the other (among several lesser) grievances the manner of
acquisition of Goa in 1961, read the Supreme Court judgement by a full
constitutional bench, read the pleadings by Gupte, the brilliant Advocate
General of India, who, in our Saxonic alas, alien to India system of
adversarial law persuaded the five justices (a unanimous decision, if you
please) that the acquisition of Goa in 1961 had been by military action.
Not a word about liberation, no claim whatever that the acquisition had
been desired by the people of Goa.
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* G * O * A * N * E * T *** C * L * A * S * S * I * F * I * E * D * S *
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Spread the Christmas cheer - even when you're not here!
Send Christmas Greetings to your loved ones in Goa.
2005 Christmas Package - Flowers, Bubbles and Layers of Love.
http://www.goa-world.com/expressions/xmas/
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