Nidān, Volume 4, No. 1, July 2019, pp. 39-57 ISSN 2414-8636 Evangelii Gaudium: Catholicism as the Source of Consolation in Goan Society Jason Keith Fernandes Centre for Research in Anthropology University Institute of Lisbon (CRIA-IUL)
[email protected] Abstract Even though close to one fourth of Goa’s population is Catholic, much scholarship on Goa is at pains to emphasize the Hindu nature of Goan society. Contesting these assertions, this paper will draw on popular culture in Goa, with special reference to the lyrics of popular Konkani music, to not only demonstrate the way in which Christian cosmology structures the world represented in these lyrics but provides hope for the suffering Goan subject. Indeed, it was the institutions around local Catholicism that allowed for Konkani music tradition to emerge in the first place. It is Catholicism, this paper argues, which sutures diverse case groups into a single social unit and thus makes a society possible in Goa, and it is also the same faith tradition that provides the possibility to see persons not as members of castes but as human beings. By providing a language to challenge caste and other similar discrimination while retaining space for pleasure even while this goal is unrealized, this paper argues that it is Catholicism, or the message of the Gospel, which is the source of consolation in Goan society. Keywords: Goa, Catholicism, music, suffering, nationalism Introduction In his work Refiguring Goa (2013), Raghuraman Trichur points to the methodological nationalism that structures research on Goa. In particular, he points to sociologists and anthropologists whose work on the territory sought to encourage the process of assimilation, post-colonial nation-building and State formation.