What has the title ‘ Goycho Saib’ done to St. Francis Xavier and Goans? As the ongoing 18th exposition of his holy relics is going on, it is appropriate to discern the effects of this distinct naming of the Saint. The title ‘Goycho Saib’ has created deep bond between Goans and St. Francis Xavier. It is a bond that has taken the Saint to a new level and has goanized him. Goans are not the only people who have affectionately named St. Francis Xavier. We find that the Saint is also devoutly called Periya Padre or the great father in Tamil among some Tamil Christian communities. The naming of the Saint in Goa as Goycho Saib has disrupted the colonial underpinnings of the legacy of St. Francis Xavier. Hence, we may have to ask: What is there in the name or the title Goycho Saib ? In fact, the bearer of the name is never in the name. In a very real way, the person who is called by the name transcends the name. But the name has a way of sticking to the bearer of the name. Name in many ways is a mask that we wear to represent ourselves. In some way we, others and the world are merged in the name that we have.
We have the ability to disappear in the name and we become all that we represent through the name. But we are more than our name. We are not fully engulfed into the waters of our name and yet not fully free from its flows. There is the unnameable side to us. in many ways we cannot be fully named. Our name leaves us unnamed. This is why we can also be renamed. This new name also has the same limits. We are still unnamable. There is a secret to all of us. But name that we have opens us to the world, God and humans. It is our yes or availability to the world. It only yeses and becomes our yes and make us yes to the world. But we have to remember we do not give name to ourselves. It is always given by the other. Name, therefore is a gift given to us. We too name others. Some times our naming becomes labelling. Such negative naming can close to the world.
Name opens a bond, a profound relation with the other. Our name is a bond, a bridge to the world, God and humans. Name makes us addressed and addressable. When the other calls our name, he/she says come. In some way our name has a performative character. This dynamism is at play when we consider the title ‘Goycho Saib’ bestowed of St. Francis Xavier. Because the St. Francis as a bearer of the name like all of us stays beyond the label of the name. It is this calling of him with a new name that has changed his position in the symbolic universe of Goa. It has a performative effect. Goans feel it and live it intimately. Within in the very name, ‘Goycho Saib’, the colonial bearings of St. Francis are undone. The Saint, therefore, becomes Goan and is evoked or called by ordinary Goans for assistance in the everydayness of their life. Hence, the evocation of ‘Goycho Saib’ becomes a decolonization of his colonial lingering.
By calling St. Francis Xavier as ‘Goycho Saib’, we Goans have deconstructed colonial legacy of St. Francis Xavier. The title ‘ Goycho Saib’ squeezed the colonial layers of meaning on the beloved Saint of Goa without taking the signature of the Saint. In several ways the gift of name bestowed on St. Francis Xavier has suspended what stood for Francis Xavier at several levels. Francis Xavier by becoming ‘Goycho Saib’ has become not his name. Francis Xavier as ‘Goycho Saib’ is goanized. As ‘Goycho Saib’, he is not his name. it has taken the Saint beyond his name. It has apophisized or removed the colonial bearings associated with his name. By naming the Saint ‘Goycho Saib’, the people of Goa has deconstructed and decolonized St. Francis Xavier. In a very real sense, the people of Goa by naming St. Francis as ‘Goycho Saib’ have taken him beyond the colonial realm and brought him into the realm of intimacy of their life. When they relate to him at this intimate level, they subtract his colonial context and see him totally in the everydayness of their life. This is why they see him as a protector of Goa and Goans. The name Francis Xavier as ‘Goycho Saib’ operates far away from the original context of the Saint and sees his relevance to the everyday context of the life of people. Title ‘Goycho Saib’ has come to represent the deepest hopes, aspirations, fears and anxieties of Goan people.
The fact that people has decolonized the colonial legacy of the Saint has become clear when persons belonging right-wing persuasions are trying to re-inflict the colonial context on to him. His holy relic is called a colonial body. A book, titled the Relic-State by Pamila Gupta, strives to say that the fate of the Portuguese enterprise is mirrored in the fate of the relic. By taking us back to the colonial times of St. Francis Xavier, the right wing strives to degonaize him. These attempts to re-root the Saint to his colonial past is rejected by the people of Goa who continue to call St. Francis Xavier , ‘ Goycho Saib’ with great devotion. Besides, we can see the performative effects of the title,‘Goycho Saib’. It has successfully decolonized and goanized St. Francis Xavier and opened deep personal and intimate relations with him. A new identity that is inscribed in St. Francis has bonded Goans with relations that are paradoxically unnamable and seem to be unbreakable. It is almost clear. ‘ Goycho Saib cannot be named. He has become unnamable. All attempts to name ‘Goycho Saib’ as colonial body , relic wedded to a state ( relic-state) , Parashurama, etc has failed. It only shows the goanization of St. Francis as ‘Goycho Saib’ deconstructs the colonial context of St. Francis Xavier.
