On
June 23, 2013, Dr. Pramod Kale passed away. About a month later, on July 25, so
did Dr. Sharon da Cruz. I did not know Professor Kale personally, but Sharon
was a classmate of mine at St. Xavier’s College, Mapusa. The news was shocking.
In their passing, not only have Dr. Kale and Sharon’s families lost their loved
ones, but our community has lost two academics who researched different aspects
of Goan culture and history. While having had many publications to his credit, Dr.
Kale is perhaps best known for his article “Essentialist and Epochalist
Elements in Goan Popular Culture: A Case Study of Tiatr” which appeared in an issue of Economic & Political Weekly in 1986. The weekly also carried
Sharon’s “The Partido Indiano and the
September Revolt of 1890 in Goa,” which she co-authored with Dr. Max de Loyola
Furtado in 2011. In addition, Sharon had her hand in other publications, and was
well known as an instructor at Cuncolim College. 
Dr.
Kale’s article on tiatr may be
considered an important intellectual intervention for having given an often
derided art form its critical due. Aware of the negative social attitudes
towards the theatrical genre, Dr. Kale highlighted the exact reasons for such
dismissiveness by saying of tiatr
that “[i]t is a form ... rooted in the working class and lower middle class
Goan Catholic population living in Goa or outside expressing their trials and
tribulations, hopes and aspirations.” He saw in its audiences that they
gathered to witness the metatheatrical, evidence of one of the major political
dramas of Goa in the 1980s – the language issue. In regard to this, Dr. Kale
notes in his essay that for those audiences of tiatr, “Konkani [was] not merely a language, a medium of
communication, but a cause...” In so saying, the researcher acknowledged the
socio-cultural significance of this traditional style of Goan theatre, its class and
caste affiliations, and its ability to rally a community concerned with the socio-political
theatrics beyond the stage. 
In
her role as a historian, Sharon’s interest in the Goan past ranged from her
doctoral research on the Franciscans to the Opinion Poll, on which she co-wrote
a book, and the aforementioned September Revolt of 1890, among other topics. Of
the politics of 1890, Sharon’s article astutely points out that while the
revolt had an “elitist ... nature, it [also] had a mass popular base ... from
[within] the Mundkar community.” Thus, she underscores not just the alliances
formed in challenges to colonial power, but also “contesting versions” of
historical events which, when taken into account in their multiplicity, may
“[enable] us to view the historical process holistically by visibilising the
other...”
As
we mourn, it is necessary to consider not only the legacy that researchers like
Dr. Kale and Sharon leave behind, but also how their work could have been
studied while these scholars were still with us. It is generally only at the postgraduate
level that students in Goa are supported in their choice to take up the study
of the region and read the writing of researchers like the ones memorialised
here. Yet, how much more might we have benefitted from a curriculum of Goan Studies
that
pervades our educational system at all levels while encouraging established
scholars of Goa to be an interactive part of the process? One imagines that it
would have allowed students to interact personally or virtually with thinkers
like Dr. Kale and Sharon whose dedication to studying Goa is inspiring. Even
though they are no longer with us, their scholarship lives on and what we can
do to sustain and build upon it remains to be seen.
To see the print version of this article, visit here. My thanks to Dale Menezes for providing the EPW essays quoted herewith.
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