Caption: Bandodkar Samadhi Bahujan Samaj: Unlike Lord Parshuram, who represents only 2% of the Gaud Saraswat Brahmin population of Goa, and St Francis Xavier, who represents the minority Catholic population, Goa’s first chief minister, Dayanand Bandodkar, is the only leader who sought to unify and empower the overwhelming majority of Goans under the Bahujan Samaj.

Intro: If anyone deserves the title of Goencho Saib it is the first chief minister of Goa, Dayanand Bandodkar, who united and empowered all the backward classes under the umbrella of the Bahujan Samaj….

By Rajan Narayan

IT IS an action replay of LK Advani’s Rath Yatra to Ayodhya to demolish the Babri Masjid, to rebuild the Ram temple which presumably was  demolished to build the Babri Masjid. It is not a coincidence that former RSS chief Subhash Bhaskar Velingkar’s 20-DAY awareness yatra comes closely in the wake of Chief Minister Pramod Sawant’s claim that more than 500 Hindu temples were demolished by the Portuguese colonial rule. The Goa government has even made an allocation of Rs20 crore to rebuild the temples allegedly demolished.

We cannot afford to take the Parshuram Yatra planned by Subhash Velingkar from May 3 lightly. Subhash Velingkar is clearly a proxy for Chief Minister  Pramod Sawant. Subhash Velingkar would not have announced a Parshuram Yatra without the blessings of his former boss, Mohan Bhagwat, president of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Subhash Velingkar was the president and indeed, the founder of the RSS, in Goa. It was  Velingkar who promoted the Bharatiya Janata Party in Goa. H was the mentor if not guru of Manohar Parrikar and other prominent BJP leaders like Shripad Naik, Laxmikant Parsekar and Rajendra Arlekar. It was on the insistence of Subhash Velingkar that Manohar Parrikar contested and won from the Panaji assembly constituency, after a couple of failed attempts in the parliamentary elections.

Subhash Velingkar and Manohar Parrikar were extremely close but fell out over the decision by Manohar Parrikar to revive grants to English medium primary schools run by the Diocesan Society of Education in Goa.

Subhash Velingkar was furious with what he considered was the betrayal of the language policy of the BJP government. When Shashikala Kakodkar was the education minister in the Ravi Naik government in the 90s, she had withdrawn grants to all English medium primary schools, irrespective of whether they were run by private managements or the Diocesan Society.

WORST AFFECTED

THE worst affected by the decision of Shashikala Kakodkar were the Diocesan Society’s primary schools which were mostly located in the villages. Overnight, they were faced with the prospect of either charging fees to their poor students or switching to Konkani as the medium of instruction. Left with no choice the Diocesan Society decided to switch to Konkani as the medium of instruction.

 It was even more difficult for the Diocesan Society schools as it was stipulated that the medium of instruction should be in Konkani in the devanagiri script. The teachers in the Diocesan schools were totally ignorant of Konkani in the devanagiri script.

KONKANI-MEDIUM SCHOOLS

TOWARDS the end of the tenure of the Digambar Kamat government from 2007-2012, the Diocesan schools unofficially switched from the Konkani-medium to English medium. They had little choice as the enrollment in the Konkani-medium schools had dropped drastically. Though there was no official directive Digambar Kamat informally continued grants but only to the Diocesan schools imparting primary education in the English-medium.

When Manohar Parrikar succeeded Digambar Kamat as chief minister in March 2012, he had no choice but to officially sanction grants to Diocesan schools which had switched to the English-medium. This was looked upon by Subhash Velingkar as a great betrayal. In a strange coming together of diverse elements, Uday Bembre, Arvind Bhatikar and Subhash Velingkar formed the Konkani Bhasha Mandal to oppose the decision to extend grants to English-medium schools.

For Manohar Parrikar it was question of survival as he knew that the Catholic MLAs to whom he had given tickets in large numbers would revolt if he withdrew the grants. Parrikar was not willing to sacrifice his government and his chief minister’s kodel to satisfy Subhash Velingkar.

So now the announcement by Subhash Velingkar to start a yatra to convert Goa from the land of Goencho Saib to that of Parshuram Saib is part of the national campaign of the BJP to polarize the country along communal lines. Goa is the only BJP-ruled state in the country where the party controlled government has not been able to impose its Hindutva policies, which are already in force in other BJP-ruled states.

BEEF POLITICS

EVEN in neighboring Karnataka there is a ban on the transport and consumption of beef. Again in neighboring Karnataka, not only the Muslim minority community but the Catholic minority community is also being targeted. It may be recalled that several churches were targeted in Bengaluru. Earlier, the Ram Sena led by Pramod Muthalik, targeted girls entertaining themselves in Mangalore. Significantly, Pramod Sawant has not extended the ban on the entry of Ram Sena into Goa.

The recently concluded election in which the BJP managed to emerge as the largest single party with 20 seats is an indication of the shape of things to come. In a sharp departure from Manohar Parrikar’s policy of integrating the Catholic minority with the BJP, very few Catholics were given the BJP ticket. Unlike in the earlier cabinets there are only three Catholic MLAs in the cabinet. Even in their case they were required to join the BJP. Pramod Sawant posted on Facebook that the Hindu gods were under threat. That if the gods were under threat the temples would be also under threat. This implied a threat to Hinduism. Clearly Pramod Sawant is insinuating that the Muslims and the Catholics are a threat to the BJP aspiration to convert Goa into a Hindutva state like the other BJP-ruled states. Pramod Sawant has also been commenting that he has proof that Hindus were being converted to Catholics.

The decision by Subhash Velingkar to start a Parusharam Yatra has to be seen in the context of the statements of  Chief Minister  Pramod Sawant. There can be no room for doubt that Subhash Velingkar has the support of the Pramod Sawant government. The extent to which Catholics have been marginalized is dramatized by the fact that not a single BJP Catholic MLA or minister has protested against Velingkar’s plans to displace Goencho Saib with Bhagwan Parshuram.

CATHOLIC POPULATION

PART of the problem of course is the sharp decline in the Catholic population of the state. As against 40% of the state population at the time of the Opinion Poll in the latest census the percentage of Catholics may drop to less than 25%.

The issue is not whether Goencho Saib should be Parshuram or St Francis Xavier. In any case Bhagwan Lord Parshuram who Shubash Velingkar is promoting so ardently has the support of only the Saraswat Brahmins who represent less than 2% of the population of Goa.

Forget about the Bahujan Samaj or the Bhandari Samaj who account for the largest section of Goa’s population,. even Chados (Shatriyas) are opposed to Bhagwan Parshuram. Who it has been  alleged massacred the Shatriya people – it’s bad news for the Pratapsingh Raoji Rane and Viswajit Rane family.

In any case Goencho Saib is not an official titles conferred by the government of Goa like the post of permanent cabinet minister with 14 staff extended to Pratapsingh Singh Rane. If the minority Catholic community chooses to call St Francis Xavier Goencho Saib with reverence, it does not affect the majority Hindu community in any fashion. On the contrary the BJP will only end up antagonizing the minority Catholic community without which it cannot form the government.

As dramatized by the fact that the BJP High Command sacrificed Manohar Parrikar’s son, Utpal Parrikar, for Babush Monseratte in the expectation that Monserrate will deliver all five Tiswadi seats to the BJP in the recent assembly election.

Goa is the only secular, democratic, cosmopolitan state in the country. It is the only state in the country which has never witnessed any communal riots except for a small skirmish in Curchorem in 2006 instigated by the BJP. Perhaps Subhash Velingkar needs to be reminded that a large number of Bhagwan Parshuram brahmins converted to Christianity. That the Bahujan Samaj which represents Hindu Goa has always lived in close harmony with the minority community.

As Prashant Kishor, the so called  master election strategist has pointed out, the BJP can get a majority only in states where Hindus form more than 55% of the population. With the Catholics forming 25% of Goa’s population concentrated in Salcette and the Muslim minority population almost touching 20%, both Subhash Velingkar and Pramod Sawant will be committing political suicide if they seek to replace Goencho Saib with Bhagwan Parshuram. Better to let them coexist like they always have.

GOENCHO SAIB BANDODKAR

IF anyone deserves the title of Goencho Saib it should be Dayanand Bandodkar who united 90% of the backward communities of Goa under the umbrella of the Bahujan Samaj.