My father used to be a bigot. The word immediately conjures up images of burning trains and frenzied mobs but anyone who knows my father knows him to be a most congenial soul. So let me put his Catholic prejudices into context.
My paternal great-grandmother must have been at best a second-generation convert. Ancestry from her side of the family is almost untraceable, but given the physical features of her kith and kin, which were fair of face, green-eyed and tall of stature; I am assuming a migratory possibly Northern tribe found their way to Goa. Whatever the religion of her ancestors was, it must have had some shamanistic element to it, for Sunday Mass was almost invariably followed by a trip to the "Maar". She saw no dichotomy in this act whatsoever. By the time, my parent's generation came of age, such duality of worship had been successful purged thanks in part to formal education , but also largely to the efforts of the Catholic church. The Church however, was ever watchful of lapses that caused many Goans, even well into the 20th century, to continue some form of "pagan" worship. Doubtless, one way to counter this was to spread vicious canards about other religions. That they worshiped animals, that they were unclean, that their Gods had several hands and as many heads. Canards made more plausible by the increasing distance, both geographical and political, created by colonialism between these two religions. My father bought the party-line unquestioningly. This is what Goan born journalist Rajdeep Sardesai has to say about Goa: --- "Let us be honest, there are two distinct communities -- Goan Catholics and Hindus. They have lived for centuries through a process of what I would call "civilised segregation", in the sense that there has been no open hostility between the communities but there has been limited interaction at a personal level. There has been attempts over the years to exploit these divisions, particularly by the post independence politicians of Goa." --- My generation is the first called up to truly assimilate. And we've failed. We are all too ready to endorse Freud's "narcissism of minor differences", embrace our suspicions and hoist our disrespect. This unfortunately from both sides of the aisle. My father was a victim of his time and over the years has painstakingly revised so many of his ill-conceived notions. We on the other hand have no excuses to harbour ours. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
