The onus on stopping the unadulterated and dangerous mischief mongering of desecrating religious places, across faiths cannot lie on the police alone, though it is primarily its responsibility. This is the time when accountability has to be fixed and responsibility be taken by all elected representatives. What the MP, MLAs, councillors and sarpanchas can do even better than any police, is ground level information gathering, finding out groups within their area who have the potential to do this, and also set up citizen’s vigilante squads to assist the police.
The Chief Minister is right when he says that these kind of desecrations are pre-planned and sought to create disturbances. But while Google can provide us with 24×7 monitoring cum mapping it is no substitute for ground level intelligence.
This is the time to call upon all MLAs of Salcete and the South Goa MP as well as sarpanchas and councillors to form a grand team in their respective areas. Thus each MLA can work with all the sarpanchas and councillors of his constituency, each given charge of their elected area, to gather intelligence. This is the only way, suspicious movements and planned acts of vandalism can be detected and trapped. The culprits are not from outer space, but local miscreants. The plan was simple. First provoke the minorities by vandalising crosses and when that didn’t work they took to Hindu religious symbols. Goa should never allow these criminals to succeed.
On Sunday, three crosses in St Jose de Areal, Chandor and Paroda were desecrated. On Tuesday, two more crosses were desecrated.
At Ravondfond in Margao, it was the statue of Saibin Mai and a cross, and at Ralloli Tollem in Curtorim, it was a cross on the roadside.
At Conkonde in Margao a tullos outside the Krishna temple and Nandi was also found desecrated. This temple is in the heart of Margao.
The scale of the mischief is reaching alarming proportions. A total of five Holy crosses, places of Catholic worship, and a temple were found desecrated in the last three days in South Goa, mainly in Margao.
It still isn’t clear where the orchestration of this was initiated. The planned progrom however, appears to be delinked from any party but could have emanated from certain groups with the propensity to create trouble and disturbance. Since the motives are still unknown it would be irresponsible to speculate at this stage, but at the same time we cannot let this uncertainly linger any longer. This will propel those behind this to spread their wings and their intensity.
For this reason alone, it becomes an absolute need for all MLAs and the South Goa MP with local elected members to meet. There’s a likelihood that someone in this group will have fair idea of the forces behind these attacks on religious places. The teams can then work with informants and meet twice a week to discuss progress. Within a fortnight they will have enough ground level information which will be of immense help to the police.
At the same time churches and temple managements or priests must regularly conduct peace meetings to calm down nerves and remind people that irrespective of so many attempts, Goa’s social fabric has never been snapped.
The fight against some below the belt mischief mongering cannot be fought by the police alone. Society, its elected representatives and each of us have a role to play. We have to be the Google maps.
