Revolution Day: Making meaning of freedom
Albertina Almeida
The date: 18th June, 1946. Goa Revolution Day. Just another day? Or did it have a particular significance? We gathered from history that it was on the 18th of June that Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia issued a clarion call for a Direct Action Day against the Portuguese in Goa. What did this clarion call mean for those issuing the call? What did this clarion call mean to the people in Goa? Were the people in Goa a monolith? Or would this call have meant different things for different sets of people?
History is much about a looking backward exercise to look forward. Therefore, it might be useful to understand what could have been the motivations with which people fought for freedom and for which freedom was fought. Was it just about shooing away an alien set of people? Was it about managing to taste power or assume full power by ousting competitors for power? Was it a revolt against dictatorship? Was there a Goa before the Portuguese came to rule Goa or were different parts of Goa under different rules and therefore not the one whole that constitutes Goa today? Were therefore the realities of people in different parts of Goa different?
It also becomes significant to understand who were the stakeholders in the process for attaining freedom, to understand how freedom is today playing out. How were different people in Goa located in the freedom struggle? Various caste formations. Women. Various sections of women. The different tribes of Goa. Differently-abled persons. Persons who were vocal with their dissent. People with different occupations including those in Government service. Persons with different political opinions.
We need to interrogate what was sought to be achieved through this freedom. Was freedom fought for a voice for all and real equality and justice for all? Was the action towards having Goa coming on its own? Was it about achieving nation status for Goa? What did nation mean? The walls and structures or its people or the land and the people? Was it about challenging the corridor that Goa was being reduced to? Or was it about a dignified life for the people living here? A life where every person has the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter? Where every person has the right to survive? Where inequalities and hierarchies do not exist and suppress the expression of some people or communities or exploit some people or communities?
If so, are we anywhere near it? Do people today here have the possibilities of individually and collectively determining their destinies? Do panchayats and more importantly gram sabhas and the municipalities have the possibilities of determining what is happening in the villages or is there an outside or a foreign hand that determines these futures? Who really can attend gram sabhas without feeling intimidated? What has been done to enable participation of all in gram sabhas? To the extent that people can attend, what real sanctity do the gram sabhas have? How are the systems today enabling of freedom for all people?
If one looks around, one finds several situations that sets one thinking. There are casinos that sell dreams to people and bring profits to a few corporates which are not really shared with even the employees of those organizations. And as the dreams are being sold, even the proverbial pot of milk gets kicked. There is a move towards yet more 18-hole golf courses, which is about acquiring huge tracts of land, in one case, even at the cost of displacing a village and its fairly equal social fabric. By village, one means the entire web of life including livelihoods. If these are sought to be dislodged asunder, and people do not have a say, pray is this about real justice and freedom for all or do we have another unseen leading hand?
Talking of people’s freedom to shape their futures, SEZs in Goa were shown the door, thanks to the concerted struggles of people whose lives and livelihoods were threatened by those SEZs and others who perceived the impending threat at a larger level. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom and it remains for us as a people to be vigilant that SEZs do not come in now through the back door. SEZs are countries within a country where local laws do not apply, systems are different and crimes are not to be reported in the same way as the normal systems.
There are other systems that enable such SEZs to be established – the biotechnology policy, information technology policy, tourism notifications, that talk SEZ-like. In other words, if there is an IT Park or a food park or a golf course proposed in your village or city or a casino on the shores, the panchayat or municipality, as things are, can simply be bypassed. Because these policies so provide. This means that even to the extent that the Constitution of India that has been amended and to which we owe allegiance, to incorporate the concepts of Panchayat and Municipality Raj and local self governance and people’s power through gram sabhas, on the one hand, the laws enacted are in that spirit, and on the other hand, practices are coming into place that continuously destroy the available freedom of people to self determination. So the notification about special tourism areas enables the State Government to bypass the local self government and set up tourism projects. There have also been and continue to be moves in the pipeline towards carving areas out of the control or determination of panchayats and municipalities. These have come in various forms, including even a draft Goa Police Bill.
Is this therefore a case for majoritarianism, where the majority should determine and the minority can have no voice? Certainly not. It cannot mean, for instance that because only one differently abled person made a call for a ramp at the Panchayat and no one else supported it on the pretext that there should be other priorities in budgeting, that this lone voice can be disregarded. The Constitution provides for checks and balances. Rights have to be upheld, even if the majority takes a decision in the panchayat that is unconstitutional. The decisions taken cannot be violative of the Constitution that stands for a sovereign secular socialist democratic republic. The question clearly is: whose voices must get special attention – those of mighty corporates – the real invisible ‘foreign’ hand, or those of every common person.
