Goa is hurt. Once again the notorious Subhas Velinkar opened his mouth. Every time that he has opened his mouth in recent times, he seems to insult the sentiments of people in Goa. There seems to be a pattern to his outbursts. They also appear to be uttered at some appointed time. Take for instance, his negative rand almost always appear to arrive at the advent of the feasts of St. Joseph Vaz and St. Francis Xavier. It appears that he chooses those festive occasions as opportune times to vomit his divisive poison into our society. Perhaps, this predictable pattern has many lessons for us. It calls for a profound reflection on our sense of time.
May be we have to ask ourselves: Does history happens in time or does it happens through time ? Time is not a passive lane through which history travels. Time is not external form in which all events of history take place. It acquires historical quality of its own. Time is dynamized into a force of history itself. This is why we as Goans intensely feel moved to commemorate several important moments of our society. When we see our present and future in the plural, we are able to align with Goans of all walks of life and live in harmony. What if we were to see the present in the singular and future in the singular. We would be in conflict when we sense that the present is deviating and would feel that the future will also loose direction. Unfortunately, Subhas Velinkar and his ilk seem to be afflicted by a singular present and singular future.
May be a German thinker Reinhard Koselleck might enable to understand our condition. He teaches that history occurs through time. Time propels us to be a part of change. He sees this sense of time as temporalization of history. He points out that we feel accelerated or missionized by certain intensive moment of time. This temporalization of history also receives temporal index. Thus, history is not just about change but also about temporalization of change. Perhaps coming of feasts of St. Francis Xavier or St. Joseph Vaz might be felt as occasions that provide temporal indices to the like of Subhas Velinker to initiate his discourse. In a similar ways several of us also feel missionized to reply to his nonsensical rants. Hence, we have to come to the aware how we are become captivated by temporal indices that might throw up from time to time and have to learn to choose our response and not react mindlessly.
Kosseleck teaches us that temporalisation of history is a product of modernity. He says that modernity changed our time consciousness. History, then, became an open process that leads to an unknown future. To the fundamentalist, then present became a process to push history to their preconceived destinations. The unknown future then become close future. Following Kosellecks we can see the unknown future as future in the plural. But this future in the plural is closed and transformed into a future in the singular by the narrow minded fundamentalists. We can see how Nazism, Facism, Hindutva and several others see only a future in the singular.
In our days, we too experienced an acceleration of time. This kind of accelerated time pushes us to join what it thrusted on us as development. No one wants to be left behind or remain undeveloped. It appears that we have been co-opted in a production of a social order on the side of powers that be. Perhaps, we as Goans have fallen victims to ideology of development. We then come under increasing pressure to act. Some of us have sold our lands to join the ship of development. Several among us are missionize to act to save what is left of Goa. We can also feel this authentic impulse to act for Goa and Goans.
We are still moving under the modern conception of time. We at times mindlessly join the driving forces of history thinking that time is on our side . Living in capitalist society, we feel intensely the compulsion for growth and feel the push towards profit maximization. We are propelled by what Kosseleck calls secular eschatology. Often it gives us a feeling that our time is come. Here unfortunately, we envisage the future in the singular and fail to see the future in the plural. This sense of future in the singular seems to be one that is firing the politics of our days. Just because we are not able to envisage a future in the plural we have become victims of hate politics. It is for us to open our minds for present in the plural and future in the plural. Goa as well as our country needs to view our present and future in the plural.
