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Ruth
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health, women's health,culture and health, technology,
research and learning and development.
She has done extensive work on mental health, in
particularly migrants and mental health and gender
and mental health.
She says "I am interested in western illness
categories and whether they are applicable to other
cultures. In many communities, when individuals
experience unhappiness, applying a mental illness
label can be stigmatising. Migrants tend to under-utilise
mental health services and terminate treatment prematurely."
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Ruth
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TO KONNA'LO?
GOAN SOCIETY IS BASED ON A TRADITIONAL HIERARCHY
By
Lucio Rodrigues
From: "GoanetReader" <goanet@goanet.org>
Courtesy 'Goan Literature: A Modern Reader', Guest Editor:
Peter Nazareth.
From the Journal of South Asian Literature, Winter, Spring
1983. US ISSN 0091-5637. Reproduced with permission of
the editor.
KONKANI HAS ITS own unique expressions -- words, phrases,
idioms, proverbs, and other folksy linguistic miracles
which defy translation into any other language. *To konna'lo?*
is one such, with its several inflexions according to
gender and number: *tem konnalem*, *ti konna'li*, *te
konna'le*, *teo konna'leo*, *tim konna'lim*.
Literary,
the phrase means, "Which family does he belong to?"
or "Who are his parents?" It is apparently a
simple interrogative, an expression of normal, healthy
curiosity, expressing the concern that one human being
has for another.
But
to those who know their Konkani and belong to the social
matrix of Goa, the phrase is far from simple and innocuous.
True, it does express curiosity, but the curiosity is
not the elementary curiosity of a mere individual. It
is the highly sophisticated curiosity of the community,
or organised society. The phrase is a masterpiece of verbal
economy and semantic subtlety. It implies a social and
moral attitude that is the result of a whole way of life
rooted in the soil of Goa.
Though
the phrase is known to all, it is never used indiscriminately.
It is not to be bandied about in the street or in the market-place.
You cannot just speak it out glibly, or shout it out brazenly.
Even in the drawing-room or the dance-hall, you cannot mouth
it tactlessly. To do so would be the height of impertinence,
and you would be summarily condemned as a very ill-mannered
yokel.
In fact,
the use of the phrase calls for the proper occasion and
situation, the proper place and time, and above all, the
most practised gesture and inflexion of voice. Its utterance
is part of a "code."
Goan
society is based on a traditional hierarchy which has its
origins in ancient Hindu India. It is a hierarchy of many
tiers, arranged in a descending scale, each tier made up
of a homogeneous group, with its own status, it own priviledges
and responsibilities, its own loyalties, and its own "code"
of honour, which have to be zealously guarded. An individual's
place in this hierarchy is determined solely by the accident
of birth.
The
gods decided it all for you: you are born into a family
which belongs to one of the social tiers, and there you
"belong," there you stay. Like the fixed stars
in the heavens, you have your fixed station in the social
firmament, and your set orbit.
In
the good old days, before emigration and the spread of education
began to disturb the feudal stability of life in Goa, everyone
knew practically everyone else. Your identity was known,
not only who you were but also where you belonged.
This
is generally true in the villages even today. Such was the
thoroughness with which the hierarchic social system was
perpetuated that a large number of Hindu surnames could
be interpreted as marks of identification which placed you
definitely in one of the social tiers.
However,
an accident of history took place to disturb the old social
order.
Foreign conquest and conversion in the sixteenth century
introduced new ideas of a free and equal society in Goa.
The logic of the principle that all men are equal was a
challenge to the traditional hierarchic practice, and the
situation was fraught with perils. But the challenge had
to be faced. Habits die hard; position and privilege cannot
be easily surrendered; group loyalties cultivated over the
centuries cannot be given up. The new ideas of social mobility
were a threat to the homogeneity of the group.
The purity of the social group had to be maintained, the
well-being of the members assured. This could be done by
sedulously preventing the infiltration of intruders and
upstarts, of "outsiders."
Under
the new dispensation this was not as easy as before. Names,
for example, were arbitrarily changed, and one clue to the
identity of an individual came to be lost. "Fernandes"
or "Colaco" offered no clue to the status of an
individual christened with the new foreign name, as
"Sardesai" or "Borkar" offered. A "Colaco"
could be anyone from the highest-born to the lowest-born.
In
this state of anonymity and impending social confusion a
technique had to be devised to discover the identity of
the individual, so that the privileges enjoyed exclusively
by the high-born could be safeguarded. In the field of employment,
for instance, unwanted low-born competitors had to be eliminated.
The loaves and fishes of office had to be distributed among
members of the group that enjoyed the patronage of the rulers.
The elders who held office had not only to see that their
relatives, whom they knew, were well-placed, but also see
that further recruitment was confined to the members of
the social group they traditionally belonged to. This called
for
the closely scrutiny and circumspection.
This
was a task for the new Goan gentleman. A gentleman, as Cardinal
Newman has it, is one who never hurts others. So when the
job-seeker had to be 'placed' socially, it had to be done
in a gentlemanly manner. The problem was to find an answer
to the crucial question which the upholders of the old hierarchic
order had invented in face of the new challenge: *To konna'lo?*
An easy way would have been to ask the party a direct question:
*Tum konna'lo?* But that would be against the spirit of
the new civilization. The process of detection had to be
oblique and casual. By indirections find directions out:
that was the civilized way.
"Which
village do you come from?" is usually the opening question.
Like the old surnames, the names of several villages in
Goa are associated with a certain social group that has
a major population in it. If your reply is Assagao, or Saligao,
or Moira, or Velim, or Cuncolim, or St Estevam, the problem
of "placing" you is not very difficult.
There is a supplementary to this: "From which ward?"
which tracks you down nearer home. The pursuit continues,
however, "Do you know so-and-so?" It is a change
from place to person, generating an atmosphere of intimacy.
If the answer is yes, then pat comes the confidence move,
"He's my mother's sister's sister-in-law's husband's
son-in-law." You reel under the impact of this chain
of relatives, and when you have recovered from the attempt
to unravel the complexity of the relationship, you warm
up to the occasion and discover to him, "Ah! He's my
father's sister's brother-in-law's daughter's son."
It's a mutual discovery, and he bursts upon you with the
cabalistic phrase, "*Arre, tum amcho mum-re!*"
You're not only 'placed', you are accepted. You join the
chosen band of the priviledged.
Another occasion calls for a like investigation. Traditionally,
marriage in Goa is endogamous. It is arranged between members
of the same social group. It is not a personal affair, but
a family affair, and it is mother-made.
Goa is dotted with *Donas* with grown-up daughters, whose
giving away in marriage is a matter of great concern and
calls for perpetual vigilance. It is not only that an adequate
dowry has to be provided; a proper husband has to be chosen.
The young man need not be rich, he need not be highly educated;
in fact, he need not even be young. There may be a bunch
of decaying *beatas* in his house, not to speak of a number
of aged *tios*. The family may even have bred quite a few
*endde*. But the proper husband-to-be must "belong"
to the social group of his mother-in-law-to-be.
One of the happy hunting grounds for these *Donas* is the
dance-hall, which offers a wide range of eligible young,
or not-so-young, bachelors. Many a marriage has been arranged
in this place, and many more are still arranged.
Bejewelled, laced and feathered, these Goans of a dying
species chaperoned their daughters to the hall and took
their seats at a vantage point from where they could survey
the whole scene.
Imagine
them in a phalanx, these pillars of the traditional hierarchy,
fanning themselves while they observe and comment upon the
young couples on the floor. Perhaps one of them spots her
daughter swaying in the arms of a handsome young man. She
has not seem him before, but he looks eligible.
Perhaps he is making overtures to her daughter. Anything
can happen when the two young people dance cheek to cheek.
She has to make a quick move to prevent a *misalliance*.
Her cronies on either side can come to her rescue and enlighten
her. Some of them are experts in genealogy; they know family
trees from roots upwards to the smallest twig.
And so she leans to her left, her face half-covered with
the spread-out fan, and whispers in her neighbour's ear
the great question: "*To konna'lo re?*, pointing to
the young man with her raised eyebrow and fixed look. This
is the classic occasion for the use of the phrase. The young
aspirant is minutely scanned, perhaps with the aid of a
lorgnette, and "placed" with a superior sniff
and a whispered contempt. His predicament has been very
precisely stated by Prufrock: "... eyes that fix you
in a formulated phrase,/ And when I am formulated, sprawling
on a pin, / When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall."
He does not belong. The establishment is secure.
Of course, in spite of the heroic efforts of such *Donas*,
there have been cracks in the establishment in recent years.
There is greater social mobility than ever before. But social
attitudes practised over the centuries become part of the
subconscious mind and resist change. The attitude crystallised
in the phrase, *To konna'lo?* formed the warp and woof of
Goan society. It played a furtive role in the corridors
of the seminary, in the vestry of the church, and in the
chapter of the cathedral. It received a sanction in Goan
folklore, was codified in proverbs and immortalised in the
following legend.
The two adjoining villages in Bardez, Sangolda and Guirim,
have each a major population of one social group. They have
one church, however, and one patron saint on the centre
altar, the side altars being dedicated to the Holy Name
of Jesus and Our Lady of the Rosary. The religious loyalty
of each of the two social groups is attached to one of the
side altars.
It happened once that an old woman in Guirim was on her
death-bed. Now, it is a custom in Goa to teach prayers to
the dying and end them with the ejaculation, *Jezu pay!*
(Help me Jesus). The young woman who taught her the prayers
finally whispered in the ears of the dying, "Repeat
after me: Jesus help me!"
Hardly had she uttered the ejaculation when the old woman
open her eyes wide and shook her head most piously, "Jezu
amcho nhum, Jezu ten'cho!" and she closed her eyes
and died.
Perhaps the old woman has changed her attitude in the other
world. But in this world, the Goan mind generally wavers
between "decisions and indecisions" on this social
problem. And if I speak wrong, dear reader, tell me this:
has a question been flitting in and out of your mind as
you have been reading what I have written: *To konna'lo*?
Your answer will alone prove or disprove what I have been
saying.
--------
LUCIO RODRIGUES (1916-1973) had a brilliant academic career
at Bombay University; he started the literary magazine *The
Liberation Movement* and contributed to many publications
in India; a specialist in folk literature and arts, he was
Visiting Professor of Folklore at Indiana University in
1969.
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