As elections get closer in Goa, political forces are sharpening their swords over caste, religion, and language. No matter the size or nature of the target community, the politics around an old or new purported grievance tends to succeed in polarisation. That formula is now being applied again in India’s small western coastal State. The demand to make Marathi a co-official language of the State government is dividing Goans, and all of it is aimed at the 2027 assembly elections.

Subhash Velingkar, former Goa chief of the RSS who was dropped from the organisation in 2016, has kicked off the controversy this time. He has addressed multiple rallies in Ponda, Dicholim, and other locations under the banner of the Marathi Rajbhasha Nirdhar Samiti, demanding that Marathi be made a co-official language alongside Konkani. “For years, the Goan government has done injustice to Marathi and to people who speak Marathi. The government must announce it as co-official language. It will respect the indigenous culture of the Goan people,” he said at his rallies. He has also threatened the Goan government that “the Marathi vote bank will be created through this protest and the BJP will have to face the consequences.”

The Goa Assembly election is scheduled for early 2027. The BJP has been ruling the State since 2012 and anti-incumbency is now considerable. On that backdrop, Velingkar raising the Marathi issue—with explicit political implications—has expectedly stirred things up.

Velingkar’s demand was immediately opposed by various Konkani forums. Konkani is already Goa’s official language. Within a fortnight of Velingkar’s meeting at Lohia Maidan in Margao, the Global Romi Lipi Abhiyan (GRLA) organised a pro-Konkani meeting at the same venue. GRLA convenor Keneddy Afonso warned the State government that if it bowed before Marathi pressure, it would face backlash from Konkani speakers. He added that Konkani should remain the only official language of the State and that Roman-script Konkani should get the same status as Devanagari-script Konkani. Youth leader Vishal Nogueri, who convened the Margao meeting, said: “Konkani is the identity of Goa and it distinguishes the State from Maharashtra. The language issue was settled in this State long ago and there is no need to drag it back from the past.”

These actions and reactions have started the foundational debate over Goa’s language question all over again. According to Census 2011 data, Goans who registered Konkani as their mother tongue numbered 9,64,000—around 85.6 per cent of the population—while those who registered Marathi were 1,59,000, or about 14.4 per cent.

The official language question was settled in 1987 after a two-year agitation in which seven Goan protesters died. The Goa Legislative Assembly passed the Official Language Bill on February 4, 1987, making Konkani in Devanagari script the official language for government communication. At the same time, Marathi was accepted “to be used for all official purposes.” But Marathi has never been declared a co-official language of the State. That is precisely what Velingkar wants.

Why this cuts so deep

The strong opposition to making Marathi a co-official language has deep historical roots. When Goa was liberated from Portuguese rule in 1961, the State faced a fundamental question about its future: remain a separate territory or merge with Maharashtra. The issue remained unresolved for six years. On January 16, 1967—now commemorated as Opinion Poll Day—Goans voted in a referendum against merger with Maharashtra by 1,72,191 to 1,38,170 votes, with 54.20 per cent against merger and 43.50 per cent in favour. One of the central arguments for remaining independent was the language: that Konkani is an independent language, not a dialect of Marathi. Any demand to give Marathi official language status therefore sparks a deep reaction in a large section of Goan society.

The debate has a religious undercurrent, too. Goa has one of India’s oldest Catholic communities, a consequence of over 450 years of Portuguese rule. Almost all of them speak Konkani. Pushing Marathi as a co-official language is widely seen among Catholics as a cultural assertion by Hindu-nationalist politics. At the same time, a large part of Goa’s oppressed castes also speaks Konkani. For them, Marathi has historically been associated with privileged-caste cultural authority. So the demand does not just reopen a linguistic debate—it rapidly becomes a controversy along religious and caste lines as well.

Velingkar has a long and complicated history with both the RSS and the BJP. He was associated with the RSS from the organisation’s earliest years in Goa, joining on the first day of its first branch in Panjim in June 1962.

His confrontation with the BJP grew out of a language battle he had not originally picked against them. Back in 2011, when Congress was ruling Goa under Chief Minister Digambar Kamat—now the Public Works Department Minister in the incumbent BJP government—the Kamat government tried to change a 1990 decision taken by then Education Minister Shashikala Kakodkar, which had restricted government grants to Marathi- and Konkani-medium schools. The Congress government moved to include English-medium schools in the grants scheme. This was strongly opposed by all opposition parties, including the BJP.

Those opposing the extension of grants to English-medium schools formed the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (Indian Language Security Forum), with Kakodkar as chief and Velingkar as convenor. Manohar Parrikar, then the face of the BJP in the State, also participated in the Manch’s protests. As a result of the sustained agitation, Congress lost power in the 2012 Assembly election and Parrikar became Chief Minister.

But Parrikar changed course. After taking office, he granted government aid to English-medium schools as well—essentially continuing the policy the Manch had fought against. By 2015, protests against the BJP government had resumed. Velingkar, though still within the RSS, led the battle against his own party’s government. When BJP national president Amit Shah visited Goa in August 2016, Velingkar and other Manch members protested in front of him. Shortly after, Velingkar was dropped from the RSS—a rare occurrence in the organisation’s history—after he decided to float a political party, the Goa Suraksha Manch, launched on October 2, 2016.

The impact was felt at the 2017 assembly elections. Goa Suraksha Manch, in alliance with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party and Shiv Sena, contested against the BJP in several constituencies and split the party’s vote in at least five of them. Chief Minister Lakshmikant Parsekar lost his own seat in Mandrem. The BJP fell from 21 seats to 13.

The 2027 plan

BJP leadership in Goa as well as Delhi is well aware of Velingkar’s capacity to damage the party’s prospects. In North Goa, where the Marathi-speaking population is electorally significant in several constituencies, his public call to build a Marathi vote bank is a direct threat. The party currently holds North Goa more firmly than South Goa, where Congress has its Lok Sabha member and a stronger opposition base. A split within the BJP’s North Goa vote bank would be difficult to absorb.

Keeping this in mind, BJP leadership has decided to not engage with the issue. As part of its strategy, the party is watching closely how the Konkani-speaking majority responds. The calculation is one of reverse polarisation: if Konkani speakers consolidate against Velingkar’s demand, his anti-BJP position could help the BJP survive with 85 per cent of the population on its side.

The opposition is conscious of the same dynamic and has deliberately kept its distance. “We do not want to get aligned with Velingkar. He is already a polarising figure because of his anti-Christian statements. Plus the Marathi agenda will further alienate the Konkani-speaking majority from him. Siding with him publicly is dangerous,” said a senior Congress leader, speaking without attribution.

Goa is already struggling with multiple pressing problems. Environmental degradation, rampant conversion of agricultural land for real estate, and unemployment have all become significant issues. The BJP government has faced a serious corruption scandal over alleged cash-for-jobs in government appointments. Opposition parties are weighing an alliance to capitalise on these grievances ahead of 2027.

It is on this backdrop that Velingkar’s demand lands. On the surface, it appears to be anti-BJP. But at a deeper level, it has the capacity to shift the campaign’s focus from governance failures to emotional controversy. That is why political observers are watching the Marathi agitation carefully. The 2027 Goa Assembly election has already started to take shape.

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