Narratives are crafted and even altered or censored based on what is deemed as convenient and inconvenient to our interest or the interest of the powers that be. Here we stall try to understand narrative making along with the politics of juxtaposition. We shall see how each of us as individuals and communities need narratives for build our identities. This narrative identity formation is not free from the logic of juxtaposition. Next we shall try to see how logic of juxtaposition is misused in our post-truth society. Finally, we shall draw attention to the technique of narrative making that uses juxtaposition in literature and research. We draw our attention to a Book on St Francis Xavier that Juxtaposes with the relic of the saint with the fate of Portuguese Estado de India.
Narratives are constructed and shaped as much as how we want others to perceive us and as much as they are shaped by those that we do not see as us. Narratives are founding stories and are very important to define who we are. Narratives are part of our life and they are means through which we perceive ourselves and let others perceive us. Narratives are exclusionary and embed with them a sense of moral superiority. All narratives have an outside that is viewed as the other. by defining ourselves in our narratives, we also indicate if not define the other. Narratives that constitute identity necessarily has this ‘us and them’ to them. We can see how we as Indians define ourselves visa vis Pakistan. We see ourselves as democracy, tolerant, pluralistic and view Pakistan as fundamentalist, authoritarian and backward. We may also look at the narrative constitution of our religious identities. There is always the ‘not us’, the other to our stories. If we are not aware of the narrative constitution of our self and the other, we may not be aware how we end up otherising, demonising, and dehumanizing the other. We have the challenge to scrutinize our narratives because often they blind us and we see ourselves as morally superior visa vis the other who is viewed as inferior. We need an inferior other or have to inferiorize the other to view ourselves as one following moral rectitude. These narrative construction of the self and its other can actually be unhealthy as we are unable to see our true selves and can only see ourselves in juxtaposition to the demonized other.
Besides, these kinds of narrative making and the logic of juxtaposition, we have crafty and malicious juxtapositioning that is being used in our post-truth world. Juxtapositioning as a technique has been used in literature. But in a post-truth world of fake news and deep fakes, we can image any person to glorify or demonize him or her. We can also do the same to communities and groups. This crafty juxtapositioning can politicize, criminalize and even sacralize the person that we may choose. Since we have the technology that can create deep fakes, we can put into the mouth of the person the words he or she has never uttered or put him or her in places or modes of actions that he or she has never been in his or her entire life. This crafty , cunning and deeply immoral narrative making that is using the logic of juxtaposition has indeed become fashionable in a post-truth society that we have come to live. Often Media is used to criminalize innocents persons to achieve the ulterior motives of the powers that be.
Another type of narrative making alongside the politics of juxtaposition seem to be occurring in the academic circles. I need to seek more examples of this practice. I thought of bringing this narrative making in this context because I being a Goan and holding St. Francis Xavier in high regard thought this juxtaposition and narrative making cannot be simply overlooked. Although the work of Pramila Gupta displays great academic rigor, one can notice a deliberate attempt to use the logic of juxtaposition to politicise, despiritualize, and secularize the presence of St. Francis Xavier sacred relics in Goa. The very name of her book itself is revealing this crafty juxtapositioning. The title of the book, the Relic State: St. Francis Xavier and the Politics of Ritual in Portuguese India. She aligns the fate of the Portuguese colonial project of Estado de India to the fate of the relic of the saint. She sees five historical moments in the life of the relic in Goa that she sees as also manifesting the glory and twilight of the Portuguese enterprise. She presents the five historical moments as : Incorruption (15 54) , Amputations ( 1664), Desiccation (1782), Shrinking Stature (1859) and Body in Parts (1952). The book dedicates one chapter for each of the five historical moments and synoptically weaves the fate of Portuguese Estado India with the fate of the sacred relic of the saint. This is why the tile of the book is the Relic State is fully justified. While, this juxtapositioning is unwarranted and looks crafty, we can still find great historical data concerning how the relic was subjected to scientific and medical examination from time to time to study its state. One can also find well documented narration of recognition of the miraculous body of St. Francis Xavier by those who personally knew him. This manifests that the identity of the relics cannot be questioned all through centuries of its presence in Goa.
The securalization of St. Francis Xavier diminishes his saintly legacy that cannot be reduced to his historical life alone. Once the saint is divested of his saintly legacy that has grown over the centuries after his canonization in 1622, it becomes easy to politicize him and even criminalize him in hindsight by making him responsible for the Goa Inquisition. This narrative making is exactly used by the right-wing. The subject of their narrative is simply the man Francis Xavier of the Portuguese era. They abstract him of his saintly stature. During the exposition 2014, there was another attempt to juxtapose the relics of St. Francis Xavier with the body of a Buddhist monk Thhotgamuve Sr Rahula Thera raising suspicion about the authenticity of the relics by one Sri. Lankan Journalist, W T J S Kaviratne. But this claim also lacked substance and has been debunked then. One can also draw the conclusion about the authenticity of the sacred relics from the book , Relic State that has been discussed above. One can again, we notice the politics of juxtaposition in the narrative making Subash Velinkar in recent days. He clearly sees him as a Spainiard and wants his DNA be matched with his relatives there and then want him to be sent to Spain only to retack his own position when it backfired and soften his demand as one revoicing the one made by the Sri Lankan Journalist during the previous exposition. Thus an attempt is made to once again weaponise the old narrative. Our exercise here is directed to uncover how narrative making depends on the politics of juxtaposition. Our effort is to enable us to critically revisit the narrative that are constantly floated in our society so that we can respond to them mindfully and emancipativley.
