Through our misfortune, Goa had to face the rule of 2 dictators during the last one hundred years; one dictator from Portugal and the other from Goa. Salazar was the dictator from Portugal and Bandodcar from Goa. Both these dictators rigidly applied their dictatorship to Tiatro and Tiatrists. During Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal, freedom of speech was suppressed ruthlessly, this suppression was applied in the Portuguese colonies as well or in overseas Portuguese colonies, as they were then called. It was not only in Goa but in Portugal itself the free thinkers and democrats suffered more because of suppression of freedom of speech.
During Portuguese time in Goa after Salazar came to power, Censorship on Tiatros and on Press was introduced, that means, no criticism of government and its machinery from the Stage and Press tolerated. Vavraddeancho Ixtt, the Konkani Weekly was the victim of this law somewhere in 1958 when it was suspended for 3 months for writing a critical editorial.
As for Tiatro, because of the censorship, no Tiatrist could write a Tiatro against the government policy nor sing a song against the government and its policies. In order to maintain this Censorship, the village Regidores compulsorily attend the Tiatros organized in the villages, to supervise the Stage proceedings that there was nothing against the government. Otherwise, criticism against anybody was tolerated. For this reason, those days’ Tiatrists used to criticize heavily the Goan Brahmin Bhattkars for their misdeeds against Mundkars and non-Brahmins.
Tiatrist always stood for justice for downtrodden and suppressed and harassed Goans. When Dayananda Bandodcar the first Chief Minister of invaded Goa tried to liquidate Goa and Konkani and also started working against the interest of genuine Goans, Tiatrists in Goa from the Stage challenged him. Having no teeth to absorb this challenge and in order to force them to surrender to him, he introduced censorship on their script and songs. The great political Trio of Conception-Nelson-Anthony whom Bandodcar was terribly afraid, was his target. During that short period of censorship, this Trio suffered a lot as best of their political Trio songs remained unsung till all three of them once came on to the Stage in full black dress and covered their faces with black handkerchiefs, escorted by M. Dod de Verna and to his questioning the Trio answered as dumb singers thereby giving an impression that their mouths were gagged. This was in late sixties. Still some other Tiatrists raised this issue from the Stage fearlessly supported by the UG members in the Goa Legislative Assembly till Bandodcar relented.
Tiatrists are a big fear for the government for its misdeeds and because of this fear Bandodcar was more afraid of the Trio Kings for their piercing political songs than of all the gigantic 12 MLA’s of Opposition UG Party. Tiatrists created more awakening against the government misdeeds and their campaign has greater effect on the masses as well as on the elites.
Similarly, Parrikar government is afraid of the mighty voice of the Tiatrists against his government and its ministers for this reason recently Francis de Tuem was arrested. And now to make the Tiatrists totally Dumb against the government and its ministers, two days back Margao’s Ravindra Bhavan issued a circular whereby the Tiatrists were asked to sign an undertaking not to criticize Ministers and MLA’s, if they want to hire the Hall for staging their Tiatros.
This is another form of Censorship thru back door by the Hall management headed by the BJP stalwart Damu Naik who disclosed his ignorance on this Undertaking. Can we accept this answer from Damu Naik? Without his knowledge and approval can any document get released? Was there no nod for this Undertaking from the top man of BJP in Goa? I think from behind the curtain, all are involved in issuing the Undertaking but only after they felt the pulse of the reaction, they washed their hands like Pontius Pilate.
From this incident, Tiatrists must be careful of BJP government in Goa. This issue of Hall and censorship should make the Tiatrists to think of having one Hall in Margao built by their own private capital and owned by them jointly. Money collection should not be a difficult task. But there must be a will and for that matter a very strong will. For the late Antonette de Calangute’s Kidney operation fund, within a short time the Tiatrists collected so many lakhs. In the case of Hall construction, they can form their own company as we Kuwaitcars did and built our own Hotel Goan Heritage at Calangute. Besides, with so many intelligent brains among them, they can easily go ahead in this project.
Candolim, Goa.
Tel: 7507394349.