GOAN LAND ‘GROWS’ By Valmiki Faleiro Goa’s land is fast being alienated. Sooner than we think, our identity will be gone, forever. We almost are a minority in our own house. Someday, the rare Goan in Goa may be glorified in a museum niche. In a way, we need not despair. Pardon my flippancy, but we overlook one phenomenal aspect of Goan land – it grows! The thought won’t cross our minds, habituated as we are to the daily phenomenon. ‘Growing’ Goan land is so common a happenstance that we hardly notice it. I was sitting in a courtroom of the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court many years ago. Waiting for my advocate, himself a future Justice, over my Writ Petition querying why motorcycle helmets were mandated for all except Sikhs. Whether the Sardar’s turban had the same protective value as the ISI-mark helmet or whether government was of the opinion that there was nothing worth protection inside the Sardarji’s head. Arguments on a judicial appeal were in progress. Two of Goa’s arguably best legal minds were arguing. The matter pertained to a boundary dispute between two adjoining landowners in some Goan village. With a plethora of land records – colonial and post-1961, including land registry descriptions, ‘matriz’ descriptions, surveys (old and new), record of rights, etc. – one would imagine there was no scope for a land boundary dispute in Goa. Hold on! The senior visiting judge on the bench was a keenly observant and sharp-minded Parsi gentleman, Justice Barucha if I err not, who later rose to the country’s highest court. The issue at stake was that the common boundary line between the two properties did not match. Viewed from one side, the boundary transgressed into the other property. And vice versa. Title deeds and supporting documents do at best describe the boundaries of a property. Only the land survey map shows them as existing on the ground, on paper, in a proportionately reduced scale. But, then, catch Goa’s land survey maps to be accurate. Each of the Senior Counsels argued the case of each of the two warring property owners. Both seemed right! Survey maps produced by the owners of their respective property substantiated the fact that indeed, either or both the adjoining properties had, over time, morphed their boundaries in such manner that the line of their common boundary overlapped. In other words, either or both properties had ‘grown’ in size. Listening intently to the arguments and counter-arguments by the two learned legal luminaries, the judge, his brow deeply furrowed and with much deliberation, finally observed: “All of life,” the Hon’ble Justice began, “I’ve known two things in the world that grow naturally – a healthy baby and a healthy business.” He then paused, looked even more intently at the contending Senior Counsels and, a faint smile now playing on his countenance, said, “But, for the first time, I see that even land grows naturally in Goa!” The suppressed giggles in the courtroom were almost audible. The crux was, while the area of one property as it were grew automatically, the area of the adjacent property correspondingly diminished! Mysteriously shifting property boundaries should rank the single biggest cause of property litigation in Goa. The extent of land boundary litigation in our courts of law should easily convince us that compulsive encroaching into the neighbour’s property is a national Goan trait. To me, mercifully, the import of this ‘growing land’ phenomenon had hit home early. The ancestral land on which I live, mercifully again, is bounded by a municipal road on one side and a Comunidade watercourse (‘nallah’) on the other. That leaves just two flanks to encroach or being encroached upon… Let’s keep that interesting story for next Sunday. (To conclude.) COMMUNAL CLASH? For the third time, a private row near Margao was converted into a public headache for the town. This new phenomenal private-public ‘conversion’ formula needs two duelists, one a Hindu and the other a Muslim migrant, to fight over any personal matter. The Sangh Parivar apparatus – whose visible face is the Bajrang Dal, the other ominous arms hiding behind a ‘purdah’ – immediately descends on Pimplapedd, Margao’s centrally-located place of Hindu worship. The Sangh Parivar then spews venom and shuts the town. Margao’s secular voices of sanity are drowned in the din. What kind of BJP politics is this? Digambar Kamat must also cease to be regarded as the Protector General of Muslim migrants. Both sides – Parrikar and Digambar – must learn from world history: that politics of hate has never paid long-term dividends anywhere before. The monster, once big, has only turned round to bite the master. (Ends.) The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at: http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330 ============================================================================== The above article appeared in the July 6, 2008 edition of the Herald, Goa