MARGAO: Veteran Konkani writer and freedom fighter Naguesh Karmali on Saturday alleged that the Church in Goa is doing what the Portuguese could not do to finish Indian culture.
He was speaking after releasing ‘Osmitayecho Kasay’, a book written by this year’s Sahitya Academy award winner Adv Uday Bhembre, on several aspects of Goan identity.
Karmali lashed out at the Church for promoting the English medium at the primary level, claiming it to be a design to suppress the Indian culture and ethos.
“The suppression by Church today is much larger than the way Portuguese suppressed it in the 16th and 17th centuries,” he said.
Speaking at the function, Bhembre felt the time has come for the 75 percent to rise up against the domination of 25 percent Goans, without elaborating whom he was referring to.
“The Goa government is acting under the pressure of 25 percent, for the simple reason that 75 percent are silent. Time has come to show the strength of the majority,” he said.
Goan society is ailing with chronic disease and surgery is the only solution to it, not simple treatment, Bhembre added.
“My articles in the book are an attempt to awaken Goan society, which has not marched forward the way it had to, after Goa’s liberation”, he said.
Babali Naik, whom Bhembre dedicated his book to for his contribution to the official language agitation, said the Konkani movement needs to have a political direction. “We need to have maximum number of Konkani supporters in the Goa Assembly,” he said.
