Subhash Velingkar who formed the Goa Suraksha Manch after he was removed as Goa chief of the Rashtriya Swayamvsevak Sangh, feels an “undercurrent of discontent” in the organisation for “compromising on its principles for the benefit of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in many States”. For the Goa Assembly elections, the Manch has allied with the Shiv Sena and the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party. The former Goa chief of the RSS speaks to Prakash Kamaton the election scene in the State.
Do you believe that you will dislodge the BJP from power in Goa? Are you not worried that the Congress will come back to power, which will not serve your cause?
I will not mind at all if the BJP is defeated. We have given an alternative by floating the GSM and aligning with like-minded parties such as the MGP and the Shiv Sena. We fully trust our allies. I recall that in the good old days, the BJP was an alternative we gave to the people of Goa. People laughed and called it Bhaji-Pav party. Within 10 years, under Parrikar [Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar], it came to power. Now we have given an alternative, it is a humble beginning, and I am confident that the MGP will have to live up to its old legacy, when it was a complete votary of regional languages. I am confident that an alternative government will be formed and there will be no hung Assembly.
Will your government stop grants to English-medium government-aided primary schools, as the manifesto of your electoral alliance declares?
Yes. Let me tell you, I am an educationist. So I would not like that any educational institution is closed down. We will stop grants step by step in four years. Not like the diocesan educational body, which in the 1990s, converted schools from English to Konkani medium overnight, when the government made regional languages a precondition for grants, and again turned them into English medium overnight based on a Congress government circular which opened up grants to schools irrespective of the medium of instruction.
When did you feel that the erstwhile Manohar Parrikar-led BJP alliance government in Goa will not stop grants to government-aided English-medium schools, forcing you to challenge him publicly?
The BJP, you will recall, had joined the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM), a regional language movement on the medium of instruction, against the then Congress government’s circular to allow government grants to all primary schools after a High Court order over a parents’ petition asked them to de-recognise or take over the schools which had overnight turned the medium of instruction from Konkani to English.
But come Election 2012, Parrikar worked out an electoral strategy to woo Catholics and gave ticket to six or seven Catholic candidates, most of whom had nothing to do with the BJP cadre, unlike [Deputy Chief Minister] Francis D’Souza who is from the cadre. I suspected they could become a hurdle to the decision of scrapping grants to these schools and also spoke to him about it.
But post-election, he told the BBSM to give him some time and also asked us to withdraw the parents’ petition in the High Court which had interim order over the Congress circular to de-recognise the English grant schools or de-recognise them, so as to prepare ground for him for an “amicable solution” as promised in the manifesto. But instead of scrapping grants in a phased manner, he betrayed us by continuing it by categorising archdiocese schools as minority schools. That means for the first time Mr. Parrikar divided Goa’s educational arena on communal lines, which even the Congress did not.
And then what happened?
Once he decided to continue grants even after we gave him over a year and a half, we realised the whole sequence of events leading to the Archbishop’s hand in getting a large number of Catholic MLAs for him. We realised he cheated us.
Did the BJP get Catholic votes in 2012?
Not at all. Hardly 1% of the votes the BJP might have got, that too only for the Catholic candidates he had put up. We came to know afterwards that in fact, they were given to him along with their constituencies earmarked by the Archbishop. I knew they would sit on his head and that is what happened.
Many still feel that this is an “ego” clash between you and Parrikar, who was your shishya.
Not at all. RSS has taught me that individuals do not matter. His biggest problem is he cannot do team work. He just dictates, others should listen.
People feel the medium of instruction in primary schools is the parents’ choice. Why do you insist it should be in regional languages?
You see, in Goa, study of Indian languages after the fifth standard is on the way out. So we think that the link of children to Indian culture, languages and scripts, irrespective of religion, is local languages. If the children do not go through this, they will become rootless.
Parrikar wants to come back to State politics, it appears.
If he comes back, it will be the biggest downfall.
