Free Thoughts on World Goa Day The World Goa Day has become more than just a concept, but who and how it got conceived has become a moot point on this year's celebration. The conceivers must be given the due and, since there has been no challenge to Goa Sudharop's claim that the idea was first mooted by it, we must concede their claim to be the birth parent. On the other hand, it takes more than just conception of an idea to be formulated into an action plan. In this respect, Rene Barreto deserves the fullest support and encouragement. When the history of such a thing called GWD will come to be written in a decade or more, those who kept pushing for it and kept it running, no matter it kept growing or slowed down, would get their names written in bold letters. Since the Indian and Pakistan Independence Days have just passed, it becomes an annual exercise to discuss and debate how the Partition happened, and whose idea was it to have a nation called Pakistan. The idea is often said to have been espoused by the poet Iqbal and later taken on by at least another leader before Jinnah embraced it without much of a choice, though his heart remained in undivided India. L.K. Advani's recent statement on Jinnah's secularism created lot of heat in India, more so in the BJP, which almost resulted in a revolt against the party president. History was on Advani's side and he survived, for he spoke no untruth. The World Goa Day was more targeted at diaspora Goans, if I remember correctly. Rene rightly wanted the Goans spread around the world to join in unison with their homeland, celebrating the soil, song and that elusive, indefinable world, Goenkarponn. It took the diaspora Goans some time to warm up to the idea, not because they disliked it but because of lack of time and temperance to do what seemed an abject notion. Aren't there enough village social, association dances and picnics that displayed the Goan spirit in many forms? Should another one be added separately or incorporated in some of the scheduled functions, such as Viva Goa in Toronto, on a date other than notified for the World Goa Day? As we have seen over the past few years, more associations feel that tying up with other groups in other lands for celebrating the World Goa Day is worth the time and, in some cases, money. It's the impact of immigration that one focuses to remember and reconcile one's thoughts and feelings to the places of their origins or their forefathers. It's the immigrant's quest to occupy the "Third Space" as the noted scholar Homi K. Bhabha has maintained in his The Location of Culture. Further to Bhabha's theory, a writer such as Salman Rushdie has maintained that Indians or, to a larger extent, immigrants create "imaginary homelands" in their disaporic places. Other writers have noted that there are diasporas within India, such as Goans in Mumbai, Keralites in Delhi, etc. To read Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak in her deconstruction of Derrida, especially the subject of "Other", and also other Indian writers and scholars such as Arjun Appadorai, Vijay Mishra, Bhiku Parekh, just to give few names, and through the books and essays by writers such as Anita Desai, Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, Meena Alexander, Bharati Mukherjee, to give just a few names, is to understand the underlying forces that shape the diasporic imagination. There are writers of other nationalities who have sought a peep into their own diasporic communities and no one has better defined the postcolonial world than Edward Said, whose book, Orientalism, brought new focus to colonialism and its effects, and giving us his "politics of dispossession." Coming to Goans, we have seen similar traits in the writings of Peter Nazareth, Victor Rangel-Ribeiro and Lino Leitao. The heart of the matter is the ties to Goa and how new writers, as we have seen in the writing of Silviano Barbosa, and Ben Antao, though I haven't read his debut novel, Blood and Nemesis, expopound their Goan feelings to the land that's far and beyond physically, but resides firmly in their imagination. It was such a pull that kept Naipual in close proximity to his Indian roots, and those who have read A House for Mr. Biswas would agree how Naipaul who wrote that to be an Indian from Trinidad was not only to be "unlikely and exotic" but also a "little fradulent." After the ethnic riots in England (Lancashire and Yorkshire) where youths of Indian and Pakistan origins fought racist attacks, Naipual wrote, "I see that generations of free milk and orange juice led to an army of thugs." Such a remark comes to mind in the midst of what has happened to Britain in the past few weeks, and how the subject of multiculturalism has come to the fore because of the call for Muslims who are not "British" enough to leave the country. Goa is said to be multicultural and has often been portrayed as a model for racial tolerance. But with the growing migration from other places, rise is given to the fear of Goan identity fading into the background. In the current battle for Konkani in Romi script, the faultlines becomes visbile. Wendell Rodricks's call to dispora Goans to come to the aid of the state is sensible, but fraught with fear. One need to read between the lines of his message and also through what he says in the current issue of Goa Today. The very mention of "corruption, neglect and apathy" are words loaded with caution. He calls us to join the resident Goans in the battle. But, to be generous, we may win the battle, however small, but will we win the war? I was a witness to the farce that took place in the name of NRI Goan event in Panaji. Chandrakant Keni's message on the WGD is welcome, but taking into consideration the unsustained efforts of the NRI-Goa to consolidate the unity of Goans across the globe the words sound hollow. The WGD could mean different things to different Goans. Those Goans who haven't reconciled to the fact that Goa is "liberated" and now part of the nation called India, where it belonged and should have remained if not for the Portuguese interlude, the WGD could be nostalgic with Portuguese colours. For others who have no hangup of the Portuguese regime, the WGD is something of an opportunity to coil up tightly into Mother India's womb. Diaspora Goans must continue to work harder to strengthen the ties that bind to Goa and, at the same time, continue on their quest to occupy the "Third Space."
Eugene Correia ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs