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Goa Suraj ; Migrant voting rights
Though I have followed the controversy only intermittently, I find there seem
to be two underlying issues under discussion: the unfettered right of everyone
from India to walk into Goa whenever he/she feels like it and hair-splitting
over the word 'outsider'
In regard to the first point, granted that one has the 'constitutional' right
to go anywhere you want in India, because willy-nilly you are a part of that
country, the interests of Goa and its capacity to absorb these migrants
adequately should also, I believe, be of paramount importance. Someone in the
columns mentioned that Goans had had unhampered access to India and so, the
reverse too was in perfect order. Quite true, theoretically, mutatis mutandis.
We have to consider that at the the best of times, the total percentage of
Goans in India was probably no more than 0.01%.One may therefore admit ten, one
hundred and one thousand times that number of outsiders in Goa. But when the
figure reaches an absurd 40% it is time to sit up and take more than simple
notice, because that is like a boa-constrictor embrace waiting to snuff out
your very identity! And it results in the polemic foisting of a BJP Government
on a Goan population that, on its own, would never have elected
one.
On the second point, there seems to be some sophistry in play in coming to
terms with the term 'outsider', though it is so easy to define when applied to
peoples. And language is not the sole, or even the main, criterion. That is why
a Kannadiga speaking Salcete Konkani is still an outsider. I am an outsider in
Gujrat, Bengal or Kerala. But I continue being an outsider even in France,
Spain or Italy though I speak their languages, am quite conversant with their
literature, history and general culture and adore their music and food! This is
because an outsider is one who does not commune with the shared traditions,
lore and mind of that particular people, in short, does not partake of the
'soul' of that people ('soul' here not used in the metaphysical sense). Whether
one wants to admit it or not, we Goans
have our own distinguishing, unmistakable identity, different from that of
other Indians. An anecdotal reference apropos helps illustrate the point:
On a visit to the USA, we were invited for dinner at an acquaintance, a
Mangalorean family. The only other guests were an Andhraite Catholic and his
sixteen-years old daughter, and the man's second wife, an America(white,nurse)
who had never met a Goan and for whom Goa might be synonymous with a newly
discovered comet or an extinct dinosaur species! The hours flew, with good
drinks, even better food and good conversation. After almost four hours, when
time to leave, the American lady asked my son-in-law:How is it that
you(i.e.he,my daughter, wife and self) are so different from them?(indicating
her husband and daughter and probably, subliminally, his many Indian friends
since he entertained a lot, being a contractor).. In Portuguese they say A bom
entendedor, meia palavra basta(Literally, for a good 'understander' half a
word suffices).
The great British,Catholic writer Graham Greene, visited Goa in l962 to gauge
the after effects of the December l961 events. On returning to England, he
wrote a very insightful article entitled GOA the UNIQUE. With uncanny, if for
us tragic, foresight he predicted to-day's situation to the T( excepting the
BJP episode because there was no BJP then !).
Portugal, he wrote helped to form the special character of Goa and Goa's
character may survive Portugal for a year or two but you cannot hang a skull at
the entrance of Goa as you can on a mango tree to avert the envious
eye....................Outside Goa one is aware all the time of the
interminable repetition of the ramshackle, the enormous pressure of the poverty
flowing, branching, extending like flood water .This is not a question of
religion: the Goan Hindu village can be distinguished as easily from the Hindu
village of India as the Christian, and there is little need to drive home the
point at the boundary with placards.........In the first Indian village outside
Goa on the road to Bombay you are back to the mud huts and thatch, which are
almost a sign of affluence compared with the horrible little cabins made out of
palm fronds and bits of canvas and any piece of old metal on the outskirts of
Bombay......................Industrialization is bound to come, a
tourist department has opened in Pangim, and there are great beaches awaiting
great hotels, whilst just over the hills lies the enormous poverty of the
sub-continent, ready to spread along the seaboard as soon as the barriers are
raised. (Bold face mine)
Could anyone have been more prophetic about our situation?
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