We as beings in the world, actively create signification systems. By doing this we make meaning of our being in the world and become worldly. Charles Sander Pierce calls this process semiosis. This semiosis leads to what Aristotle calls mimesis. Mimesis (imitation) then, leads to poesis which is an actualization of a form or vision of being which is chosen as a sociality (social way of being in the world). Indians have sent in a process of making (poiesis) a skewed sociality. Our choice has led to majoritarianism. A new Indian has emerged. We have become ontological. We are striving to live a referential totality without a synthesis. This means our referential totality does not represent all Indians. Thus, everything that makes up life in our society has unleashed aesthetic anarchy and fractured ethics. It is in the interstices of that order, a minoritized other has to find his life and limbs. In a free India, unfortunately, minorities cannot enjoy their autonomous space. Their constitutional status is interrogated and kept under erasure.
Although in several ways the minorities are depersonalized and deIndianized, we can trace Goa as the site of resistance or escape for the Indians who belong to the majority community. Goa remains an exotic other in the imagination of the other Indians. As visitors or tourists, we Goans can see how they enjoy the aesthetics of body performance. It may involve dressing less, bathing in the sea, dancing, drinking, eating, experimenting on drugs and even sex. This means the other Indians who otherwise stand for a referential totality of a Hindu India find the bodily indulgence celebratory and rejuvenating. Thus, to them, Goa has turned out to be almost a sin city where the Indian ontology is no longer laying its weight on them. Goa to them had become a site of unconscious resistance or conscious escape from the everyday burdens of living a life of sanskari Hindu.
Goa has emerged as a site of interrogation of the immediate surrounding world of other Indians who flock to it. Goa to them becomes a place to indulge in aesthetic anarchy. While the aesthetic order of Hindutva holds its sway over them in their native states, Goa offers possibilities of rebelling against those aesthetic boundaries and enjoying a kind of aesthetic anarchy even for a short time. Ironically, Goa can, therefore, become a therapy to India. The aesthetics of Hindu singularity is suffocating both the majority community as well as the minorities. Instead of living hypocrisy in Goa, one may do well to accept sensitively aesthetic of anarchy that truly goes against the hate politics of the right wing and with deep contemplation on ethics that will enable us to realitify harmony taught by Vasudaiva Kutumbukam. Such an India is possible from Goa.
