Sunday Column
Text: GoanVoice UK Newsletter Sunday 1 May 2011
http://www.goanvoice.org.uk/
Who the
bleep cares about Goa’s freedom fighters?
Many years
ago, I got myself a cyber-troll. This man, or so he claimed to be, would not
leave me alone. As cyber-obsessions go, his turned from admiration to a
delusion that I was evil incarnate. It’s hard to tell whether he suffered from
some sort of mental disorder, many obsessive people do, but whatever it was, he
would harangue me, night and day, on one particular cyber-forum, misconstruing
and misrepresenting anything I had to say. In sheer desperation, the other
participants on that forum finally came up with the rule that only civil
discourse would be tolerated. Now, this was a bit tricky. His entire DNA, by
this point, had been re-engineered to hate and abuse me, and he couldn’t cope
with a situation where he didn’t have a platform to do that. So he found a way
around it. He replaced my name with other words, like “person” or “thing.” The
people on the forum complained that they couldn’t understand what he was
saying, until I pointed out that they merely replace the word “person” with
Selma and what he actually wanted to say would become crystal clear.
This
parable is frighteningly similar to Goa’s freedom fighters. Let me qualify the
phrase Freedom Fighters. The real Freedom Fighters, the ones who spent their
time in the darkened cells of the Peniche Fortress or got thrashed within an
inch of their life with a palmatoire, in the cells of Aguada are long dead.
What we have are the dregs of society
masquerading as its champions. These freedom fighters, who were probably still
suckling at their mother’s breast when the good fight was being fought, are
determined to get rid of Portugal from Goa, 50 years after the fact. In a
recent spate of abuse, they insist the cultural institution, Fundacao Oriente,
is a Portuguese intelligence agency, which is a bit surprising because the
Portuguese may have been good lovers but they have hardly ever been recommended
for their espionage. History tells us that when they wanted to spy, they hired
Shenvi Brahmins. Now, to the casual
observer, the Freedom-Fighters’ obsession with the Portuguese is an enigma. But
the key to understanding this enigma and this coded language is simple. You
only have to replace the word “Portuguese” with “Catholic Goan” and all becomes
crystal clear.
The
accusation that it is the Fundacao Oriente and the Camoes Institute fermenting
divisions within Goan society deserves the contempt with which it has been
uttered. If the White man’s gifts are indeed tainted then let us lobby for the
rest of India to have the same dismal relationship with Britain as our Freedom
fighters want us to have with Portugal. Let’s cut off diplomatic relations with
the UK, close down their embassy, withdraw from the Commonwealth, and ensure
that no Commonwealth events are ever held in India so that a British sovereign
need never again walk on Indian soil. Let’s ban English, dispatch tout suite
their multinational companies, say no to foreign aid and workers, and most
certainly let’s accuse William Dalrympleof being
a secret agent intent on destroying India through one literary festival at a
time. All this would of course be considered ridiculous so why do we do it with
respect to Portugal?
I can
think of many definitions of colonialism; one of them is denying colonised
populations the ability to mature. The fact that our Freedom fighters refuse to
mature, refuse to allow their minds the ability to discern fact from fiction,
tells me that our Freedom fighters are indeed still colonised, not by the
Portuguese but their own limitations and stupidity. At a certain point in our
collective lives, we have to assign history its proper place and get on with
the hard, nebulous aspects of living; of creating society, of managing
democracy. When we hold history hostage to current political leveraging, we are
refusing to learn from it, to study it without censure and without the burden
of guilt.
In all
this I don’t blame the freedom fighters. It could well be, that some of them
are nearing
senility and some others, like my troll, suffering from madness. I
blame the government for creating a congenial atmosphere in which this
Right-wing, lunatic fringe carnival thrives, whose real purpose is to be a
thorn in the flesh of the Catholic community. Indeed, it is the Government’s
way of pitting one community against another, so that tumultuous vote banks are
spontaneously created like so many waves on a foam-created beach, on which they
can safely ride to power, election after election.
This year,
we commemorate 50 years of Goa’s liberation. The real question is, what does
freedom mean to us Goans if we refuse to grow-up as responsible human beings?