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UNWRAPPING GOAN IDENTITY: Finding the right
distraction to schizophrenia?
By Teotonio R de Souza
teodesouza@gmail.com
From:
goanet-news-bounces@lists.goanet.org
Dr Souza is a prominent Indo-Portuguese historian.
This essay was written for the recently-published 'Semana
de Cultura Goa 2008', edited by Vivek Menezes
vmingoa@gmail.com
When asked to write this short note, the recent
autobiographical and polemical novel of Gunter
Grass, "Peeling the Onion", came to my mind. That is
exactly how I see the Goan identity, with its many
wrappings.
Some of these make me cry, due to the ambiguities
and contradictions involved in the process of the
historical growth of "my people". In the course of
my 62 years of life -- 12 of these spent in India
but outside Goa for University studies, and the past
14 in Portugal accompanying the former colonialists
in their University studies -- I have been part of
the Goan onion wrappings. This is not a damage
controlling Gunterian confession, but I may admit
that I was born legally as Portuguese in colonial
Goa without my choice in February 1947 (while rest
of the country was on the threshold of
independence). I became an Indian without my choice
by a legislative process which followed the
expulsion of the Portuguese colonial regime.
Our personal destiny greatly shaped by such unchosen
developments of the collective history. Mine was no
exception and some important life decisions became
dependent upon the best available opportunities, but
hardly of my choice.
It was only in 1995 that I could find the right
conditions to re-orient my life. Recovery of the
Portuguese nationality was then an option. Similary,
the recovery of the Indian nationality as OCI in
2007 was another option. These were hard and
thoughtful decisions, and reflect my way of
integrating consciously, freely and appreciatively
the major elements that have contributed to shape my
identity as a Goan. In the past I had seen the same
elements as forced into my identity. Now I feel that
I have come to terms with my identity and feel proud
of it. That is a process I wish for every Goan.
Post-liberation generations, and most visitors and
recent settlers in Goa are not sufficiently clear
about what precisely makes up the Portuguese
cultural legacy. Many "outsiders" (bhaile for the
native Goans) come imbibed with Salman Rushdie's
imagery of Goans who love to light candles to the
kababed saints and tandooried martyrs which they
preserve reverentially in the home oratories.
At the close of the Portuguese colonial regime in
Goa, after nearly four and half centuries of intense
and sustained batterings of the Portuguese law,
church rituals and inquisition threats on a small
enclave, Goans could not escape adopting overt and
covert cultural habits that distinguish them from
the rest of the inhabitants of the subcontinent. To
illustrate the reaction of the Goan Christian elite
to liberation, I cannot resist quoting a somewhat
lengthy paragraph from Rushdie's The Moor's Last
Sigh depicting a character modeled after Mario
Miranda:
"When the Indian Army entered Goa, ending 451 years
of Portuguese colonial rule Vasco was plunged for
weeks into one of his black-dog depressions. Aurora
encouraged him to see the event as a liberation, as
many Goans did, but he was inconsolable. 'Up to now
I had only three Gods and the Virgin Mary to
disbelieve in,' he complained. 'Now I have three
hundred million. And what Gods! For my taste, they
have too many heads and hands'
"On the night of India's independence, the red mist
came over him in a rush. The contradictions of that
high moment tore him apart. That celebration of
freedom whose engulfing emotions he could not avoid
even though, as a Goan, he was technically not
involved -- he drank vinho verde in quantity and at
speed, sunk in darkness." But the impact of the
Portuguese brand of Christianity could also be felt
on ordinary rural Goan Christian women. For
instance, they all love to put flowers in their hair
just as would any other Goan woman, but they take
them off whenleaving home.
When I asked my mother once why she did that, her
only explanation was: Kristanv bhail ghara bhair
fulam mau na. I discovered a reason in the course of
my research, namely in the course of the 16th
century the church provincial councils had decreed
under severe penalties that women should discontinue
the practice of divination by sticking flower petals
with saliva to the left or right side of a temple
idol and waiting to see which petal would fall first
to decide if a wish would be granted or not. By
banning the use of flowers in the hair while
outdoors would thus prevent the woman from being
tempted to continue an old "gentile" practice. For
such and other "lapses and re-lapses" many Goans
were hauled before the Inquisition tribunal and
punished at autos-da-fé during two and half
centuries of its operation in Goa.
We can only imagine from distance in time the
intimidation and terror it may have had on men and
women torn away from their families and kept in the
dungeons of the Inquisition. Several of these never
returned to their families, or perhaps some did
after serving six to ten years as forced labour in
galleys or gunpowder manufactory. The Provincial of
the Goa Jesuits, my co-villager and a trained
psychologist, Fr. Tony da Silva S.J., analysed once
in a seminar organized by me at the Xavier Centre of
Historical Research in 1992 the permanent impact
such intimidation left upon Goan psyche for times to
come. We are experiencing the unwinding in some of
the social excesses that we have been witnessing in
the post-liberation era.
I wish to recall another incident that left me
baffled some years ago. It was the statement of an
orthodox Hindu Brahmin from Pune. He came to Goa in
the wake of the liberation as the Director of Goa
Historical Archives and stayed in that job till his
retirement about 20 years later. Like many other
such non-Goan officers that were little welcomed by
Goans and were labeled as "deputationists", he too
decided to live his retired life in Goa.
Dr. Gune acquired a house near Mangueshi temple and
believed that he could continue his hobby as
astrologer (jyotishi) and earn some complement to
his pension. My surprise was to hear from him some
three years later that he had decided to leave Goa.
He was disillusioned with Goan Hindus, whom he
denounced as "different", a milder way of saying
that they were corrupted by the Portuguese
influence. They did not meet his requirements of
Hindu orthodoxy!
Until this moment I had only noticed -- like most
Goans do till today -- the differences between Goan
Hindus and Christians. I needed a Hindu from outside
Goa to bring the similarities to my notice. Goa had
been in its past history, at least since the 11th
century, under the Kadambas, linked to a widespread
network of Afro-Asian seaborne trade, and of
hinterland trade with the Deccan through ghat
passes.
The integration of Goa into the Portuguese eastern
empire after 1510 catapulted it into an unforeseen
scale of operations. As headquarters of an early
modern European empire from 1530, Goa exposed its
inhabitants very early to the challenges of modern
globalization. If the early decline of the
Portuguese failed to sustain this process, the
economic pressures and the cultural acquisitions
permitted the Goans to avail of the opportunities
presented by the British empire in the neighbouring
territories, particularly since the establishment of
the rail link.
Ironically, the allegedly harassed Hindu community
of Saraswats -- one-sided historical perspective
conveniently bandied around for political gains in
post-liberation times -- sustained the
fiscal-commercial structure of the Portuguese in
Goa, and the Hindu dubhashis effectively served
their diplomatic needs in Asia as extensively
documented by Dr. P.S.S. Pissurlencar in his Agentes
da Diplomacia Portuguesa na India (1952).
Without such vital support the Portuguese
colonialism in Goa would have short-circuited and
burnt out very much earlier than it did. But the
self-interested collaboration of Goan Hindus gave
lots of time for masses of poor Christians, and
allegedly protected by the Portuguese Christian
rule, to make a bee-line as emigrants to eke out
their living in British India. It should never be
forgotten however that it was the structure of the
Portuguese Church Padroado throughout Asia, manned
largely by native Goan clergy from the 19th century
onwards, that gave the scattered Goan emigrants the
emotional sustenance they needed away from their
homeland.
The Padroado parishes in Bombay and the village kudd
dedicated to the patron-saints of the respective
parishes in Goa were the visible and effective props
in the process of adaptation to painful
socio-economic challenges. The church connection
also helped developing the musical talent of many
Goans, and the westernized culinary skills opened
job markets for many Goans in British India. Sad to
say also, the tradition of an international slave
market where females and males from different
countries were bought and sold (and that made
Portuguese Goa famous through the writings of the
Dutchman Linschotten and other contemporary foreign
travelers) contributed to the exodus of many Goan
women who earned their living with prostitution in
Bombay.
If language is a core component of any social
identity, it may surprise us to find that Goans
preserved their language even during the colonial
period; barely five percent of Goan population could
read, write and speak in Portuguese according to the
last census of the colonial regime. These included
ethnic Portuguese serving in Goa and and one hundred
or so mestiços and luso-descendentes.
According to statistics presented by Dr. Froilano de
Mello as deputy to the Portuguese Parliament on 24
January 1947, English schools were experiencing fast
growth in Goa, while the Portuguese Lyceum
languished! He referred to 63 private English
schools in Goa employing 389 local teachers and 71
foreigners. They had a total of 8890 pupils! That
meant 22 times more than those who frequented the
Portuguese lyceum! The needs of emigration to
British India fuelled this trend.
Rural folks in Goa and low middle class emigrants
held fast to their Konkani. However, close contact
with the Portuguese clergy during the early
centuries after conversion, elementary training in
the parish schools, and compulsory primary schooling
in Portuguese since 50s, resulted in the absorption
of a hefty proportion of Portuguese loan-words into
the spoken Konkani of Goan Christians.
Fuj-da-put (filho da puta), bonku (bom cú), fodricho
(foder), etc. became common folk utterances
alongside besanv (benção), maldisanv (maldição),
etcSuch linguistic colonialism, despite the
colourful ingredients, greatly endangered the
healthy growth of Konkani language and many decades
of sustained efforts became necessary after 1961 to
restore its linguistic-cultural legitimacy and
standards so as to make it acceptable as the
official State language in 1987 and to permit its
entry in the Constitutional schedule in 1992.
No discussion on Goan identity can be complete by
ignoring the caste system that dogs the Goan
society. To konnalo (to which family does he
belong?) is a question which a good Goan usually
asks or intends to ask, be it in Goa or anywhere in
the world. Goans married to non-Goans and living in
non-Goan ambiance may care to ignore the caste
linkage, and even in Goa today money and power call
shots.
However, deep in the unconscious a Brahmin knows he
is a Brahmin, a Chardo resents being a Chardo, and
the same old trap works. Spoken Konkani retains
grammatical inflections and vocabulary preferences
that identify castes, such as aila and eila, taka
and teka, sokoilo and khailo, etc.
Despite all the haute couture and other external
shenigans that Goans have acquired over time and
make them presentable global citizens, the Goan
identity has yet to break out of its caste-shell. A
glance at the archives of Goanet (www.goanet.org,
the oldest and global Goan Internet discussion
forum) should confirm my point.
Thus caste remains a challenge for Goans for yet
another millennium. It is what the Portuguese would
call a pedra no sapato, a cultural irritant that we
need to learn to freely detach from the requisites
of our personal and collective identity. Until we
can eradicate it, we can hardly call ourselves
global Goans. We will remain puny caste-bound Goans
doing relatively well globally. In the meantime only
the common cause against the "bhaile" will distract
us from our schizophrenia. |
