By Frederick Noronha
Nobody would like to be told they're dying; not even an
elderly patient on a deathbed. So, one reads with rather
mixed feelings the BBC.com story titled 'In pictures: India's
dying Christian communities'.
This feature was actually about a forthcoming book
by the London-based photographer Karan Kapoor, the
son of actors Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer (Kendal)
Kapoor. Initially, the article focuses on the
Anglo-Indian community, but latter on throws in the
line that "Kapoor also took portraits of Goa's
Catholic community".
Karan Kapoor's parents were part of an early generation which
owned a holiday home in Goa. This was at Baga, if one is not
wrong. The Kapoors came in to Goa some time before it became
the fashionable thing to do, for anyone and their uncle from
Urban India.
Given how the mainstream-periphery divide works here, one
that Independent India has inherited from British India, this
is not the first, nor the last depiction of Quaint Goa. Many
many decades later perhaps, visiting photographers will
continue to locate the 21st century equivalent of what Kapoor
found here in the 1990s.
Tiny boys striking a pose behind a violin at Loutolim. A
blind musician being led to the church feast. Suit-clad
teenagers consciously posing while seated on a parked
scooter. A boys dressed as an angel for church service in
Loutolim. A scene at the centuries-old seminary at Rachol.
But despite the somewhat cliched depiction, Karan
Kapoor's work pushes us to think of wider issues
concerning Goa. Once again, in the 2010s, the
Catholic in Goa feels a sense of uncertainity and
disenchantment as he (often she, this is in some
ways a women-empowered society, thanks to migration
and education) looks to the future.
For Goa's Catholics, history has been like a roller coaster
ride. It's important not to get unduly pessimistic over it,
but the facts have to be faced up to. Good and challenging
trends have come its way, not just in the past five or six
decades of tumultous political change. But this has been the
case through centuries of migration, changing fortunes,
shrinking and expanding opportunity, new El Dorados and
unexpected threats.
* * *
In the 1960s, as ours was one of the families heading back
to Goa, the local Catholic elite was largely caught up amidst
fears, doom and gloom. Those brought up amidst a Portuguese
worldview saw little hope. But, for the English-speaking
Catholic, opportunity was just opening up back home.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the traumatic
developments in former British East Africa,
specially Uganda, ended up ironically in bringing
in so much talent back here. I have argued
elsewhere that this was a time when many
emigration-oriented (read: Catholic) coastal
villages flowered like never before.
But, barely a decade or so later, by the 1980s, many of the
children of those who had returned were finishing their
education, and readying to once again migrate themselves.
Today, many are settled in Australia, Canada, UK, the US and
other parts of the Anglo-Saxon English-speaking world.
Meanwhile, in the 1990s, quite a few Bombay Goans opted to
resettle here, for reasons of real estate costs, and safety
issues in the big city, among others.
* * *
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
