http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2005&leaf=02&filename=8339&filetype=html
EPW Special Articles
February 26, 2005
A Time to Publish
Pamphlets and Politics in Colonial Goa
This article discusses two sets of pamphlets that appeared towards the end
of the 19th century in colonial Goa, in an attempt to show how precedents
and norms established by European print were not exactly reproduced in the
colony. The function of print and the genre of pamphlets, in particular,
were altered by class difference, caste hierarchies and the context in
which rural and urban politics functioned in Goa.
Rochelle Pinto
This essay examines two distinct sets of pamphlets that appeared at the
end of the 19th century in Goa, to trace the uses of this genre among
different castes and classes. While it assumes that a set of norms
established in European print worked as a precedent for pamphlet writers,
these were not smoothly reproduced in the colony. Instead, the experience
of producing print amid reading practices and political relations unknown
in Europe resulted in a complex manipulation of the pamphlet form.
One set of pamphlets discussed here demonstrates the ways in which print
could reproduce, or double the closures and limits inherent to the
politics of the Goan elite. These indicate how the disseminative and
representative properties of print could be diminished through print
production itself. Against an inherent agency being granted to print as a
technology, this suggests that the positioning of different classes
vis-a`-vis print and writing determined the form and intricacies of print
aesthetics among readers.
This essay has focused on two moments of intense conflict in Goa, where
the contents of pamphlets could have affected the outcome of conflict, to
argue, instead, that the weight of these texts in fact belied this
expectation. It emphasises that even in the case of pamphlets, a genre
where the equation between cause and effect seems obvious and fixed,
questions of form and signification were in fact crucial to determining
how these were received and what their historical place would be. The
strategies of signification used by non-elite groups in both cases
indicates that as users of print, their relation to texts was distinct
from that of elite readers. Their manipulation of the terms of
signification within which these pamphlets were inserted, however, reveals
degrees of proficiency with print that would compel elite opponents to
alter their use of print and meet them on linguistic terms they had set.
I
A Rural Readership for Print
Increasingly, in the early decades of the 20th century, the monopolies
and usurpation of land rights by nadkarnis, kulkarnis, and other dominant
castes began to be challenged across villages in Goa. In the Old Conquests
of Goa, the territories conquered from 1510 on, the institution of the
'communidade', which administered village land through councils whose
membership was hereditary, male, and usually upper caste, was particularly
strong. Rising literacy levels among sudras had, however, resulted in
their growing visibility among groups of litigants in Goa. Salaried
employment outside Goa had enabled sudras to use print to supplement
litigation for land-rights. Within Goa, the form of the pamphlet was
considerably altered when they adopted it to challenge the monopolies of
kulkarnis, nadkarnis, and their own village communidades.
The individual and village-level case histories of those who had moved the
court were often reproduced at length in pamphlets. These texts focused on
the process by which land records were maintained, manipulated, and
interpreted by various contenders. Such disputes provided a space for a
history of caste discrimination to be constructed, and the implicit call
for class and caste alliances to be formed in each village created a
public for pamphlets in individual villages in Goa. These were
simultaneous with, but isolated from Portuguese publications centred
largely in the capital and produced by an urban elite.
Though arguments about caste rights and discrimination in these pamphlets
were addressed to the state, the primary focus of each publication was an
opposing caste group. The mobilisation and polarisation of public opinion
on these questions strengthened legal disputes that had consequences for
an entire village. These may have been the first print forms that were
relevant to an entire village across distinctions of caste and class.
Caste was, therefore, the primary category through which a rural mass
public for print was solicited.
Throughout the duration of the 19th century, the communally administered
village communidades, or 'gancarias' in the Old Conquests were clearly in
trouble. While hereditary memberships ensured that a few families held the
administrative rights over land, their inability to sustain the lands
economically had led to the farming out of dividend rights to others who
were not original members. In many villages, impoverished 'gaunkars' held
onto administrative rights over lands whose actual economic value lay with
the many dividend holders or 'culacharins'. All through the century,
treatises on land urged the government to act either to preserve the
communidade system, and therefore the rights of the gaunkars, or to grant
all title-holders equal rights in the administration of the land. This
implied that inhabitants of a village who belonged to different castes
would be placed on an equal footing with regard to the division of village
incomes.1 A government order at the end of the century allowed for
culacharins to be recognised as members of the communidade. This threw
open the possibility of litigation, and where gaunkars were predominantly
brahmins and culacharins were sudras, the battle-lines were also drawn
between caste groups.
Language of Legality
These pamphlets not only signalled the identification of readerships
within village boundaries, but also the introduction of Konkani into the
pamphlet form. Litigation had finally propelled the production of
pamphlets among groups other than upper-caste Catholics by the late 19th
century. These were sometimes bi-lingual, in Konkani and Portuguese, or
when produced in Bombay, in Konkani, English and Portuguese.
The early 20th century may have seen the first appearance of pamphlets by
sudras. This section traces the development of a land dispute in a village
of the Old Conquest in the 20th century. Bento Sertorio Mascarenhas,
advocate for the communidade of Aldona, published a defence of the
communidade's position, addressed to the government. This Portuguese
publication, and another Memorandum making the same argument, disputed the
claims made by Custodio Caetano Fernandes to the communidade of Aldona,
asking that his right to be registered as a sudra gaunkar at the age of 12
be recognised. In his pamphlet, Contra-Minutas da Communidade da Aldona
aos recursos interpostos por Custodio Caetano Fernandes, Mascarenhas cited
past legislation and case histories to argue, instead, the prior right of
brahmins to administer the communidade of Aldona.
In response to this, Jose' Baptista Caetano Vaz (who in 1930, launched a
Konkani newspaper in Goa), appealed to the Portuguese government to uphold
his plea as a representative of the sudras of Aldona. He asked the
government to provide a law that would protect him and his caste members
from becoming victims of the brahmins of Aldona.2 In contrast to earlier
publications relating to this issue, this one specifically spelt out a
caste identity and asked justice for Custodio Fernandes not just as a
litigant, but also as a member of a caste group.
Vaz's story began with Custodio Caetano Fernandes, who, along with his
father, Roque Pascoal Fernandes, approached the communidade of Aldona and
asked for his right to be registered as a recipient of dividends from the
communally administered village land as he had turned 13. The communidade
refused, invoking a law which allowed brahmins, chardos and scribes to be
registered when they were 12, but required sudras, goldsmiths, and other
'serving' castes to be admitted at 19. Custodio took his case to court.
The communidade defended its claim saying that since brahmin gaunkars were
of the class of masters, administrators, and governors, they had a prior
right, while the sudras were of the class of servants. In his defence,
Custodio Fernandes delegitimised all prior judgments and documents on
which the communidade's case relied, by citing various omissions and
duplicities by brahmin clerks and litigants in the past that had helped
skew the documents.3 This was much more than a legal defence. Citing
disputes from the past, his appeal stated, 'the silence of the
dispossessed castes who did not protest for decades against this practice
which was probably followed from 1826, can be attributed to the power of
the communidade members over the other castes, who, only in recent times,
have risen through their work, intelligence, and strength, from the
position of subordination in which they were maintained'.4
Pamphlets in this form introduced readers in each village to the
intricacies of the legal system that were otherwise inaccessible.
Fernandes' case for instance, revealed the process by which legal
documents could be undermined and made a distinction between what would
count as an official text on land rights, and what would not. This legal
language was scarcely available in Konkani prior to these kinds of
publications.
Conflicts between sudras and brahmins intensified, and the communidade of
Aldona and its land were split into two. In 1925, a brahmin lawyer from
Aldona, Caetano Soares, was shot dead one evening as he returned home. The
murder was alleged to have been masterminded by the prominent sudra
lawyer, Jose Batista Caetano Vaz. This time round, pamphlets opposing the
murder evoked it as a tragedy not just for the brahmins, but for the
village of Aldona. Caetano Soares' widow also published a pamphlet, and
his friends and relatives from Bombay put together a contribution to
construct a memorial, which still stands on the spot where he was shot.
'Clamour' of Pamphlets in Aldona
The eloquence of pamphlets by litigant sudras spurred the brahmins into
producing texts which were more than a reproduction of legal cases. The
need to elaborate caste identities required the use of literary skills, as
the reproduction of legal documents alone would not be sufficient to
persuade readers to see themselves as members of a political and social
formation or to identify with the past experience of other caste members.
To supplement their arguments, the litigants of Aldona therefore, turned
to religious metaphors, etymologies of caste terms and popular songs to
establish 'truths' that had no legal basis.
An account of the bitter history of the Aldona communidade recounted a
history of sudra-brahmin relations in Aldona, which stretched over four
centuries, and invoked divine justification for the existence of class
hierarchies.5 This may have been one of the first pamphlets to be
produced by brahmin Catholics in Konkani, and marks a stage in print
production when the lines separating the print spheres of Portuguese and
Konkani began to be blurred. These pamphlets were largely in Konkani, with
a few sections in Portuguese, and were published in Bombay. The fact that
sudras had begun to publish arguments about issues affecting local and
hitherto enduring power structures seems finally to have prompted print
production which could be read across these divides. With the sudra lawyer
Baptista Vaz publishing in Portuguese and Konkani, and defenders of the
brahmins of Aldona furnishing lengthy pamphlets in Konkani, the linguistic
repertoires both groups had acquired over half a century earlier were
finally deployed in print.
Menezes was evidently concerned about accommodating various readerships,
and a Portuguese or an English translation sometimes accompanied Konkani
words. His text was a divine history of the village of Aldona: 'The
village of Aldona is a gift of God. He developed it by creating people who
were clever enough to administer Aldona. When those elders died, the
cleverness and honesty of Aldona died with them'.6 With the coming of
'predators' and 'traitors', Aldona reached 'a state of madness', said
Menezes. 'Though the devil had been around for four centuries, the elders
of Aldona had kept it at bay'.7 Menezes asked his readers to read, think,
and reflect on the differences between the class of gaunkars and
culacharins, differences that were so great that they could be compared to
those between heaven and earth. The gaunkars of yore gave the culacharins
dividends as rights in exchange for their duties. But just as 'the Old
Testament tells us that the angels fought in heaven, thinking they would
become god and god turned them into devils, so Honorato (a brahmin
supporter of the sudras) made the culacharins gaocars.'8 In this new
world, the new gaunkars 'filled their pockets and those of their
lawyers...with their purchased orchards, made their sons doctors and
lawyers, paid thousands for their daughters' weddings, and began to wear
suits'.9
Menezes also emphasised that the word gaunkar in itself meant the owner of
a village, while culacharin meant domestic servant. To prove the inherent
unworthiness of culacharins, he cited instances from the 16th century
onwards to prove that they had always tried to oust brahmins, but through
the intervention of the archbishop, the old order was maintained even
after Portuguese rule was introduced.10 Menezes' history is significant
as it suggests that the first recording of land rights by the Portuguese,
which was made public as the Foral of 1526, was not a process without
conflict. The reinscription of land rights in Portuguese, though this must
have been conducted with the help of brahmins, was seized on by
culacharins, according to him, as an attempt to reorganise the
distribution of rights in their favour.
Christian lore was not yet exhausted despite these historical forays.
Menezes managed as well to free Christianity from the burden of having to
dispense social equality: 'If Jesus had created us equal, why is it that
we owe honour and respect to the rich?'11 Just as the Jews had arranged
for Judas to kill Jesus, so also the sudras had found someone to shoot
Caitano Soares.12 The twelve groups of (brahmin) families (vangodes) that
originally, according to him, comprised the communidade of Aldona, were
likened to the 12 apostles of Jesus.
This pamphlet developed into a three-part history of Aldona by 1926. The
introduction in Portuguese to Part Three said that the work had been
written for the benefit of the members of both groups so that future
generations would learn about the past of the village. A broadly moral and
religious framework was set out at the beginning of this text as well, but
went on to detail the ambitions of culacharins. The body of the text was
in rhymed Konkani verse, lending itself to absorption into the popular
stock of songs through which political conflict was recorded and recalled
in the villages of Aldona. Many Konkani ballads were composed through the
century to record political events, and were modified, when sung, to
accommodate the identities and involvement of their singers. The history
of Aldona was, however, a deliberate effort to shape and fix a village
history told from the point of view of brahmins, in print.
'The clamour of pamphlets' ('boball foletimcho') began to sound, according
to the song, as soon as the appeal of the sudras was thrown out of court.
Dr Honorato, the first to have permitted sudras into the communidade at
fourteen instead of twelve, is here held responsible for the growing
hardship of the gauncars. In particular, the widows and other female
dependents of the gaunkars, were portrayed as immediately impoverished
once sudras were allowed a share of the village returns: 'Their daughters
were married, and sons made doctors and lawyers, at the cost of the
womenfolk of the gaunkars'.13
The case of Aldona indicates that pamphlets relating to land rights
triggered continuous strings of publications among various villages of the
Old Conquests. Since many of these may have been prompted by land
disputes, the sphere of circulation, and the central readership for these
was primarily in the villages of the Old Conquests in Goa. Pamphlet
production had ceased to be centred in the capital, about events
concerning the state and the elite intelligentsia alone.
II
Elite Writers and the Influence of Print
At the time of the rebellion of soldiers and peasants in 1895, some years
before the appearance of the pamphlets described above, the Goan elite
held a monopoly over the representation of the rebellion. This was also a
time when newspapers owned by the elite were being severely censored. This
urban intelligentsia used this moment of conflict to produce pamphlets
purportedly about the rebellion, but radically diminished its scale and
political potential, by debating instead, the centrality of newsprint in
fomenting it. The use of one kind of print to discuss another, at a time
when the state was challenged by perhaps the widest mass rebellion it
would face in the century, dramatically illustrates how, what are
considered the innate properties of print could in fact be inverted. The
effect of the pamphlets of 1895 described below, was implosive and
diminished both, the breadth of rebellion, and the domain of newsprint.
The first set of pamphlets was produced on the heels of a rebellion
involving soldiers in the capital, Panjim, who joined forces with revenue
collectors in the New Conquests of Goa. The immediate causes and contexts
of rebellion are briefly outlined in this section, because among all the
pamphlets produced in the context of this disturbance, only one would
actually detail the reasons why thousands of Goans were engaged in
rebellion against the state.
In September 1895, a section of Maratha soldiers in the military quarters
at Panjim escaped from their barracks and mutinied against the Portuguese
government's orders that they be sent to Mozambique. The rebelling
soldiers rode out of the city to join insurrectionary peasants from the
neighbouring districts in the New Conquests. The peasants were led by the
Ranes, who were revenue collectors in the New Conquests before the
Portuguese acquired these territories in the late 18th century. The Ranes
were disaffected with the state because of the recent imposition of new
taxes and a reorganisation of land rights.14 The Portuguese state with a
much-reduced army was under considerable pressure until the limitations of
the rebellion itself led to negotiations between them and rebel leaders so
as to secure a quick end to the rebellion.
A few weeks before the outbreak of rebellion, the 'Administrador', a
Portuguese official, Gomes da Costa arrested and imprisoned the Goan
editors of two newspapers in Panjim, on the grounds that their articles
had maligned him. When rebellion broke out a few weeks later, it was clear
that constitutional rights were about to be withdrawn. Newspapers were
soon banned from functioning in Goa, and this ban stayed for nearly two
years.15 Newspapers in Bombay and Lisbon continued to cover events in
Goa, while in Goa itself, many pamphlets emerged as a mechanism to
circumvent the ban on newspapers.
Disavowing Anti-colonialism
The occasion of rebellion provided the state with an opportunity to
implicate the sharpest dissenters within the Goan intelligentsia in a
conspiracy to plot rebellion. Some were charged with having abetted
rebellion through their nationalist and anti-colonial writings. The
pamphlets that emerged to counter these charges therefore undertook to
discuss both rebellion and newsprint. All of these exchanges were
conducted in Portuguese.
Ignacio Caetano de Carvalho, the Visconde de Bardez (hereafter referred to
as Carvalho), wrote the first pamphlet in his defence, against charges
that he had conspired with the rebels, and had helped incite rebellion
through newsprint produced by his seditious colleagues. Carvalho was a
Goan employed in the bureaucracy, and owned and edited a number of
newspapers in Goa.16 All of these were anti-establishment papers. In his
official capacity, Carvalho had acted as a negotiator during the rebellion
on behalf of the state. He had, according to his own admission, disagreed
with many government decisions, but had communicated them to the rebels.17
His newspapers were among those curbed in 1895, and Carvalho himself came
under suspicion on two counts: he had allegedly abetted the rebels and had
conspired with Pe Alvares, the editor of the Brado Indiano, the paper that
was the focus of state censorship and criticism during the revolt.
Carvalho was also a lawyer and was accused of advising the rebels about
the best course of action to take, and of actually helping them negotiate
relations with the government and the legal system through their letters
and depositions. Many among the Catholic intelligentsia occupied similar
conflicted positions through the course of this century, being on the one
hand, administrators and bureaucrats, and on the other, editors of, or
contributors to nationalist or anti-Portuguese newspapers.
Carvalho's pamphlet, which was published in Bombay, had certain specific
tasks to achieve. It sought to exonerate editors from the charge of having
moulded public opinion, since he himself was persecuted in this role.18
The pamphlet was constrained to identify a figure that had conspired and
masterminded the rebellion. Carvalho named the Portuguese official who had
taken charge of the campaign to quell rebellion, Gomes da Costa, as a
conspirator. In addition, the author tried to establish that the
conditions for rebellion had nothing to do with newspapers, but had been
prompted by bad governance and callousness.19 His pamphlet, therefore,
began with a defence of himself and his colleagues within the Goan
literati.
The main motivations of Carvalho's pamphlet were to prove that the revolt
was caused by the state's indifference, to suggest that it was within the
rights and duties of the press to criticise the state's actions, and to
establish that the two were unconnected. Carvalho's narrative began with a
discussion of the case of the newspaper O Brado Indiano and its chief
contributor, the Goan priest, Pe Alvares. It was to avenge the priest's
criticisms of certain Portuguese officials, it claimed, that Gomes da
Costa had him stripped publicly of his vestments, and arrested with his
associate on grounds of sedition. In defence of Alvares, Carvalho stated
that sedition required the soul of secrecy, and could scarcely be
proclaimed in newspaper articles. Four hundred years of Portuguese rule
had so assimilated the natives with the metropole, he claimed, that the
idea of disaffection against Europeans was the product of an unbalanced
imagination.
Dismissing the idea that the revolt was momentous enough to threaten the
state, and that the priest had incited rebellion, Carvalho described the
exact sequence of events in September. The reader was led through each
movement made by da Costa and the soldiers to suggest that it was the
corrupt Portuguese official who had an interest in provoking disturbances
in the territory to justify the use of authoritarian administrative
measures. Carvalho, therefore, had furnished a sympathetic account of the
plight of the soldiers, only to suggest that it was the machinations of
anofficial, which had actually led to rebellion.20 Carvalho had explained
away both Pe Alvares' criticism, and the fact of rebellion, as a
consequence of misgovernance. Had the government heeded the many
suggestions its indigenous intelligentsia had made, none of this would
have occurred. The sharpest nationalist and anti-colonial assertions made
by the priest-editor and the rebels were therefore partially blunted by
the first pamphlet to appear months after the rebellion was suppressed.
It is necessary to detail the arguments in this pamphlet, as subsequent
responses were set within its framework even if only to refute it,
particularly its location of the workings of the press in the course of
rebellion. Carvalho dwelt at length on letters written by rebels to the
state and the documents from the rebellion of 1870 that they brandished to
demand a similar amnesty for themselves. These acts signified levels of
literacy, according to him, which soldiers and peasants did not ordinarily
possess, and an ease with the trappings of a modern bureaucracy that they
could not have manifested without assistance from someone more likely to
possess it. The illiteracy and rusticity of the rebels was a constant
theme through all subsequent pamphlets as it was the ground on which the
culpability of journalists had been premised.21
'Two days later, when I was in the capital', said Carvalho, 'the Conde de
Mahem showed me a letter from these soldiers, which asked me to solicit
the government for an amnesty for them....the letter was written in
Portuguese'.22 Against the advice of close associates like Carvalho, the
government issued instructions to send a detachment to counter attacks by
rebels in neighbouring districts. The author set off on behalf of the
government to communicate this to the soldiers. At the meeting, the rebels
presented him with a printed sheet and another handwritten letter in
Portuguese. One of these was a copy of the 'Portarias' (orders of
government), which had pardoned mutineers of 1870. The soldiers asked
Carvalho why a government which had pardoned one revolt, could not do so
again. 'Who had given them these printed sheets and these copies of
government resolutions, offered at the time of the previous revolt?' asked
Carvalho in his pamphlet.23 'The readers can decide that...how could
anyone explain why, when Gomes da Costa knew about the revolt four days
before it occurred and informed the governor about it, nothing was done?
Who let the soldiers in to sack the arms of the palace guard? The guard
did not know the language of the land. There was someone who knew
Portuguese among them'.24
The dominant elements of this pamphlet were reworked and reinterpreted in
all subsequent pamphlets, with the difference that the causes for
rebellion had disappeared. These texts seemed to be exercises in elision,
where the immediate impetus for their production receded within the
pamphlets themselves to the place of a background, so that other issues
could be discussed. Since Carvalho had furnished details, documents, and
newspaper articles within his pamphlet to prove finally the innocence of
the intelligentsia, it was this that appeared as the focus of subsequent
pamphlets. Within all the texts, whether Carvalho's or his opponents',
however, a narrative structure where news articles had incited rebellion
was hard to sustain. As with Carvalho's pamphlet, the detailing of the
place of newspapers and of the intelligentsia in the rebellion only served
to emphasise how minuscule a place these occupied in the immediate or
long-term conditions for the for the occurrence of rebellion. Government
documents about the rebellion do not suggest that newspapers had provided
an overarching framework for various dissatisfied groups within Goa to
transform their ire into rebellion.
Disappearance of Rebellion
Most pamphlets were opposed to Carvalho and questioned the existence of
the press in Goa, particularly the more strident of newspapers. This was
achieved by constructing the Goan intelligentsia in a position of
ideological leadership over the rest of the population and by suggesting
that articles in Portuguese language papers had incited rebels, and the
Goan people at large. The author of an anonymously issued pamphlet, for
instance, strenuously resisted Carvalho's claim that the newspapers had
merely furnished critiques of policy and had not incited rebellion.25 The
founders of the paper O Brado Indiano, as listed by the author of this
pamphlet, seem to have been a substantial section of the critical literati
of the time: Bernardo Francisco da Costa, Carvalho himself, Ismael
Gracias, Sertorio Coelho, Sertorio Mascarenhas, etc. The appearance of
articles in Portuguese print, which were said to be incendiary, and the
illiteracy of the soldiers were both invoked as the conditions for
rebellion. The soldiers, according to these arguments, 'were incapable of
such an act, without a conspiratorial leader to impel them'.26
By the time the second pamphlet had emerged, the terms within which
rebellion was discussed had shrunk. The main protagonists of the rebellion
had already been limited to newspaper editors, Gomes da Costa, and
newspapers in themselves. There were at least two camps among those who
were opposed to the newspaper editors. One consisted of representatives of
the Portuguese state. The others, who were more prolific, were
representatives of the chardo caste among Catholic Goans, who detected a
bid for state power in the nationalist rhetoric of Catholic brahmins. This
struggle between the two, of which the brahmins had the upper hand since
they dominated the bureaucracy, inflected all print forms of the period.
Within this set of pamphlets, it marked another level of the gradual
collapse of the terms within which rebellion was discussed, into the
metaphors of an old caste rivalry.
A pamphlet written by the Portuguese Administrador Gomes da Costa and
published posthumously by his son had a succinct description of the
brahmin-chardo rivalry as an explanation for the context in which
rebellion occurred. When the presence of the army was reduced in Goa in
1871, said da Costa, an assured source of employment was lost to the
chardos, while the brahmins saw a clear monopoly left to them over state
positions in the bureaucracy. The subsequent formation of two political
parties, the nativistas (predominantly brahmin) and progressistas (largely
chardo), were only ways to strengthen both sides. According to da Costa,
with the Portuguese presence much reduced in Goa, only cowardliness
stopped the brahmins from capturing Goa from the Portuguese. They
dominated the judiciary, the treasury, and the administration, he said,
but concerned themselves only with the newspaper, the Evoluc,a~o, and with
securing jobs in the bureaucracy.27 Da Costa's explanation not only
scoffed at upper caste Goan claims to nationalism, but also declared that
their preoccupation with unsavoury journalism had incited the soldiers.
Another opponent of Carvalho's, also issued a pamphlet. Jose' Ina'cio de
Loyola, the Goan editor of the newspaper A India Portuguesa, hailed as the
mouthpiece of the Catholic chardos.28 '(T)his pamphlet intends to give
the country the exact point of origin of the revolt that ruined the
powerless inhabitants...and created many problems for the nation', said
Loyola.29 For Loyola, a chardo, the conditions for the undesirable
rebellion were not just recent news articles by brahmins but an entire
series of covertly nationalist conspiracies undertaken by brahmins.
According to him, the ground had begun to be prepared as far back as 1859,
with the opening of the first privately published paper in Goa, the
Ultramar.
This provided another shift in the way the narrative of rebellion was
structured in all pamphlets. Carvalho's pamphlet, the first to be
discussed in this series, had begun with a description of a newspaper and
went on to detail the actual causes of rebellion. By the time Loyola
wrote, the narrative about newspapers and newspaper editors extended back
to the middle of the century, and any other motives for rebellion had
disappeared. Instead, the reproduction of apparently pivotal newspaper
articles had become the main event within the pamphlets relating to 1895.
Newspaper articles that had featured in Carvalho's pamphlet and
correspondence between brahmin editors, which had been carried as
implicating evidence, began to constitute the main body of the text. The
pamphlets of 1896 had turned into full-fledged textual analyses of
preceding pamphlets and newspapers. Loyola's pamphlet, therefore, was set
in differing font sizes. This was to distinguish his brief commentaries
from the large quotes from other texts.30
The disavowal of nationalism evident in the pamphlets marks the end of
the inward spiral followed by each pamphlet. Loyola ridiculed all the
calls for independence given by 'misguided' Goans over time - a time
beginning with the revolt by native (brahmin) Catholic priests in 1787,
that of 1835, with the deposition of Peres da Silva, the 'election by
bayonets' of 1861, and in the dubious elections of 1892. While all of
these were instances of anti-colonial dissent by the Goan elite, Loyola
emphasised that they were all unsavoury nationalist conspiracies by
usurping brahmins. He urged that while all of their critiques demanded a
response from the Portuguese crown, it was foolishness to propagate a
separation of nations or peoples. Carvalho, a brahmin, had himself
qualified the call for nationalism in his pamphlet of 1896. By the time
the last few appeared, the existence of a popular anti-Portuguese
sentiment was itself being questioned by writers, a few months after
soldiers and revenue-collectors had tried to challenge the state for a
restitution of their rights.
Redefining the Place of Print
The order of appearance of rebellion, the arrests of editors, the ban on
newsprint, and the appearance of pamphlets indicates that when the
Portuguese state wanted to curb print, it did not think that mere
legislation would be sufficient. Instead, it engaged elaborately, at a
time when its resources were being consumed with keeping rebellion under
check, in implicating news editors, arresting them, threatening them, and
eventually banning papers.
The period of the ban and of the appearance of pamphlets was also a time,
however, when the place of the Goan press was being tested and defined by
all who participated in producing pamphlets and newspapers. In particular,
among the Portuguese, and the brahmins and chardos among Goan Catholics,
these were attempts to fix the limits to critiques of colonialism,
articulations of disaffection, and nationalist ideas.
The pamphlets of 1895 have been discussed largely to reveal the degree to
which they constituted a struggle for control over print between the
Portuguese state and the indigenous Catholic elite. However, the pattern
of arguments through which the indigenous elite defended their detachment
from rebellion, and their right to print, indicates that the use of print
also worked as a marker of difference between classes within Goan society.
An overview of these texts reveals the extraordinary ability of this class
of Goans to write itself into the centre of an event when no other
documents suggest they played such a role. It is only those who wanted to
implicate the journalists and curb the possible impact their volatile
writings could have, who insisted on the power of these texts to incite
the minds of people.
The direct threat to editors and to the existence of a free press itself
from the Portuguese state had succeeded in producing disavowals or
reinterpretations of nationalist statements. These disavowals were perhaps
an inevitable result of the political isolation of this class from any
popular movement. The fact that there was little contact between rebels
and editors had forced the latter into a situation where they had to
redefine their position. Their isolation in fact led to a shrinking of the
social and political space they occupied, in a situation when the state
had turned hostile.31 The pamphlets of 1896 manifest a narrowing
circularity in the relationship their presence effected between politics
and publications. Though the pamphlets gestured constantly toward
rebellion, there were no referents for this contact outside the statements
themselves. Carvalho and the judge presiding over the case were the only
ones who could provide a first person account of their involvement with
the events of the time (Gomes da Costa's account was published only in
1938). In a perilous situation where there was little contact between mass
movements and a bourgeois intelligentsia, the latter found that they could
not quite defend themselves and their publications against a violent
state. A causal relationship between print and rebellion had been thrust
onto editors by the state, and it was, in fact, the absence of such
contact that made the ban on papers and the curb on nationalist
articulations so easy to achieve.
Uses of Illiteracy
The captivation of this class with their own use of writing served to
conceal the different, but equally masterful strategic use of texts by
rebels themselves. These uses had so disturbed both anti-Portuguese
editors and their opponents that both groups had to attribute the use of
texts by rebels to anonymous supporters from within the Goan or Portuguese
intelligentsia. There were three instances, however, when both soldiers
and ranes had indicated that they were familiar with the use of specific
documents in the judicial process, and in systems through which revenue
was collected, and land records were maintained.
It is clear that the ranes (who were revenue-collectors long before the
Portuguese took over the New Conquests), if not the soldiers, were well
versed in the ways of statecraft and its accompanying paperwork. The
attention in the pamphlets to the uses of documents by 'illiterate
marathas and peasants', however, reveals the gulf that existed between the
ways in which the intelligentsia, soldiers, and the ranes engaged with
different kinds of writing.
One of the pamphlets dwelt on the exchange between Gomes da Costa and the
rebels.32 In the first instance, the Portuguese official, Gomes da Costa,
had attempted to negotiate a conversation with the rebels, and they,
reportedly, being 'illiterate marathas', replied in Konkani, which he did
not understand.33 This linguistic gap featured in Gomes da Costa's own
defence of his actions during the rebellion. He dwelt on his difficulty in
determining the demands of the rebels with the assistance of an
interpreter who knew no Portuguese. The rebels claimed that they would
return to their posts the following day, if given an assurance in writing,
on stamped paper, that they would not be sent forcibly to Africa.34 The
fact that soldiers could articulate such a demand astonished all
pamphleteers.
Another instance was the brandishing of copies of the government's amnesty
by soldiers and ranes when Carvalho met them on behalf of the government
of Goa.35 This showed a shrewd understanding of the weight of the
document in effecting negotiations when the rebellion showed signs of
wearing out. Having brandished the amnesty offered by the state in 1872 to
mutinying soldiers, the mutineers of 1895 had proof of a precedent that
they wanted the state to follow. A third instance that drew the attention
of the intelligentsia was the letter to the colonial government in which
the rebels listed their demands as conditions for surrender. The nadkarni
whom the rebels had kidnapped in the early days of the rebellion had
probably composed the letter that was written in smooth prose.36
The demands themselves were an attempt to ensure that the systems of
writing and record keeping, through which the ranes had lost control over
their land, were adjusted to accommodate them. The ranes had resorted to
rebellion because of their opposition to nadkarnis and kulkarnis in the
legal and administrative offices of the state who, through their monopoly
over these forms of writing, had usurped territories and revenue-rights.
The ranes who led the rebellion demanded that revenues be declared orally,
accompanied by the beating of a drum, while no brahmin be employed to
collect revenues.37 Therefore, within the relation between nadkarnis and
ranes, therefore, written documents in either Portuguese or Marathi were a
potential threat, and only oral communication could guarantee truth. But
what the soldiers wanted from the state was a written amnesty alone, on
stamped paper, with the approval of the king. This suggested that they
understood that when dealing with the state, orality held no guarantees,
and that the word of the Portuguese state stood for nothing if
unaccompanied by a written document.38 The demands by ranes and soldiers
reveals a concern with the place of writing as a threat and as a means to
secure rights, which emerged directly from their experience of state rule.
The demands and statements made by soldiers and rebels indicates their
perfect understanding of their place within the world of writing, print
and orality by which they were governed. Their surrender and cessation of
rebellion was followed by an attempt to alter their place within this
order, given that rebellion itself had failed to force a change. In
contrast, the use of print by sudra litigants in the Old Conquests
demonstrates a deeper saturation of this class with print and its place in
colonial politics. In both instances, however, print was used to
substantively intervene and transform their situation. The pamphlets
circulating in Aldona were punctuated after all by a court case, a murder,
several appeals to the court, votes cast, and the splitting of the
communidade along caste lines. While the pamphlets did not individually
cause these events, they were knit into the processes convulsing the
village of Aldona in a way that the pamphlets concerning newspapers and
rebellion were not.
Pamphlets produced in the context of litigation held tremendous potential
for a substantive transformation of the situation of groups that conceded
to adopt the identity offered in them. Whether these were land documents,
amnesties, or caste relations, the referrent for pamphlets issued by
non-elite Goans lay outside the pamphlet itself. While print was
transformative in its form and its political power, its ultimate referrent
lay beyond the articulation of dissent.
Form in the Production of Truth
For the Goan elite, however, the relation to print was non-substantive. As
an intelligentsia that was adept at the uses of print from the 16th
century on, this class of Goans were invested in the autonomous value of
the printed word, and the belief that the world of letters in itself would
resolve its dilemmas. It had met a moment of maximum conflict by a
substantial mass of rebels and soldiers, with a flurry of writing that in
the last instance, was about itself, and that gestured to another realm of
letters - the world of elite newsprint.
The Goan elite had been long witness to the use of the pamphlet in
European and specifically Portuguese contexts. As is impossible to assume
any continuity between northern European and Portuguese statecraft, it is
safe to say that the Goan elite understood that the terminology of
liberalism was not entirely intended to substantively alter political
relations either in the metropole or in the colony, but that it could be
invoked as a remote ideal in all situations. Their use of pamphlets in
1896 indicates that the rhetoric of liberal democracy was used to encode
caste rivalries.
The two propelling situations for pamphlet production described above,
therefore, provoked very distinct kinds of pamphlets. While the Goan elite
of 1895 had used a broad contemporary conflict to argue for its own rights
of representation, print had brought another dimension to the way caste,
land rights, and the legal system could be negotiated among sudras and
brahmins outside Goan towns. The fact that these were in Konkani implied
that they were a bridge between an alien legal process, and a population
which had only just begun to find these structures of power negotiated in
printed texts produced by their own caste members. The significance of
these pamphlets therefore lay in the fact that they may have expanded
forms of literacy available to sudras while they substantively fed into a
legal process that required a demonstration of public opinion and
consensus.
As with the demands made by revenue-collectors and soldiers, pamphlets
negotiating caste rights indicate a mastery of the requirements of the
judicial system, as well as scepticism about the claims it made for
itself. This suspicion among lower caste pamphleteers - that the terms of
modern political and judicial structures were a strategy to be mastered
rather a guarantee of rights - inflects all print representations dealing
with caste rights. For this reason, while the structure of a rhetorical
appeal for caste rights became commonplace, litigants were not always
concerned that the variety of arguments presented had to be formally
consistent.
The pamphlets of 1895 had constructed a public to whom the truth about
contemporary reality had to be proved by reproducing authenticated
documents to substantiate the arguments. Likewise, litigants of the 20th
century, whether sudra or brahmin, had to defend their claims to local
representatives of the state as well as fellow-villagers to consolidate
their case. However, when a legal dispute assumed wider proportions, and
broad alliances had to be forged on the basis of village or caste
memberships, pamphlet writers abandoned the attempt to substantiate their
claims through documents, but drew on song traditions and popular
Christian symbolism and myths to bolster their arguments. The display of a
document within a pamphlet produced in the context of the rebellion of
1895, seemed an infallible substantiation of the truth of the arguments
based on it. The marks of authenticity in the form of government stamps,
signatures of officials, and their circulation within a public realm,
formed an unbroken gloss over documents reproduced in the pamphlets of
1895. However, the authority and inviolability of such documents crumbled
in the context of land disputes, when legal documents produced through
centuries old legal systems appeared to be fundamentally suspect, and
manipulated by caste interests. Official documents of the past, when
placed under the sceptical scrutiny of litigants, seemed to be the
motivated falsifiable work of caste interests, which had been maintained
over decades. The faceless objectivity of papers produced under an
apparently neutral state appeared, in these cases, to be no more than a
front.
When documents once regarded as unassailable fact were either revealed as
entirely fabricated, or at best, left open to interpretation, this process
of delegitimisation gradually unfolded with each pamphlet related to the
land dispute in Aldona. However, caste alliances and the consolidation of
public opinion was achieved in these situations, by merging the discourse
of caste with metaphors through which village-based and religious
identities were already articulated over centuries.
Email: rochellepinto @ yahoo.com
Notes
1 Of the treatises published during the 19th century, Francisco Luis
Gomes, A Liberdade da Terra e a Economia Rural da India Portuguesa Lisboa:
Typografia Universal, 1862, was the only one to suggest that all
protection and controls on the village economy be removed. Gomes' work was
seen as an anti-brahmin position. In contrast, the appeals of various
gaunkars to the state in the Francisco Luis Gomes, Projeito do novo
regimento das communidades agricolas do Estado da India, com as consultas,
representac,o~es e requerimentos que a suas magestade tem sido dirigido
acerc,a do mesmo projeito. Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, 1862, J H da Cunha
Rivara, Brados a favor das Communidades das aldeas do Estado da India Nova
Goa: Imprensa Nacional, 1870, and all of Felipe Nery Xavier's publications
during this century were seen as pro-brahmin works, since they asked for
the protection of the gaunkaria as an institution.
2 Vaz's book was written in Portuguese with an abbreviated account of the
proceedings in Konkani (Roman), and a note on the 'Composition of the
Society of Goa' as an appendix to his account of the court case. Jose
Baptista Caetano Vaz, Luta das Castas entre os Sudras, Chardos e Bramanes
Bombay: Lucio Jose' Sequeira, 1911.
3 He asserted that not only were the facts of the 1824 ruling based on
the published text, Codigo das Communidades which was not law, but the
document of 1760 was fabricated, as 12 gaunkars were to have signed it,
only five of whom did so. The other signatures were of people other than
the remaining seven gaunkars. The communidade of Aldona, they emphasised,
had five sudras, one goldsmith, and six brahmins. Among these signatures,
is that of Roque Pascoal Fernandes. Custodio Fernandes had a clinching
argument. If Roque Pascoal Fernandes was not a gaunkar, the document was
false.
4 Vaz, Luta das Castas entre os Sudras, Chardos e Bramanes.
5 Historia de Aldona, Bombay: D Menezes, 1925.
6 'Prefacio', Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid, pp 7-8.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Historia de Aldona, 1926.
13 Ibid, p 15.
14 Processos, referente aos Ranes de Sanquelim, 2759, DAAG. See also,
Miguel Vicente de Abreu, Relac,a~o das Alterac,o~es Politicas de Goa Nova
Goa: Imprensa Nacional, 1862, pp 24-26.
15 Boletim do Governo do Estado da India, # 91, August 24, 1895. Portaria
# 303 of 1895 forbade the publication of newsprint entirely.
16 Visconde de Bardez, Apontamentos para a Historia da Revolta em Goa dos
Soldados, Ranes e Satarienses em o Anno de 1895 Bombaim: Nicol's Printing
Works, 1896. The Visconde contributed to publications from the 1870s on.
He was associated with O Mensageiro, A Patria, O Oriente, Evoluc,a~o, A
Gazeta de Bardez, and O Brado Indiano as a writer, owner, or editor.
17 Ibid, pp 15-18.
18 It was under the 'inquisitorial torture' to which the new order
subjected the councillors and their workers, that these claimed that he
was 'the counsellor, the leader, and I don't know what else, of the
rebels!' exclaimed Carvalho. Ignacio Caetano de Carvalho, Apontamentos
para a Historia da Revolta em Goa dos Soldados, Ranes e Satarienses em o
Anno de 1895 Bombaim: Nicol's Printing Works, 1896.
19 A separate set of conditions had led to uprisings among
revenue-collectors and peasants, which Carvalho explained. The state
rented the lands of Satary through auction, which kept the lands
circulating from one to the other, 'allowing the appraiser to extract the
utmost from the cultivators who competed with each other to give a larger
share of their produce to the treasury'. 'For sixteen years', said the
Visconde, 'the gaunkars and ryots had asked that revenue (aforamento) be
fixed for each village'. When orders from Portugal arrived agreeing to
these demands, the first to ask that lands be leased to them were the
nadkarnis who wanted the best and most extensive lands which had been
tended over years by the ryots. The nadkarnis were brahmins who usually
worked in district courts and revenue offices, and were in a position to
actualise their demands themselves. Ibid.
20 de Carvalho, Apontamentos para a Historia da Revolta em Goa dos
Soldados, Ranes e Satarienses em o Anno de 1895, p 14.
21 Ibid, p 64.
22 Ibid, p 15.
23 Ibid, p 18.
24 Ibid, pp 18-21.
25 Apontamentos para a Historia da Revolta em Goa comec,ada em 1895, Goa:
1896.
26 Ibid, p 3.
27 Gomes da Costa, A Revolta de Goa e a Campanha de 1895/1896 Lisboa:
Carlos Gomes da Costa, 1938, p 39.
28 O Visconde de Contrabando e A Revolta de 1895 em Goa, 1896.
29 Ibid, p 1.
30 Ibid, pp 2-5.
31 The testimonies of two prisoners following the rebellion specifically
mention Carvalho's intervention. Apart from the fact that he is said to
have advised them to join the Ranes of Satary, and was promised loot
procured during raids as payment to secure a pardon from government, there
is no mention of either Carvalho or his associates in government records
of the time.
32 Joao Criso'stomo Egipsi de Souza, Veredictum da Opinia~o Publica sobre
os 'Apontamentos para a Historia da Revolta em Goa dos Soldados, Ranes e
Satarienses...' pp 15-16.
33 da Costa, A Revolta de Goa e a Campanha de 1895/1896, pp 35-37.
34 O Visconde de Contrabando e A Revolta de 1895 em Goa, p 25.
35 Ibid, p 27.
36 Political Department, Vol 99, Maharashtra State Archives, Bombay, 1895.
37 Ibid.
38 A report, which circulated within the British administration that
monitored the border, shared with Goa drew on spy reports received by them
to comment: 'it appears, however, that on a former occasion, some years
ago, the government is said to have broken faith with the men then sent to
Mozambique, in the matter of duration of foreign service, pay and passage
money for the return journey.'
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To Subscribe/Unsubscribe from Goa-Research-Net
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Send us a brief self-intro to justify your interest in this
"specialized" forum. This should be sent to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
* Send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (NOT goa-research-net@goacom.com)
* Leave SUBJECT blank
* On first line of the BODY of your message, type:
subscribe goa-research-net [EMAIL PROTECTED]
or
unsubscribe goa-research-net [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-------------------------------------------------------------------
