A recent newspaper report, ‘Bicholim’s Forbidden Namazgah’, brought back distant memories of
the place. Bicholim is my mother’s birthplace, and as a child I spent many
summers there. The Namazgah could be sighted from a distance, if one were seated
on the right side of the bus while approaching the town, as I often did.
Perched on a hill, the historic monument, which evidences Goa’s Islamicate
heritage, always seemed like an intriguing place, one that I often yearned to
visit as a child. Even now, between the monument and the town, midway along the
hill, is a busy mining road where trucks full of ore ply from the mining areas
to the river port. From a distance, these trucks seem like robotic guards to the
Namazgah. The monument, because of its location and the restrictions
surrounding it, reminds me of Franz Kafka’s novel The Castle, a haunting tale of a man who struggles relentlessly with
an inscrutable authority to gain entrance to the castle.
During our school vacation
days, the enigma of the Namazgah would frequently feature in our discussions; some
older kids would boast of flying kites from there. Apparently, the kites flown
from the Namazgah would disappear into the misty skies above the town. Such
claims made a deep impression on me and I hoped to reach the hilltop someday.
I grew up in Vasco da Gama,
the port town from which the ore mined from places like Bicholim is shipped to
distant lands. My father worked for one of the mining companies, often driving
from Vasco to Bicholim and back. When the mine company he worked for closed down,
he was made redundant, and our family suffered in the process, just as many bahujan families do today.
I had to return to Bicholim
to continue my education, partly because of these economic troubles. This is
when the Namazgah became more accessible to me. I often climbed up the slopes
of the hill to study in preparation for the 12th Board Exams. The place is a few
minutes hike from my grandmother’s house. The hillside was tranquil, without a
soul around, so one could read aloud. Also, I needed to move about while revising
my lessons. This place provided multiple choices to study, including sitting on
rocks; walking up or down the gentle slopes; or, if boredom was taking over,
even running from one side to another, while screaming out some stupid
chemistry formulae in order to better memorise them. I must have seemed like a fool
to the occasional locals who came there to collect firewood. The side of the
hill I studied on faces east, so after about 2 PM, it would turn shady.
Although I found the place
relatively quiet, it was not as if the mining trucks had disappeared. They
continued to ply across the belly of the hill, even having increased in number.
The steady rumbling of the machines could put a baby to sleep.
In those days, the Namazgah
merely appeared inaccessible, and people were not physically forbidden from
visiting it as reported recently. The denial of access, for some time now, is
because a huge mine lies across from the Namazgah. Although the hill as seen
from the town appears normal, the western side is completely mined, with the excavations
going extremely deep. The devastation is such that anybody seeing it from the
Namazgah would justify the mining ban.
While I am skeptical of the
appeals for a complete or immediate ban, I would like to argue that the recent
mining ban in Goa had less to do with saving the environment and more to do
with who benefits from mining. There is no denying that mining has been an
important source of livelihood for many in Goa. A documentary produced by Time magazine in 1953, under its ‘March of Time’ series, suggests that mining made many prosperous then. In fact,
the rise of the first Goan political bahujan
leader Dayanand Bandodkar would not have been possible had he not been a mine-owner.
That he was able to be Goa’s first Chief-Minister is a testimony to the power
of mining as mediator of social change.
Apparently, the beneficiaries
of the recent mining boom were largely the bahujans
of Goa, many of whom were able to rise from the pits of poverty into a middle
class life. This was because the benefits of mining were directly accessible to
them. The rise of bahujans is
apparently not easily digested, and one could read the mining ban as a systemic
tool to weed the bahujans out from
the business.
Given that we are on the
cusp of resuming mining operations, the Namazgah will once again bear mute witness
to the drone of machines. However, this time only a select few will benefit from
the operations, while many bahujans dependent
on mining will continue to live on the crumbs. As in Kafka’s tale, only some are
allowed entry into the castle.
There is no doubt that mining has to be done in a different
way – by ensuring that local communities benefit, that environment is minimally
damaged (and then repaired as much as possible) and that heritage does not get
obstructed or damaged.
[This article first appeared on The Goan on 27th March 2016, on the Easter Sunday]
