Church mag attacks Goa govt, says it’s an oligarchy

PANAJI: Three months after the Church magazine, 'Renewal Novsornni Renovacao', likened those in power in the country to Nazis, it has hit out at the state government terming it an "oligarchy".

Without naming anyone or the government, the article headlined, 'Societal undercurrents stir the land', by F E Noronha says: "No honest person can overlook the fact that a minuscule section of people have taken control of everything, opposing our leaders of consequence, joining hands with their kinsmen across the divide and getting elected in our own heart land."

In the August issue of the magazine brought out by the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman, Noronha, who is on the editorial board, had written that since 2014 "what we are witnessing in India is nothing but a constitutional holocaust".

Without naming a particular community, he writes the people who have taken control of the government "have also appointed their kin to every consequential post in the administration and quasi officialdom. To ignore this, you have to be plainly blind or of course pretend and ignore as most are doing. As for us, even if we are fully qualified, knowledgeable and competent, there is no place in the oligarchy of power."

Hinting that the government hasn't permitted Catholic leaders to take control and driven out a large section of the community using "subtle and imperceptible ways for more than 50 years", he writes: "The continuous emigration of Goans, never to return, is like a terminal cancer: there will be no Goa very soon; only the geography that too environmentally damaged."

Noronha writes about the "dwindling of a section of people and the upsurge of another" and pointing to what sociologist M N Srinivas identified as the phenomenon of 'Sanskritization', first called 'Brahamanisation', whereby the poorer classes in India sought to imitate the privileged. "In Goa, a variation of this phenomenon is taking place. The Sudirsukt controversy speaks for itself as to who is doing what," he writes.

Sudirsukt, a collection of poems by former BJP MLA Vishnu Wagh, created a storm when a jury member of a panel appointed to shortlist winners of the state Goa Konkani Akademi literary awards protested against the shortlisting of the book claiming it was vulgar and targeted a particular community. Following the controversy, the state government scrapped the literary awards for the past two years — 2014-15 and 2015-16 — due to objections "over the procedure of shortlisting of books for the awards".

Noronha also refers to migration of Goans to the UK. "We have to go to other countries. We may even find a place in other parts of India, but not in our own land. The rest of us have to change our nationality and go where our labour will be used and well paid.

"In the meanwhile the ruling oligarchy is busy targeting all possible sources of opposition. In this they are assisted by our own fellow men eager to prove themselves loyal and cement their own position in the lower rungs of the structure."

He also criticises his own community and says that it has taken a "soft option of trailing behind others who have boldly captured all influential positions in every nook and corner of public, business and social life".

The bimonthly magazine, of which Rachol Seminary's rector Fr Alexio Menezes is the editor, states that "the opinions expressed in this bulletin are not necessarily the opinions of the editor".

Fr Joaquim Loiola Pereira, secretary to the archbishop, said the articles are not vetted by the archbishop, his secretary or any other official of the archdiocese. "The final decision of what to publish and what not to publish lies with the editor," he told TOI.