The best way to remember the now deceased Gregory D’Costa from Curtorim, popularly known as Greg, would be to remember the conversations we had so we can take them forward, and to think through different facets of his life, during which many myths were busted. This piece aims to do just that.
At a time when, on the one hand, there is hatred against migrants and, on the other hand, many reaching out to migrants’ function as if no local Goans were marginalised, a view of the world from Greg’s working experience can offer a refreshing perspective. Having formally set up Jan Ugahi, in 1997, upon settling down in Goa along with his wife Bernie, Greg, began working with the migrant population, especially children, at a time, when there was no consciousness about migrant people’s concerns. Did that mean that he did not believe in retaining the unique identity of Goa that formed its USP? No, he was, in fact, proud to be a Goan, took up issues concerning Goans, and maintained a cordial relationship with his typical totally Goan neighbourhood.
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How could he be a proud Goan and yet be helping the migrants, is what you may wonder. How many of us have domestic helps or persons doing odd jobs or assisting us in our fields who are migrants? How many migrants are building the constructions which metamorphose into our residences? How many of the migrants work so that we may live? In engaging with Jan Ugahi or providing legal advice to them for some of the acute violence some of the poor migrant children suffered, I could not only see how violence was so naturalised to the point that it was invisibilised, but also the various sectors in which the poor migrant population was contributing to Goa’s economy, by ensuring the wellness of local Goans, or providing services necessary to oil the economy.
The slums where Jan Ugahi worked in Margao, such as Calcondem, Deccan Tyres (now known as Azad Nagar), Sadu Bandh, Moti Dongor, are often referred to, in our day-to-day parlance, as vote banks. This they may be, but what if you realised that the migrants in the slums in Goa including Moti Dongor are not a monolith – the same as the people in any waddo. What if you realised that whichever be the politicians from whichever parties, they keep a large section of migrants forever dangling in suspense, enabling certain amenities, and denying certain core others, like housing, that will ensure that the migrant population will forever be at their mercy? What if you knew that some of them are treated as outsiders even after fifty or sixty years of living in Goa, simply because they are not of Goan origin?
There is no doubt that Goans are being overwhelmed in numbers, because of migrants (as well as tourists) from other States in India. But we cannot miss the trees for the woods. So in that sense it is forced migration out of their respective States. Correspondingly, poor governance, including poor employment opportunities, and discrimination on the basis of caste and class and religion in Goa has compelled people to migrate from Goa to foreign countries, be it the Gulf countries, or in the last many years to UK, availing of the possibility of asserting Portuguese citizenship. Therefore our position on migrants needs to be nuanced. There are migrants and migrants. The word ‘migrants’ is in fact a catch-all word for workers or working-class people hailing from other States in India, who have migrated to Goa for a living, and some of whom have settled in Goa from sometime in the early 70’s, or even earlier, but do not have steady legal housing, and also elite populations descending from Delhi and other parts of North India mainly, who have no stakes in Goa, except to consume it to the maximum. It is this same population that turns up their noses about Goans and their ways of life. It was clear to me that Greg was not referring to that section of society when he was amplifying the cries of migrants for basic needs and against injustice.
It is often argued that people set up NGOs or become social workers or activists when they lack other skills or have not made it in mainstream studies. That is not the case with all. Greg was a gold medallist in Mathematics, and had all the trappings of privilege, but harnessed that privilege for the marginalised sections. He gave remedial classes, taught the migrant children mathematics with a dedication and personal touch that makes them fondly remember him decades afterwards.
Greg straddled the worlds of political positioning and social work, the worlds of Goa and India, the worlds of landlord and empathy for the landless, which can quite be like a tight rope walk.
Greg was a Vipassana meditator, and if we thought that the urge to arrive at equanimity through Vipassana meditation would derail from socio-political actions, then Greg was a living proof that this was not the case. He had returned from the Vipassana Centre at Igatpuri only in January this year, and was to go again to settle there, but it seems that a premonition about dying made him resist going there. That he had a varied set of friends and supporters could be seen in those who attended his funeral. His legacy lives on, especially in the many faces he brightened.
(Albertina Almeida is a lawyer and human rights activist)
