Goans and Caste - Getting Hot Under the Collar Hi Cornell: I have waited to the weekend to respond to your post. The weekend gives us the writers and the readers more time to digest this topic. It may also be a welcome break for the native Goans who must be overdosed reading stories of the machinations of the Goa government. Thanks for responding to my post. You have raised many points. With your indulgence, I am replying to you point by point, which I usually dislike doing. I am truly trying to learn from your experiences and hopefully you can educate me/us with specifics.
Cornel: On another point, I believe that you are inclined to suggest, or at least, desperately want to believe, that all this evil caste business was a thing of the past, and if prevalent at all today, it is limited to a few. So let me provide you a brief response to this point. Firstly, Catholic Goa absolutely reeks of caste today as it has always done. GL responds: Please give me EXAMPLES OF TODAY of the above last statement. Please be sure to draw a cause and effect relation. No long explanations needed! Cornel: My grandparents and their generations before them, intuitively knew that casteism was absolute hogwash. Nevertheless, they were intimidated and undermined by the hegemonic casteists in Goa. Unfortunately, my forebears did not have the education nor skills to take on the casteists and their hegemony. However, I am ever so glad that I can now do this, with absolute relish and confidence, especially, in targeting contemporary Catholic Goan casteists wherever they may appear. Now, can you possibly have a problem with my stance? Do you want an historically oppressed people to suddenly suffer an attack of amnesia? Not on your Nellie my friend! GL responds: You are fighting yesterday's battles today. You are more likely engaged in verbal fencing with 'shadows of the past'. Of course, You look mighty good! Cornel: Secondly, Catholic Goan casteism was taken beyond Goa, and across the waters to places like East Africa with much enthusiasm by a thoroughly disgusting casteist lot. Their hegemony lasted, pretty triumphantly, for them, upto about three decades ago and still persists there but not with its former intensity. Instead it has tried to root itself in the UK, Canada, USA and other places in more recent times. However, it is my earnest hope that it is today fighting a losing battle in London, Toronto, Melbourne, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Jersey/New York and (believe you me) even in Oslo! GL responds: I will tend to agree with you on this; given the many 'social get-together' divisions in the Goan community seen in large Diaspora. But still this is not a cause and effect relation. Goans in Diaspora shun people from their own caste. They seek instead individuals with common legacy, which may be, they are sure of their caste. That is why I asked you the question how do you target the population group that you desire to change? Do you single out all folks from East Africa, which you identified in your first line of the above paragraph and you growing up there originally are familiar with them? Is this post copied to all the East African Goan mailing lists? Or are you preaching to the choir? Cornel: And this is, particularly paradoxically, among people who should know better through education but have been unable to discard what they absorbed, very early on, through their mothers' milk. We know this because strident anti-casteists, like me, keep our ears to the ground and know exactly what is going on. GL responds: I am sure your 'ears are to the ground' in many places. If your sources are from Goanet, the same posts that I read, then you are 'hearing some blowing in the wind'.:=)) Because all I read on two major mailing lists are theories (about caste discrimination) with no specific examples. Unless of course you are implying that the rude posts that I receive, sometimes from my own village folks, are casteist in nature and I am just 'not astute enough to get it'.:=)) Cheeze I thought they were ....:=)) Cornel: Yet, we are pleased when we hear former casteists accept and state that Catholic Goan casteism is and has always been totally indefensible. GL responds: Who are these former casteists? I did not see much support from you and others (including JC) when I condemned the use of Alcunha (remember the thread on Professora, Professorachem ghor, cheddo etc.) where today's Johnny-come-lately(s) rest on the laurels of their ancestors. Thus in the process some of them do a disservice to themselves (by being lazy) and to other Goans who were not born with 'a silver spoon in their mouth'. Yes... Yes... I know you were very busy...! :=)) Most of the Brahmins were not born with a silver spoon in their mouth. So I would not accuse the opposition on that thread as being 'Brown racism aka casteism'. I would merely term them defending a practice which was a part of Goan feudal society, and their own relic, which today we Goans can do without. That was my 'take-home message' and hopefully well received. Cornel: All I therefore personally seek, Gilbert, is this form of coming out, rather than the absurdity of some die-hard fellow Goans trying to be defensive about casteism in this day and age. GL responds: Again please show me practice of specific casteism in THIS DAY AND AGE. I know I 'can be thick' on observing this aspect of Goan culture. Cornel: In sum, it is my firm belief that it is not by running away from evil that we overcome it, but by going to meet it. Brown racism aka casteism among Catholic Goans, in all its manifestations, has to be met head on in the Goan Diaspora, and simultaneously, but bit by bit in Goa itself. GL responds: All power to you my friend. Please provide us examples in action like a lower-caste Goan get-together at the Royal Dorchester in London. In my mind you fight caste by lifting the lower caste up ... and ... real up! As you live in London, perhaps you have changed things. But if not, why don't you have a 'reception group' of Goans to welcome and help new Goan immigrants to London and UK. The migrants are 'outsiders' on whose behalf you are waging a worthy battle. In my three years in London in the mid '70s, I was invited to one GOA function even though I had met a few Goans in that city. I did not know GOA (London) existed. So as a prominent Goan in London and UK you could do a lot to help eradicate brown-racism by example rather than words. Again you may be doing it. So why don't you write posts on how established-Goans in London help Goan new-arrivals to the UK, other lower caste and lower class Goan ganv-bhavs and ganv-bhoinis get on their feet? (like the Sikhs, Patels, Parsees and Jews). And this could be repeated in all Goan Diasporas that do not have this support. After-all you don't want Goans, thirty years from now, writing about Goans in London etc., in the 21st Century (a.k.a. you and me) in effect practiced brown-racism. Don't you think that would be a worthwhile effort to address in practice on 'caste or class among Goans'? It's not likely that Goans who NEED PRACTICAL HELP TODAY will be consoled and satisfied with 'getting hot under the collar' and excuse you and me for our yeomen work in our 'academic ivory towers'. Regards.
