"Haven't We Seen this One Before?" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (24 July 2016)

Goa University’s plan to inaugurate a Bollywood course needs a rethink that includes the history of Goans in the industry.

A couple of weeks ago, ­­Goa University’s Board of Studies announced that it will introduce an optional undergraduate course in Indian cinema, tentatively titled “History of Indian Cinema, 1913-2013” (O Heraldo, 8 July, 2016). Commonly referred to as Bollywood, India’s is the most prolific dream factory in the world. While for this and other reasons Indian cinema is worthy of study, the trajectory of Goa University’s proposed course gives cause for concern.

Quoting Prajal Sakhardande as “[t]he brain behind the concept”, the news report chronicling the development of the film course states that the curriculum would cover the origins of “the Indian film industry in 1913, migration to talkies in the ‘30s, growth of regional cinema, Bollywood’s golden age from the ‘40s to ‘60s and the advent of ‘masala movies’ from 1970”. Additionally, Sakhardande is reported to have said that the course would focus on such components as the “[m]ovies starring members of the famous Prithviraj Kapoor family to decades when Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, King Khan, Madhubala, Hema Malini, Sridevi and Madhuri Dixit ruled the industry…”­ Ambitious, no doubt, but the projected curriculum leaves something to be desired.

Indeed, there are plans to offer the Bollywood course alongside a couple of other options as part of the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) available to undergraduates. Sakhardande states that “[b]esides Bollywood cinema”, other offerings may include the “history of regional cinemas, including Konkani films…” This is precisely the problem. Again, the study of cinema is important, and within its scope there is room for the consideration of the multiple regional forms generated within a national context and their relationship to one another; yet, what the proposed Goa University course seems to imply is that there is (or was) no Goan contribution to the cinema of India. Even as it is important to study Konkani cinema, the question to be asked is what does it mean to teach about Indian cinema in Goa without considering the place of Goa and Goans in the history of this national industry?

To say that the current curriculum privileges a mainstream perspective on Indian cinema is not a stretch, especially given how those who have conceived of the course have chosen to highlight the legacies of a set of particular players. On the one hand, this privileging of cults of personality suggests that things to do not bode well for the inculcation of critical analysis through the syllabus. And on the other, by uncritically presenting the cinema of India as the cultural production of Hindi-speaking actors and directors, Goa University participates in the occlusion of minorities, such as Goans and Baghdadi Jews among others, who greatly contributed to the history of Indian cinema. Such a nationalist agenda obscures the major contributions of Goans to the music and other facets of the Golden Age of Bollywood as evidenced in Naresh Fernandes’ Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age (2011) and the Konkani language film Nachom-ia Kumpasar (2015), directed by Bardroy Barretto.

It is no uncommon fact that the place of Goans in Indian cinema history has been relegated to the mists of time, leaving the contributions of many unknown even to their fellow Goans (leave alone Indians in general). For instance, it might come as a surprise to many that Anthony Gonsalves was a real person who worked in Bollywood and is not just the Christian character to whom he lent his name in the cult classic Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), in which Amitabh Bachchan plays the fictional Anthony. Ironically, even as Goa University has a Chair that is also named after the late and otherwise uncelebrated Anthony Gonsalves, its future Bollywood course does a further disservice to unsung Goan musicians and entertainers. Devoid of any consideration for how mainstream Indian cinema once thrived on the creative labours of such minorities as Goans, only to side-line them after their value had been expended, a nationally inflected curriculum taught in the very homeland of these forgotten artists participates in a dominant representation of Indian culture that refuses to grapple with its religious and cultural biases.

While several may not know of the impact of Goans on Indian cinema’s history, what they know all too well about Goa’s place in Bollywood’s imagination is the portrayal of the region in any number of Hindi films. Bollywood’s continued dalliance with Goa is as a hedonistic beach paradise and with all that such a place entails. Goa is the seemingly unpeopled land that hosts the shenanigans of party-loving Indians who seek a reprieve from the mainland, thus exemplifying the relationship between the metropole its colonial pleasure periphery. And if perchance a film might actually remember that Goa is not devoid of locals, then their depiction is often that of a stereotypical nature, where the sexuality and drinking habits of these characters are the stuff of ridicule. Beyond this, one still wonders why any of these Goan characters speak Hindi, which is again testament to the culturally homogenising nature of Indian cinema. 

Any Bollywood course at Goa University that fails to take up a critical analysis of Indian cinema’s gendered, class, and ethnic representations while also not pointing out the history of the industry’s cultural co-optation will simply rehearse a script we are all too familiar with. The proposed course represents the opportunity to correct Bollywood’s egregious treatment of Goans while also paving the way to offer undergraduates a chance to engage with cinema anew. In the meantime, the audience awaits.

From The Goan.

"When Academics Play Tourists" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (24 January 2015)

While in Goa for a conference this past December, my brother-in-law enquired if it was the India Ideas Conclave that I was there for. My protests to the contrary were quick, due to the nature of said event. The conference I was in Goa for had barely found mention in any media in the state, while the Conclave could be seen advertised on the main thoroughfare with flashy billboards. Online, it was being avidly discussed on Goan listservs, because the Indian right wing had unabashedly proclaimed it as a gathering of intellectuals and politicians who sought to distance themselves from Nehruvian socialism. Several affiliates of Hindu fundamentalist organisations were present at the occasion, as were members of the BJP. This betrayed the Hindutva leanings of the affair, revealing it to be more than just about politics and the economy. So, no, I corrected my sister’s husband; I was most assuredly not in Goa for that conference, but another. Except, upon actually attending the Re-Imagining Theory Conference, organised by the Forum on Contemporary Theory (FCT) at the International Centre, Goa (ICG), I wondered if there was something to my brother-in-law’s conflation of the two meetings.

To be fair, the Conclave made no bones about why it had chosen Goa for its deliberations, having hired a five star hotel for the get-together. Even though the rise of religiously fundamentalist organisations in the state can readily be charted over the last few years, it was evident that the right wing had settled on Goa more for its location than in recognition of its zealotry or political importance. In comparison, the theory conference, which gave the impression of being a serious academic affair, not least because of its inclusion of such high profile speakers as Gayatri Spivak and Arjun Appadurai, quickly let that veneer slip. Was it a foregone conclusion that as the site of choice for the academic conference, Goa was to be relegated to being merely a service venue rather than an intellectual space? One is inclined to believe so, given the quaint little note the organisers sent participants in a logistical email before the conference began on 21 December, 2014. It said: “Enjoy Goan hospitality and return home refreshed in body and spirit”.

That the sole purpose of Goa and Goans should be that it and they exist primarily as purveyors of hospitality rather than as intellectual participants in the programme, as such a missive implies, should give one pause. And if the notion that Goa was where one comes to be serviced rather than to be of service had not been articulated clearly enough by the aforementioned note, then it was hammered home in the conference’s opening session. In it, the organisers attempted to theorise the space of Goa as one that could be characterised through the idea of “liquidity”; they clarified their meaning by underscoring Goa’s proximity to the ocean and by hinting at the liberal availability of alcohol. When FCT held its annual conference in Goa in 2007, similar comments were made by the organisers, who then referred to Goa being a “spirited” location. But at least then FCT had made some attempt to be more cognisant of the region itself and to engage it academically. For instance, at that earlier instalment, the discussions were held at Goa University and, additionally, there was a session convened to discuss Pundalik Naik’s Acchev/The Upheaval (2002).

That seven years later at the ICG, Goa University’s presence at the conference could be marked by the official appearance of just one faculty member from that institution is just as damning of the university as it is of the organisers. Consider, too, that the conference’s only recognisable panel on Goa was laughably labelled “Spatializing the Local: Kolkata, Goa, and the Locality of Space”. As a participant on this panel, I was thoroughly confused as I wondered how the disparate locales of Goa and Kolkata were to be bridged during the session – an impossible endeavor, I was to discover. I was even more concerned as my presentation was about the Goan diaspora and the Portuguese Empire rather than about the ‘spatializing’ of Goa. But no matter, as it was quite clear that this was of no consequence to the organisers.

If the India Ideas Conclave represented the country’s religious right wing and the Re-Imagining Theory Conference India’s secular liberals, to both the meeting point was Goa. The conference I attended concluded on Christmas Eve. To Goans, Catholic or not, Christmas is a significant date not only due to the religious prominence it bears for some, but also because it is emblematic of the socio-cultural fabric of the region. To have an event end right before this occasion highlights the conference’s aim to use Goa as a destination with the added promise of local festivities. As with the right wing gathering, the pre-Christmas academic conference cast Goa as the religious other to India, fixing it once more as the nation’s pleasure periphery. Perhaps Goa’s failing tourism industry should take note of the emerging market in fundamentalists and academics.

From The Goan.