After all the praise our "Elisabeth" received for the goodness of her posts, I find it too tempting not to try to "problematise" her arguements.
1. Religions like Catholicism require you to believe in a full package, not parts of it. (Therefore the outrage against 'cafetariat Catholics', a loaded term, if ever there was one.) So-called Great Traditions in all religions would like to push 'purity' in their tradition, just as the official church has long tried, for understandable reasons when seen from its point of view, to purge any non-Catholic elements from its faithful. Likewise, the Hindutva lobby would try to define a Hindu in a very narrow way (in terms of beliefs, holy books, etc). We know that, in reality, the dividing lines between different religions and beliefs can be very blurred, and there is a lot of give-and-take even between supposedly "competing" religions. The Little Tradition has been far more accomodating, as Marblehead MA-based anthropologist Robert 'Bob' Newman put it, pointing to the context of Goa. 2. Was your father really a bigot or did he simply believe in a Catholicism that belonged to the early and mid 20th century? If someone of our generation believed in the Second Vatican Council or Liberation Theology, it would be very hardly very unconventional. But, in a repeadly changing world, could we not be seen as very "bigoted" one day, assuming the Conservative revolution initiated by John Paul II -- with all his ideological fellow travellers now in positions of authority right to Ivan Cardinal Dias -- is complete in the church? Terms like 'bigot' are probably relevant to the times and the direction in which the winds are blowing. 3. Catholicism, and other religions from the Semetic tradition (Islam, Judaism, for instance), by sheer virtue of being monotheistic faiths, don't have space for multiple gods. That makes them different, not inferior. Forget about something like the 33 crore gods of Hinduism, there's not space for 1.1 deities in Catholicism (apart from the complex logic about the trinity). It has to be the figure 1. That's it. This, again, is not bigotry. It is a different way of defining religion. To be fair to any religion, we can't say that it has to define itself by our criteria. That's why I think leaders like Advani are being mischevious, and calculatedly so, when they demand that the Pope accepts "all religions as equal". Abandoning monotheism would be equal to pushing out the plank from under the pope's feet. 4. Was your great-grandmother less of a "bigot" then you believe your father was? I would submit that a hundred years back, it was easier to indulge in cross-religious practices, even while being a practising Catholic, then it is in our generation or your dad's. This could be simply because the media and other forms of communication have become so powerful, that it's easier to give people the feeling that they're committing "sin" by not toeing the narrow Vatican line. Formal education too probably played a role, as you rightly mention. We have become so much more 'controlled' in our thinking nowadays. 5. Talking about "pagan" worshop, I would understand any ideology (and here, religion too can be seen as an ideology) having serious reservations when its followers get influenced by another possibly competing 'ideology'. It is only natural to see one world-view spreading canards or subtle propaganda another another. For instance, Catholics were kept away from any form of radical thought by stressing that the main feature of the latter was its "Godlessness". (We've seen this even in our Goanet debate recently.) I grew up believing vegetarianism was silly and possibly unhealthy, till reading a rather convincing animal liberation magazine from Australia a decade ago, which converted me (except a fish-eating transgression, or when I travel within Muslim or Buddhist societies and vegetarianism becomes impractical). The stereotype for a Catholic in today's Goa is "dukor kahvu" (pie-eater). At one stage, in BJP-ruled India, a controversy was sought to be raked up about wine-guzzling during the Mass! Stereotypes are part of any competing worldview. I'm not justifying it, just seeing it in context. 6. I disagree with Rajdeep Sardesai when he says there has be "no open hostility". If "Catholic" Goa fought its communal and competitive battles via the colonial Portuguese ruler, then "Hindu" Goa has its MGP and BJP to lean on when needed to fight low-intensity communal battles. We need to recognise the problem where it exists and be honest about it. Rajdeep is wrong in another way. "Limited interaction" between communities is partly true and also partly a myth. Isn't this true across India? Because of the patterns of growth, have people of different backgrounds been able to mingle with each other in the past, as they are compelled (sometimes unwillingly) to do today? At the grassroots, religious differences have mattered little though. People of equivalent social/economic status or positions in the caste hierarchy have been intermingling in a number of spheres. So, Rajdeep's view (incidentally, he's also of Goan origin, the son of cricketeer Dilip Sardessai) is perhaps simplistically expressed. 7. I'm not so sure "my generation is the first called up to truly assimilate. And we've failed." If we can inter-marry across religious lines, still meet up at Fatorpa and Milagres Church or the Siolim zagor, if parties based on communalism find it difficult to win majorities on their own, if we can crime together (take a look at the composition of the boys charged with the killing of Mandar Surlakar), then probably the jury is still out on this one... --FN -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org 9822122436 +91-832-240-9490 http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
