The word ‘Bhumiputra’ has brought pain and agony to Goa Putras. Goans have been let down by their government. The pain is not just in the nomenclature but also in the possibilities that the bill is opened for anyone who has 30 years of domicile in Goa. It has brought about a deep sense of loss of the present and the future along with an underlying sense of being cheated.
The bill has acquired a meaning of treason and betrayal by our government. It also appears to be siding with our non-Goan others and appears to have a secret plot against every Goan. Goans of all walks of life have felt de-Goanised and delegitimized by the new bill passed in our legislative assembly without any discussion. It has brought memories of the merger politics. This time, it seems to make Goa implode from within. It seems to have written destruction of Goa, Goaness and Goans all over it.
Some may even imagine that it has opened us to colonisation but this time it is from our very own Indians. There is very real danger of Goa becoming a slum with legal weaponisation of land encroachments. The fears are that it will dilute everything Goan, is haunting us today. The situation has become complex with real and imaginary fears crossing each other.
We have lost our innocence and feel anguished, angry and agitated. The use of the term to name the nefarious bill has called into question everything that we stood for as Goans. We feel that grievous injustice is done to us. It is not just the violation of the meaning of the word ‘Bhumiputra’ but that manner in which it was used and the context in which it was used has added injury to the insult.
It has challenged our unnamable but precious ways of belonging to Goa. It seems to have almost exiled Goans in Goa. The character of Goa that we know appears to be in danger. The meaning that is introduced into the already in use word ‘Bhumiputra’ has challenged everything that the word stood for and evoked among Goans. It has washed clean and squeezed out the meaning of the word ‘Bhumiputra’ that was close to Goan hearts.
Thus, the Government touched the raw nerve of every Goan when it sort to hollow out our collective sense of belonging to Goa and Goans. In several ways, it has denuded our many ways of being Goans. Each of us feels let down and humiliated by both the content and how the bill was passed. It has almost vapourised all that we as Goans together hold as sacred and priceless to us.
This emptying of the connotation and denotation of the term ‘Bhumiputra’ has brought a cancelling effect on us. It has erased and cancelled our Goan-ness and multiple ways of being Goans. We have the troubling sense that our very being as Goans is being snatched from us and is being given to non-Goan others. This alienating sense of being othered from Goa and ways of being and belonging to Goa and Goans has brought a kind of pain of being uprooted from Goy, Goykar and Goykarponn.
Although the bill introduces new regulations about ownership of houses, land etc., it cannot be merely reduced to a status of simply being a law. It has become a Damocles Sword that is dangling on the head of each Goan. It is threatening to de-Goanise us. Something beautiful about us seems to be dying. This painful sense of impending death and annihilation of everything that we together consider as the good life of a Goan has set us all on the road to save Goa, Goans and Goanness from sinking into a vanishing point.
The bill, thus, has become a black hole to us Goans and has trapped within it all that we as Goans live and die for. The damage is done and a change of name may not bring about any kind of healing as it can only further fuel the sense of alienation. It may become even worse as the change of name of the bill cannot change the condition. It may give us a feeling that the new name has simply put the fearsome possibilities that it has opened into invisibility. This sense of a secret plot has several unfortunate lines of alienation and can produce a movement to recover the lost.
Now, a mere changing of the name ‘Bhumiputra’ can only reinforce the sense that may make us think that the government is attempting to rub salt over our injuries. It can only mean the government, realising the error of its nomenclature, is now trying to hide the process of de-territorialising and disinheriting Goans.
Thus, the Government is caught in troubled waters and can only opt to dump the bill for the sake of all Goans, failing which there is a very real danger that the government itself will be dumped in the next electoral husting.
There is a danger in perception level that our very own government will begin to look like our enemy. The new Goa that is designed by the bill has become synonymous with the destruction of Goan, Goans and Goanness.
(The author is parish priest of St Francis Xavier Church at Borim)
