It appears that all the effort Dr Jack Sequeira put in to help Goa retain its identity by the Opinion Poll and attain statehood in 1987 is being flushed down the drain. Goa is inexorably moving towards being an appendage of Maharashtra or worse still being amalgamated with it. The Marathi Bhasha Nirdhar Committee claims that Marathi is widely spoken in Goa and should be declared the mother tongue of Goa. Subhash Velingkar, the RSS hatemonger wants to create Marathi vote banks in all 40 constituencies of Goa, according to him much injustice has been done to Marathi all these years and this needs to be rectified. Statues of Chhatrapati Shivaji are being erected across the state almost on a weekly basis. CM Pramod Sawant who himself has roots in Maharashtra is silent and complicit in this sinister scheme to erase our unique Goan identity. We keep on blaming 'outsiders' for settling in Goa and making niz Goenkars strangers in their own land but we fail to see the enemy within. The way things are going it won't be long before the Centre promulgates an ordinance to merge Goa with its northern neighbour.
