Whose view and for whom?
The identity of any group/community/society de pends to a large extent on history the role played by local heroes. For those of us who were born after the liberation of Goa all our information about the freedom movement is gleaned from our parents and elders and what we have learnt from history books. There is no history without interpretation and every history is written from a particular point of view. So it is very important to know who writes history and for whom. While any interpretation retains certain elements and leaves out others, I fail to understand how an account of the freedom struggle of Goa focuses so much on forced conversions to Christianity when it should devote more time to the tremendous sacrifices and effort put in by the freedom fighters against the Portuguese. What place does conversions have in a VCD on the freedom struggle of Goa? This film gives the impression that the Goan freedom struggle was a struggle against religious oppression and not
against the colonial rule. Young impressionable minds, after watching this film, are sure to think that Christians are evil and that freedom from Christianity was what the freedom fighters fought for. It is a sad commentary on the freedom struggle of Goa when a documentary on that subject focuses on the missionaries� activities and the many petty revolts and uprisings against the Portuguese rule from 16th to 19th centuries, which were manifestations of the need of sections of the people to protect their own interests. The fact that the revolt of Mateus de Castro Mahale in 1654, a priest from Divar who attempted to free Goa from the Portuguese colonial yoke with the help of the Adil Shah of Bijapur, is omitted and the attacks of Shivaji and Shambhaji on Goa find a mention in the documentary gives a clue as to who the target audience is. Also the film repeatedly and graphically depicts the use of brute force by the Portuguese soldiers under the guidance of the clergy to convert the
local population. One thing is apparent that this film does not have the Goan people as its target audience, who have a rich tradition of respect for different religions and have lived in religious harmony for years. By showing the priests wearing long hoods and oversize crosses and with hatred burning in their eyes, looking more like members of the scary Klu Klux clan, the film makes a caricature of them and deliberately makes a mockery of Christian symbols. This type of depiction of priests is an affront to well educated, intelligent and committed missionaries like Francis Xavier, Joseph Vaz and others who worked extensively among the lowliest of the low, the sick, the lepers, and who crusaded against age-old evils like superstition, caste-based inequalities, child marriages, practice of sati, etc. If the film makers wished to document the missionary activities in Portuguese Goa they could do it in a separate documentary, but without reducing missionary work only to forced
conversions.
This film stereotypes the Portuguese as devils, very cruel and inhuman, always inebriated and smoking cigars, and laughing sadistically at the shrieks of the suffering Goans. Some freedom fighters recently said that though the Portuguese are shown as Rakshas in the film, their experiences tell a different story. It also stereotypes the missionaries as evil men scheming in the dark, completely obsessed with spreading Christianity by any means possible. Any historical account, especially one that is shown to students in schools has to give a complete picture of what happened and should show both sides of the story. One can distort and falsify history, but no historian who follows the historical method and loves truth will attempt to do so. The film may be showing historical facts, but by picking and choosing certain provocative and out of context references, and by exaggerating and depicting them as the entire truth and as facts is presenting a distorted picture of
history. The Education Director while speaking in defense of the CD said that its aim is to make the younger generation of Goa aware about the sacrifices made during Goa�s freedom struggle. I would have been very happy if the CD had to bring out the human cost of the freedom struggle of Goa. For example in the attack on the Betim police station on 25 October 1955 Mohan Ranade suffered bullet injuries and fell while escaping. He bravely ordered his colleagues to leave him behind and to think of the struggle ahead. The judge who tried him was a Goan and was impressed by this act of bravery. Though he was forced to sentence him to 26 years of imprisonment he showed his respect for Ranade, due to which he himself was transferred to a far off place. Ranade himself recalls the way the Portuguese prisoners open-heartedly welcomed him and became his good friends when he was in a jail in Lisbon, making him change his misconceptions about the Portuguese in general. I am sure our young
students would have appreciated viewing these human stories of brave gestures and actions and at the same time human failings and betrayal on both sides, rather than gory scenes of rapes and brutality. While force was used in the conversion process, it is an insult to the intelligence and ingenuity of the Goans and the Portuguese and the missionaries to show that Goans were converted only by brute force. History teaches us that no power or authoritarian regime has been able to impose its will on the people for a long time only through brute force. Christianity has not survived and flourished in Goa for the past 450 years only because of the use of force by the Portuguese. If the struggle for freedom was a struggle against conversion then why do thousands of Hindus flock every year to Old Goa or for other Church feasts? Rowena Robinson who has done her PhD on lived Christianity in Southern Goa says that a system of disprivileges and constraints was central to the strategy of
conversion in Goa. Jobs and offices were reserved for those who converted and denied to those who did not. Places of worship and sacred images were destroyed and the public practice of Hinduism prohibited. For the people in pre-Portuguese period caste identity was more important than religious identity, Hinduism as a religion was yet to get its nomenclature and form then. So many of the higher caste groups did not resist conversion, as long as they could hold on to their caste privileges. On the other hand social mobility was often part of the low caste converts� agenda. For example converts changed to non-traditional, pollution-neutral occupations like baking, wine making or cooking for the priests and experienced upward mobility. Also at that time the religion of the people was the religion of the ruler and so when the village leaders were converted they in turn influenced the other caste groups to convert. This does not imply that force was not used by the missionaries and the
Portuguese to convert, but force does not mean killing the locals mercilessly with swords and guns or tying them forcibly to wooden crosses or throwing mud in the faces of Brahmin priests or raping women. By only highlighting those scenes the CD presents an incomplete picture of the complex process of conversion. People who are really interested in and proud of the rich legacy of our freedom fighters should make films that spread values of love, justice, peace, fellowship, sharing, instead of distrust and hatred. If Goa has been a model of communal harmony for so many years in spite of the long and harsh Portuguese rule it is because of the mutual trust and friendship that bonds different communities together. We need to consolidate these inherent strengths and encourage the syncretic exchanges between communities. We cannot allow the tremendous sacrifices that our freedom fighters went through to go down the drain by allowing a few vested interests to spread fear and hatred among
our children who are the future pillars of a united and strong nation.
(The author is a research scholar at the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Goa)
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