SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2024
Some awards are well deserved. The Jnanpith Award to Konkani writer Damodar Mauzo definitely falls in this category. Nobody will deny that. Mauzo, or Bhai, as he is called by peers, admirers, well-wishers and fans, merits this award. Awards, however, are not alien to Mauzo. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 for the novel Karmelin, and bagged so many other awards after that, but the Jnanpith is different – it is the highest literary award in the country. He is the second Konkani writer after Ravindra Kelekar to achieve it and this cements his place among the greatest of Goan Konkani writers that the land had produced.
In the 60th year of Goa’s Liberation the Jnanpith award to Mauzo comes as a refreshing breeze crowning a year that has otherwise been quite lacklustre with little to brag about and the news mainly centred about the pandemic or more recently political movements across parties. As Mauzo celebrates this award, all of Goa joins him, especially those who like Mauzo believe in liberal thought and for whom this award is a vindication of all what the resident of Majorda has stood for not just as a writer but also an influencer who has played a crucial role in the path Goa has taken.
Mauzo has been a key figure in Goa’s politics of identity, right from the time of the Opinon Poll when he campaigned against merger, to the Konkani agitation of the 1980s for getting Konkani official language status and later to see its inclusion in the VIII Schedule of the Constitution. He had a central role in all these. This he did for the language he loved. But, more than that Mauzo has stood for the freedom of expression and also dashed off a letter to the Sahitya Akademi demanding that the Akademi make it clear that it would not tolerate any threat to the freedom of expression.
His stance was not well received by rightwing extremists and a threat to Mauzo’s life was discovered when security agencies were interrogating a person in connection with the killing of writer and journalist Gauri Lankesh. He was given police protection. With his life under threat at that time, Mauzo had turned philosophical and had said, ‘No bullet can defeat a thought’. The threat did not stop him from fighting for what was right or make him change his views. He remained as resolute as always.
Against this background, the Jnanpith award to Mauzo recognises, besides his literary genius, also the freedom of thought and expression. For Mauzo always believed in inclusiveness and tolerance. In an interview some years ago, he had said, “The good Goan has to be inclusive in nature.” For him that is most important and for him it will continue to remain important. You find that a theme in his stories and his novels, many of which have been translated into other languages, so that non-Konkani readers will benefit from reading Mauzo. That is what has made him known across the country.
For the reader outside Goa, the stories may seem exotic. But any Goan who has read Mauzo’s stories will identify with some character or will find some familiar setting, because his characters are based on people he meets and the stories occur in the Goa he loves, which is why you will find the sea in his stories and the railway in others, as he lives just metres away from the Majorda railway station. It is the simplicity of the story that makes Mauzo extremely readable. Perhaps, the Jnanpith Award will lead to more Goans reading his works. Mauzo is a worth winner of the Jnanpith Award.
