In the past few weeks, friends from Goa kept forwarding me WhatsApp messages of the Sturm und Drang during the election campaign season there. I would promptly delete them without even a cursory glance, for I long stopped following Goan politics. Some days ago I did go in and look at the results and the lone seat won by Revolutionary Goans caught my attention.
I just read a column following a link on Goanet wherein this development has been mentioned sprinkled with the words “nativist” and “xenophobic.” Around 12-14 years ago I had foreseen this and had written about it on Goanet. It didn’t take any special flash of insight. Do you know ANY state or region of India where you can go in, reduce the host population to a minority in a short time, and it will sit back passively without any reaction? In which Indian state may I find these princes and saints? The anger has been building up, as I have personally seen and experienced during my travels all over Goa the past 15 years. These aren’t people who will write bon mots on Facebook and social media to virtue signal. You have to engage them to find out what they really think of the outsiders taking over. And these aren't only the working class Goans. Every segment of Goan society will tell you exactly what it feels of the takeover of their land. The Goan villager looks at his fields and orchards flattened to make way for large apartment complexes he will never afford, his neighbourhood suddenly rife with languages he doesn't relate to, and his familiar paths intercepted by gates manned by a guard from Bihar. This isn't a recipe for strife-free coexistence. If what has happened in Goa had happened in any other Indian state, there would be literal blood in the streets. Goans, by contrast, express their ‘xenophobia’ at the ballot box. Liberal apostles who are all about democracy always declaim the results whenever they don’t turn out their way. They can't run with "white supremacy" or "Russia/Putin did it!" in Goa but "nativist" and "xenophobic" will do for now.
