Opinion In picture-postcard Goa, Wagh’s Dalit poetry challenges upper-castes

In poetry, as in politics, the punch is in the timing.

An FIR against Wagh, arguably the most popular voice of the Goan Bahujan Samaj, the state’s Dalit community, for his anthology of poems written in colloquial Konkani and voicing the oppression and volatile caste divide between the state’s dominant Gaud Saraswat Brahmins and the majority Bahujan Goans, on the day of Narkasur Vadh has not gone ignored by the people of Goa.

Politics also is about symbolism, then.

While the administration states it’s a routine matter of jurisdiction which delayed the formal lodging of FIR, it won’t be the case files alone where the historic date remains etched. Local newspapers say it is the first such criminal case against a poet in Goa.

Politics appreciates ironies, though.

In 2009, Narkasur Vadh grabbed the national headlines after two sadhaks (seekers) of the right-wing Sanathan Sanstha organisation died after a badly camouflaged explosive device exploded in their scooter near a Narakasur effigy in the township of Margao.

Wagh, who remains the organisation’s most trenchant critic, may have captured the irony that life brings to the art of poetry, but remains incapacitated by a stroke.

Still, in this collision of politics, elegance, subtlety, symbolism and irony that has been swirling around Goa recently, what is being curtailed is the prose of Wagh’s dissent, and significantly the language of his verse. That is the heart of the matter.

Wagh’s book, launched by Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar himself in 2013, echoes the ground narratives of the Bahujan Samaj which the upper caste Goud Saraswat Brahmin refuse to acknowledge.

Wagh’s poetry, written with all the angst of a class oppressed in his “chosen” dialect of Konkani calls for the restitution of an older order, a culture where nature and not stone idols was worshipped, before the forced appropriation of land, natural resources and culture took place, doing away with caste oppressions and restoring dignity, access, and equality to his Bahujan forefathers who Wagh identifies as original settlers of the land.

He brings this assertion into his poetry with utmost gusto, the verses ending with “Yes, Yes, We are those Sudhirs”.

One of his poems is reproduced here from ‘Sudirsukt, Hymns of a Shudra’, an anthology of 62 poems. This book, now controversial, was slotted for at least one award in the poetry category by the Goa Konkani Academy Award which would have ordinarily gone unnoticed, except that it was leaked by a jury member of the award committee, who declared it communally potent.

The Konkani poem translated by writer Augusto Pinto reads,

“On your shoulders the sacred thread
We wore our threads around our waists.
We exhausted our energy
Gathering your sheaves of paddy
And silently we ate
Fallen, leftover grain.
Being servants we were powerless
Slaves of your daily wage
We swept your verandas
And from our foreheads dripped a lifetime of diamonds
Yes, yes
We are those Sudhirs.”

It didn’t take long for a social media campaign to be launched against his “obscene poetry.” A local commentator accused Wagh of insurrection against upper caste Brahmins. Another wanted to know, “Why now?”, claiming that the tourist picture postcard of a state is utterly peaceful and justifiably proud that no lynchings take place here.

But a daily reading of the Goan village square murmurs and paddy field pit stops will tell you that the truth is not far from Wagh’s poetry.

There is no ‘Goa model’ yet, but its political history speaks of its first chief minister Dayanand Bandodkar, a lower caste mine owner backed by the idea of democracy as well as the numerical strength of the state’s Bahujan Samaj winning the state’s first election after its liberation in 1961. But Goans point out that a demonetised democracy, a fragmented Bahujan Samaj with no strong leadership, and Goa’s most recognised status symbol, its fertile land, which is owned by a select club of upper caste individuals, has perhaps exacerbated the disparities and discrimination between the people.

In Wagh’s narrative of the same journey, however, words like “usurp” are central, although he agrees that those with land and status will always have their narrative heard. Commentators also point to the strife and discrimination this narrative by Goa’s upper castes means.

A local newspaper recently noted that most senior administrative and policy making posts in the state government have been taken by members of upper castes. The locals speak of Bhatkars (landlords) and mundkars (bonded labourer) and the exploitation which continues. But in political victories, and in the trading communities who back them, upper caste Hindus and Catholics are predominant, while there are hardly any Bahujans. This disparity exists in panchayats as well.

Wagh doesn’t spare the forced hierarchy of worship and is most liberal with Bahujan emotions. He says,

“You uprooted the original culture
Of the non-Aryans
And where once were immaterial Gods
There you installed stone idols.”

Also, in all the complaints — against his verses, in social media, by the protesting jury member (is believed to have sat and counted 40 abuses in the book), and in the police complaint filed by a women’s rights activist, Auda Viegas, the first objection is over the language.

While Viegas is upset over the obscenity involved scholars say that if you take the verses out of context, the FIR threatens to shift the caste politics into another debate of gender politics_the majority point towards the dialect of Konkani used.

Wagh who writes on behalf of the oppressed has avoided the popular Konkani dialect– which many in the Bahujan Samaj call the ‘Brahmin Konkani.’ The politics of language — which was also a poll agenda by a rebel group of RSS leaders, is in itself a power broker in Goa.

The Official Language Act (OLA) of 1987 formalised “Konkani written in Devnagari script”— Nagari Konkani — as the official language of Goa. The Catholics do not accept Nagari Konkani either, speak in a Konkani using the Roman script. The Bahujans, who use folklore and the “language of the field” to describe their daily engagements chose to rebel against the sanskritised Konkani, and instead sought to infuse Marathi with Konkani.

In borrowing from the outsider, the Bahujans transcreated a new language in which they liberally used swear words against upper caste people and passionately recounted the daily discriminations they faced.

Wagh’s admirers say the whole power dynamics of responding in a dialect not accepted by the state, precisely to narrate stories of the sons of the soil is a way of style in his writing.

A Marathi writer at heart, Wagh’s decision to pick a dialect spoken, understood and expressed by the oppressed, is certainly a deliberate choice as well as his right. Irrespective of the loss of the award from the Goa Konkani Academy, the challenges to Wagh on the words he uses to make sentences, on his language, is akin to gifting him his victory even before he pens his defense.