The Case against Romi Konkani (FN, in The Goan)

[Goanet Reader]

The Case against Romi Konkani
Frederick Noronha

Last week, the issue of Romi Konkani came up in the Assembly.
The Congress Opposition (whose partymen birthed this
controversy around the 1980s) raised the issue.  The ruling
BJP ducked the same, and some ruling legislators were not
present while the vote was taken.

The battle for Romi has been continuing for quite some time
now.  The case for Romi has been argued in quite some depth.
It doesn't take much to understand why this demand is being
made.  What is interesting is the case made by the State,
against allowing any trace of Romi to enter schools.

          What explains the hardline stand of the Goa
          government against Romi?  Is it a "foreign" script
          still?  Is there an allergy to a script and dialect
          because it is used primarily by a minority, and can
          thus be ignored and delegitimised?  The arguments
          in the debate were spearheaded mainly by Chief
          Minister Pramod Sawant.  Apart from Sawant's
          offense, few other ruling members came up with
          arguments against Romi.  Maybe this reflects their
          political interests in their respective
          constitutions.

Sawant's arguments were interesting.  He caught the
Opposition on the wrong foot by quoting from PS Varde's book
on education in Goa, 'History of Education in Goa: From 1510
to 1975'.  This is a text many would have forgotten, and the
Opposition seemed confused over (connecting it wrongly with
the work of his scientist-son NPS Varde).

Sawant pointed to the Jha Commission of 1962 on education in
Goa, which suggested that Nagari should be made the medium of
instruction if Konkani gets introduced in the primary
schools.  Both these arguments, incidentally, are
conveniently cut-and-pasted from the writings of Nagari
votary Uday Bhembre.

(Bhembre notes that the Jha Committee arrived in Goa in April
1962, and spent over a fortnight studying education here.  It
recommended, among other things, that Konkani could be taught
as the medium of instruction at the primary, and if chosen,
the script should be Nagari.  This was before Dayanand
Bandodkar and his ministry would rake up the
Konkani-is-a-dialect-of-Marathi row that dominated Goan
politics for quite some time in the 1960s.)

Sawant pointed to the collapse of Konkani schools
(incidentally, in Devanagari) mainly in "South Goa,
particularly Salcete" after the "convent schools" were
started.

          The CM's arguments were that two scripts could
          "cause confusion".  He said Marathi schools were
          doing well (the statistics go counter to this).  He
          raked up the issue of the shift-over to English.
          Incidentally, during the Medium of Instruction
          controversy of the 1990s, the ideological ilk of
          Sawant & Co. were singing a different tune.

Sawant noted to the growth of (Nagari) Konkani upto the MA
level at the Goa University.  He pointed to the Dalgado
Konknni Akademi, which has started getting government grants
since the past decade-and-half, as the route by which "Romi
can be learnt".  That Dalgado is not a teaching institution,
or lacks the capacity to do so, is entirely another matter.

The CM went on to argue that those interested to "create
their own literature" in Romi could do so, that the NEP
Committee had also supported Nagari, and also that the High
Court had disallowed a petition for Romi.  (Incidentally, the
last was on an entirely different matter, and on unrelated
technical grounds, as Wilson 'Wilmix' Mazarello, who was
behind this petition, has clarified.)

The CM claimed that the Sahitya Akademi accepts Konkani only
in Devanagari (which is true, and it has already seen a lot
of protests over this, from Kannada script Konkani writers as
well).

He went on to say that Konkani in Nagari made it to the
Eighth Schedule.  This is incorrect.  The Eighth Schedule of
the Indian Constitution recognises languages, not scripts.

          Konkani was added to the Eighth Schedule in 1992
          via the 71st Amendment, but the Schedule itself
          does not specify any script.  The association of
          Konkani with the Devanagari script stems from the
          Goa, Daman and Diu Official Language Act, 1987,
          which declared Konkani in Devanagari as the
          official language of Goa.  This is a state-level
          policy, not a constitutional requirement.  The
          latter was also passed in a contentious manner, a
          matter which is yet to be adequately understood.

The CM spoke with emotion about the "unity of Goans", and the
Miramar statue which symbolised this.  If a Goan is
recognised anywhere, it's because of his (Konkani) language,
he suggested.  Touching indeed.

* * *

Given all this, one can conclude that the Goa government’s
opposition to granting Romi Konkani any formal place in
school education is not just about pedagogy or script
preference.  It is deeply rooted in political, cultural, and
identity-based calculations.

There are many political reasons for this. Primary is the
jostling for cultural hegemony within Goa.  Unfortunately, we
are still divided on community and caste, and don't see a
commonness in the State.  We also don't want The Other
(someone 'different from us') to get a voice.

Since the 1980s, Nagari has served as a 'middle-way'
compromise to marginalise both Romi Konkani and Marathi,
while also keeping dominant groups placated.  This alliance
cannot be unsettled.  Electoral calculations and demographic
shifts are also undeniably part of the game.

Control over educational institutions is also what one is
seeing here.  Curricular flexibility or symbolic wins are not
to be permitted.  Resistance from dominant lobbies, which by
now have stakes of their own, including the Konkani Bhasha
Mandal (KBM) and the Goa Konkani Akademi (GKA), are a reality
too.

BJP's ideological leanings which valourises Sanskrit,
Devanagari and majoritarian civilisational narratives comes
into play here.  Having said that, this same thinking had won
the upper hand even in Congressi times.

Ironically enough, Romi users were strongly anti-merger with
Maharashtra in the 1967 Opinion Poll.  But they have been
since politically sidelined.

          Denying rights to a script like Romi is not just a
          bureaucratic act but a way of shrinking the
          cultural and emotional world of its users.  Article
          29(1) of the Indian Constitution recognises this.
          Script and language are gateways to identity,
          memory, and belonging.  As philosopher Ludwig
          Wittgenstein put it: "The limits of my language
          mean the limits of my world."

###

A version of this was first published in The Goan, Tuesday,
July 29, 2025.