The leader of opposition in Goa, Pratapsinh Rane of the Congress demanded that Portuguese be made the second language in Goa State Board schools. “We should have no problem with any language. I learnt Portuguese because our own documents are in Portuguese,” the Congress leader said during the discussion on the ‘Demands for Grants’ on first day of Monsoon Session of Assembly.
“It (Portuguese) should be second language for the students to learn. If you want to know the history of what happened in past, you should know this language also,”
The issue of MoI has been going on for many years, with different organisations favouring different languages. Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) has demanded the state’s mother tongue Konkani to be the medium of instruction. They have also sought withdrawal of grants given to English medium schools.
First, BBSM. Withdrawing grants given to English medium schools is foolish (unless they are run by missions) because no matter how much they might hate this fact, but the colonial system of our country ensures that no one can get a decent employment in service sector without understanding English. And the self-proclaimed custodians of Indian regional languages are as guilty as the Marxist educationists of the sorry state of Indian languages because they have totally failed to update them to working knowledge of today’s world.
But this is still small compared to Mr Rane’s statement that Portuguese is the best to document Goa’s history and culture. You can’t expect anything better from a person belonging to a so called national party which was started by an English civil servant in 1885 with pro-British Indians in Bombay as a safety valve. 130 years later nothing has changed. With an Italian origin party president, why not Portuguese as a compulsory language.
Did Mr Rane forget Marathi, a language which is deeply rooted in the state’s ethos? After all, Konkani (the official state language) couldn’t have been created without Marathi. Why doesn’t he remember that Goa’s history is ancient, with Mauryas, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas, Yadavs, Kadambas and even Vijaynagar administering it during various periods in time? Why not Marathi as the second language of instruction, Mr Rane? Without the Maratha Empire fighting the Portuguese, from Chhatapati Shivaji to Chimaji Appa, Goa today wouldn’t have had any sign of Hinduism today, and we would have had another Nagaland and Mizoram like state in our hands. Its India’s misfortune that Chhatrapati Sambhaji had to withdraw his troops in 1683 from Goa due to a bigger Mughal army coming in, and the end of the Maratha confederacy in 1818 which left Portuguese with no power willing to fight them.
Mr Rane feels proud about Portuguese, as much as he might feel being a servant to the Gandhi family, because this also involves a history of slavery.
There is nothing pleasant about the 450 year Portuguese rule in Goa.
The fondest memory of Portuguese rule in Goa is the Goa Inquisition, which went on unabated from 1560 till it was abolished in 1812. Most of the records were destroyed by the Portuguese and the rest was whitewashed by our great Marxist historians. While its aim was to preserve the Catholic faith, the Inquisition was used as an instrument of social control against Indian Hindus, and also against Portuguese settlers from Europe (mostly New Christians and Jews but also Old Christians). It also was a method of confiscating property and enriching the Inquisitors. Francis Xavier, who ironically is worshipped as a Saint in Goa to this day was the one who requested the Portuguese crown in 1545 to establish the Goa inquisition.
Hindus under this inquisition were no different than they were under shariah as dhimmis in areas under the Turkic sultans, Mughals or their governors. Any open practice of Hinduism was punishable by death. Laws were passed banning Christians from keeping Hindus in their employ, and the public worship of Hindus was deemed unlawful. Hindus were forced to assemble periodically in churches to listen to preaching or to refutation of their religion.People who were sentenced in trial, were forced to work in galleys and gunpowder factories for many years. Those accused of religious heresies were the prime targets of the death penalty.
As per records by the Portuguese clergy themselves, “The fathers of the Church forbade the Hindus under terrible penalties the use of their own sacred books, and prevented them from all exercise of their religion. They destroyed their temples, and so harassed and interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large numbers, refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and were liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their own fashion the gods of their fathers.” Viceroy António de Noronha issued in 1566, an order applicable to the entire area under Portuguese rule:
I hereby order that in any area owned by my master, the king, nobody should construct a Hindu temple and such temples already constructed should not be repaired without my permission. If this order is transgressed, such temples shall be, destroyed and the goods in them shall be used to meet expenses of holy deeds, as punishment of such transgression.
Over 300 temples were destroyed. Rituals of Hindu marriages, sacred thread and cremation were banned. All the persons above 15 years of age were compelled to listen to Christian preaching, failing which they were punished. Orders were issued to suppress Konkani and making it compulsory to speak Portuguese (Not very different than what the Spanish Conquistadores did to the indigenous tribes in South America from 15th to 20th century). Following that law all the non-Christian cultural symbols and the books written in local languages were sought to be destroyed. The main reason for this was to isolate newly converted natives from the Hindus. Charles Dellon documented all these cruelties of the Inquisition and in 1687 published L’Inquisition de Goa (The Inquisition of Goa), describing his experiences in Goa.
The Portuguese viceroy forbade the use of Konkani in 1684 and decreed that within three years, the local people in general would speak only Portuguese. Violation of this meant imprisonment. But these measures did not meet a lot of success. With Marathas conquering Bassein, Chaul and Salsette in 1739, the attack on Konkani was renewed by Portuguese. In 1745, Archbishop Lourenço de Santa Maria decreed that applicants to the priesthood had to know Portuguese; and their close relatives as well. Bamonns (Brahmin converts) and Chardos (Kshatriya converts) were required to learn Portuguese within six months, failing which they would be denied the right to marriage. Because of the language issue, the colonial government expelled the Jesuits in 1761, as they had been proponents of using Konkani to communicate with the native peoples. In 1812, the Archbishop decreed that children were to be prohibited from speaking Konkani in schools and in 1847, this was extended to seminaries. In 1869, Konkani was completely banned in schools.
As a result, no literature in Konkani could develop, nor could the language unite the population, as several scripts (including Roman, Devanagari and Kannada) were used to write it. Konkani became lingua de criados (language of the servants),as Hindu and Catholic used Marathi & Portuguese, respectively. After India liberated Goa in 1961, Konkani has become the cement that binds all Goans across caste, religion and class; it is affectionately termed Konkani Mai (Mother Konkani). The language received full recognition in 1987, when the Indian government recognised Konkani as the official language of Goa, the same year when Goa was granted statehood.
Mr Rane somehow does not want to remember these indignities that were heaped on Konkani by forcing Portuguese. It does not fit his secular narrative. Its his party that failed completely to uproot the Portuguese rule in Goa even 14 years after the county’s independence. His party does not want to remember the heroic resistance our people put against the invaders, but he wants to proudly uphold the language of the invaders to please his vote bank. He should remember a saying in Hindi “Agar apni Maa aur Mitti ki boli se sharm aati hai, to na maa maaf karegi na mitti”.