Medium of confusion
FRANK RODRIGUES
Joe D’Souza’s extremely lucid piece (Linguistic Zealotry—Herald February 28) spells out clearly the evil designs and hideous treachery on the part of a section of our society to ensure that the Goan Catholic community becomes redundant in its own homeland. This community, sadly, continues to drink, dance, celebrate the festa, ladainho, and cazars in extravagant and vulgar fashion, and are too myopic to see the danger staring them in the face, while the boa-constrictor slowly and inexorably continues to tighten its grip to strangle the peace-loving and trusting Goan Catholic community out of existence. It is only a question of time, not too far distant, when this community will find itself a shivering and cowardly minority, bleating like sheep in the misty mountain top.
I am considerably saddened to see little Goan children eating their breakfast while waiting for their school bus. The school bag, containing heaven knows how many books, about two-thirds their height, is so heavy, the accompanying parent has to carry it for them right up to the bus, where it is hauled up by the assistant in the bus before the children get in. The insistence that children should be educated in their mother-tongue is yet another weapon used to reduce the Goan Catholics to a community of incoherent, toadying ignoramuses, with no education to make them employable, depriving them of the grandeur of the English language, and the joy of spending many an hour on reading an improving book. To insist that such books are freely available in Konkani or Marathi is merely laughable.
It is a democratic right that parents should be entirely free to educate their children in the language of their choice. While the bigoted proponents of the regional languages in typical doublespeak continue to send their offspring to English medium schools and abroad for university education, they then insist that our children should be instructed in Konkani, using the devanagari script.
It is high time the Goan Catholic community stood up for their rights to reclaim their patrimony, away from those who will only use them. Pre-liberation I could go to my village parish church and trace my ancestry going back a few generations, an impossible task now, given that the records have been mutilated and scattered.
