SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024
Vivek Menezes
An unusual interview with Damodar Mauzo in the latest issue of Outlook Magazine is yet another warning sign that Goans are drifting apart in fundamental ways, with dreadful implications for the future. Speaking to Mayabhushan Nagvenkar, the distinguished 2022 Jnanpith Award winner, shared his apprehensions that communal divisiveness has corroded the famous harmony of India’s smallest state: “Even during the Portuguese times I have never felt this. Because I move around, I find people who are educated, who are sensible otherwise, they speak about things which I cannot even imagine. People are thinking in such terms, particularly when it comes to Hindu-Muslim or Hindu-Catholic issues.”
Mauzo’s writings are rooted in his experience growing up and living in coastal Salcete, where he spent decades serving the community from his ancestral family general store. Now, he says, “Many of my well-wishers, good friends in the village would invite me to conduct their house-warming ceremonies in my presence or to raise a toast at (Catholic) weddings. I have raised a toast at not less than a dozen church weddings till some years back. It has stopped now, why? I am not haunted by this, but I see this change happening.”
What could have made this cultural shift? It’s hard to pinpoint: “I have played football with fellow Catholic students. Nowadays, it is slowly brewing. Earlier, say ten years ago, I was invited very often to functions at the Church during Christmas, New Year. Of late, it has stopped. Probably, they are not on bad terms with me, but they do not want to give exposure to me or maybe look at me as ‘the other’, which I am opposed to.”
This cri de coeur from Goa’s pre-eminent intellectual presence recalls the late Padma Shri award winner Maria Aurora Couto’s 2015 public statement at the time of the medium of instruction (MoI) imbroglio that was being cynically stoked into sectarianism: “I am deeply saddened by the spiralling descent into communalism in Goa, among my friends who have valiantly fought for secularism and liberal values all their lives. Intolerance which is vitiating the air nationally will do irreparable damage to Goa’s legendary secular ethos. Debate and dissent by all means, but do not vilify an entire community and its leaders. The communal virus, if allowed to infiltrate the Goan psyche will not leave a Goa we wish our children to inherit.”
Right about the same time that Couto spoke out, she surprised the brilliant young architect Vishvesh Kandolkar (he is now on the faculty of Goa College of Architecture) at their first meeting, by asking him what he thought of then-chief minister Manohar Parrikar’s remark that “a Catholic in Goa is also Hindu culturally, because his practices don’t match with Catholics in Brazil except in the religious aspect. A Goan Catholic’s way of thinking and practice matches a Hindu.” Kandolkar responded, “on the contrary, Goan Hindus are culturally Catholic.”
Kandolkar’s account is in his excellent Unmooring Goan Identity: Maria Aurora Couto and the Architecture of the Hotel Mandovi, part of the inaugural issue of The Peacock Quarterly, the new flagship cultural magazine from the Entertainment Society of Goa which was launched at Maquinez Palace earlier this week (where I am on the editorial team). The architect recalls that “Parrikar’s assertion that Goan Catholics were culturally Hindus seemed to have disturbed Couto, and she therefore became fascinated with my reply, exchanging emails with me on the topic up until 2021. Thinking back, the architectural history of the venue of our first meeting, The Hotel Mandovi is a perfect example which represents the complexity of framing Goan cultural identity.”
This is a fascinating reading of the imposing presence of one of Panjim’s most beloved landmarks (which has been somewhat mysteriously shuttered since 2019). Kandolkar says Hotel Mandovi “was constructed during the Portuguese colonial period in 1952, to cater to pilgrims” who were expected in the greatest number ever that year, for the fourth centenary of St Francis Xavier’s death, and “among other buildings in Panjim from that period, marks a departure from the use of region’s Indo-Portuguese style of architecture in Goa (in) connection to the Art Deco movement that flourished in British Bombay during the 1930s-40s; the hotel is designed by Bombay-based architects Master, Sathe, and Butha.”
Kandolkar muses that “while the patrons of The Hotel Mandovi used architecture to make a symbolic gesture towards Goa Indica, the very occasion for which it was built in the colonial time period disrupts easy categorisations. The fact that The Hotel Mandovi was built to cater to the 1952 Exposition, a Catholic religious festival, means the building’s history is intrinsically linked to Goa’s Catholic identity. More importantly, pilgrims venerating St Francis Xavier belong to various religions, castes, classes and nationalities. The diverse worship of Goa’s Patron Saint is a reminder that Goans cannot be divided into strait-jacketed categories of religion.”
This is a complex picture: “At the same time, the opposite is true; that is, politicians assert the construction of Goan identity as Goa Indica to benefit from the rise of BJP at the national level. For example, Catholic upper caste politicians, such as the late Francis D’Souza, who was the Deputy-Chief Minister in Parrikar’s BJP Government, had called himself a “Christian Hindu”. Does one dismiss this as an exception to majority view of Catholics in Goa? Not really. To continue to hold on to power, upper caste Goans, whether Catholic or Hindu, have always mirrored the ideology of the metropole, be it Lisbon or Delhi… In reality, both constructions of Goan identity are a myth, which gets conveniently used by contemporary politicians and corporations for profit.”
In his Outlook interview, Damodar Mauzo said he didn’t think that Goa’s increasing communal fracturing will heal quickly: “In the immediate future, I don’t see it. (But) I am optimistic. I think 10-15 years later, people will realise their folly and we will be able to re-establish democracy.” For his part, Kandolkar concludes that “Perhaps our meeting at The Hotel Mandovi would have signaled to Couto that ongoing efforts by contemporary politicians to un-hinge Goa from its Portuguese past would not be so easy. So long as Goans continue to have open dialogue with each other, embrace caste and religious differences, and celebrate Goa’s complex history, through art and architecture, Goan identity will not be easily co-opted or erased.”
(Vivek Menezes is a writer and photographer and co-founder and co-curator of the Goa Arts and Literature Festival)
