WHO THE BLEEP CARES ABOUT GOA’S LUNATIC FREEDOM FIGHTERS? by Selma Carvalho

Many years ago, I got myself a cyber-troll. This man, or so he claimed to be, would not leave me alone. As cyber-obsessions go, his turned from admiration to a delusion that I was evil incarnate. It's hard to tell whether he suffered from some sort of mental disorder, many obsessive people do, but whatever it was, he would harangue me, night and day, on one particular cyber-forum, misconstruing and misrepresenting anything I had to say.

In sheer desperation, the other participants on that forum finally came up with the rule that only civil discourse would be tolerated. Now, this was a bit tricky. His entire DNA, by this point, had been re-engineered to hate and abuse me, and he couldn't cope with a situation where he didn't have a platform to do that. So he found a way around it. He replaced my name with other words, like "person" or "thing." The people on the forum complained that they couldn't understand what he was saying, until I pointed out that they merely replace the word "person" with Selma and what he actually wanted to say would become crystal clear.

This parable is frighteningly similar to Goa's freedom fighters. Let me qualify the phrase Freedom Fighters. The real Freedom Fighters, the ones who spent their time in the darkened cells of the Peniche Fortress or got thrashed within an inch of their life with a palmatoire, in the cells of Aguada are long dead. What we have are the dregs of society masquerading as its champions. These freedom fighters, who were probably still suckling at their mother's breast when the good fight was being fought, are determined to get rid of Portugal from Goa, 50 years after the fact. In a recent spate of abuse, they insist the cultural institution, Fundacao Oriente, is a Portuguese intelligence agency, which is a bit surprising because the Portuguese may have been good lovers but they have hardly ever been recommended for their espionage. History tells us that when they wanted to spy, they hired Shenvi Brahmins. Now, to the casual observer, the Freedom-Fighters' obsession with the Portuguese is an enigma. But the key to understanding this enigma and this coded language is simple. You only have to replace the word "Portuguese" with "Catholic Goan" and all becomes crystal clear.

The accusation that it is the Fundacao Oriente and the Camoes Institute fermenting divisions within Goan society deserves the contempt with which it has been uttered. If the White man's gifts are indeed tainted then let us lobby for the rest of India to have the same dismal relationship with Britain as our Freedom fighters want us to have with Portugal. Let's cut off diplomatic relations with the UK, close down their embassy, withdraw from the Commonwealth, and ensure that no Commonwealth events are ever held in India so that a British sovereign need never again walk on Indian soil. Let's ban English, dispatch tout suite their multinational companies, say no to foreign aid and workers, and most certainly let's accuse William Dalrymple of being a secret agent intent on destroying India through one literary festival at a time. All this would of course be considered ridiculous so why do we do it with respect to Portugal?

I can think of many definitions of colonialism; one of them is denying colonised populations the ability to mature. The fact that our Freedom fighters refuse to mature, refuse to allow their minds the ability to discern fact from fiction, tells me that our Freedom fighters are indeed still colonised, not by the Portuguese but their own limitations and stupidity. At a certain point in our collective lives, we have to assign history its proper place and get on with the hard, nebulous aspects of living; of creating society, of managing democracy. When we hold history hostage to current political leveraging, we are refusing to learn from it, to study it without censure and without the burden of guilt.

In all this I don't blame the freedom fighters. It could well be, that some of them are nearing senility and some others, like my troll, suffering from madness. I blame the government for creating a congenial atmosphere in which this Right-wing, lunatic fringe carnival thrives, whose real purpose is to be a thorn in the flesh of the Catholic community. Indeed, it is the Government's way of pitting one community against another, so that tumultuous vote banks are spontaneously created like so many waves on a foam-created beach, on which they can safely ride to power, election after election.

This year, we commemorate 50 years of Goa's liberation. The real question is, what does freedom mean to us Goans if we refuse to grow-up as responsible human beings?