After 1961 there were no assurances for Goans. For a couple of decades Goans have been crying hoarse - give us special status -. All these calls have fallen on deaf years. What is left is mati and gobor. BC
* * * Three challenges face the community now, that in some ways justify the 'dying' tag of Karan Kapoor. The first stems from a crisis of its own ambitions. The second is its struggle to legitimise its aspirations. Third, but not necessarily in that order, is the role it builds for itself in its home State and the wider world. Goans worldwide are, in some ways, victims of their own ambitious. The growing trend towards seeking foreign passports -- not just Portuguese -- has been widely commented upon. We all have our own stories of our own friends and colleagues, who, despite enjoying a perfectly comfortable lifestyle in Goa, one fine day just pack their bags and leave. If asked, they will justify it saying they are doing this "for the children's sake". Unlike other Indian migratory communities, the Goan Catholic is seldom known to return home once (s)he migrates. The Goan ability to merge into almost any setting is a doubled-edged sword. It makes migration easy, but lowers the desire to return. In contrast, highly education expats from the rest of India are ready to return back and contribute to that place called home, sometimes while they are in their 30s itself. Goa has a few exceptions of this kind, like the festival-organising Marius Fernandes. But most stay away, only to find their children too deeply entrenced in their new homes to ever be able to return. Then too, with all its wealth and its talent, the Goan Catholic appears rather headless as a community. Because it has got caught up in low-intensity communal conflict or caste disputes for some time now, it finds it hard to define its own priorities. For a variety of reasons, it finds it cultural space shrinking. Portuguese, the preferred language of the elite till the middle of the last century, died (or was phased out, understandably) with the demise of colonialism. Then, for unconnected reasons, the widely used Romi Konkani got step-motherly treatment while English was pushed out of primary education for over a decade. At another level, nobody seems to know how politicians who pose as community leaders get selected for, or manoeuvre themselves into, the job. In the first place, it's a myth to believe that an entire community shares a common, unified interest. But those in the political class who claim community leadership should at least be held accountable in some ways.
