This is no obituary. This is no tribute either. For, in Goa, we respect the dead. And as the legendary Chief Seattle of the native Indian Duwamish and Suquamish tribes of North America would say, “To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground”. But yesterday’s consignment of Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s ashes to Rivers Mandovi and Zuari was the low point of tribute to a dear departed. An act that should shame each one of us Goans. For, a tribute is the highest form of respect that we can pay to an admirable soul and Vajpayee was up amongst them.
As Union AYUSH Minister Ayush Sripad Naik immersed the urn containing Vajpayee’s ashes into the Mandovi, one shudders to think what the departed Statesman would have thought of us. The Mandovi that Vajpayee saw sitting on Miramar Beach flowing into the sea in 2002 is now the home to half a dozen dens of vice, the floating casinos that were brought in by his own partymen. Vajpayee’s ashes would squirm at the very thought of a party that he built on principles now compromising all that to immerse him in the casino and corruption infested waters of Mandovi. This week Goa lost Mhadei. This week Goa lost its innocence too when it came to knowing that a Kerala style disaster had been forecast by the same scientist Dr Madhav Gadgil whose pleas went unheeded by both by Kerala and Goa governments. Couldn’t Goa have done better to pay respects with sincerity and commitment than just indulge in a macabre show of pseudo mourning?
Vajpayee who once famously said ‘Main jee bhar jiya, main mann se marun’ (I have lived my heart to its fill, let me die as my mind desires) wouldn’t have imagined his ashes being immersed amongst the toxic and polluting illegal shipyard infested Zuari. The river, home to the endangered windowpane oyster, is now being readied by this government in its Tourism Plan as the next casino playground of Goa. Why does a political party show such a high degree of insensitivity to the remains of such a profound soul? Vajpayee’s tryst with Goa was probably the most distinct of all the BJP stalwarts who visited Goa. From swapping his trademark dhoti kurta for T-shirt and trouser, to pillion riding a scooter, carrying his own suitcase to the airport, the former Prime Minister would be remembered as sussegad as any true blue Goan would have. Why then, couldn’t we have pledged for a casino free, cleaner Mandovi and Zuari to him as a mark of respect?
The fact that BJP didn’t find the Sal that lies in the heart of South Goa (just as Mandovi meanders close to the heart of the North), worthy of the honour is a sad testimony to the step-motherly treatment that Salcete and other talukas of South Goa continue to receive. Despite its water hyacinth infested upper reaches, the quiet and gentle Sal would have been Goa’s best gift to the last Statesman. After all, the poet that Vajpayee was would have met his match in the striking warm greenery straddling the Sal. Respecting the dead is a commitment and someone failed there.
But then going overboard in its tribute also had Congress’ faux pas moments. The party that prides itself on its ‘secular’ credentials whilst paying glowing tributes to Vajpayee pompously proclaimed that PM Modi cannot be a patch on Vajpayee. Indeed. But did the Congress forget that Vajpayee did his famous volte-face on Modi and his role in Gujarat Riots out here in Amchem Goem in April 2012 when he infamously held the Muslim community responsible for terror and the reason for Gujarat riots?
Where then is the respect, for revered ashes, if hollow hands of politics and opportunism hold it?
