Apropos the article by Dr. Jason Keith Fernandes on Herald 21 August 2015, I wish to clarify as follows:
First, The BBSM is a conglomerate, made up of Konkanibhaktas and Marathivadis, of RSS men and secularists with the sole purpose of restricting Government grants to the vernacular medium primary schools. So the fact that persons like Uday Bhembre, Arvind Bhatikar and me are members of BBSM does not make us communalists, as Dr Fernandes implies.
Second, the strong language which Udaybab and Arvindbab used against the DSE and ABE is because these education societies fought for grants for conducting English primary education and, once they obtained them, with one stroke extinguished over a hundred primary schools which they ran in Konkani medium. The DSE and ABE are not the Church which is the Christian community, for which Udaybab and Arvindbab have the highest respect and the good of which alone they seek.
Third, Shenoi Talwadkar derided Konkani as a “Catholic tongue of very low classes” and called the Goan savant Dr. Gerson da Cunha a “defiled Christian”, “bigot”, “Goanese”. If, in answer to this offensive language, Shenoi Goembab says that Christian missionaries in the distant sixteen century learnt Konkani from Brahmin teachers (which is a fact) and if he defends Dr. Gerson da Cunha as being a “large-hearted, virtuous scholarly Brahmin”, is there anything wrong? Shenoi Goembab answered Shenoi Talwadkar in a language the latter used and understood. To be proud of one’s origins is not casteism, to belittle those of others is. Shenoi Goembab did not do the latter. By the way Shenoi Talwadkar was also a Saraswat.
Fourth, Dr. Fernandes fabricates a historical myth, when he says that Saraswats, under Shenoi Goembab, aimed at converting Konkani into their own property and bestow upon it the Devanagari script. Dr. Fernandes also fabricates a historical myth that the first half of the last century was the golden period of literature in Konkani by the Catholic bahujan samaj. May I request him to kindly present specimens of this golden literature.
Fifth, Dr. Fernandes creates the bogey of Saraswat project of domination, against which the three ‘vads’, according to him, are fighting, viz. The Marathivad, the Romivad and the Englishvad. This is a quixotic construction of things.
Sixth, I appreciate Dr. Fernandes’ intellectual prowess as a legal anthropologist and his humility to describe himself at one time as an itinerant mendicant. But I regret that the thread passing through his writings is his Brahmino-phobia. If to detest another community is casteism, this is a specimen thereof.
