If you didn’t hear it or read it, here it is. Read it at your pleasure only if your see them as lines from a circus, and not lines reportedly uttered by Goa’s Minister for Culture Dayanand Mandrekar, at a function this week. These are some of his classic lines (as reported by a news agency).
– “Parties”, are patronised by “anti-elements”, are illegal and cannot be permitted by law
– People who run restaurants, play music. Then there are some anti-elements who start dancing to the music
– Who will stop it? Sunburn requires multi-department involvement like the tourism and home department which takes decisions. My ministry of art and culture does not promote western (culture)
– Western (culture) is a ghost which is raising its head
The reason why Goa hasn’t reacted to this strongly is because people have begun to expect comments fit for a crass comedy show from Goa’s ministers. Dayanand Mandrekar, of all ministers, cannot be serious in calling beach parties illegal. The sheer number of parties on the beaches of coastal Upper North Goa, including Anjuna in the 55 years since Goa’s liberation, would be the highest in a concentrated area, anywhere in the country. That’s where he comes from. Beach parties and dancing to the music is intrinsic to the life of a party goer, a tourist and even most Goans. Mandrekar is Goa’s Culture Minister and a law maker. Can he tell us, with more seriousness than he hopefully made those cavalier remarks, which law framed by law makers in the country, does a man or woman dancing to music on the beach, break?
Can Mr Mandrekar tell the people of Goa, that he hasn’t given permission (or told the local police and panchayat) for a single beach or any other party in his area. Can he honestly claim that he does not know a single violator of the sound pollution laws, who conducts raves late into the night?
When he says western culture is a ghost which is raising its head, he needs to explain where was he hiding when Goa proudly followed, loved, experienced and shared its western culture during Portuguese rule, and then, post 1961, imbibed beautiful customs and traditions of the west and married them to Goan culture. This was either embraced or at least respected by both communities. What is raising its head is not the ghost of Western culture, but the ghost of division. These ghosts are not cultural ghosts but political ones and their mandate is to cause confusion and divide communities and in the process alter the inclusive culture of tolerance, Goans have.
And we say this to Mandrekar the only way we can say this. He has actively fed off this called western culture but done absolutely nothing to raise his voice against far more serious social ills like drug sale and consumption. And the minister should know that beach parties alone do not promote drugs. If that was the case drugs wouldn’t be bought and sold in landlocked metros of India.
Lastly Mr Mandrekar’s grief against Sunburn has nothing to do with his dislike for electronica and his love for bhajans. He simply wants to have some control over a part of the festival, which is the property of the Tourism department.
Mr Mandrekar is maintaining the fine tradition of BJP or alliance ministers making remarks which make Goa a laughing stock of the civilised world. The “bikinis should be banned” or “women should not be allowed in nightclubs” remarks have fizzled out of public memory but are still brought up in the context of remarks which have shamed Goa.
The Culture Minister should try and do his own job reasonably well, without pontificating on subjects he has no control of.
