Through our misfortune, Goa had to face the rule of 2 dictators during the last one hundred years; one dictator from Portugal and the other from Goa. Salazar was the dictator from Portugal and Bandodkar from Goa. Both these dictators rigidly applied their dictatorship to Tiatro and Tiatrists. During Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal, freedom of speech was suppressed ruthlessly, this suppression was applied in the Portuguese colonies as well or in overseas Portuguese colonies, as they were then called. It was not only in Goa but in Portugal itself the free thinkers and democrats suffered more because of suppression of freedom of speech.
During Portuguese time in Goa after Salazar came to power, censorship on Tiatros and on Press was introduced, that means, no criticism of government and its machinery from the Stage and Press tolerated. Vavraddeancho Ixtt, the Konkani Weekly was the victim of this law somewhere in 1958 when it was suspended for 3 months for writing a critical editorial.
Tiatrist always stood for justice for downtrodden and suppressed and harassed Goans. When Dayanand Bandodkar the first Chief Minister of invaded Goa tried to liquidate Goa and Konkani and also started working against the interest of genuine Goans, Tiatrists in Goa from the stage challenged him. Having no teeth to absorb this challenge and in order to force them to surrender to him, he introduced censorship on their script and songs.
Parrikar government is afraid of the mighty voice of the Tiatrists against his government and its ministers for this reason recently Francis de Tuem was arrested. And now to make the Tiatrists totally dumb against the government and its ministers, two days back Margao’s Ravindra Bhavan issued a circular whereby the Tiatrists were asked to sign an undertaking not to criticize Ministers and MLA’s, if they want to hire the hall for staging their Tiatros.
This is another form of censorship thru the back door by the Hall management headed by the BJP stalwart Damu Naik who disclosed his ignorance on this Undertaking. Can we accept this answer from Damu Naik? Without his knowledge and approval can any document get released? Was there no nod for this undertaking from the top man of BJP in Goa? I think from behind the curtain, all are involved in issuing the Undertaking but only after they felt the pulse of the reaction, they washed their hands like Pontius Pilate. From this incident, Tiatrists must be careful of BJP government in Goa. This issue of hall and censorship should make the Tiatrists to think of having one hall in Margao built by their own private capital and owned by them jointly. Money collection should not be a difficult task. But there must be a will and for that matter a very strong will.
