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Stage Play: ON THE HOLY TRAIL
Staged By: The Mustard Seed Art Company
Where: Kala Academy - Mini Open-air Auditorium
When: Dec 20 & 21, 2007 @ 7pm
Read a Review at:
http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2007-December/066558.html
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Dears,
I am forwarding the story of the KONKANI AGITATION of 1986 written by
Asok Row Kavi in The WEEK January 18-24. 1987, isue. Rajan Narayan,
the then Editor of oHERALDo newspaper is now the Editor of the GOAN
OBSERVER. Narayan Athavale is no longer editing Gomantak, which has
also changed ownership and now belongs to the Sakal Group of the
Pawars.
21 years later, the language war is far from over. The manipulators
are still around ... trying their luck in other CSOs and agitations
now in progress. the "Save River Sal" Front is a good study of what
goes on "Behind" the scenes.
The Catholic Church has many persons who are devoted to the Perpetual
Succour ... and remain perpetual suckers! Losing sucks. The losers
suck up to the same coterie.
"Those who do not remember their history are condemned to see it repeat."
Mog asundi.
Miguel
pratap naik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
SETTLING OLD SCORES :
The following article by Ashok R. Kavi describes in detail the
language agitation in Goa in 1987 and other important related issues.
On 20 December 1986 Floriano Vaz was shot dead during the language
agitation in Goa. He became the first martyr of Konknni. On 21st
December six more were killed. Many people may not be aware of the
details of their death. This article will enlighten them with facts.
The Saraswat group which dominated and manipulated then continues to
resist to amend the Official Language Act now and to give equal status
to Konknni written in Roman script. They are making use of a few
priests and Catholic lay persons who mainly use Roman script but
oppose it the official recognition! Goa is a land of paradox.
Dr. Pratap Naik,S.J.
Language became a non-issue in a week of violence This article by
Ashok Row Kavi was published in THE WEEK issue of January 18-24. 1987.
SETTLING OLD SCORES
THE TWO chants, one childish and the other self-evident, rise louder
and louder and fall rhythmically with the swaying fronds of coconut
palms in Goa's verdant plains. As they fall on the territory's
sun-scorched beaches, submerging the roar of the waves, an
uncomfortable tension grips the mind of the largely peaceful
inhabitants.
Goa's soporific calm has been shattered beyond repair. A language,
which held the Goans in good stead during the Portuguese rule, has
ironically divided the little Union territory now. Yet, little has
changed. The paper stars of Bethlehem twinkle quietly and chains of
small colourful bulbs still glow though Christmas is past and the
tulsis are decorated with kumkum in the dewy mornings. Trouble had
been brewing for long, but the cauldron boiled over only six months
ago, when the lone MLA of Goa Congress, Luizinho Faleiro introduced in
the assembly a mischievous bill urging the government of Pratapsingh
Rane to make Konkani the sole official language of Goa.
The bill, badly worded and plainly provocative, was a gauntlet thrown
at the Marathi protagonists in the Congress (I) and the
Maharashtravadi Gomantak Party (MGP) who were slowly retreating from
the position that Marathi should be the sole official language of Goa.
[Luizinho] Faleiro, and his party headed by Dr Wilfred D'Souza were in
fact giving hard choices to the Congress(I) which had been trying to
equivocate. But Rane instead of deflecting the attack, invited trouble
with a reflex action. "Which Konkani do you want - the Pernem variety,
the Salcete variety or the Cuncolim variety?" he asked in the
legislature, referring contemptuously to the variations in the
language found in different parts of Goa.
The bill was dismissed, but the whole incident hurt the Konkani
sentiments. Party loyalties were given the go-by and the Congress(I)
split right down the middle. There were now only two kinds of people
in Goa, as desired by scheming Goa Congress leaders: those who wanted
Konkani, mainly the Catholics and the Gowda Saraswat Brahmins, and the
Marathas who considered Konkani just a dialect of Marathi.
The Goa Congress, supported mainly by the Catholics, and the Konkani
Porjecho Awaz (KPA), claiming to represent all Konkani interests
including the Gowda Saraswats as well as Christians, then decided to
harass the Maratha-dominated Congress(I). When the territory began
preparing for the December 19 silver jubilee celebrations of its
liberation, the two organisations suddenly demanded statehood for Goa
and renewed its demand for Konkani as the sole official language with
added vigour.
On December 18 [1987], the KPA held a massive rally at Panaji's Azad
Maidan and demanded that Rane resign immediately. Luizinho Faleiro
asked the people to start a civil disobedience movement by not paying
taxes, bus fares, and ferry charges "to bring this anti-people
government down". Faleiro also said the "deadline given to the
government was over and the KPA leaders would not be responsible if
anything happened tomorrow," the Liberation Day. Surely enough, the
next day, the whole of south Goa, comprising Salcete, Sanguem and
Canacona burst into violence. "It was too well organised to be called
spontaneous," said Collector Sinha. Roads had been blocked the
previous night with boulders and uprooted trees (more than a thousand
trees had been cut with electric saws), telephone and electric poles,
billboards and even cars dragged out during the night. A culvert at
Vernem was damaged by dynamite. Barrels of bitumen were rolled into
the roads and set afire. Seven-inch nails welded on steel plates were
placed on roads to puncture tyres. Water pipelines were blasted
between Mungal and Margao.
When asked how spontaneous all this was, Jitendra Deshprabhu, an
aggressive Youth Congressman opposed violently to Rane, said: "We
Goankars are pretty well organised. This isn't all that difficult as
you think it is." In other words, the Congress dissidents knew what
was up but preferred to embarrass their own chief minister. Even Goa
PCC(I) president Sulochana Katkar, a nominated MLA, has taken the
anti-Rane stand. In the legislature of 30 elected MLAs and three
nominated women MLAs, the Congress(I) has 22 MLAs including Speaker
Dayanand Narvekar. MGP has seven MLAs and the Goa Congress, one.
The remaining are independents. At certain places the behaviour of the
mob was quite inexplicable. Eduardo Faleiro, Union minister from south
Goa, had declared that he was for Konkani. Yet his house was stoned.
Obviously, the fight was also between Congress factions. And then two
incidents, which had nothing to do with the language agitation,
inflamed passions. In Margao, a teenage tough, Floriano Vaz, was shot
at point blank range by Inspector Narayan Yetale. The boy seemed to
have been marked out by the policemen from some previous enmity with
the son of a local bigwig. Vaz was now accused of trying to impose the
bandh call given by the local Konkani protagonists. The other incident
at Dongrim near Mandur village is what really set Goa to the torch.
Peter Fernandes of Agacaim had a grouse against the group of brothers
called the Parwatkars for having outbid him for the fishing rights at
a sluice gate. He sent two local toughs to break the Parwatkars' shop
at Mandur, but they were beaten up.
When Fernandes's friends tried to take one of them to hospital, they
found the roads blocked by the agitating KPA men. Frustrated, they
rang the Agacaim church bell and a mob of 300 proceeded towards Mandur
to attack the Parwatkars. Suddenly it was a communal issue between
Konkani Christians and Maratha Hindus. The Parwatkars gathered 300 men
of their own and ambushed the Agacaim group in the paddy fields of
Mandur. Both groups were armed with sickles and .22 guns with the
result that two persons died on the spot and four died in hospital. It
was a savage butchery with men cutting each other's faces and genitals
of the fallen.
Two days later the KPA came out with a statement that the dead were
"martyrs to Konkani". Not only that, 30 priests said mass on a
platform in an emotional funeral ceremony where some of them said that
the dead youth would resurrect like Jesus Christ to fight for Konkani.
Following this, the daily 'Gomantak' wrote a nasty editorial saying
"molesters of women have become martyrs." Whether the Agacaim boys had
molested any woman is doubtful though they are boisterous by nature.
Then Chief Minister Rane committed his next mistake. He pointed out
that only Catholics were involved in the KPA agitation.
The police were given orders to arrest only Catholics. The Hindus
arrested were either let off or abused publicly as those "rascals who
have become Christians." By then, the situation had exploded in the
face of the KPA. "The agitation is now out of our control and in the
hands of the people," said Datta Naik, the main controlling force
behind the KPA. In other words, after having inflamed passions, the
KPA had no strategy worth the name. But the interests behind the KPA,
the Gowda Saraswats, the Goa Congress and the Goa Lok Pox, now took
over.
The houses of MLAs from South Goa and those of Ministers Francisco
Sardinha and Voikunth Desai were attacked. Manu Fernandes, an MLA, was
forced by a mob of over 3,000 to hand in his resignation from the
assembly. Another mob proceeded to J.B.Gonsalves, MLA from Panaji, and
asked him to resign. Meanwhile, the KPA claimed that it had got the
resignation of Sripad Cuncolikar, MLA from St Andre. Subsequently, the
army was called out to patrol Margao. Fourteen platoons of CRPF and
SRPF were called out to clear the roads.
The 2500-strong local police just watched from the sidelines. On
Christmas eve the Gowda Saraswat traders in south Goa played a nasty
trick. To provoke the Christians further, they closed all shops,
despite the fact that both were fighting for the same cause. They
calculated that the Christians when deprived of the provisions and
other things needed for Christmas festivities would turn more
anti-Hindu and subsequently anti-Maratha. The Gowda Saraswats could
always explain that they too were fighting for Konkani.
But the Christians still refused to be provoked. If there was no sugar
for cakes, they used jaggery. If there was no wine, they used cheap
feni. It was then that someone started a rumour that the church had
asked Christians to boycott the Liberation Day just as they did in
December 1961 when India threw out the Portuguese. There was no truth
in it and Christians had celebrated the Liberation Day with all Goans
six days earlier. But this was now forgotten. Obviously the canard was
spread to make the MGP react and its president Ramakant Khalap fell
into the trap.
He issued a statement that the agitation was "by those who have not
reconciled to the Portuguese being thrown out and Goa liberated."
Meanwhile, a crisis developed in the government. Ministers Francisco
Sardinha, Harish Zantye, Sheik Hassan and Luis Proto Barbosa, GPCC(I)
president Sulochana Katkar, and Youth Congress president Mauvin
Godinho rushed to Delhi, without bothering to tell the chief minister.
The information in Panaji was that they had gone to give in their
resignations, but Sulochana Katkar later told THE WEEK: "We went to
tell Delhi that the law and order situation had got out of hand and
that even we MLAs had no protection from rampaging mobs." Hundreds of
tourists were stranded in Panaji as the road between the airport and
the capital was blocked at Agacaim. Petrol was in short supply and
vehicle traffic stopped completely all over the territory. Fish, the
staple diet of Goans, vanished and Panaji did not get milk for two
days.
The second development was more sinister. One morning, the Christians
found crosses broken and the Hindus saw the tulsis in their yards
desecrated. THE WEEK discovered that most of the broken crosses were
in Catholic dominated areas and similarly the desecrated tulsis were
in Hindu areas. Obviously, behind the incident were people to whom
neither the cross nor the tulsi meant anything. But their plans failed
when the ordinary people defused the situation in a magnificent
manner. The Hindus offered to rebuild the crosses and the Christians
washed away the cows blood and the pigs' entrails that had been
dropped into the tulsi pots.
A Punjab was averted by the Goans' pragmatism. But the game to
embarrass Rane was continuing. What the Goa Congress had hoped for was
to make it impossible for any Christian MLA to work with Rane. The
attacks on the houses of Congress(I) MLAs and ministers from South Goa
were meant to intimidate them from siding with Rane. The strategy was
to polarise the Congress(I) legislature party so that it had to rush
to the MGP for support to survive. Surely enough, suddenly on December
28, Doordarshan reported that MGP president Ramakant Khalap had
extended support to Rane.
This looked a bit incongruous because just a day earlier, Khalap had
derided the chief minister and called for his resignation for "not
protecting the life of Goa's citizens and enforcing law and order."
When asked by THE WEEK about this, Khalap said: "I have extended my
support to the chief minister only on the language issue. We cannot
afford to allow the Konkani protagonists to bully him into declaring
it as the sole official language." The crisis in the Congress had by
then taken another twist. On the day after Christmas, the four
ministers said that they had handed in their resignations not to
anyone in government but to AICC(I) general secretary G.K. Moopanar.
The next day, Katkar and Godinho also gave in their resignations. By
then, the real issue, that of language had become a non-issue. Harish
Zantye stressed that he was for the dual language formula while Katkar
was for Konkani. So why on earth had they made common cause?
Obviously, to unseat the chief minister who had taken such an openly
partisan stand on language? Lt-Governor Gopal Singh was also taking an
equally partisan stand. He insisted that "only Konkani people have
suffered and not the other side." This was untrue. All the people of
Goa were suffering, despite the government's efforts to pick on only
one community.
Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mani Shankar Aiyer, the Prime
Minister's press secretary, who visited Goa did not visit the
riot-affected areas but understood what was going on; the Congress was
sought to be broken up so as to communalise the politics of Goa. Armed
with this information, G. K. Moopanar told the ministers to get back
to work and gave a few assurances. Yet Rane now had only three MLAs on
his side: Sangita Parab, Phylis Faria and Chandrakant Verekar. To
defuse the crisis Rajiv Gandhi asked Union Minister Eduardo Faleiro to
take over chief ministership, but Faleiro developed cold feet.
Now Delhi is counting on three men who it thinks are capable of rising
to the occasion - Harish Zantye, Speaker Dayanand Narvekar and
Shantaram Naik, MP from North Goa. Naik has a clean image but he would
have to seek a safe assembly seat. Manu Fernandes has offered to
resign his seat from Cuncolim but one does not know whether Naik would
like the job. Narwekar is slippery and is a little susceptible to the
pressures of Wilfred D'Souza of the Goa Congress. Zantye is considered
a political lightweight.
Rane is unlikely to last long as Delhi is bound to find a replacement
for him either from among the three or in someone else. But no one can
deny Rane the satisfaction of having ruled the Konkani people despite
being a Maratha. But in the final analysis, the only ones to win would
be the Gowda Saraswats. They have used the Catholics against the
usurper from Maharashtra, and they would continue to hold the strings
of Goa's economy. -- ASHOK ROW KAVI
* * *
* * THE TWO NARAYANS The three worlds in Hindu mythology always
shuddered when the chant 'Narayan, Narayan' echoed in the cosmos.
It meant that Narada, the roving rishi, was making his petty-fogging
presence felt. Goa has two Narayans and there is internal trouble
there. One is Narayan Athavale, editor of the Marathi daily Gomantak
and the other Rajan Narayan, editor of O Herald, an English daily from
Panaji. They are fighting each other claiming that they are fighting
for two languages, Marathi and Konkani.
Their credentials can be questioned, though no one bothers to do that.
Athavale is an outsider, a Maharashtrian Chitpawan Brahmin; Rajan
Narayan is from south India and is fighting for Konkani in English.
Athavale's editorials are pure petrol on Goa's red hot embers.
Starting with 'Ooth Marathe Ooth' (Wake up Marathas, Wake up),
Athavale, who supports Rane, has carried on a relentless-battle to
show that Konkani is a 'boli' (dialect) and not a 'bhasha' (language).
Athavale has published some 25 eminently forgettable novels, and had
had a lacklustre career in 'Lok Satta', the Marathi daily from the
Express group. Athavale gets quite alarmed when someone mentions
Vishal Gomantak (Greater Goa), which to him means 'expansionism'. But
he has no qualms at all when he says that Goa should finally merge
with Maharashtra, because "their cultures are the same". In his seat
to propagate the interests of Marathi, he has even neglected the
success of his newspaper, which has been falling in circulation.
Tarun Bharat, published from Belgaum, in Karnataka, has taken away
6,000 out of the 18,000-odd Gomantak circulation. Yet Athavale has
such a strong grip over the owners, the Chowgules, that he even
oversees recruitment. No Christians are employed in the daily. Apart
from editing 'O Herald', Rajan Narayan, a former editor of Imprint,
now speaks from political platforms. Narayan has become more a
pamphleteer than a journalist. He often attends the strategy sessions
of the KPA. He has at times tried to maintain a balance but has failed
because he is viewed suspiciously by the Hindus and because the
Christians patronise him.
Rajan Narayan is a professional doing a job and taken up with a cause
which he would just as well drop like a hot brick if he got a better
challenge somewhere else. However, the turn he has given to the O
Herald has taken its circulation to 12,000 from the 4,000 odd it was
selling before he took over its editorship. "I don't make any
pretensions that I'm being objective," says he. "I am here to fight
for Konkani." Come what may, the two Narayans, both non-Goans, are
slugging it out through reams of newsprint. And both are accused of
polarising Goa's good people as never before. -- ASHOK ROW KAVI
* * * * * O R P H A N E D L A N G U A G E: Konkani neglected by its
own people TO UNDERSTAND the real issues behind the Marathi-Konkani
problem in Goa, one has to go into the history of the Portuguese
colony.
In 1853 there landed in Goa an exceptionally brilliant administrator,
Dr Joaquim Heliodoro da Cunha-Rivara, as secretary-general of the
colony. It was this extraordinary man who promoted Konkani in the
teeth of opposition from the Roman Catholic Church. Asked by the
governor-general to give his opinion on a "project of new rules for
primary schools presented by the local board of inspection of Ilhas de
Goa", Cunha-Rivara said that primary education had to be given in
either Marathi or Konkani, the local languages, and not in Portuguese.
But some local Christians, converted by the Portuguese, did not like
Cunha-Rivara's idea. They choose to educate their children in
Portuguese. The Hindus, who had by then retreated to the hinterland,
brought in Karada, Deshasth and Konkanasth Brahmins from Maharashtra
to teach their children in Marathi. Konkani, the language spoken by
all Goans regardless of caste and creed, was thus orphaned in her own
land. Only two institutions kept the fact in mind that Konkani was
indeed a living language. One was the Catholic Church, which knew that
the gospel could be spread only through the local language.
The other was the Gowda Saraswat Brahmin community, which considered
it the 'divyabhasha' (divine language). They controlled the temples in
the hinterland and hired Maratha Brahmins to manage them while they
adjusted to the situation by learning enough Portuguese and becoming
bureaucrats, all the while talking Konkani at home. So quick was their
rise that they invited the wrath of both the church and the Maratha
Brahmins. Some of the Maratha Brahmins even took the Gowda Saraswat
Brahmins to the Madras High Court accusing them of unbrahmanical
practices like eating fish and hobnobbing with the mlechas.
The Maharashtrian Brahmins lost the case. The animosity between the
two Brahmin sects grew. The Gowda Saraswats continued to prosper. The
Marathas continued to keep the temple rituals in Marathi and the Gowda
Saraswat minted their money in Konkani written in Devanagari script.
Thus all Goa's temple records concerning rituals are in Marathi and
their accounts in Devanagari Konkani. The church meanwhile developed
Konkani in Roman script so much so that even as Hindus pronounce
Konkani as 'Kokani' the Christians pronounce it as 'Konkaani'.
The party that came to power after Goa's liberation in 1961, the
Maharashtravadi Gomantak Party (MGP) was unabashedly pro-Marathi. The
Konkanasth, Karada and Deshasth Brahmins were now having their revenge
against the Gowda Saraswats. The backward castes rallied around
Dayanand Bandodkar, under the banner of Bahujan Samaj, which also took
a stand hostile to the Gowda Saraswats. However, Bandodkar knew very
well he could not do without the Gowda Saraswat skills in management
and administration. His strict orders were that no Gowda Saraswat be
transferred without his permission.
The community formed the backbone of his administration for nearly 15
years till his death. The Bahujan Samaj too prospered tremendously
under Bandodkar and learnt the tricks of democratic functioning to
become a formidable force in Goa politics. The Gowda Saraswats knew
their days were over; they would now be thrown to the wolves as the
backwards could now stand on their own feet. Suddenly their love for
Konkani came back in a great rush and found a willing ally -- the
Catholics. By then the church had translated all its religious
literature into Konkani in the Roman script, though the pronunciation
was different. For example, the Konkani of the predominantly Christian
Salcete is different from the Konkani of Ponda taluka, inhabited
mostly by Hindus. Meanwhile things were happening on the education
front. Bandodkar had opened Marathi medium schools in every village.
With the result that in 1981, out of 1.22 lakh students in primary
schools, 77,000 (61.71 per cent) were in Marathi schools; 44,500
(34.64 per cent) had opted for English; and Konkani had just 410
students. The people, whichever community they belonged to, knew that
Konkani offered few job opportunities.
They either had to learn Marathi to get jobs in Maharashtra or learn
English to climb higher. Even today, Konkani is offered only as a
third language in Goa's secondary schools, and not as a medium of
instruction, which continues to be either Marathi or English.
Traditionally Goans have been getting jobs either in Maharashtra's
factories or in the Gulf. (Goa Congress president Wilfred D'Souza made
his pile in the Gulf as a consultant to a Sheikh.) But with the Gulf
boom over and Maharashtra simultaneously closing its doors, the Goans
suddenly found that they had nothing.
Neither a language nor a state of their own to take care of their
interests and give them jobs. It was then that the Konkani Porjecho
Avaz was formed. Eight years ago, it achieved a minor victory when the
Sahitya Akademi recognised Konkani as an Indian language with its own
literature. And now it is asking for more, certainly with a good
amount of justification. -- ASHOK ROW KAVI.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Miguel Braganza, S1 Gracinda Apts,
Rajvaddo, Mhapsa 403507 Goa
Ph 9822982676 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
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