The late, great Eunice de Souza, one of the most important modern Indian poets, wrote poignantly about “ways of belonging.” The phrase has deep significance to her native Goa, and beyond to the entire western coastline comprising the Konkan and Malabar.
Here history has played out quite apart from the northern plains, and the borderlands of the subcontinent. Instead of constant waves of invasion and repulsion, this part of the world has experienced profound confluence since antiquity. The differences are significant, and if we are to speak of anything like ‘Ek Bharat, Shreshta Bharat’ then they have to be understood, respected and celebrated. Curious paradoxes abound about Goa. Most people think of beaches, but don’t realize the spectacularly beautiful interior includes some of the most beautiful sections of the Western Ghats. There’s a common perception that Christianity dominates, but in fact Hindus have been in the majority for centuries.
There’s a spectacularly rich syncretic culture, including generations of peerless excellence in both western and Hindustani classical music, yet the contemporary image is of pounding EDM under coconut trees. Ask the average Indian what he thinks of Goa, and most of what emerges is shallow Bollywood stereotypes. Ranjit Hoskote, the acclaimed poet, critic and cultural theorist, once wrote with great insight, “geographical contiguity does not mean that Goa and mainland India share the same universe of meaning: Goa’s special historic evolution, with its Lusitanian route to the Enlightenment and print modernity, its Iberian emphasis on a vibrant public sphere, its pride in its ancient internationalism avant la lettre, sets it at a tangent to the self-image of an India that has been formed with the experience of British colonialism as its basis.”
This is a crucial distinction. By the middle of the 19th century, due to something like a perfect storm of geopolitical circumstances, the Portuguese were unable to project significant power or control into their beloved Estado da India Portuguesa centered on Goa.
The last two centuries of their nominal rule was characterised by painful negotiations and compromise with local Hindu and Catholic elites who not only dominated both political and economic affairs in their homeland, but also extended their influence across the oceans from Macau to Mozambique, and eventually to Lisbon.
Thus, it’s unsurprising the current prime minister in Portugal is Orlando Costa, who takes every opportunity to proudly display his Overseas Citizen of India card (it was presented to him with terrific ceremony by Narendra Modi in 2017). All of that is truly extraordinary context, that defies the lobotomized logic of jingoism. But any sincerely “shreshta” Bharat will be necessarily predicated on the ability to accommodate pluralistic identities, that are born from genuine complexities.
As last year’s Jnanpith Awardee – the first ever writer in the English language – Amitav Ghosh once pointed out with great acuity, “One of the ways in which Goa is new is that it has invented a kind of cosmopolitanism that is peculiarly its own. It is a cosmopolitanism of lived experience; a cosmopolitanism of inner dialogues, where the outsider becomes a part of an inner voice. Sometimes embraced and sometimes excoriated, this voice is nonetheless not ignored as it might be elsewhere.” Cosmopolitan does not mean confused. Only bigots take open-mindedness to indicate weakness.
There should be no doubt that Goans do not need lessons on patriotism and nationalism from single-minded simpletons, who cannot understand the strength that comes from understandingthe world. Mahatma Gandhi could have been speaking specifically of the citizens of India’s smallest state when he said, “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”
From time immemorial, this tiny sliver of the Konkan coastline has remained open for business with the rest of the planet, for which it has been renowned as far back as history has been written.
At the turn of the sixteenth century, the port of Goa was the richest city in the world, twice the size of London and Paris in those days. Both the East and West were changed completely because of what happened here – imagine Indian food without chilies, or potatoes or tomato, for example. By the inexorable logic of democracy, this is an insignificantly minuscule place, with only two seats in the Lok Sabha, and a total population smaller than scores of cities across India.
But functioning democracy is much more than the brute force of overwhelming numbers. And true unity in diversity means an acknowledgement of the possibility of harmonious convergence.
(The article is an OP-ED on World Ekta Diwas, observed on October 31)
