Guddhameva Jayate !

Guddhameva Jayate!

TEOTONIO R DE SOUZA laments the fact that Goans who try to be critically creative get little support and encouragement

T aking stock of the year ending – one more of the many that have ended and others that will follow and end – are we not more inclined than ever to be driven down the path of a Labadda Upanishad rather than to be elevated by the Mundaka Upanishad? In other words, the preferred motto of the national citizens today seems to be ‘Guddhamella Jayate’! In Bardeshi lingo guddhamella would be pronounced as guddhameva – that rhymes well with the ‘Satyameva’ of the Indian national motto. Dalgado’s Konkani-Portuguese dictionary provides the meaning of guddhamella as pacto secreto, conluio (secret pact, conspiracy). Instead of the Upanishadic world of mumukshu, we now live in the brave new world of aparavidya where truth is stranger than fiction. While truth forces one to look at the reality outside confronting us, fiction promises autonomy and egoistic uni-directionality of Kafkaian einsinnigkeit, one-track mindedness of the maniacs. Dedicated terrorists are just one of the frightening results of this trend, but we have a whole range of other variants, beginning with the milder variety of fiction writers who pick up their knowledge of history from book cover flaps. We have such mushrooming literati in Goa-related internet forums and some local press organs that cater to peasant tastes. This lot is condemned to producing fait divers that will hardly be remembered after a year ends. To prevent that from happening to him, one such guddhameva-lover resorted to Goanet before the year ended to remind us of what he wrote on Herald in 1996. It was about a controversy he invented, but saw the need of recruiting Shirodkars, Pearson and Teotonio to corner some public attention to his ability. He also denounces his own democratic credentials, seeking to protect the unwary masses from the foreign influences he attributed to the above-mentioned authors: “Too many common people have begun subscribing to such views and they should be stopped before the situation deteriorates.” Is that also a reflection of “foreign concepts like Marxism, or other strange ideas like Feminism or Post-Structuralism and so forth”, or is it Derrida’s “democracy to come”?It is a pity so much talent and energy in Goa are wasted on trifles and petty issues, instead of supporting and encouraging those who try to be critically creative. We do not object to destroying to construct, and isn’t that the symbolic message of the cosmic dance of Nataraja? Goans crying wolf about their identity in danger could try to be more attentive and concerned about the attempts being made to “invent” Goa to cater for market-oriented academic and non-academic tastes. One need not fall into the easy trap of calling it post-colonialism or fail to accept critically any positive contributions coming from any source. Before I present a few recent attempts at understanding Goa and Goans better, including one high-falutin bombastic “invention”, I cannot but denounce painfully the cases of promising Goan/Indian scholars who manifest their insecurity by preferring at times to pay homage to questionable Western scholarship to proven and better substantiated native research. This inheritance of orientalism is unfortunately still with our young generations, and it bodes ill for the immediate future. Correspondingly, the young generations in the West are still suffering from the occidentosis of their forefathers, and still reveal the hangover of a colonial superiority complex. These young generations in the West include some of Goan/Indian origin. During the past two decades nearly a dozen young and not-so-young Goans have made noteworthy contributions to the understanding of different aspects of Goa’s cultural past. Without intending to keep anyone out, I remember P P Shirodkar, S K Mhamai, Charles Borges, Pratima Kamat, Shyam Bhat, P D Xavier, Celsa Pinto, Fatima Gracias, Philomena Antony, Délio Mendonça, Phal Desai, Xavier Martins, Sharon D’Cruz, Remy Dias and Rochelle Pinto, who have produced PhD theses on themes related to Goa. I had the honour of guiding the research of at least three of them officially. Maria Aurora Couto is a specialist in English literature, but has given us a masterpiece of cultural studies in the form of the autobiographical Goa: A Daughter’s Story. Lourdes Bravo da Costa Rodrigues is no less active in tracing Goa’s cultural traditions. And we have more such worthy examples. One does not necessarily need a University diploma to make a mark. Most of these researchers have consulted and utilised information produced by Filipe Nery Xavier and a host of others who never saw any University. For further proof one need only to glance through the three volumes of Dicionário de Literatura Goesa recently compiled by Aleixo Manuel da Costa. How many readers of this column have made an effort to find out what exactly each of the above mentioned scholars produced to enrich our knowledge about Goa? That could be a test of sincerity and honesty of Goans who proclaim their concern for Goa’s identity and future. I could list another dozen of foreign scholars who have worked on Goa and we owe them gratitude for that. Some of them are very senior or senior scholars, like M N Pearson, G D Winius, A Disney, Robert Newman, Caroline Ifeka, Janet Rubinoff, A T Matos, M J Mártires Lopes, Cristiana Bastos, Timothy Coates, Tim Walker, Susana Sardo, Paul Axelrod, Michelle Fuerch and R Trichur, who have covered such varied aspects as history, anthropology, ethnomusicology and tourism studies. As one can expect, Portugal will continue to take interest in the field, and more recently we have seen published research by two young and upcoming scholars, Catarina Madeira Santos and Angela Barreto Xavier. We may have other occasions to appreciate the specific contributions of these various scholars, both Goan and foreigners, but for now let us have only a very brief review of Angela Barreto Xavier’s A Invenção de Goa (Lisboa, ICS, 2008). This scholar shares the virtues and defects of a young scholar. With a PhD from the European Institute of Florence, and with a glamorous institutional affiliation in Portugal, this Portuguese citizen of Goan origin could be more modest in her work and not just in words. She seems to have discovered the moon, and classifies summarily and brattishly most existing studies as “synchronic”, “orientalist”, “nationalistic”, etc. She offers us a diachronic approach to prove that the Portuguese imperial presence in Goa was made possible by consent and negotiation between all parties, and not necessarily by any hegemonic group, imperial or local. Curiously, she contradicts her own premises, choosing to cite a Goan priest, A Frias, and using him as a metaphor and point of departure for her research. In addition to inventing a Jesuit General Jacopo Lainez (p 140), the Hindus of Sirula may learn about their ‘Garam-Purusha’ (p 186). The author rushes into details wherein the angels would fear to tread: while dealing with the caste traditions of Chorão (pp 277 ff), instead of quoting Srinivasan and Cohn, a much better job could be done by consulting and citing F X Gomes Catão who published his extensive ‘Notes for the History of Chorão’ in the Portuguese journal Studia (nos 15 & 17, 1965-66). The title of this thesis well justifies the contents and approach of the book. More modesty and less brashness augur a better future for any research.
Satyameva Jayate!