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Vivian D'Souza and Jose Oscar Noronha
Vivian D'Souza:
I want to express my appreciation to all or you who have given us the benefit of your personal experiences of life in the old Goa, of illustrious
persons such as Dr. Froilano de Mello and others who fought for Goa. It has
been extremely informative and I feel proud to be a Goan and know that our
forebears were not just a bunch of sossegado, do nothings.
Inevitably, all this information about our illustrious Goans which has been
related on this forum will be lost as we pass on, unless it is archived on a
web page for future scholars and historians to access.
I was not in Goa in 1961. My personal preference would have been to see Goa
become an independent state. Goa was separate for a total of 450 years and it was
inevitable that it would be overwhelmed by a behemoth like India proper.
450 years is a long time when you consider that India has been a nation for just over 50 years. Our culture, like it or not is an amalgam of East and West. We are different. We continue to cherish and hold on to, and celebrate the fact that we are Goans and we are different.
Unfortunately in time, Goa proper will become, at least for those outside Goa, a
Saraswat or mythical place that we originated from.
Who can we blame for the state of affairs in Goa ? Nobody but ourselves.
What have those of us who have migrated to the West done for Goa ? Precious little
except for a few noteworthy instances. We return to Goa flaunting our wealth expecting
everything to be just the same as it was in the "old days", making our wretched fellow citizens in
Goa envious and anxious to migrate out of Goa as well so they too can become
rich. And if one cannot migrate then the only way to acquire wealth in Goa is
through corrupt means, or ill conceived development projects without concern
for the environment, further crushing those who are not so lucky.
It may be late in the game, but it is still not too late to salvage
something of the colossal mess that Goa is in now. To change political reality would be akin to
committing suicide. Like it or not, Goa is now part of India. That is a given.
But with the collective wealth and brainpower and expertise of those of us
outside Goa a lot can be done to improve Goa and make it a real Goa
Dourado.
Utt Goenkara ! Viva Goa !
Vivian A. D'Souza Nov 1999
Jose Oscar Noronha:
I am behind as always, trying to catch up with recent discussions on The
Goan Forum. Let me begin marking my appreciation of the post sent by "Shenzi" -
Vivian de Souza on November 7, under the heading "Goa".
Prof. Froilano de Mello was the Dean of the Goa Medical College, and a Member
of the Portuguese parliament for Goa, Daman and Diu. In addition to that, he
had ample recognition as a talented researcher in the Medical disciplines in
Western Europe.
When, as a five year old, on my Mother's lap I asked her
what is a "sabio" or "savant", she unhesitatingly replied " someone like Dr.
Froilano de Mello". FM could have had a very cushy life, if he chose, if he had not decided to
stand up for his convictions and his conscience. - That Independence or Autonomy served the best interests of Goa and Goans from the Colonial power.
Conflict with the dictatorship in Portugal and lack of support at home drove
him into self-imposed exile to Brasil.
Dr. Tristao de Bragança Cunha was what I would call an Indian nationalist,
who wanted to see Goa merged into India. His ideas and political action caused him to be jailed by the Salazar dictatorship for many, many years.
Mons. Francisco Monteiro ( Padre Chico) was not a politician, but a pastoral
and social activist, toiling for many, many years among Goa's younger generation to ensure they followed a path of rectitude and virtue. But he did
have political convictions, in this case, favorable to the continuity of Goa
under Portuguese sovereignty. His role and insistence in staying in Goa, the
land of his birth, after December 1961, while insisting on holding a Portuguese passport, was the sole reason for the World's largest democracy to
confine him to jail for many, many months, not home detention, but a jail outside Goa. Some say that he was misguided, but his contribution is
difficult to deny.
I will not use any benchmark of political or social savvy or achievement to
evaluate and to rate them. They are legends in their own right, in
our Homeland, that is if there is such a thing as a memory of our history and
people. They did not hesitate to sacrifice their personal well being for the perceived higher interest of their land or their people. They might not be
accepted by all. But I think they need to be part of our written memory, the
collective wisdom from the past that is handed down from generation to generation.
My own position is that, if I was given a choice, in a free plebiscite
in December 1961, I would have voted for Goa to become a part of India. My
vote, however, is not unconditional- the condition being that the rights of
Goans would have to be respected at all times, and I would like this vote to
be reversible if these rights were denied. My vote would be heavily based on
the moral legacy of a Gandhi to an Independent Indian nation, and on the professed creed of a
dominant Congress Party led by Nehru to deliver social and economic justice to all. I would expect such values to be incorporated in
the Constitution and internalized by the people , to the same extent that the
right to free speech and economic freedom is established in North America. It
would also be circumstantially influenced by my abhorrence of the Salazar dictatorship. May sound Utopian. Almost four decades later the legacies
bestowed by the Founding Fathers of the Indian democracy or even arguably those which integrate a
millennial Indian heritage, have been relegated to the dustbin of History, and rampant and widespread corruption in India,
including Goa, causes these rights to be denied.
All the same, at the
threshold of the 21st. century, I do not think that it would ever be possible to build a "Great Wall of Goa" as some may wish, to protect "the
Goan way of life". Sometime Fred Noronha has produced a very insightful analysis on this theme. I will agree that significant strides towards social
and economic progress were made earlier on, in the first decades of integration. Rampant corruption denies the
continuity of the process in the future. Again, I will not accept that all corruption is imported into Goa.
But if in the mainstream of the Indian nation the principles of morality and
social and economic justice are trampled on, ethnicity becomes a very tenuous
strand on which to base and maintain such a vote.
That brings me to another point. This point relates to the use
and abuse of History. Over and over, sometimes true historical facts, other
times historical half-truths are continually brought up, again and again, and
used in isolation or out of context. And the case is made for justifying or
condemning the past, justifying or condemning the "status quo" , or pressing
the case for "historical justice".
My own conviction is that we need only so much historical truth and history as to not repeat mistakes from the past.
Historical truth needs be tempered with the urge to use it in a socially responsible way. Academic achievement is ,alas, no guarantee of social responsibility. What I have seen is socially irresponsibility in some people, laying dynamite along the fracture lines of our Community, in their own self serving interest. In doing so, these self-appointed "avengers of history" really become the "scavengers of history".
If we are to follow some of these Net Gurus, there is no opportunity or break to heal the wounds from the past, redeem ourselves, and build a promising future.
We do not have to "get even", to make up for the past.
We have to forget and forgive, to build the future. I hope I will be preserved from such experiences on this forum.
Jose Oscar Noronha
Nov 1999