Your script over mine

LONG after the Portuguese left Goa in 1961 the erstwhile colonisers were still in vogue in the coastal belt Cars and threewheelers displaying Portuguese flags national colours and emblems would amble down the quaint gullies and streets as if India was not mothership yet Jason Keith Fernandes who was pursuing his doctoral research then remembers being intrigued by this practice common among the workingclass and lower middleclass Goan Catholics This hed learn was not just their attempt to demonstrate claim to Portuguese citizenship but also distinguish themselves from the rest of the population in the stateAt the time Fernandes was keen on researching the multisited ethnography of the citizenship practices of Goan Catholics in Goa Portugal and London I came to language politics almost by accident says Fernandes who is currently a researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology University Institute of Lisbon PortugalHis new book Citizenship In A Caste Policy Orient BlackSwan explores the complex history of caste and class behind the recognition of Konkani as Goas official language and how by deliberately excluding the Roman script the largely lowercaste and lowerclass Catholics were denoted as less authentic members of society At present Devanagari or Nagari is considered the official script for Konkani in Goa invalidating any other script including Roman The argument among the proNagari activists is that Konkani is an Aryan language and therefore its script must also be Aryan While Konkani is clearly marked by IndoEuropean features there is a failure to realise that language and script are not necessarily related and are in a sense arbitrarily assigned to each other Thus an IndoEuropean language need not necessarily have an Aryan script But the real question is why are we troubled by the fact that protoKonkani ie the language form before it was standardised by missionary activity was written in HalleKannada The discomfort stems from the racism that underlies the Konkani project It stems from a desire to be classified in colonial times as civilised Aryans and more recently as part of the largely northern Indian project of Indian nationalismJason Keith FernandesHe also counters historianlinguist Joseacute Pereiras assertion that there existed a distinct Goan region and a standard form of Konkani before the Portuguese and the missionaries arrived This is highly unlikely because as is well known caste which is such a strong factor now and was earlier as well strongly determines the kind of language that you speak There is as a result no possibility of a standard form language Language is also marked by region This was the case in Europe and is the case here too as we can see with Konkani where it differs in Pernem from that in Bardez and that in Salcette Karwar and Mangalore This is to say that each of these regions had distinct identities in the past and many came together only as a result of the Portuguese knitting them together into a province of the Estado da IacutendiaThe Konkani Project in Goa has witnessed several roadblocks over the last two centuries In PortugueseGoa the resistance first came from those using the Marathi language This included essentially dominant castes for whom Marathi was both a route for employment in British India as well as increasingly a way to distinguish themselves from polluted Christians who spoke Konkani Marathi would later be embraced by the Bahujan Hindus because of the way it was entwined with Hindu and Indian nationalism at a point when they were embracing both to pull themselves out of the abject condition they were in After Konkani was adopted by Goans attempts were made to determine its historical authenticity based on the script It affected the way the language was experienced by the average Goan To begin with there has been or was until they began to push back an attempt to suffocate production in the Roman script This involved denying awards and state support to literary work being produced in Roman ie forcing them to produce in Nagari KonkaniBut this is only at the material level says Fernandes Perhaps the more brutal impact has been at the emotional level One of the things I did not expect my work to develop into was an examination of the emotions of citizenship I had initially decided to focus on practices of citizenship It was only when I was in the field and hanging out with Roman script activists that I realised that there was a deep sense of being shamed among them There was also the sense of being excluded from the national Indian and removed from the subnational Goan community to which they wanted to belong and into which they wanted to return They were ashamed that the fruit of their literary and cultural labour was held to not have standard And that their cultural lives were simply not Indian enough These concerns have become ever more valid today especially since belonging to the Indian nation is increasingly being marked on Hindu lines To be Hindu according to this understanding is to hold a place in the top varna categories As such at least for the small number of proNagari Catholic elites Sanskritised Konkani in the Nagari script is consciously or unconsciously about asserting caste their link to Hindu India and more importantly crafting a place at the high table of powerThe language mobilisation he feels then has done little to unify this community of Konkani speakers But I would point out that there was no community to begin with What we have in India and a number of Ambedkarites would agree with me is not a society but a collection of castes working parallellyKeep scrolling to read more newsCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and a complete guide from food to things to do and events across Mumbai Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates MidDay is now on Telegram Click here to join our channel middayinfomedialtd and stay updated with the latest 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