Author: Amita Kanekar

Popular Essays

Ami asa, mhunn tumi asa: Of the Big Daddies who would rule us

By AMITA KANEKAR

The above is what someone campaigning in the Panjim bye-elections said to a group of voters living next to the St. Inez creek, when they spoke up at the election meeting about how the creek had not been cleaned even though monsoon was around the corner, which usually means terrible floods engulfing the houses and their residents. Don’t complain, was the answer. You live here because of us; be grateful. But the people did not stop complaining, so the meeting ended with a lot of promises of action and improvements, none of which have been fulfilled till date.

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Books, Reviews

Review: A Spoke in the Wheel

Courtesy: Luis Dias, Navhind Times.

Of all the genres of novel-writing, I have the greatest respect for writers of historical fiction. It is a genre best left untouched before a vast amount of reading and research on the subject and the historical period has been accomplished. In addition, one also has to possess a good imagination to recreate an often-distant past, in some ways very different from ours, but also in terms of the human experience, not that different. (more…)

Popular Essays

The Case of the Missing Temple

By AMITA KANEKAR

 

This article is about the temple of one of the most widespread and important deities of Goan village society, which is also however almost invisible as well as unknown to many Goans. The deity is Maharingan, and the reason for the invisibilation is because Maharingan is a Mahar deity, and Mahars are a community that would be openly called ‘untouchable’ in the past. Today, although such terminology and behaviour are banned by law, they are still treated as outsiders in not just many Goan villages but also in urban Goa. And their temple is a witness of this unspoken but persisting discrimination.

 

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Popular Essays

Big Corporates and their Political Minions need the Boot

By AMITA KANEKAR

 

Monkeys are taking over village roofs across Goa, from Pernem to Canacona. According to Rama Velip, environmentalist and anti-mining activist, this is just one of the ways his village of Colomb has changed over the last decade. Most of the paddy fields and coconut plantations were damaged by mining run-off. Water availability went down; with heavy pollution of the river and wells running dry, the winter paddy cultivation was stopped. Increasingly erratic and unseasonal weather changes routinely cause crop failures. On top of all this are unwanted visitors: hoards of monkeys, along with leopards, wild boar, and bison. In fact, with bison attacks becoming common in the talukas of Bicholim, Sattari and Sanguem, some villages have demanded a drastic change in the classification of Goa’s state animal from ‘protected’ to ‘vermin’, which would allow them to be killed.

 

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Popular Essays

Need of the hour: English MOI and reservations for all

By AMITA KANEKAR

 

The Dr B R Ambedkar Memorial Lecture Series this year saw both the distinguished speakers, Advocate Martin Macwan and Prof Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, speak, among other things, of the same two issues in their speeches. One was about English-language education – a subject of burning debate in Goa – and second about the need to expand caste-based reservations – a subject which is like the proverbial elephant in the room, i.e. always ignored.

 

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Popular Essays

How Ancient are Ancient Temples?

By AMITA KANEKAR

 

Hindu temples in the news means that election season is upon us. First there was the violence at Sabarimala in Kerala, following the Supreme Court judgement lifting the temple’s ban on the entry of women of menstruating age. In what Kerala’s BJP chief reportedly called a ‘golden opportunity’ for his party, women trying to enter the shrine were violently stopped by rampaging mobs. Meanwhile in the north, we see the sudden reiteration of the old Sangh Parivar demand for a Ram temple on the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. The demand was not surprisingly accompanied by the declaration that only Modi would build the temple, which is why he must be voted in again.

 

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Popular Essays

When Will #MeToo Challenge Hindu ‘Sanskaar’?

By AMITA KANEKAR

 

In one of the #MeToo cases which received widespread publicity, media reports of the allegations against the actor Alok Nath were accompanied by the information, in either shocked or ironic tones, that the man had always been seen as the most ‘sanskaari’ of actors. What the tones implied was that all the ‘sanskaar’ seems to have been just a hoax, with the real Mr Hyde now finally exposed. Implicit in this was the message that those who are really sanskaari, i.e. full of Indian, or rather Hindu, culture, will never behave like this. In other words, this behaviour is foreign to Hindu culture.

 

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Scholarly Articles

The Politics of Renovation: The Disappearing Architecture of Goa’s Old Brahmanical Temples

By AMITA KANEKAR

 

2018. “Politics of Renovation: The Disappearing Architecture of Goa’s Bragmanical Temples.” In Preserving Transcultural Heritage: Your Way or My Way? Questions of Authenticity, Identity and Patrimonial Proceedings in the Safeguarding of Architectural Heritage Created in the Meeting of Cultures, edited by Joaquim Rodrigues dos Santos, 253-263. Casal de Cambra: Caleidoscópio – Edição e Artes Gráficas.

 

ABSTRACT

The unique architecture of Goa’s old Brahmanical shrines is under threat today, and one reason seems to be a perception that it is not Hindu enough. Goa’s centuries-long Islamicate and Iberian connections have left behind a heterogeneous culture in many aspects, including architecture. The many Brahmanical temples built from the seventeenth century onwards are examples of this, their hybrid forms belonging as much to the Islamicate world and the European Renaissance as to local building traditions. But, while these temples still stand today and attract increasing numbers of worshippers, their original architecture is disappearing, to be replaced by forms and elements from outside Goa. This paper examines the attempts to erase these unique forms, and the relation of this to the social, political, and legal context.

Keywords: heritage, preservation, Goa, Hindu temples, Brahmanical temples.

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