In
exploring how Goans with familial ties to Pakistan are dispossessed through the
Enemy Property Act, Konkani film Enemy?
questions the state’s relationship to the nation.
Saturated as much with colour as
symbolism, a pivotal scene in the film Enemy?
(2015) comes to mind in epitomising the film’s success in delivering its
message, but also its heavy-handedness. Set against the backdrop of a deeply
hued sunset, a meeting between an informant and government officials ends with
the former satisfied that the evidence he has offered about an enemy property
in his village will allow him to occupy the seized house, which belongs to a
relative. Upon his departure, the representatives of the Indian state
deliberate over their own designs for the grand old edifice, and smirk about
how they have duped their Goan informant. As they bask in the moment, the
iconic beauty of Goa sparkles in relief behind them, palm-fringed and
sun-drenched. Revelatory, even if heavily didactic, the audience is given to
understand that the relationship of India to Goa is one of desire – a
covetousness of its land, accompanied by a disregard for its people, both
facilitated by law.
Directed by Dinesh P. Bhonsle, the plot
of the Konkani film revolves around events that transpire in relation to the
seizure of a family’s ancestral home under the aegis of the Enemy
Property Act of 1968. Created in the
aftermath of the India-Pakistan War of 1965, the Act was instituted to allow
the Indian government to take over the properties of those deemed citizens of
enemy nation-states. The Act targeted Pakistani nationals, and primarily those
who would have been displaced by Partition, post-Independence, but as Enemy? reveals, it also affects the
lives of many with a tangential connection to Pakistan.
Despite attempts to amend the Act in
2010, its intent remains problematic, as does its name. An
op-ed in The Hindu notes:
“The issue is simple: the property rights of a section of Indian citizens were
wrongly taken away and a limited attempt is now being made to restore them. In
fact, the government should have … change[d] the very name of the Act, which
not only projects a wrongful image of Indian Muslims, but also implicitly
carries the suggestion that all Pakistanis are enemies of India. As the ‘enemy
properties’ were left behind by migrants to Pakistan, not during a war but due
to the exigencies of Partition, there was never any justification for the name …”
(28 October, 2010). For the many Goans targeted by this Act, it was not
Partition that cleaved them from their land, but the annexation of Goa by
India.
In flashbacks, Enemy? communicates how Mrs. Almeida, a widow, came to own the home
she loves so much. Shortly after she is married, the newly named Mrs. Almeida
discovers that her father has a second family in Pakistan, where he is
employed. Upon this revelation, his Goan wife asks him to leave for good. In
bidding his daughter farewell, he bequeaths the house to her, and tells her to
take care of it and her mother. Mrs. Almeida, at first tearful, steels herself
and, like her mother, spares no more pity for her cheating father. From then
on, she takes residence in the house and comes to raise her only son there. As
must now become clear, Mrs. Almeida is dispossessed of this very house, because
her father was a Pakistani national and the house was not officially in her
name. Envisioning the Church as a supporter of the community, rather than a
patriarchal force, the film uses the figure of Father Britto – a friend of the
Almeidas – to stress the need for Goans to be more mindful of legal matters
pertaining to land ownership.
Despite Mrs. Almeida’s son being a
Captain in the Indian Army, they are evicted. That her son is named Sanjit is
meant to indicate the change in political dispensation between the time of Mrs.
Almeida’s father’s employment in Pakistan and then her son’s occupation in the Indian
armed forces. It was likely Mrs. Almeida’s intention to have her son ‘blend in’
in a post-Independence India by giving him the more Hindu-Indian name of Sanjit
in comparison to his Portuguese Catholic family name. Yet, neither this nor his
allegiance to the nation as a soldier is sufficient in helping the family regain
their land.
As the aforementioned flashback
chronicles, it was not uncommon for Goans from Portuguese India to work in
Pakistan when it was part of the British Empire, just like India once was. In
effect, Portuguese India had a very different relationship with the world
outside itself in comparison to the contemporary associations between
post-Independence India and those countries it has named its enemies. That
Goans now finds themselves trapped within the political machinations of
histories external to their own is epitomised by the plight of those affected
by the Enemy Property Act. The appropriation of the Almeida home is thus
symbolic of a double occupation, where law and postcolonisation combine to
ostracise Goans within their homeland and the nation that claims to be their
home – further proof of the region’s status as the colony of a postcolony.
From The Goan.
