Let's not bluff ourselves that all is hunky dory on the communal front in Goa. Things have been fuelled here for too long
Every time there is some conflict or controversy, we go back to the old trope -- Goans are a peaceful community. We've lived in peace and amity for so long. Now, someone is trying to ruin this.
But, is this true, really?
Take a few responses to the statue-and-idol conflicts which have been dogging Goa in recent weeks, and you'll get an answer to this. Or half an answer.
Dr Oscar Rebello, the talented diagnostician from the world of medicine, makes a comment in a column titled 'The Season of Madness'. He comments, among other things: "It is true that Goan Hindus and Christians have always lived amicably and have, over the centuries, developed a syncretic, unique, and largely peaceful culture. But there are flash points."
Debating this issue, and blaming the government for allowing it to deteriorate, the RG (Revolutionary Goans) supremo Manoj Parab lambasted "non-Goans". He blamed them for bringing in the communal virus into this small region. Parab's stand is not surprising, given that his ethnicity-based party sees black or white largely (if not entirely) on the "Goan"-versus-"non-Goan" fault lines.
Even more interesting was the reported statement by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant. He said in his Independence Day August 15 speech: "Since 1961, Hindus, Catholics, and Muslims in Goa have lived in unity and celebrated each other’s festivals together."
What Sawant is implying is that things were bad till 1961. But after that magical date, everything changed for the better, and suddenly things turned alright.
Let's call a spade a spade. Goa's people have been largely interdependent for ages now. They all acknowledge that they share common roots. To claim that everyone is a Hindu in one way or another (as the late Mapusa MLA and deputy chief minister Francisco Casimiro Jerónimo Agnelo Pinto de Souza once did, was stretching things a bit (?) too far.
Yet, at the same time, our politicians have been actively playing divide-and-rule games for long now. The Portuguese did it in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while our post-1961 politicians have won elections and got people to forget their misdeeds by playing up on religious and even caste divides.
If you look a bit deeper, you'll find discriminatory laws and policies that affect one section of the population. Not just before 1961, but after as well. Take tenancy or the Medium of Instruction, for example, and how these played out.
Goa has seen low intensity, and sometimes fairly pretty obvious, bigotry of various kinds. There had been misunderstandings between religions.
Goa may not be much prone (though increasingly it is) to the Hindu-versus-Muslim bitterness that struck the rest of India since Partition, or even before. But conflict between its major communities here is nothing new, even if low-intensity and more concealed.
Activists have pointed to the bitterness and hate spread among communities in Curchorem-Sanvordem around 2006, or the Zuarinagar-Sancoale flashpoint during the Ram Navami rally of April 2022. Groups like the Citizens' Initiative for Communal Harmony, have done a good job in documenting and fact-finding on such issues.
In colonial times, the Portuguese sometimes used religion to consolidate their hold on Goa. Let us not forget, however, that they were also pretty "secular" in ensuring they got support from Hindu and even Muslim sections at various points in their history. Goa's history strongly reminds us: There are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, just permanent interests.
For a long time, though, the history of colonial Goa has been manipulated and distorted to make it seem as if it was only about conflict based on religious lines. This is simply not true. Even within Portugal itself, the relationship between Church and State has been complex.
Catholicism there existed locally before Portugal was formed. Portugal's first king of Afonso Henriques, ruling between 1139 and 1185, accepted vassal state status from the Pope in return for papal recognition of the nation. Later, the Church helped Portugal to expel the `Moors' (Muslims from the Iberian Peninsular) from its southern regions.
But in time, the Church's position declined in Portuguese society. Things changed with the overseas empire, when religion became an agent of the state.. Then came the mid-sixteenth century Inquisition. Contrary to the dominant perception of it in Goa, this was not aimed at converting people of other faiths into Catholicism but rather to enforce the `purity' of the Catholic faith itself.
By the eighteenth century, sentiment against the Church grew again. Keeping with this trend, the Marquis de Pombal, who ruled from 1750 to 1777, expelled the powerful Catholic order of the Jesuits in 1759, cut relations with Rome and all education came State control.
Anti-clericalism dominated Portugal even after Pombal's ouster. By 1821, the Inquisition was abolished. Religious orders were banned, and the Church lost much of its property.
By the second half of the nineteenth century, Church-State relations improved. But anti-clericalism emerged with the First Republic in 1910. Education was secularised, Church properties were seized. Steps brought about in this period included curbs on the pealing of church bells, disallowing a clerical garb to be worn on the streets, and bans on some religious festivals.
The Republic was replaced by a conservative, Right-wing government which dominated Portugal for over four decades of the twentieth century, and till the end of Portuguese rule in Goa in 1961. We need to understand such complex trends.
Somehow, by a selective and persistently communalised rewriting of history by some, it is shown as if Portuguese rule was entirely religion based. Not just that, the actions of the former rulers is somehow extended to their coreligionists in today's Goa. Thus, in the early 21st century we are repeating the mistakes of part of the 16th.
Let's not bluff ourselves that all is hunky dory on the communal front in Goa. Things have been fuelled here for too long. We need to understand who is stoking conflict, and why. What is their ideological moorings that prompts them to do this? What do they have to gain by bringing turmoil to a place which -- while it has some troubled times in the past -- has also been endowed richly by nature, its talented people and even history.
Once understood, it might be easier to avoid getting taken in by those with dastardly agendas.
