As Goans I am sure we are all familiar with the Konkani idiom, Literally translated it means “We saw something never seen before and blindly chewed it and swallowed it whole”.
My aim today is to apply this idiom and explain a situation that has perhaps led to the sorry state of affairs that we are facing today as Goans/Indians.
We take tremendous pride in our struggle for freedom/liberation; Indian Independence from the British Raj in 1947 and Goan Liberation from the Portuguese Colonialism in 1961. I am no historian nor am I an expert in Political Sciences. But as a layman I feel that we all got a “little too much too soon”.
I am sure that the time of Independence and Liberation was an occasion for widespread celebrations. However, little did we know that we were falling from the frying pan into the fire.
I am not a fan of living in bondage or under colonial rule but I still think that the British and the Portuguese should have left at least 3 to 4 decades later than they did.
Everybody was fighting for “freedom” but it seems like only a select few, namely, the affluent lot, who had vested interests in this so called freedom were driving the struggle so as to derive the maximum benefit. Once the Colonialism was over all the power was concentrated with only these select few. And that’s where everything went for a toss.
Now let’s connect the idiom that I talked about in the beginning. Nobody knew what to do with this so called Independence or Liberation or Freedom. It was a mess of sorts.
The Industrial Revolution that originated in the United Kingdom and Europe in the 19th century had not even gotten a chance to penetrate our country. Another 3 to 4 decades and we would have slowly seen our workforce and labour class getting geared up and exposed to the modernisation that the Revolution had brought about. The general population would be more open to innovations, mechanisation, modernisation. We would have been more informed and the educational quotient would have been marginally higher. This would have equipped us and given us the necessary tools to systematically handle our newfound freedom.
What kind of an independence, secularism, and democracy are we harping about now? Are we truly independent? We have a strong Indian Constitution which proclaims secularism and various other freedoms. But can someone stand up and tell me on my face that I am wrong when I call the Constitution only a paper tiger?
We are killing each other in the name of religion, caste, class, language, etc. There is widespread poverty across the nation and our leaders (huh!) are declaring fatwas against dressing styles and individual lifestyle choices. Unemployment is rampant and our politicians are rioting about unimportant things like what we should eat and what we shouldn’t. The minorities are being held at ransom by certain fanatical groups and individuals who are trying to push their ideologies down our throats.
At the cost of sounding cynical I would still say that we did not deserve to be independent as yet.
Trust me, we still don’t know what to do with it and how to deal with it.
