Guddhameva Jayate!

Pg8

HERALD

OPINION

www.oheraldo.in

Guddhameva Jayate!

o= HERALD o= Vol No CIX No: 3 Saturday 3 January, 2009

Stimulation and recession

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he global recession is sweeping all before it. In a bid to reverse the recessionary trends undercutting the growth of the Indian economy, the central government yesterday unveiled its second ‘stimulus package’ for the economy. Apart from the RBI easing credit norms – to provide more funds to trade and industry at lower interest rates – the package enables industry to borrow more from abroad, allows Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) to invest more in the country, and steps up public spending. It allows states to access the market for borrowings of up to Rs30,000 crore to meet additional expenditure. It liberalises External Commercial Borrowing (ECB) norms to boost the near-comatose real estate sector, and raises FII investment limits in rupee-denominated instruments to $15 billion from the present $6 billion, to give the stock markets a muchneeded shot in the arm. To boost beleaguered local industry, exemptions earlier given for countervailing duties on imports of cement, TMT steel bars and structural girders to contain inflation have been withdrawn. Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Alhuwalia, who announced the package, said special attention was being paid to the crisis-ridden housing and real estate sector, to all industry, both macro and micro, and to the dormant infrastructure sector. The package expands credit and liquidity, including for non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), which finance sales in the troubled auto sector. This package, he said, would be the last for the current financial year. What the package will do is boost public investment, particularly in the infrastructure sector. The hope is that this area, which has taken the biggest hit in the recession, will give the economy a major push if it can be revived. However, whether this will actually happen or not remains to be seen. Along with the first package announced earlier, it takes the national exchequer’s total revenue loss to about Rs40,000 crore. What could be a crippling deficit burden in normal times, it is hoped, will stimulate demand in the short term, as well as lay the foundation for overall revival of investment and growth. Alhuwalia warned that the global economic crisis would continue at least through the coming year. But he said India would still manage 7 per cent growth in FY’09. Fine economist though he is, Alhuwalia is here parroting the official line, even though India’s present industrial growth rate is sub-zero. Whether the stimulus package will work or not remains to be seen, but it is better than doing nothing at all, which will surely take the economy down the slippery path to deep recession.

A question of crores

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s2.6 crore went missing in the central headquarters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in New Delhi. The amount went missing from a safe stored in a small room located at the back of the main building, and was first noticed on 26 December. The money had been deposited on 24 December and, by all indications, was stolen on Christmas Day. For a party that likes to portray itself as different from the ‘corrupt’ Congress, this is the most serious setback after the Tehelka sting of March 2001, in which its then President Bangaru Laxman nonchalantly accepted a bribe of Rs1 lakh in cash from a reporter masquerading as an arms dealer, and tucked it into his drawer as if it was something routine that he did dozens of times a day. The theft is almost sure to have been an inside job. The lock had not been tampered with; and there were no traces of forced entry. Since then, the accountant and the party Treasurer have been made to resign, but the party has further slipped in public estimation since it has refused to call in the police, and sought the help of a private investigator instead. Meanwhile, the Congress is enjoying itself at its rival’s discomfiture, and has alleged that the money was part of the corpus collected to fund the cash-for-votes scam, in which BJP MPs dumped Rs1 crore in cash on the table of the Lok Sabha, claiming it was bribe money to induce them to change sides during the confidence vote.

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TEOTONIO R DE SOUZA laments the fact that Goans who try to be critically creative get little support and encouragement

aking stock of the year ending – one more of the many that have ended and others that will follow and end – are we not more inclined than ever to be driven down the path of a Labadda Upanishad rather than to be elevated by the Mundaka Upanishad? In other words, the preferred motto of the national citizens today seems to be ‘Guddhamella Jayate’! In Bardeshi lingo guddhamella would be pronounced as guddhameva – that rhymes well with the ‘Satyameva’ of the Indian national motto. Dalgado’s Konkani-Portuguese dictionary provides the meaning of guddhamella as pacto secreto, conluio (secret pact, conspiracy). Instead of the Upanishadic world of mumukshu, we now live in the brave new world of aparavidya where truth is stranger than fiction. While truth forces one to look at the reality outside confronting us, fiction promises autonomy and egoistic uni-directionality of Kafkaian einsinnigkeit, one-track mindedness of the maniacs. Dedicated terrorists are just one of the frightening results of this trend, but we have a whole range of other variants, beginning with the milder variety of fiction writers who pick up their knowledge of history from book cover flaps. We have such mushrooming literati in Goa-related internet forums and some local press organs that cater to peasant tastes. This lot is condemned to producing fait divers that will hardly be remembered after a year ends. To prevent that from happening to him, one such guddhameva-lover resorted to Goanet before the year ended to remind us of what he wrote on Herald in 1996. It was about a controversy he invented, but saw the need of recruiting Shirodkars, Pearson and Teotonio to corner some public attention to his ability. He also denounces his own democratic credentials, seeking to protect the unwary masses from the foreign influences he attributed to the above-mentioned authors: “Too many common people have begun subscribing to such views and they should be stopped before the situation deteriorates.” Is that also a reflection of “foreign concepts like Marxism, or other strange ideas like Feminism or Post-Structuralism and so forth”, or is it Derrida’s “democracy to come”? It is a pity so much talent and energy in Goa are wasted on trifles and petty issues, instead of supporting and encouraging those who try to be critically creative. We do not object to destroying to construct, and isn’t that the symbolic message of the cosmic dance of Nataraja? Goans crying wolf about their identity in danger could try to be more attentive and concerned about the attempts being made to “invent” Goa to cater for market-oriented academic and non-academic

tastes. One need not fall into the easy trap of calling it post-colonialism or fail to accept critically any positive contributions coming from any source. Before I present a few recent attempts at understanding Goa and Goans better, including one high-falutin bombastic “invention”, I cannot but denounce painfully the cases of promising Goan/Indian scholars who manifest their insecurity by preferring at times to pay homage to questionable Western scholarship to proven and better substantiated native research. This inheritance of orientalism is unfortunately still with our young generations, and it bodes ill for the immediate future. Correspondingly, the young generations in the West are still suffering from the occidentosis of their forefathers, and still reveal the hangover of a colonial superiority complex. These young generations in the West include some of Goan/Indian origin. During the past two decades nearly a dozen young and not-so-young Goans have made noteworthy contributions to the understanding of different

aspects of Goa’s cultural past. Without intending to keep anyone out, I remember P P Shirodkar, S K Mhamai, Charles Borges, Pratima Kamat, Shyam Bhat, P D Xavier, Celsa Pinto, Fatima Gracias, Philomena Antony, Délio Mendonça, Phal Desai, Xavier Martins, Sharon D’Cruz, Remy Dias and Rochelle Pinto, who have produced PhD theses on themes related to Goa. I had the honour of guiding the research of at least three of them officially. Maria Aurora Couto is a specialist in English literature, but has given us a masterpiece of cultural studies in the form of the autobiographical Goa: A Daughter’s Story. Lourdes Bravo da Costa Rodrigues is no less active in tracing Goa’s cultural traditions. And we have more such worthy examples. One does not necessarily need a University diploma to make a mark. Most of these researchers have consulted and utilised information produced by Filipe Nery Xavier and a host of others who never saw any University. For further proof one need only to glance through the three volumes of Dicionário de Literatura Goesa recently compiled by

Aleixo Manuel da Costa. How many readers of this column have made an effort to find out what exactly each of the above mentioned scholars produced to enrich our knowledge about Goa? That could be a test of sincerity and honesty of Goans who proclaim their concern for Goa’s identity and future. I could list another dozen of foreign scholars who have worked on Goa and we owe them gratitude for that. Some of them are very senior or senior scholars, like M N Pearson, G D Winius, A Disney, Robert Newman, Caroline Ifeka, Janet Rubinoff, A T Matos, M J Mártires Lopes, Cristiana Bastos, Timothy Coates, Tim Walker, Susana Sardo, Paul Axelrod, Michelle Fuerch and R Trichur, who have covered such varied aspects as history, anthropology, ethnomusicology and tourism studies. As one can expect, Portugal will continue to take interest in the field, and more recently we have seen published research by two young and upcoming scholars, Catarina Madeira Santos and Angela Barreto Xavier. We may have other occasions to appreciate the specific contributions of these various scholars, both Goan and foreigners, but for now let us have only a very brief review of Angela Barreto Xavier’s A Invenção de Goa (Lisboa, ICS, 2008). This scholar shares the virtues and defects of a young scholar. With a PhD from the European Institute of Florence, and with a glamorous institutional affiliation in Portugal, this Portuguese citizen of Goan origin could be more modest in her work and not just in words. She seems to have discovered the moon, and classifies summarily and brattishly most existing studies as “synchronic”, “orientalist”, “nationalistic”, etc. She offers us a diachronic approach to prove that the Portuguese imperial presence in Goa was made possible by consent and negotiation between all parties, and not necessarily by any hegemonic group, imperial or local. Curiously, she contradicts her own premises, choosing to cite a Goan priest, A Frias, and using him as a metaphor and point of departure for her research. In addition to inventing a Jesuit General Jacopo Lainez (p 140), the Hindus of Sirula may learn about their ‘Garam-Purusha’ (p 186). The author rushes into details wherein the angels would fear to tread: while dealing with the caste traditions of Chorão (pp 277 ff), instead of quoting Srinivasan and Cohn, a much better job could be done by consulting and citing F X Gomes Catão who published his extensive ‘Notes for the History of Chorão’ in the Portuguese journal Studia (nos 15 & 17, 1965-66). The title of this thesis well justifies the contents and approach of the book. More modesty and less brashness augur a better future for any research. Satyameva Jayate!

The Right to Sleep

Tongue in Cheek

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had a strong feeling that it would happen one day. Now I stand vindicat ed. The Supreme Court, the apex court in the land, has held that ‘sleep’ is a basic right and a biological need of life that is essential for good health. This news comes as a dream come true for die-hard sleep addicts like me. There could be many out there who consider sleeping as the most important ‘activity’ they carry out during the day (and the night too). Such compulsive sleepers can sleep just about anywhere, besides, of course, sleeping on the bed at home. They can fall asleep in the bus, on a bench in the garden, under a banyan tree, at the Sunday mass during the sermon, or simply in the office. They say that the beginning of good health is sleep and that a good sleep is better than the best medicine. Sleep is a treasure. The poor man has a lot of it in comparison to the rich man, who has a lot of money and can end up losing his sleep over it. Sleep is a great leveller. Everyone has to sleep at some time of the day and the night. The King does sleep, and so does his subjects. The clever and the fools, the strong and the meek, the whites and the coloured, all have to sleep. It makes me wonder why so much fuss is being

made when people working in offices doze off at their worktables. Now such people can confront the boss by saying that sleep is their basic right. Be that as it may, sleep is not all about rest and inactivity. In sleep the mind could be more active than while one is awake. You could have a sweet dream or wake up in the middle of the night all sweating and with your heart pumping hard after a nightmare. Then you have the sleepwalkers who walk about in the bedroom or all over the house with their eyes shut. Just as you walk the talk, such people walk the sleep. While there are those who walk in their sleep, I wonder if there are people who sleep while they walk. If so, what do you call such people? Walksleepers? Sounds appropriate. While it is natural to sleep with one’s eyes shut, I believe there are people who can sleep even with their eyes wide open. How fortunate they are! The boss will never know that they are actually sleeping at the worktable. A certain boss prefers to call one of his employees a miracle-worker. “It is a miracle if he works,” the boss says nonchalantly. There are those who go into a deep slumber as soon as they hit the pillow. Some die-hard sleepers don’t even need a pillow. There are, of

By Adelmo Fernandes course, also those who can fall asleep on their feet. For others sleep could be hard to come by. They are better known as insomniacs. Such individuals resort to all sorts of methods to go into a slumber – right from watching the late-night show on television to reading an old newspaper. Believe me, there is no better remedy to cure insomnia then reading stale news. You can try it out. It works far better than counting sheep. Of course for the chronic insomniacs a medical intervention seems to be the only way out to blank out. How many hours of sleep does one need in a day? It is said, “Five hours sleeps a traveller, seven hours a scholar, eight hours a merchant and eleven hours every knave.” Given an opportunity I wouldn’t mind sleeping even fifteen hours in a day. But then there are also those who sleep for hardly four hours a day. Such people probably believe in the saying, “There will be sleeping enough in the grave”, for many consider sleep as the image of death. If that is so we ‘die’ every night and probably several times during the day. Then why do we fear death? Is it because it is one sleep where you sleep for eternity and never get up? Well, my eyes feel heavy now…zzzz…

Letters to the Editor Tiatr-ical theory Sayeesh Naik, Marcel How often have we seen the ‘Ayurvedic’ peddler of patent medicine, who sits at the roadside with bowls full of herbs, narrating to bystanders how his magic concoction can cure every illness, from arrhythmia to arthritis and from indigestion to impotence? Now, similarly, we have a ‘single solution’ to each and every one of Goa’s ills. According to Wilson ‘Wilmix’ Mazarello, the root cause of all of Goa’s chronic problems (which he says are mere symptoms) is Konkani; because it has been chained by the present Official Language Act (‘Official Language Act: The cause of all our problems’, OPinionatED, Herald, 1 Jan). If only that perfidious Act is totally removed and we ‘set Konkani free’, Wilmix implies, Goans will stop mistrusting each other, the megaproject standoff in villages will come to an end,

100 Years Ago PRIMEIRO

DIARIO

N AS

C O L O N I AS

P O RT U G E Z AS

3 January 1909 Sacred Heart of Jesus

The City paid solemn respect day before yesterday to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Serbs assault Austrian patrol

An Austrian Patrol at Bosnia was assaulted by Serbians, which left behind one wounded officer who had earlier shot dead two assailants.

British railways affected

There has been an interruption of railway services in Scotland, Ireland and the north of England due heavy snowfall which had covered the rails. The River Tweed remains absolutely frozen.

Public auction of land

On the 19th of the current month at the Superior Office of the Treasury, at a public auction, strips of the field D Manuel in this city and other plots of land on the banks of the river which belong to the State will be sold.

the SEZ controversy will be over, members of Utt Goykara and the Goa Bachao Abhiyan (GBA) will stop infighting and playing the blame game, and people’s suspicion and hatred for the regional plans will disappear. Wonderful, is it not, that one single deed could make everyone happy? A perfect ending – for a tiatr. Life, unfortunately, is far more complicated. If the Official Language Act is removed, Konkani will no longer be Goa’s official language! Wilmix is a great tiatrist. But he should stick to his strengths. Goans have fought long and hard for Konkani and statehood. They cannot even think of gambling it away on the basis of a whimsical, tiatr-ical theory.

Miserable power situation Orlando S A Da Silva, Carmona On 19 Dec the CM inaugurated the electricity sub-station at Carmona and applauded the Electricity Department and the Congress for the completion of the much-awaited project. I remember the day when, at a press conference in the presence of our ex-MLA, a group of like-minded Panchyat representatives including myself bombarded Digambar Kamat, the then Power Minister, for the miserable power situation on this coastal stretch. At this meeting, besides approving the sub-station, he also sanctioned a mobile van with linesmen on night duty with immediate effect, with an assurance to introduce permanent van service not only in this part of Navelim constituency but to the whole of Goa, which promise was kept and introduced the said service amidst vast publicity and fanfare. But today under a new Power Minister and a new MLA the service is withdrawn or has unceremoniously died a natural death, and the locals are once again are suffering due to power failures during the night hours. Similarly the project of installation of fancy street-lighting system introduced by our ex-MLA at a whopping cost of Rs 5 crore from the taxpayers’ money to beautify this tourist destination is lying idle for the past two years. The Electricity Department is collecting eighteen paise per consumer in their power bills towards street lighting cost. Why is the mobile Service withdrawn, and why are the fancy streetlights not commissioned?

Letter of the Day

Wiping out terrorism

Vijay Nadkarni, Sanguem

The recent terrorist attack on Mumbai is an attack on our whole country. This has caused great damage to the pride and image of our country. Two hundred innocent citizens were killed and three hundred injured in this brutal attack. What are the main causes of this attack? Our shameless, impotent, incompetent and selfish politicians are mainly responsible for this. These leaders are crazy only for money and power and least interested in the welfare of the country. SIMI and Indian Mujaheddin are another problem. Most of our country’s people have no patriotism left in them. They are only after money and enjoyment. There are around 3 crore Bangladeshi citizens staying illegally in different parts of India. I would like to suggest certain measures to combat terrorism. First and foremost we need to change the political scenario. We should have a two-party system. Politicians should be allowed to contest elections at most twice, with a maximum age limit of 60 years. The public should have strong control over these leaders who should be forced to take decisions in favour of their country. The members of terrorist outfits like SIMI who are citizens of India should be identified and put behind bars. Leaders like Abu Azmi and Imam Bukhari who provoke them should be dealt with firmly. The Sachar Committee for Muslims must be scrapped. Uniform Civil Code should be applied. The financial assistance for Haj pilgrimage should be stopped. All the madarasas where jihadi training is given should be closed. TADA and POTA should be brought back. Bangladeshi insurgents should be identified and sent back. Afzal Guru should be hanged immediately. The full Indo-Pak and Indo-Bangla border should be protected with fencing. The smuggling of fake notes and drugs across the border should be stopped. The terrorist camps across the border should be destroyed. Naxalites and ULFA should be finished off. The Coast Guard has to be made more vigilant with the support of the Air Force. The recruitment of police has to be increased and provided with modern weapons. Kashmir has to be brought under military rule. All separatist leaders should be arrested. All Kashmiri Pandits should be rehabilitated and provided with modern weapons. Section 370 should be scrapped. At present there is one MLA per 60,000 population in Hindu-dominated Jammu and one MLA per 30,000 population in Muslim-dominated Kashmir. This has to be brought on par. Only if these measures are taken will our country be saved from terrorist attacks.

Monthly electricity Bills Augustus Alphonso, Vasco A lot of citizens have been complaining about the electricity bills that are accumulated (for several months together) instead of being given on a monthly basis in Goa. It seems that the government staff in the Electricity Department want to work less and play more during office hours. Citizens don’t have unlimited salaries in Goa to reserve their money just to pay these accumulated monthly bills. This is injustice to citi-

zens. It seems there is no law and order in the government departments itself.

Irrelevant objections? Joaquim Correia-Afonso, Benaulim The Panchayat Minister is back with his attacks against the people living in Panchayat areas. This time he says that people “do not want any project in villages.” He also said that “people’s objection to mega projects having all legal permissions are irrelevant” (Herald, 30 Dec). This seems to me to be a purely “irrelevant”

outburst. Are people fighting against “any project”? Have all those behind the mega projects been following the terms and conditions laid down in the “legal permissions”? That is what people have all along been objecting to, even if the minister does not understand it – or, understanding it, does not accept it, for reasons best known to himself. The latest example: agitated residents of Telaulim-Navelim are demanding revocation of permission granted to a construction project where a 7-metre road is not existing in the area (Herald, 31 Dec). Will the Minister tell the people where the road is? Further, the people also noticed many irregularities in a project coming up at Buticas-Navelim. The people are asking: “Why is it that no action has been initiated in the matter?” Does the minister have an answer? Or are the people’s objections “irrelevant”?

Youth are the future Newton Mendonca, by email Youth are the backbone of a happy and a prosperous society. It is extremely tragic to see many of our youth in the prime of their lives losing themselves to drugs, alcohol and accidents. Youth are the treasure who when animated in the true spirit make the face of a nation shine vibrantly. Many of today’s youth are directionless due to poor leadership both within their families and also within the society. This is precisely why we see so much of despondency among the youth which entices them astray into paths which eventually ruin their lives. But poor leadership was never a constraint in the history of great men and women. These great souls struggled despite their limitations, making their lives worthy of imitation. One such example is Gautama Buddha. In spite of having the luxuries of a royal life, he craved for inner peace which only God gave him in prayerful meditation and surrender. If our youth can attune themselves to the brilliance of God’s sublime love, then our world will break forth into a song of everlasting joy. So as we journey into a New Year 2009 let us all make firm resolutions to become vehicles of transformation in our lives and in the lives of others.

Words of Wisdom Basic Beliefs of Animism Animism can be considered to be the original human religion, being defined simply as belief in the existence of spiritual beings. It dates back to the earliest humans and continues to exist today, making it the oldest form of religious belief on Earth. It is characteristic of aboriginal and native cultures, and can be practiced by anyone who believes in spirituality but does not prescribe to any specific religion. The basis for animism is acknowledgment that there is a spiritual realm which humans share the universe with. The concepts that humans possess souls and that souls have life apart from human bodies before and after death are central to animism, along with the ideas that animals, plants, and celestial bodies have spirits. Animistic gods often are immortalized by mythology explaining the creation of fire, wind, water, man, animals, and other natural earthly things. Although specific beliefs of animism vary widely, similarities between the characteristics of gods and goddesses and rituals practiced by animistic societies exist. The presence of holy men or women, visions, dancing, sacred items, and sacred spaces for worship, and the connection felt to the spirits of ancestors are characteristic of animistic societies. Animism contrasts with polytheism (the worship of various gods), in that animistic worship is of minor, local deities, whereas polytheism is the worship of major deities. Most animistic belief systems hold that the spirit survives physical death. In some systems, the spirit is believed to pass to an easier world of abundant game or ever-ripe crops, while in other systems, the spirit remains on earth as a ghost, often malignant. Still other systems combine these two beliefs, holding that the soul must journey to the spirit world without becoming lost and thus wandering as a ghost. Funeral, mourning rituals, and ancestor worship performed by those surviving the deceased are often considered necessary for the successful completion of this journey.

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