TUESDAY, JULY 02, 2024
Vivek Menezes
There is something certifiably miraculous about this cultural moment in Goa, despite an ongoing brutalization of the social harmony and many-layered heritage of India’s smallest state. Even as the body politic is rendered by a thousand cuts, there’s an undeniable intellectual and artistic renaissance – best illustrated by Damodar Mauzo winning the 2022 Jnanpith Award - as well as an unprecedented re-evaluation, and more profound collective understanding of Goan history. Uday Bhembre’s 2021 novel Vhodlem Ghar, recently republished as Faith on Fire in translation by Vidya Pai, is another important landmark in this beautiful journey of understanding, truth and (potentially) reconciliation.
Near centre-stage for many crucial episodes in the making of modern Goa, Bhembre was born in Zambaulim in 1939 - just over a decade after Tristão de Bragança Cunha founded the Goa National Congress - and grew up steeped in the passions of the liberation movement, due to the involvement and inspiration of his father, Laxmikant Bhembre (1906-1985).
Here’s what J Clement Vaz writes about senior Bhembre in Profiles of Eminent Goans Past and Present: “With the qualification of Matriculation of the University of Bombay and the third year of Portuguese Lyceum, Bhembre proved to be an impressive teacher much appreciated by the students of Union High School as well as Popular High School in Margao, One of his aims was to create political consciousness amongst the youth [and] he came out openly with his strong patriotic views when he presided over the historic meeting of the 18th of August 1946 at Londa [when all the nationalists rallied to Bragança Cunha]. Later, he offered satyagraha in Margao and was arrested, tried and sentenced to four year’s exile in Portugal.”
Less than a month after his son’s 8th birthday, Laxmikant Bhembre was jailed in Peniche Fort [but he] “was not a person to remain idle even in prison. He protested against non-segregation of political prisoners, and about the food served to them. His demands were ultimately accepted [but] even after he was out of jail he had to stay in Lisbon under police surveillance for about eleven years. He utilized the time fruitfully by practicing law, and conducting classes on the Bhagvadgita for Portuguese enthusiasts. He also wrote regularly for Dudhsagar of Bombay and Navjeevan of Belgaum.”
Uday Bhembre was 22 when his father came home to Goa in 1962, following Nehru’s mercifully swift decapitation of the 451-year-old Estado da Índia. It is immensely moving to look back on the young man’s own idealistic journey, starting from an influential anti-merger role in the 1967 Opinion Poll, via his column Bhramastra in the Marathi newspaper Rashtramat. Then, as a pillar of the language agitations that led to the stunning achievement of Konkani being recognized in the Indian constitution. On that stirring march to statehood, this multifaceted public intellectual – lawyer, editor, legislator – even provided the lyrics to Channeache Rati, the indelible anthem voiced by Goem Shahir Ulhas Buyao.
Recently, the distinguished 83-year-old has reinvented Bhramastra in an editorial video format that is passed around widely on social media. Faith on Fire is best understood in this pedagogical context, as the author admits up front in his excellent and useful introduction: “I became convinced that it was the Inquisition that had created untold misery and injustice in the 16th century and it was important that Konkani speakers who regard Goa as their ancestral land should be made aware of this history. I felt this was necessary as many people were ignorant about this historical event. Others had wrong notions about it and some people believed the Inquisition had not occurred at all.”
Bhembre explains: “There were two avenues open to me to get information about this event to Konkani speakers. I could write a historical tome dealing with the Inquisition; or I could write a novel using the historical events that occurred during that period as a backdrop. It struck me that only those who were interested in history would read the historical tome, but I could reach a wider readership if I took the literary route, so I decided to write a novel. [However] I set myself a single rule at the start…the novel I would write would be a literary exercise, but I would take no liberties with history. [So] I had to be very careful. Whenever history and creativity came face-to-face, it was creativity that stepped aside letting history get the right of way.”
Such integrity in action and intent is admirable, and readers of Faith on Fire will appreciate the author’s diligent research in his detailed descriptions of 16th century Old Goa. What is more, Bhembre demonstrates admirable skill at evoking atmosphere and emotions in just a few words: “The black stone walls gleamed golden in the evening sunlight as the Familiar, with the guard and Caetano in tow, stood before the Big House. Waves of apprehension lashed Caetano’s breast as the trio climbed the large stone steps that took them to the threshold of an extensive hall.”
Nonetheless, while there are many good things about Faith on Fire, this book also sometimes struggles to soar as literature, which is understandable from a first-time novelist. In this regard, I was very glad to hear from Anwesha Singbal - the outstanding President of Konkani Bhasha Mandal who helped with inputs for this review essay – that Bhembre has already finished another novel on a different historical theme.” These kinds of books can be an invaluable means to get under the skin of dates and facts about history and heritage, such as the more experienced Konkani fiction writer Mahableshwar Sail’s Age of Frenzy, which is also about 16th century religious violence (and also translated by Vidya Pai), and the multifaceted Kannada litterateur Vasudhendra’s superb Tejo Tunghabhadra, which tracks from Lisbon to Vijayanagara in that same era, translated by Maithreyi Karnoor.
Bhembre says that “while the characters and incidents in the novel are representative of that period, all the rest is history. This is not an exaggeration. The reader might suspect that some of the events in the countryside as well as in the City of Goa are figments of my imagination, but this is not so. They are all based on the accounts of Goa in the 16th century, left behind by historians and travellers.” In particular he relied minutely on Charles Dellon, who was imprisoned, tortured and released from the Vhodlem Ghar, then returned home to France to write the sensational Relation de l’Inquisition de Goa in 1687, which became a best-seller of the times across Europe.
Unfortunately, this not a reliable text to build or claim historical authority, and it is to be regretted that Faith on Fire’s bibliography does not extend to more credible sources like the terrific Los Angeles-based historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam (whose brother is India’s current Minister of External Affairs) or, especially, Ângela Barreto Xavier’s magisterial Religion & Empire in Portuguese India: Conversion, Resistance and the Making of Goa which Subhramanyam accurately describes as “the first detailed and sophisticated treatment” of the exact period explored by Bhembre. That little extra depth of up-to-date research would have added greatly to the impact and importance of this otherwise diligent and impressive literary effort by one of Goa’s intellectual icons.
