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In More than One
Place: Goan Kenyans and the Crisis of Identity
From: goanet-news-bounces@lists.goanet.org
on behalf of Goanet Reader
R. Benedito Ferrao |
12child@gmail.com
In a Mombasa cemetery overgrown with weeds and tall
grass, we looked for a grave that held the remains of my
grandmother. My uncles, aunts, and cousins tried to make
sense of the graveyard's organization while its
caretakers followed closely, their voices low as they
informed us that they looked after this site and that
perhaps they could assist us. We had, of course, been
warned that any African who offered us assistance must
want money for services they would be hard pushed to
render in the first place. So, we ignored them until it
became clearer after a while that we were getting
nowhere in our attempts to find our matriarch's resting
place.
In December 2006, over forty of us had come to Kenya to
celebrate a family reunion. We had arrived from
different points on the globe, some of us in Kenya after
many years (for my mother this had been the first trip
in forty years) and many of us here for the first time
ever.
As we drew up our family tree, three generations of sons
and daughters, grandchildren, and great grandchildren
marvelled at how from two had come one hundred, my
deceased grandparents the point of origination of this
journey.
We celebrated our happiness at having finally come
together, yet mourned the loss of those we had known and
loved. But the greatest loss of all grieved by this
large family of Goans was that of Kenya itself.
Particularly for those of us who had never been here
before, the constant refrain heard was of how Kenya was
no longer the place it once was; how once the
Africans had regained their independence they had run
the country into the ground; how Nairobi was no longer
safe and overtaken by "too many Blacks" (a relative I
pointed out the obvious to was not amused).
Therein, though, lies the unseen pain of nostalgia -
beguiling in memory but embittering in its post-dated
influence. For the Goans of East Africa, particularly
those of my mother's generation and before, their edenic
memories marked with the sweetness of childhood, young
courtships, and sepia tinted photos, this millennium's
Africa is another place - one that changed forever when
they left. While that is indisputable, the firm belief
that it was their presence and the colonial era which
made Kenya, and their departure with the end of
colonization that led to its decay, bears scrutiny.
The provenance of Goans from East Africa throws up
several questions about their postcolonial identities,
not least of all to Asian East Africans themselves. In
Kenya, this community would have held passports that
nominally made them British citizens of Kenya. Because
Kenya was considered a colonial protectorate, it meant
that British passports held by Goans, others of Indian
subcontinental origins, and Black Africans as well,
rendered their ability to travel to England impossible.
One need not dwell too long on the reasons why such an
artifice was employed to come to the conclusion that it
was simply to restrict the flow of labour within a
specific, and secure, gamut. Many Goans either directly
made their way to British East Africa or by way of
British India, to which they travelled because of the
few educational and economic opportunities in Estado da
India Portuguesa.
When Goans left Goa to provide service and to live in
colonial Africa, they were indeed Portuguese citizens,
but not in a majority of cases were they of mixed-race
origins, which is a commonly held, but erroneous, view of
the extraction of Goans. Unlike in Brazil, the colonizer
and the colonized seldom mixed, both sides looking down
up on the practice.
This, of course, does not mean that there were not some
intermarriages, rapes, affairs, and elopements. In early
colonial times, interracial marriages were the product
of strategic alliances between upper-caste Indians and
their aristocratic Portuguese equivalents, meant to
cement business and power relations.
Evidently, the reason for such partnerships being to
limit the exercise of power, their own numbers were
limited and the practice did not filter down into the
socio-religious ranks.
While it might be true that there was little inter-raciality,
there is no doubt that Goan culture in the process of
450 years of colonization had been Lusitanized, in much
the same
way that the cultures of the Philippines and parts of
Latin America had been Hispanicized.
Fast-forward to the present era. In 1961, Goa received
its independence from the Portuguese and was absorbed
into the Indian Union. It was a tumultuous time for
Goans as identitarian politics took over and the little
enclave faced losing autonomy with its potential
assimilation into the adjoining state of Maharashtra.
The event was marked with the use of religio-cultural
and elitist caste politics to sway opinion towards the
merger. Despite this, an ensuing referendum in 1967 made
clear the view that Goans, of Hindu and Catholic faiths,
wished to be Goans and that Goa should be its own
political entity within the Union of India. It thus
became a Union Territory and then, later, a fully
fledged state. Previous calls for Goa to be an
independent country had by this time fizzled out and
Goans themselves were not immediately given the option
when the Indian government wrested it from its European
colonizer.
The loss of that prospect is interesting less for its
nationalism, but more for providing yet another example
of how hegemonic Indian politics function to reduce
minority voices. How else would one account for the fact
that Indian history books recall Goa's liberation not as
a struggle by Goans themselves, but as an
Indian-orchestrated event? Undeniably, Goa had a lot to
offer India, because of its tactical coastal location.
For the same reasons that the
Portuguese had made Goa the capital of their Asian
empire, newly independent India saw the geopolitical
necessity of removing the natural harbour from the hands
of a foreign power. And so was rid the last European
colonial power within the contiguous Indian land mass,
only to have the Indian navy set up shop there instead.
Meanwhile, Goans in East Africa and other parts of the
diaspora were in an interesting moment of historical
suspension: While their homeland had during the two
short days of the Goan liberation struggle gone from
being Portuguese to Indian, they were in a kind of
ethno-national limbo.
They were 'British' by supposed virtue of their colonial
status, but were restricted in travelling to Britain;
they were African because they resided on that
continent, but were
indigenously not so; but were they then Indian, or were
they still Portuguese?
This quandary was made possible by the fact that this
community had left Goa while it was still Portuguese and
their birth certificates would have laid testament to
this
fact even if their native land had now become part of
India.
Their relatives in the homeland might not have had a
choice when India took over, but for Goans in East
Africa, their divergent history still left their choices
open. In time to
come, this dilemma would prove very useful. To make
things even more complicated, in 1963 Kenya threw off
its own British colonial shackles.
It might be argued that colonization brought together
various communities and that in the struggle for
independence these heretofore disconnected groups bonded
to oust their common
oppressor. The problem with that analysis is that it
belies the history of trade and cultural exchange that
characterized the Indian subcontinent even before
colonial times.
More to the point, while ousting the British may have
led to the creation of the modern nation states in South
Asia, what was left behind was the legacy of divide and
conquer commonly
used by the departing Raj as a means of control. Just as
this is the case in the sub-continent, so too has Africa
continued to struggle with the cartographies of violence
that have overlaid older tribal histories.
Within this, the major Indian diasporic communities of
Punjabis, Gujaratis, and Goans, displaced and generally
little known to each other, given the circumstances of
geographic distance and lack of cultural commonality in
the Indian context, had little reason to commingle in
East Africa. Over time, while community and religious
ties may have kept individuals close to their respective
groups, the employment of particularly the middle
classes in colonial administration would have put them
in a position to rub shoulders with each other and, to a
limited extent, with their European employers.
Social interactions between Asians and Blacks in the
East African racialized political economy would have
been restricted, as a result of deliberate and sometimes
unconscious segregation. It is no surprise that Indians
already educated in colonial ways in British India could
avail themselves of various opportunities not afforded
to Blacks in European Africa once imported there,
leading to superiority complexes that further separated
them from Blacks.
They often conveniently fell into the
hierarchical, racialized system of colonial subjugation
of native Africans -- a much more subtle yet refined
form of divide and rule. With the departure of the
British in East Africa, the Indian communities were left
behind to live in countries soon to be led by their own
indigenous sons and daughters. What was seen as
collaboration with the former colonizer led, in some
cases, to a high price to be paid by the immigrant
communities, as in Uganda.
Where they could, several Goans and members of other
Indian communities departed for Western shores. Some
found that after years of service to Britain they were
not seen as equals there and were barred entry. Several
went to India, and in the case of Asian Ugandans were
forced there and elsewhere as refugees. Yet, many others
stayed back East Africa, which was the only home they
had known.
As immigration laws changed in countries like England,
the United States, and Australia, Asian East Africans
made their way there, creating a doubly displaced
diaspora. Portugal became a very attractive option for
Goans both in Goa and the diaspora with the genesis of
the European Union, causing a scramble to reclaim
Portuguese identity vis a vis their colonial birthright
(and certification) as explained earlier.
Many successfully migrated using the historical anomaly
to their advantage; others found that in their attempts
to rehistoricize themselves, they were instead taken for
a ride by shysters who promised them a Portuguese
passport only to disappear, once paid, into thin air.
Clearly, these post-independence migrations from East
Africa indicate the destabilization felt by diasporic
Goan communities, but what was the source of these
insecurities? More obviously, there was Idi Amin, the
political and economic instability of these newly formed
countries, and a general anxiety of having to deal with
change. But within all of this was also the sense of
fear that these communities felt at having lost what
they saw as a colonial protector with the departure of
the managing classes of Europeans who provided the
divisions between Blacks and Asians.
Class, colonial legacies, and history continue to
impinge upon inter-raciality in Kenya. This is not to
suggest that interracial relationships would necessarily
be indicative of communal harmony, but their dearth is
also suggestive in its own way. Given all this, what
future do Goans and other South Asians in Kenya envision
in what is largely viewed as a Black run country? The
dramatic suggestion hovering here is that, postcolonially,
Goans may feel they have no political future in Kenya
because their agency was created and made manifest
through the colonial structure and ended in its demise.
This is simply not true. There is, if anything, an
impressive legacy of the involvement of Goans in the
nationalist anti-colonial movement.
Take Fitz R. de Souza, a lawyer instrumental in
defending Kenyans accused of Mau Mau activities and a
parliamentarian in free Kenya, or Pio Gama Pinto,a
freedom fighter who was assassinated post-independence
in 1965, and not to forget Joseph Zuzarte Murumbi,
Kenya's second Vice President (1965-66), who was half
Goan and half Maasai. Sadly, there is little to suggest
that the legacy exemplified by these figures continues.
Goans in Kenya recently celebrated the hundredth
anniversary of a popular social club, but what marks
their political history in that country seems to have
stopped in the build-up to and then just after
independence.
My young cousins are proud to call themselves Goans and
so I asked them what this meant to them. Often, their
response was that this was a statement of their
difference from "other
Indians", because they were "part Portuguese." I pushed
the question further to get at whether this was a
product of willful confusion, communally upheld in the
desire to hang on to colonial legacies of difference and
thus superiority, or unwitting ignorance. The answer I
came closest to was that it was a combination of those
and other factors.
Goan Catholics form one-third of the state's population
and while as a whole Goan identity crosses religious
difference, it is also coloured by it. The Goan diaspora
in Kenya is
largely Catholic and in addition to the nostalgia for
the Kenya that once was, there is also the prevalent
idea that Goans are becoming a minority in their own
state.
While this might be an overstatement, Goans, regardless
of religious affiliation, are a cultural minority, but
are not recognized as such by the Indian nation. Goan
Kenyans continue to have ties with their families in Goa
and their identitarian feelings are perhaps an extension
of the minoritization Goans of Catholic backgrounds feel
in a state and a country that, while it is important to
point out is secular, is predominantly Hindu in its
population.
This transposition is indicative of a cultural dialogue
between homeland and diaspora which at once attempts to
disrupt dominant and monolithic ideas of what it means
to be Indian in both locations and also intensifies the
existing feelings of displacement and identity crisis in
diaspora communities.
Goans in the diaspora thus seem to feel the loss of more
than one 'home' land. At the same time, in the African
context, feelings of minoritization take on an air of
victimization at the hands of a state that is seen as
having failed its constituents. While there might be
corruption in Kenya, its victims are not just Goans and
other immigrant communities, but also indigenous groups,
and class privilege still affords advantages despite
racial background.
In writing this piece, I must point out some biases.
Knowing that my own thoughts are underpinned by Western
education, as well as Asian American and Asian British
ideas of diversity, my limited knowledge of Asian
African multiculturality leaves me with the hope that,
despite what was visible, there exist positive
interactions. It is not my intention to undermine the
historical difficulties faced by Asian East Africans,
particularly victims of political displacement. Yet, if
Goan and other Asian East Africans really feel that the
countries they call or called home are in crisis, then
the onus is upon them to interrogate the causative
forces, their collusion, and what they can do to affect
change.
The African caretakers of the cemetery in Mombasa
cleared patches of grass as we walked through the
graveyard. They indicated where Goans were usually
buried and politely asked us when my grandmother died.
Without the help of these caretakers, we would never
have found her last resting place. She had left Goa as a
young woman, courted by my grandfather who brought her
to Kenya. It was here that she died prematurely after
bearing her children. I never knew her. To be able to
pay my respects at her grave was to also do so to our
history in the land that adopted my family.
First published in Parmal, the magazine from the Goa
Heritage Action Group (GHAG). R. Benedito Ferrao is
affiliated with the University of London and the
University of California, Los Angeles. |
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