GOA ON ALERT
Crosses have been desecrated, hate speeches made. Fanaticism is trying to break in. But Goans are determined to defeat attempts to polarise the state
It was a Saturday morning in July. Agnelo Fernandes, a retired seaman and resident of Goa’s Curchorem village was dressed to go out, but decided to call a staff member of the local church before doing so, to check with him the schedule for a Mass to celebrate the local MLA’s birthday. The committee member told him about desecrations at the church cemetery. Fernandes rushed to the cemetery – one of his daughters is buried there. “When I reached, I found bones lying near the entrance. Some crosses had been broken and niches damaged. I made my way to my daughter’s grave and the niche we had made in her memory. The granite stone covering the niche was broken. Still it didn’t strike me. Then I saw the satin bag on which I had written her name, her date of birth and the date of her death, before putting her bones in it to preserve her memory, lying on the ground. It was then that I realised that the bones lying near the entrance were my daughter’s,” he says, with barely concealed pain.
Last month Goa was jolted by a spate of desecration of crosses, causing grief to Catholics inthe state. A temple was also vandalised. “The method of destruction was the same everywhere – the base of the cross was broken by hitting it with some heavy implement,” says Father Savio Fernandes, executive secretary of the Council for Social Justice and Peace, which has been engaged in fact-finding studies into the desecrations. In some places the headstones on the graves and niches – where families preserve the mortal remains of a departed member – were broken. Goa Police has arrested Francis Pereira, a resident of Curchorem for the desecrations and claimed that he has confessed to the crime. But more desecrations were reported after Pereira’s arrest.
The mood in Goa is one of apprehension. The breaking of the crosses is being viewed as only a manifestation of the actual danger, the danger of an attempt being made to divide Goan society on the basis of religion. “Fanatical elements are getting emboldened and empowered,” says Prabhakar Timble, former president of the Goa Forward party. Timble resigned from the party when party MLAs decided to align with the BJP after the 2017 elections.
In June, Goans say, inflammatory speeches were made against minorities at the All India Hindu Convention organised by the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, allied to the Goa-based Sanatan Sanstha. Sadhvi Saraswati had reportedly made a statement that she would request the central government to publicly hang people who eat beef as a mark of social status.
In Ponda, where the Sanstha has its ashram, locals say that they know little about the workings of the organisation. “Most of their members are from outside, not Goans,” says a shopkeeper near the ashram. Another asks, “Are you a cop? The police come often to the ashram. These people are involved in many anti-social activities.” Members of the organisation have been accused in the murders of rationalists outside the state. Sanatan members had also been accused in a 2009 bombing in Goa, but were acquitted.
A DISTURBING SILENCE
“The state government should have taken note of the Sadhvi’s speech, but it did nothing,” rues Jovito Lopes, vice president of the Catholic Association of Goa. Goa has had a BJP government since 2012. Most Goans admit that the government has not made any anti-minority comments: “Due to the substantial numbers ( translated as votes) of minorities, it looks like the BJP has played its political cards well in Goa and successfully steered clear of national controversies created by its national leaders,” says A Freddie Fernandes, a political scientist. But he adds , “Since the BJP has been in power in the state in 2000 and now since 2012, attempts to divide the people and break the communal harmony have been visible.”
BJP MLA and deputy speaker of the Goa legislative assembly Michael Lobo admits that even he is “hurt” by the state’s inaction against the Sadhvi’s comments. “This type of thing should not be tolerated. FIRs should be filed automatically from the police side because this can create communal tension,” he says.
The government’s silence has added to the commonly-held perception that the BJP is a majoritarian party. “When the party was in power between 2000 to 2005, they had made attempts to sanitise school textbooks,” says Freddie Fernandes. Favita Dias remembers how the BJP government had in the past attempted to cancel the holiday on the Feast of St Francis Xavier. “Communalisation takes place in many ways,” says writer Amita Kanekar, “both direct like the new beef bans outside Goa (which resulted in a severe shortfall in beef supply in Goan markets), and indirect, like the false portrayal of Goan culture and history as Hindu and Brahminical. Catholic culture is portrayed as foreign, while Muslim culture (including Goa’s own Islamic past and culture) is ignored.” According to the 2011 Census, the number of Christians in Goa is 25.1 per cent of the population. Muslims account for eight per cent and Hindus comprise 66.08 per cent of the population.
UNITED COLOURS OF GOA
Goa has a history of religion-based politics. “After Goa’s liberation from Portuguese rule in 1961 we had the United Goans Party (UGP) which mostly enjoyed support of the Catholics and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) which was a Hindu-majority party. While the UGP wanted Goa to be a separate state, MGP wanted it to be merged with Maharashtra. But one’s political views never influenced social relations between the communities,” says writer Damodar Mauzo. The writer remembers how he was once breast-fed by the late Goan musician Anthony Gonsalves’ mother because his own was too ill to feed him.
Goans, Hindus and Catholics, repeatedly talk of this bond, of a shared living and role in each other’s lives. But now, says Timble, the situation is not as comfortable as before. “There is a feeling among a few in the majority community that they are tolerating the minorities.” The number of gumtis, or small Hindu places of worship, has gone up, say some. “There are many crosses across Goa where even Hindus pray. Now tulsi manches have come up alongside some of them,” says Timble. The competition over religious display means more crosses are also being erected to keep up with the gumtis , points out Freddie Fernandes. And an effort has begun to institutionalise Hindu practices. “The Sanstha people tell us to worship together, rather than do our individual pujas at home. At any village fair now, you will find their stalls,” says a Goan. Dadu Mandrekar, a Dalit writer and activist, rues the RSS’s growing influence in the Bahujan community. The underlying tensions sometimes spill out in social media, where a local says, “Goan Catholics are sometimes being portrayed as anti-national and proPortuguese”.
On July 29, the Catholic Association of Goa and the All India Catholic Union held a meeting to discuss the Sadhvi’s speech. All-religion peace meets have been organised to dispel tensions, if any. Father Savio and Shaikh Basheer Ahmed, president of the Association of All Goa Muslim Jamaats also issued a joint statement last month against the targeting of minorities. All this is new for Goa. “I don’t think the community feels threatened but a certain element of trust, that prevailed has been lost,” says writer Maria Aurora Couto.
Most Goans feel that the Goan tradition of peace and communal harmony will win the day. “Goans of all communities are peaceful by nature and even those who have come and settled here get moulded in its culture. It’s the outside forces who are trying to disrupt the peace. Not just the minorities, even the majority is disturbed by this. But these forces won’t be able to disrupt the harmony here,” says Lobo. His conviction does not seem misplaced. At Da Silva’s – Panjim’s popular cutlet joint – a woman in a salwar kameez and mangalsutra comes for a snack with a young girl in jeans. She orders a chicken cutlet for herself, but nods encouragingly at her young companion who orders a beef cutlet. Da Silva does brisk business in both.