Democracy as politics of pop culture

https://shar.es/1euJTu

Teotonio R. de Souza
It is commendable that the Goa University has come of age and entered the phase of creating
research chairs [http://ow.ly/4nbKEv]. DD Kosambi chair, DB Bandodkar chair, Mario Miranda
chair, Anthony Gonsalves chair, Nana Shirgaonkar chair, and the latest, JH Cunha Rivara
chair. With the exception of the last mentioned chair, almost all the others tend to honour
popular personalities of Goan culture in its various aspects. Also Cunha Rivara, a high ranking
colonial administrator during two decades as Secretary of the Estado da ndia, was intelligent
to combine colonial interests with the promotion of vernacular literature.
The Goans need to be proud of DD Kosambi, recognized as a tall figure in the academic
research at the national level. He focused his research about Goan past in a way that sought to
redeem it from the colonial underpinnings. He saw Goas past as integrated in the culture of
the Indian subcontinent, and as ongoing struggle of people to develop their potentialities. This
was very different from viewing Goan history as made of chapters of the national histories of
the colonial powers. It implied researching and writing histories of the unlettered men and
women who produce goods and services, not documents.
Getting back to the chairs in Goa University or any other University, what culture do these
high-sounding (adhyasan / upadeshasan) represent? Do they truly represent a tribute
to the personalities they seek to honour and fulfill their life objectives of reaching the
common folk? Does folk culture need a chair?
Mario Miranda I know was a shy person and would hardly feel comfortable in or before a
professorial chair. He left Mumbai and retired in his village home in Loutolim. He felt most at
ease reaching the public through his cartoons and sketches of Goans in their Sundays best.
The same could be said of most others chosen for honour through GU chairs. DB Bandodkar
was probably more relaxed at playing table-tennis, than on CMs chair in the State Assembly.
All peoples have their folk culture, high culture and popular culture. The folk culture
represents a lifestyle, that is generally conservative, characteristic of rural life.
Radical innovation is generally discouraged. Group members are expected to
conform to traditional modes of behavior adopted by the community. Folk culture is
local in orientation, and non-commercial.
In short, folk culture looks for stability, whereas popular culture represents an itch
that looks for novelties and fashions, something that draws attention. It is a sort of
a disease of the middle class that seeks to combine its folk roots with the ambition
of the newly rich to rub shoulders with the upper and erudite social groups
representing the high culture.
High culture is not mass produced, nor meant for mass consumption. It belongs to
the elites; the fine arts, opera, theatre, and high intellectualism are associated with
the upper socioeconomic classes. Items of high culture often require extensive
experience, training, or reflection to be appreciated. Such items seldom cross over
to the pop culture domain as a ordinary lifestyle. The elites tend generally to look
down upon the pop culture as superficial and worn loosely, when compared to the

sophistication of high culture. The University chairs discussed here fit better in the
category of high culture.
The best way of remembering and celebrating the memory and contribution of the
personalities that distinguished themselves in enriching the Goan culture would be
through ways of reaching the common folk, rather than obliging those interested in
listening to the guest-speakers in the isolated precincts on the Dona Paula heights.
That could take the form of extra-mural or extension programmes in rural setting,
conducted in vernacular languages, and aimed at providing the common people
with useful knowledge and skills for improving their lifestyle.
Rabindranth Tagore, our gurudev, had launched his model of a University and
higher education for India at his Vishwabharati as Shanti Niketan. But his
inspiration has almost fizzled out beneath the weight of Nehrus favoured cathedrals
for independent India, namely the heavy industry and educational institutions to
support its growth. That may have given the country a technological edge, but the
country is regressing at the social level, widening the divide between the elites and
the masses.
The political leadership has the responsibility of shaping the socioeconomic
structures that are conducive to peoples welfare. In Goa, DB Bandokar represented
a positive breakthrough along these lines, but lately we are facing a return to the
politics that mimic democracy, making it a political version of pop culture. Votes
matter, the masses need to be pampered with electoral promises and short-term
rural projects that help winning elections.
Swachh Bharat campaign should be seen in less traffic chaos and pollution in urban
areas, and better sanitation and hygienic conditions in rural areas, where poor folks
could do with more patth (toilets) in their homes to avoid messing porsakodde.
Anthony Gonsalves and Nana Shirgaonkar would be happier to know that their
cantaram (tiatr songs) and bhajana (devotional songs) have brought more joy to
the common folks, than the high-fallutin upadeshasan (chairs).