Indian Goa and Goan "Bharatis"
©Prakash John Mascarenhas. This page is Copyright.
The Only Relationship between India and Goa is one of a Criminal and a Victim: that, and nothing else. And, obviously, this is a relationship that CRIES OUT TO HEAVEN... THE BLOOD OF GOANS, DEMANDING REDRESS... The ONLY legitimate redress is that of punishing, chastising India and of restoring Goa to the Status Quo Ante. — Prakash John Mascarenhas.
Dear Senhor Bernardo,
The message you have quoted to me, this letter, even from a Goan "Bharati" (what exotic, hybrid animal is this?), is not extraordinary. After all, have we not been brainwashed for more than fifty years?
Even today, Goan sentiment, though not yet activated and inclined to recourse to arms to liberate the motherland, still sees Goa as NOT Indian. Culturally, our idiom separates Goa from India. We call ourselves Goans and the others Indians. We travel to India, not within India. And yet, ever since the unfortunate Padroado-Propaganda conflict (the so-called "Goan Schism") in British India, the Antipatronalists have sought to alienate the affections of Goans as a means of destroying the Patronalist party.
Schools run by the Church under the Antipatronalists had, in attempting to out-manouever the Portuguese Patronalists, played into the hands of the English imperialists and their Indianist handmaids by taking up education in English with an Indianist syllabus, thus anglicizing the Goans and Indianizing them.
[I must add that I am myself Antipatronalist, that is, pro-Roman, supporting the interventions of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, against the 'exclusive' claims of the Portuguese Crown and State to rights of Patronage in the Orient. However, unfortunately, the Antipatronalists in British India have harmed Goa unnecessarily in their quarrel with the Portuguese.]
For generations, Goans have learnt one thing at home, and another in school. At home we learnt that we are Goans not Indians. In school we were brainwashed that Goa is merely another and an insignificant part of the "Greater Glory" that is India. Who can blame us if so many Goans are therefore seriously confused? Who can blame us, then, if so many Goans tend to follow the Indianist line?
The man that wrote the message below is one such man, a brainwashed zombie. He has been taught like all others, to cheerlead for India, right or wrong: An unfortunate who has never learnt to think for himself, to question the poisonous pap fed him in Indian schools. For such zombies, India is their God, India and its territorial continuity, the rights and dignity of peoples be damned!
On what basis are we to understand India's pretensions to a claim over Goa and to the loyalty and affections of Goans? Is it because we are "Indians"?
But if we are "Indians", then what are the people of Burma and Sri Lanka, to whose separation and erection as separate "nations" the Indians assented to, in 1937 and continuously since, without regress? And if we are "Indians" then what are the people of Pakistan and Bangladesh who were separated from India in 1947, and to whom India formally assures that she has no designs on their territories?
Goa, by contrast, has existed as a separate country, not from 1937 or 1947, but from 1510, before the British India Empire was even born!
Long after the great Albuquerque wrested Goa from the infidel moors and inaugurated Christian Goa, in his long campaign to outflank that brood of vipers and strike them in their very nest, Robert Clive inaugurated what is today India on the battlefields of Plassey and Wandiwash. If India has a "Father of the Nation" it is Robert Clive pre-eminently above any other claimant!
It is the British who invented the modern India, who fused disparate states and peoples into one state, the British Indian Empire. It is this unification that is the moral and ideological basis of India's existence.
India is NOT a nation. Both British India and the Indian Union, which is British India minus Burma, Ceylon, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives, house more than three hundred nationalities, ranging from the Tamils to the Kashirians, the Ahom to the Brahui...
It is modern mythology that a state is a nation. However, this nostrum is idiocity defined. A State is NOT a nation. After a great many wars, states of Europe are, by and large, nearly identical in extension, to particular dominant nationalities, such as the Polish in Poland, the Germans in Germany, etc. However, even in Europe that is not entirely true. There remain many nations who do not have thier own sovereign states and who are forced to play second fiddle to the dominant nationalities.
It is absolutist, mythological nationalism that leads peoples into troubles; great troubles. It leads to man's insensitivity towards man, to one ethnic group subjugating another and dehumanising them. Absolutist nationalism has led mankind into one war after another. However, some people are too dumb to learn. Such are the Indianists.
But it is strange and unacceptable that India should claim Goa and force herself upon us by military might when she refuses to be irredentist towards the separated territories!
But there is, in fact, a logic to India's claims. And that is, not because Goa is, or is not, "Indian" but because Goa, or rather the integral EIP (Portuguese India), in all its five enclaves, is a spot and blemish on the fair face of India. That is, Goa as an enclave, interrupts the CONTINUUM of Indian territories, round about it.
This is Goa's sin.
The Indians were perfectly willing to accede and still do accede to the secession of Burma, Ceylon, Pakistan and Bangladesh. None of these secessions affect India's territorial continuity. But the mere existence of Portuguese or French India is an insult and an affront to India, by interrupting her territorial continuity, in the form of unseemly, unbecoming enclaves.
From this viewpoint, it is territory, not people, that is important. This is the idolatry of territory, of territorial continuity. In this mindset, humanity and human rights and human dignity counts for nothing. What counts is territory and territorial continuity.
By the same token, Malaysia should be fully within its rights to march in and annex the miserable, measly enclave of the Sultanate of Brunei, which mars the fair face of Federal Malaysia. Ditto for Singapore.
By the same token, France should be fully within its rights to march in and annex the miserable, measly enclave of Monaco, which mars the fair face of France.
By the same token, Italy should be fully within its rights to march in and annex the miserable, measly enclave of San Marino, which mars the fair face of Italy.
By the same token, Germany should be fully within its rights to march in and annex the miserable, measly enclave of Luxembourg, which mars the fair face of Germany.
But why only Luxembourg? Why not Austria, German Venetia, the Sudentenland, Silesia, German Switzerland, Alsatia and Lotharingia, which the French call Alsace and Lorraine?
It is precisely this mindset that precipated Europe time and again into wars - great wars. First we had the Sun King and his "reunification movement" under which he sent out troops and officers to annex territories surrounding France on the basis that they were once dependent on the cities or provinces of France. Then came the two World Wars, including Hitler's annexations of Austria and the Sudentenland, and his dream of fabricating a German Lebensraum in East Europe.
Therefore, we see, that India's claim to Goa rests not on any moral or legal principle or value, nor on ethnic or irredentist principles, but purely on the idolatry of land, the idolatry of the continuity of one's possessions, so that one must bludgeon out of existence the hapless land that disrupts this continuity, regardless of all other values.
We are all witness to the same idolatry of territorial continuity and contempt of peoples in the case of Goa's sister, East Timor, at the hands of the "Indonesians", another mythic nation like the Indians.
Message 246
From:�Bernado Colaco <[email protected]>
Date:� Sun�Jun�15,�2003� 8:24 pm
Subject: Re: June 10 Day of Camoes and Communities
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 12:24:20 -0700 (PDT)
Agnelo wrote:
Camoes is a Portuguese cultural figure, to refresh your memory. what is the relevance of Camoes to Goans and goanet?
Camoes is NOT merely a Portuguese cultural figure. He IS very much a Goan cultural figure too. Why does that boggle your brain? If Tagore can be Indian and also Bangla... If Allama Mohammad Iqbal can be the author of a both an Indian and a Pakistan national anthem, why cannot Camoes who spent a great deal of his life in Goa, be claimed by Goa, as much as by Portugal?
Goans are ethnic Indians.
Goans ethnic Indians? What bullshit! As much ethnic "Indians" as the Timorese are ethnic "Indonesians"!
Goa's elected representatives and the people choose to treat their legacy and their future as they see fit.
Elected by whom? By Goans only, or by Indians also? If the latter, than they are not legal representatives of Goa. As it is, any participant in the occupation regime and its organs is nothing more than a traitor.
Your use of the term 'bharatis' for Indians is insulting. we may have differences among us Indians and Goans, foreigners are not allowed to butt in.
What is more insulting: Fighting for righteousness, or brown-nosing the invaders-usurpers? From the moral viewpoint, I find brown-nosing insulting, I find sucking up to the enemy insulting, I find attacking patriots insulting. As for butt, all I want, as a Goan, is to kick out Indian butt. As an anti-national, YOU have no right to tell us whether we can or cannot accept aid from friendly foreigners. That is none of YOUR business. I have NO problems with friendly foreigners — especially those who come in to aid and assist us against the Indian invaders!
As far as dusting off the colonial legacy, Right, who knows when quislings will be given the warm welcome similar to the one they got in post WWII Europe, A summary trial and execution?
A Goan, A 'Bharati'
Agnelo
Our hope too! One day the quisling, those who collaborate with the invaders and justify this criminality, will be brought to book. This is our confidence in God, the God of Justice and of Righteousness, that evil will not be permitted to prevail!
Prakash, A Goan, an anti-Bharati (Bharatis are neanderthals. Bharatis are barbarians. Bharatis have, as witnessed by the emperor Babur even five hundred years ago, no real culture or sense of social hygience. They have a pedestrian civilization, a pedestrian, subhuman culture! We want no barbarians in Goa!)