That is what the magicians want us to believe, and at times they nearly succeed. Even though I had preferred as usual to deal with issues, rather than personalities, in my recent column of September 2, a response to it on September 19 issue of Herald was entitled “Pointing a finger at secularists?” in which Jason K. Fernandes has sought to take up his defence, believing obviously in the strategy of attack as the best form of defence.
Jason K. Fernandes calls my “critique” a misunderstanding of his argument, which to me remains very muddled, unless it is some variant of fuzzy logic that requires a specially trained brain. All I see is a volley of expressions like Brahmins, upper castes, nationalism, etc., which seem to convey his annoyance. They are rather the red rags that he cannot resist. But that is his privileged set of expressions like secularism, minorities, dalits and Islamicate culture, which in the near future may have to be defended as not identical with the program of the new ISIL caliphate.
The defence (or explanation) provided by Jason Fernandes reminds me of a very recent and much publicized show by a team of Illusionists in the ultra-luxurious Emirates Palace in UAE, wherein one magician calling himself the Manipulator (other six in the team had a different designation and different quality of sleight-of-hand), winner of multiple international illusion competitions, was able to fool even the most observant eye with sleight-of-hand performances.
Incidentally, Jason K. Fernandes also joins a team of other four, and at times five, to marshal support for some of his ideological prestidigitations aimed at exorcising Hindu Brahmanical / Saraswat nationalism. I must thank God or shall I say the graciousness of Jason Fernandes, who did not think my critique called for a collective effort, because I did not take any position vis-à-vis what is called the heart of his arguments against the naming of a Government college.
His apparently cautious “generally speaks in the voice of the upper-caste secular nationalist” is accompanied by a crude and baseless allegation that I see national identities and the nation as composed of monolithic religious groups who are ideally represented by upper-caste members of that faith tradition. This reflects a cheap strategy of constructing a straw-man that can later be easily demolished or burnt in a traditional Goan Catholic ritual linked with the “Judev” of the Inquisition times.
Jason K. Fernandes obviously selects his reading material to suit his arguments. Had he read with greater care and open mind a reasonable sampling from the range of my writings, starting with “Medieval Goa” (1979, 1994, 2009) and ending with the most recent “Goa outgrowing Post-colonialism” (2014), besides over 200 and odd pieces, published during the intervening four decades, he could find umpteen instances where monolithic understanding of culture in Goa is analyzed in different historical contexts and rejected.
To cite some instances, on p. 3 of Goa outgrowing Post-colonialism there is appreciation of the exceptional achievement of D. Bandodkar in shaking the existing feudal relations through his Land Reforms and unusual investment in primary education and health-care, while on p. 40 there is a clear indictment of the caste-system when it is stated that “we will remain puny caste-bound Goans who are doing relatively well globally”.
But acknowledging such tracts would probably leave Jason K. Fernandes without satisfaction of having discovered the monolithic cultural monster! That is like every growing child that discovers the world anew. Curiously, many young Ph.D´s share the ingenuity, and at times a consciously dishonest trait, of presenting their findings as earth-shaking novelties that had escaped even the best past scholars. This is usually done by avoiding references precisely to authors who pioneered the research in their area of interest, hoping that even the better informed readers would share their amnesia. That is what the tricksters wish and believe.
To conclude in a note that may please my young friend who loves to see the upper castes in trouble, Gautama the Buddha who led an historic protest against the caste system is believed to be have been miraculously conceived when a majestic white elephant entered his mother´s womb. Trickster gods abound in all old cultures, be they mesolithic, microlithic and polylithic.
In my earlier column that displeased Jason K. Fernandes to the extent of his forgetting to respond to the issue I had raised about the low-caste Bhakti promoters of the Konkan region and pioneers of Marathi literature, I hope that now Buddha too does not fail to be appreciated as a pioneer-defender of a non-monolithic culture. Or do Dalits have to remain eternally Dalits without giving rise to new versions of the oppressed, as it was believed till recently about the eventual advent of a classless Communist society? Long live mutually oppressing humans whose alliances of the willinging are right now bombing entire communities of international dalits into extinction.
(Teotonio R. de Souza – Founder-Director of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research).
