Source: GoanVoice UK Text: I ponder on this, ever since members of the Goa Government told us a few months ago that Goan society is indeed very conservative. Is the Goan a liberal or a conservative? Of course, every human heart is a dichotomy of the liberal interspersed with the conservative. No human being nor for that matter, human society can claim to be entirely one or the other. My mother is a great Goan liberal. In her watery womb of liberalism grew my adolescent ideas of humanity. She was a plain young girl of dark colouring and scrawny body, who by some sleight of hand had convinced her caste-conscious parents to let her marry a handsome but "unsuitable" man. If she had lived in the hum of New York, she would have been that chatty, intelligent woman in the corner discussing Beethoven, matters ecclesiastical and the Democratic caucus. As it was, being born in Goa and then transported to Dubai in her twenties, she was considered a bit of a prudish know-it-all. She isn't a liberal set in the mould of a lush: drinking, smoking and being promiscuous - the great Bollywood caricature of liberal Goans. Hell didn't have enough brimstone for someone swearing, wearing revealing clothes or her daughter overstaying her curfew. In many ways she was the product of her parochial upbringing. Rather, she is that rare thing, a liberal at the core of her being. She has a scientific bent of mind but circumstance didn't allow her to pursue a medical degree, instead like so many Goan women, she trained to be a nurse. Later, she would manage a men's ward in a Dubai hospital, as Sister-in-charge, till her retirement. Her work in the hospital acquainted her early on with rape - male rape and the gruesome rape of young girls; innocence lost to uncles or some other protectors into whose care they had been entrusted. This was a desert society bridled with every sort of sexual repression, the ugly scars of which came to light as these mangled lambs lay in their mother's arms, behind the closed doors of hospital wards, suffering the most horrendous internal injuries. The hypocrisy of conservatism laid bare. My mother has a profound understanding of human sexuality. Sex is a biological necessity which has to be largely unfettered by human judgment. When I look back now, I marvel at how ahead of her time she was with her views on birth-control, abortion, homosexuality and even sex outside the bounds of marriage. The infractions of the flesh did not warrant hell and damnation, rather they were the fragility of the human condition. Who is to know how liberal ideas are sown? At the foothills of Afghanistan, where nothing grows but hashish, where liberalism slithers like a snake on its belly struggling to survive, where the warlords of conservatism reign supreme, there are still fathers waging wars to send their daughters to school. Who is to know why social reformers believe by the skin of their teeth that their battle against more conservative ideas is of the higher moral order? I certainly don't know. I know only that a liberal interprets the world through extreme generosity of spirit and with an innate sense of justice.
Goa has the good fortune to boast of so many great reformers, both Catholic and Hindu, men who championed schooling for girls, widow remarriage, breaking down of caste barriers, and setting up educational institutions and organisations for social reform. I truly believe Goans are the great liberal society of India. Not in the preserve way we are pictured - loose and licentious - but in the most heroic way one can be a liberal. Do leave your feedback at [email protected] Selma Carvalho is the author of the book Into the Diaspora Wilderness http://selmacarvalho.squarespace.com/reviews-etc/
