A PROUD INDIAN.
By Valmiki Faleiro.
Serializing a topic in a newspaper column bears a major handicap. It does not provide the writer the liberty to comment on a contemporary subject until the serialization is complete. I had to wait until the ‘Goan music’ series was done – and depart from the Goa/Goan thread this Sunday – to dwell on something I strongly felt about… I’ve always been a proud Indian. Perhaps because my father, a doc in the Indian Army Medical Corps, christened me with a great Indian name. Later, and more convincingly,when I learnt of our ancient civilization’s great traditions. I look and talk like an Indian alright. Yet, I was at times asked, in India and the few times abroad, which country I hailed from. I remember this happened in New Delhi in March-1977. I was selected for an ‘AsianWriters Workshop’ organized by India International Centre, UNESCO (Asia Centre forBook Development), Union Ministry of Education and the Authors’ Guild of India. In agroup of 30 – twenty Indians and ten other Asians – I was asked at cocktails following book launches, “Which country do you hail from?” “I am Indian, from Goa,” I’d proudly say. I’m not sure I’d do that today. Not after Babri Masjid. Not after the religious pogrom in Modi’s Gujarat of 2002, when fetuses were yanked out from expectant mothers and both set alight. Not when tribals are chased into forests, their homes and lives torn asunder, as presently in Orissa, Karnataka and elsewhere.
In the name of god and against ‘forced conversions’ (to Christianity, a faith that, since the arrival of St. Thomas the Apostle inyear 52 AD, still accounts for a mere 2% of India.) I was born into a Catholic family. Even if I cannot honestly call myself religious. I hold no brief for obscurant Christian sects alluring people to change faiths with money or other inducements – a fact sufficiently documented by third-party observers from the western(largely Christian) world. I could never for a moment brook forcible conversion of a human being – whether offaith, culture, or whatever the victim would otherwise like to follow. Informed Goans, inparticular, will be aware of human misery of such mindless acts. After the Pope divided the world into two spheres – Africa and Asia to Portugal and the Americas to Spain for spreading Christianity, we know the results. Mercifully, five centuries have elapsed since that happened, and our views would at best be academic. Even if superfluous, the current madness in parts of India begets the question: why target Catholics and other long-established Indian churches? Will the VHP/Bajrang Dal cite a single instance of Catholic/Indian churches having forced, coerced, allured orinduced conversions? If at all one hand feels the itch, why scratch the other? Are elections so omnipotent that dividing one’s own home country with the politics of hate is greater than the gods one pretends to protect?
The issue is not ‘forcible conversions’ (or, for that matter, forcible ‘re-conversions.’)Whatever their weaknesses in the run up to August 15, 1947, our leaders gave the nation – ravaged by the sands of time and military history – a fitting Constitution on Jan 26, 1950. We have laws to deal with forcible conversions. Did the VHP/Bajrang Dal take recourse to these? Unfortunately, no one seems to realise – from LK Advani down to the cretins of the Bajrang Dal on the street – that maiming or killing one person, or tearing apart one family, will produce ten terrorists of tomorrow. Few kids who’ve survived seeing his/her parent or sibling being raped, killed or tossed alive into flames would forget – or forgive –the perpetrators. We’re still paying the price for Ayodhya and Gujarat. Pay back time will come from Orissa and Karnataka much after Advani and current VHP leaders have completed their life’s journey. How many Hindus does the BJP/VHP fancy to represent when orchestrating such hate?As vain a question as it would be to ask the sick minds that went about defiling isles of peace and prayer – like the ‘Rakkondar’ shrine in Cuncolim, the Mahavir statue inMolem, and dozens of temples, crosses and masjids in Goa.
I am against bans of any kind. Banning the Bajrang Dal is no answer. As much as violence will not stop forcible conversions. The answer lies elsewhere. BJP/VHP leadersmust know it, and perhaps pretend that they do not. One of course cannot be sure. Of one thing I am certain about. If asked again, “Which country do you hail from?” I will probably say Costa Rica, Cabo Verde, or Caracas! A once proud Indian, I’m now deeply ashamed.
PS: It is the same convoluted logic. Earlier this week, someone tried silencing social activist Aires Rodrigues and the heritage conservation champion Prajal Sakhardande by getting them bloodied black and blue. Where has our sanity flown? (ENDS)
