By: Mario Rodrigues
Source: The Statesman, 10 January 2005 at http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=30&id=65460&usrsess=1
Excerpts:
Sections of the Catholic intelligentsia have taken the state government to task for this attempt to "misuse history for political purposes", as seasoned Goan journalist Frederick Noronha has put it.
Malevolent priests too go about their gory evangelical mission as if colonialism was nothing but a religious war.
FULL TEXT:
A film on the Liberation of Goa, sent recently to state schools, has outraged a large section of historians, intellectuals and Catholics by making a mockery of the symbols of Christianity. Mario Rodrigues reports
JUST a few weeks ago the International Film Festival of India was raking in all the publicity for Goa and its feisty chief minister, Manohar Parrikar. Now a film has been making news in the state, and all for the wrong reasons. The credits of the 68-minute documentary, Goa Ka Swadhinta Sangram (Goa's Liberation Struggle), produced and distributed by the state government, openly acknowledge Parrikar as the inspiration behind it.
But this time around there are more brickbats than bouquets for the chief minister who has been uncharacteristically forced on the backfoot for something that might not be his own individual creation but dictated by the ideology of the party to which he belongs. The pugnacious Parrikar has surprisingly backtracked and said that he is not averse to making appropriate changes to the film, which its critics want totally scrapped and withdrawn.
The controversy erupted when the education department sent VCDs to all schools in Goa on the occasion of Liberation Day (Goa was liberated by the Indian Army on 19 December, 1961), "requesting" them to screen the film and report compliance! Parrikar now says screening the film, made incidentally in 2002, was optional and VCDs were sent to the educational institutions merely for the record.
There could be more than a change of heart in Parrikar's muted response to the controversy. Now that efforts to destablise his ministry by the Congress-led opposition are being pursued with renewed vigour, perhaps he does not want to rock his own boat by antagonising the Catholic community, which forms about 30 per cent of the 1.4 million population of the state. Parrikar is being propped up by a few Catholic legislators like Mathany Saldanha, Babush Monseratte and Isidore Fernandes, some of whom hold ministerial portfolios.
Given the record and attempts of the erstwhile BJP-led NDA to "rewrite" history in tune with its communal and questionable world-view, many people will see the point of the film's critics who allege that it reeks of communal overtones and propagates a distorted view of history.
Sections of the Catholic intelligentsia have taken the state government to task for this attempt to "misuse history for political purposes", as seasoned Goan journalist Frederick Noronha has put it. Delio Mendonca, director of the Xavier Centre for Historical Research has panned the film for being "intentionally provocative and biased and unfortunately very insensitive and regrettable". His main point of disagreement is that it makes a mockery of the symbols of Christianity by focusing intensively and extensively on churches, the cross and holy images - and that, too, out of context - and associating these with Portuguese rule.
The Congress, too, has risen up in protest and the party's Vichar Vibhag chairman, Uday Bhembre, has alleged that the project is a deliberate and malicious attempt to pursue the communal agenda of the Sangh Parivar under the pretext of presenting the history of Goa's freedom struggle.
What has damaged the government's case is that several notables from the "majority community" have also condemned the film as forcefully. Renowned Konkani poet and historian Dr Manoharrai Sardessai said he found the film terribly disappointing. "It's a third-rate, pathetic film and I don't want to watch it again. Such a film shouldn't be shown in Goa," he declared.
Vasant Molio, president of the Goa, Daman and Diu Freedom Fighters' Association, on his part, has disputed the government's claim that the film has been accepted by the state's freedom fighters and has instead asked the government to withdraw the objectionable film and tender an apology to the freedom fighters.
On the other hand, the government's own troops from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Shiv Sena and the Marathi lobby have been equally vociferous in supporting the film. Veteran Marathi stage artiste and student of history, Bhiku Pai Angle has claimed from first-hand experience that the proselytisation efforts of the missionaries were indeed brutal and the government was absolutely justified in telecasting the VCD.
Noted freedom fighter and former state police chief, Prabhakar Sinari, has argued that the film depicts historical facts - bitter or otherwise - in an authentic manner, conceding that the presentation of these facts may not have been appropriate. A group of about 150 freedom fighters who watched the controversial documentary at a special screening have likewise claimed that it is factual and there is nothing communal about it though it fails to do justice to the contributions of many freedom fighters. Incidentally, the committee that oversaw the project included a number of Catholics, including former journalist, trade unionist and freedom fighter Flaviano Dias, besides former freedom fighter Naguesh Karmali, "educationist" and "social activist" Subhash B Velingkar (who belongs to the RSS).
So what are the precise points of divergence? "Basically, the facts are not ahistorical but the juxtaposition of the facts are a cause for concern. It is not the script per se which is objectionable but the picturisation of the script that riles," Noronha, who has watched the VCD and reviewed it on the Internet, told The Statesman.
According to him, a large tract of the forceful film focuses on the hamla (attack) on the pavitra (holy) land of Goa, with scenes showing silhouettes of Portuguese soldiers destroying temples and damaging Hindu religious icons, torturing locals, attacking Hindus while at prayer and assaulting and abusing their womanhood and violence-ridden conversions to Christianity. All these scenes are accompanied by the symbol of the cross, being shown repeatedly in a way that implies it is the very epitome of evil. Malevolent priests too go about their gory evangelical mission as if colonialism was nothing but a religious war.
The cross has been depicted some 34 times, points out Noronha. "But Portugal's undeniable misuse of religion in the 16th and 17th century is no excuse whatsoever for its continued misuse in the 21st century," he quips.
In this simplistic narrative of history, the contradictions that do not fit in with the script are missing. While the film deifies some of the early Hindu monarchs who resisted the invaders, it does not reveal how some local satraps, Hindus included, made all sorts of shady deals with the Portuguese. Nor does it tell how elite Hindus, who compromised with the Portuguese, whether to survive or promote their interests, prospered under colonial rule and became its economic and administrative props.
It is indeed instructive how economic power was never transferred to locals of the favoured religion despite 450 years of colonial rule! And what about the caste contradictions and conflicts and the fact that the lower castes even today are hardly enamoured of their upper caste brethren, whether of Hindu or Catholic vintage?
Of course, the film does patronisingly mention that "even Goan Christians" contributed to the struggle against colonialism - the Pinto Revolt, Tristao Braganza da Cunha, Juliao Menezes, to name a few individuals. But this seems to be in passing or to lend balance to the project.
The question that remains to be asked in this context is that when Goan researchers in recent times are writing about and maturely discussing things like the Inquisition and conversions, whether there was any need at all to make such a film with such a slant.
When one remembers how the last government at the Centre tried to delay films (a documentary and a feature) on the Gujarat riots from being passed by the Censor Board on the ground that there was no point in reopening old wounds and perpetrating enmity between communities, couldn't the same yardstick be applied in this context? But times have changed and the producers of this violent film might have to pay the political price for trying to make a meal from the sins of the past!
=============================
Source: The Statesman, 10 January 2005 at http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=30&id=65460&usrsess=1
Forwarded by Eddie Fernandes
