By Augusto Pinto
In 2013 a poetry collection came out which in my opinion is a jewel of Konkani literature. There are those who might dispute this view and indeed regard this collection as not merely valueless but even pornographic. Be that as it may, one thing is true: anyone who has read this particular poetry collection will agree that it is the most controversial work of literature ever produced in Konkani. This collection is Vishnu Surya Wagh’s Sudhirsukta (Apurbai Prakashan, Volvoi, 2013).
When Sudhirsukta came out in 2013, Wagh was an MLA in the ruling party of Manohar Parrikar’s BJP. I was surprised that there was very little comment in the press about it. Surely for a book which everyone now agrees is controversial would have occasioned a little response in the media. There was total silence. Why the silence? Those who read the book were definitely affected by it one way or another. So why the eerie silence? My opinion is that this kind of ‘diplomatic behaviour’ is a proud characteristic of Goans. Vishnu Wagh was a man, no doubt, but why should anyone get in the way of a Wagh? (The meaning of whose name is ‘tiger’ in English.)
However in May 2016 Wagh suffered a heart attack and in August 2016 suffered another attack which left him completely bed-ridden and paralysed. Then in 2017 Goa Konkani Akademi announced that Wagh’s collection would be honoured with an award for poetry. However, before the prizes were actually handed over one of the judges, the journalist and poet Sanjiv Verenkar who was himself one of the judges for the prizes raised a hue and cry in the media that Wagh’s poetry was pornographic and casteist.
With that, all hell broke loose. A terrific controversy broke out pitting factions against each other. Bamons like Uday Bhembre and others maintained that Wagh had written many perverted things in his poetry collection. Also, there were some Bahujan Samaj writers who contended that Wagh, had been a Marathi writer all his life, and for him to be now awarded by a Konkani institution was inappropriate.
While this controversy was raging especially on social media and also the press, Bailancho Ekvott, a women’s organisation headed by Auda Viegas lodged an FIR with the police saying that Wagh’s writing was pornographic. Whether Viegas could read the Devanagari script in which these poems were written, only God knows. However, after this FIR was lodged the controversy heated up. The Parrikar government then in power seeing the anger generated among the Bahujan Samaj said that there was no case and further action on this FIR was halted. But at the same time the Parrikar government scrapped all the prizes that had been awarded that year.
This being the background, let me express my views regarding this book. I’d like to straight away contradict some opinions. Bhembre in an article in the Navhind Times stated, “[Sudhirsukt is] a harsh attack on the members of the Saraswat community, their traditions, rituals, and even their religious head, by using the filthiest language…” He makes two allegations: the book uses offensive language and the book attacks the Saraswats.
Before I go ahead let me clarify some issues: firstly—is Sudhir Sukta pornographic? Let me say that Wagh in Sudhir Sukta does indeed use words which can be described as ‘obscene’. I counted them. According to me there are about 7 words which can be so described which occur in a 152 page book consisting of 62 poems. Of those 3 ‘obscene’ words are directed towards Wagh’s own ancestors! But as Hema Naik, whose Apurbai Prakashan published this collection, said, Wagh’s words were taken out of context.
However on this issue one thing should be borne in mind: Wagh doesn’t use ‘obscenities’ casually. His use of such words is a deliberate act, one which claims that the language of obscenities was the language of his forefathers. Indeed there is one poem called ‘Bad Words’ which states:
Father used to sometimes
Fire out bad words
My grandfather spoke
Regularly using bad words
My older kith and kin
Didn’t know
A language without
Bad words.
But when my grand-fathers and great-grandfathers
Fired out bad words
They would shiver.
We got educated
And with education became urbane
And we co-mingled with them
And forgot bad words.
Since then
We broke
Our claws ourselves.
Now they
Don’t fear us
If you ask why:
They castrated us
Now we don’t use bad words.
So is Wagh saying that he wants his forefather’s obscenity filled language to come back into use? I think Wagh’s real motive is to challenge the grip, the Saraswats had over the Konkani language, having imposed a Brahminical Antruzi dialect, and wanting to bring back into use his people’s earthy language.
In fact some of the poems where Wagh allegedly uses ‘obscene’ words are quite amusing. ‘Chance’ is one of them. In it he says:
I had been fondling her boobs
When suddenly
My babe tightly gripped my hand
And babbled in my ears
If only you were ours
We’d have put you
On our heads and danced
Something else that needs to be borne in mind: Is this a book that is against the Saraswats? There is little doubt that Wagh’s book intends to unsettle not just the Saraswat caste but all “upper” castes. Is this a bad thing? When Wagh has all the evidence and all the reason to say that the “upper” castes have discriminated against his own community, isn’t it all right to say that such discrimination is wrong? Babasaheb Ambedkar, and before him Mahatma Jyotiba Phule and before him Sant Tukaram have severely criticised the “upper” castes for the injustices that they have perpetrated upon the “lower” castes.
But in Goa for centuries the “lower” castes were under the thumbs of the “upper” castes. Some say that this domination was not so severe as compared to the rest of India, but still this is not a happy fact. And nobody raised their voices against these “upper” castes in Goa. Vishnu Wagh does this in his Sudhirsukhta collection and these poems are in the tradition of protest Dalit literatures of India. I don’t find anything wrong about this.
With regards to Sudhirsukta, there are a couple of things that should be borne in mind: the first is that nowadays the word ‘Sudhir’ is not used in polite society. Those castes which used to be known as “Sudhir” are now called the “Bahujan Samaj”. But Wagh has no shame about using the word ‘Sudhir’ to speak about himself and his people and on the contrary says that his poems are in praise of the Sudhirs!
Another thing that one needs to pay careful attention to is the word sukta that’s embedded in Sudhirsukta. Sukta is a word which comes from the Sanskrit. It’s a word that stretches back to Vedic times. It means a song in praise of (generally) some god. For instance the Rigveda is an important Vedic work which is composed mainly of suktas.
But in Wagh’s Sudhirsukta most of his poems are not sung to gods or are of them but they address and are about the Shudras. This is an ancient practice: whenever someone wanted to introduce some new thought or religion, then often Sanskrit, whether from the Vedas or from the Puranas or wherever else, was used as the base. For instance Thomas Stevens’ Krist Purana was so composed. Thus amusingly although Wagh wants to shake up the Brahmins, he needs to use the Brahminical Sutra style to do it!
Sudhirsukta is well structured. There’s a thread which binds all the poems to a theme of the Sudhir. The 61 poems in the collection are about, among other things, the history of the Sudhirs, their philosophy, the Brahmin hegemony over society and another subjects relevant to the caste which Wagh has dealt with. Wagh’s Sudhirsukta can be regarded as a political manifesto for the Sudhirs or Bahujan Samaj of Goa. He explains why he wrote these poems in his preface. In it, Wagh tells a tale: he says that just as Krishna in the Mahabharat was discarded by his mother Devaki for reasons beyond her control and he was taken care of by another woman Yashoda, he says, he himself had to abandon his real mother-tongue Konkani and was taken care of by his aunt Marathi. .
And Wagh says that the Marathi language nourished him by giving him writers like Sant Tukaram, Jyotirao Phule and Babasaheb Ambedkar, and cultural objects like kirtans and bhajans and drama to listen to and appreciate. We know that Wagh was to become an accomplished Marathi journalist, dramatist and writer and his play Tuka Abhang Abhang which criticised the manner in which the Brahmins of his time treated Tukaram was the subject of much controversy.
In Sudhirsukhta Wagh says that he wanted his first mother. But to do this he had to battle against the “upper” castes. In his preface he tells a tale about how the Saraswats had trapped his mother “in a big palace”. Further he says, “Red liveried guards / Sat outside / In Mother’s name / They began issuing journals / They began to frolic in Sammelans and Parishads / They began to shout in praise of her / And in her name / They grabbed all the awards for themselves.
Wagh wants to say that Goa’s real language is the language of his ancestors and it is a language which the Brahmins stole from them. He writes, “There was one / Our ancestors had a language / That compared / To what you and we speak today / Was much more dynamic / And forward looking / Till it turned into tantras and mantras / Such was our language.” Later he continues, “Our ancestors / Didn’t do one thing / The language that danced on their tongues / Never put / The clothing of a script on it / Hence their language / While walking around naked / One day got lost in the forest .”
Wagh’s contention in this poem is linguistically correct: linguists have asserted that before the Aryan invaders brought a form of Prakrit to Goa there was a Mundari language, and ‘Goa’ is a word which emanates from this language. However the Brahmins managed to subdue the Mundari language although they did incorporate bits and pieces of it in their newly minted Konkani language.
That a lot of attention has been paid to Goa’s history can be seen in this collection. Wagh knows that those of Aryan descent were not the earliest gaonkars of Goa but were later settlers. Before the Aryan invasions there were people such as the Gauddes, Velips, Dhangars, Kunnbi and so on who when the Aryans brought their Chatur Varna system were later branded as Sudhirs. These people had Gods like nature such as the ximevelle devnchar, (spirits who dwelled at the borders of villages) Pipal and Banyan trees, cobras, ant-hills. These Gods were either discarded or incorporated within the Aryan pantheon through idol-worship and in this way the Sudhirs were ‘civilised’.
The casteism that the Aryans brought to Goa makes Wagh’s blood boil. In the poem ‘Castes’ he shows how caste has brought divisions among people and in the last stanza he writes:
“Praise to those sons of cunts
Who generated castes
And on the excuse of humanity
Built fences.”
In ‘Secular’, Wagh describes an experience of his ‘Sudhir’-ness.
Secular
At first I wasn't aware
Of the techniques
They used to identify caste.
One day I went to a friend's home.
In the veranda sat his uncle.
We were introduced.
Wagh? So you're one of us, son!
Uncle said chuckling.
I was confused.
Still, to clear any doubts
He asked-
“How are you related to the Kamat Waghs of Ribandar"
“We’re not.”, I replied.
“Then you must be from Karwar."
“No. We're from Goa itself."
“Really? From where?"
“From Dongrim."
“So you must be the Mahajan of the Ram temple."
“No. Our goddess is Satee.
Even after speaking so much
Uncle wasn't sure - so he asked-
“Okay so who is the god of your clan, tell me ?"
I replied, “Siddhanath!"
“Of Shiroda?"
“Yes."
“Which means... you aren't a GSB!"
“No Uncle, we're Bhandaris."
Uncle laughed aloud. He began to say-
“Don't be offended. I just happened to ask.
We don't believe in caste and creed. Come, have your tea.
You know: the greatest loss to Goa
Has resulted from these caste divisions.
Who's Brahmin? Who's Sudhir?
What meaning do these differences of caste and creed have?
“We should be secular
We must have a casteless society, you know?”
Uncle in the hope
Of getting a reply, kept watching.
I nodded my head
But as I drank my tea
My gaze got affixed on
The sacred thread on Uncle's shoulder.
Besides poems about Sudhirs there are a few poems where Wagh describes some of his own experiences. Wagh was a member of the Congress Party for many years before joining the BJP and some of his poems are about this party. For instance in ‘The Family’ he mocks the Nehru-Gandhi family. And in ‘Gandhi’ he shows how this great leader, the Father of the Nation’ and his satyagraha have been forgotten. He writes:
After laying flowers
At the Rajghat Memorial
Everyone ran home.
The Mahatma’s passion for truth
Has gone down the drain of politics.
The Mahatma’s photograph
Remained on the currency note.
And in the milling crowd of the theatre
Someone said
I came to know Gandhi was great
By watching ‘Munnabhai’.
‘The Valiant’ is a short poem of this kind:
The Valiant
Watching the fighting
In the Lok Sabha on Doordarshan
A son asked his mother -
Mother! Mother! Look
When father goes to Delhi
He fights so valiantly
But I don’t understand how
When he comes home, like a skulker
He gets beaten up at your hands
And sits crying
In a corner.
Reading the poems of Sudhirsukta, one thing struck my mind: although Wagh attacks the ‘upper’ castes, there is one Goan community which he has written little about: Christians. As we know since Goa’s Liberation, the Bahujan Samaj and the Christians have been at loggerheads over various issues: during the Opinion Poll, during the Official Language Agitation, during the Medium of Instruction agitation. Given that Wagh was a powerful leader of the Bahujan Samaj I wonder why he kept silent about the Christians. Another thing I noticed was that although he was in the BJP party Wagh doesn’t give any attention to BJP or Hindutva leaders or their ideology.
Are the poems of Sudhirsukta good or bad? Frankly sitting in judgement over whether they are good or bad isn’t important to me. Let everyone look at these poems in their own ways. What I can say is that these poems are very powerful to the extent that they grab you by the neck, shake you up and force you to think about our society. I feel this book deserves to be translated into English and other languages and transliterated into Romi script Konkani. If you can get a copy (it’s not easily available now) do read it.
Vishnu Surya Naik Wagh was a Goan poet, writer, dramatist, journalist, politician and management consultant/ trainer. He was a Member of Legislative Assembly in Goa from 2012—2017 as a member of the BJP. His collection of poems Sudhirsukta was released in 2013.
Augusto Pinto is a senior Associate Professor at S. S. Dempo College of Commerce and Economics' Department of English, Goa. Since 1986 he has been a translator from Konkani into English, his most recent work being a translation of Dr. Jayanti Naik's stories The Salt of the Earth (Goa 1556, 2017). He is currently translating the plays of the eminent Konkani playwright Pundalik Naik. He is also a freelance essayist, middle writer and book reviewer.