Goanet meets in Goa: December 27, 12 noon and January 7, 4 pm (meeting point: Kala Academy canteen). See you there! ------------------------------
By Dr Jose Pereira Human history has seen the rise of civilizations of tremendous creative power, like Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, China and India. Great though these civilizations were, their impact was confined to limited areas of the globe. But in the 11th century there arose a civilization which was the only one to become truly global, Western European civilization — one that was carried to the corners of the globe in the ships of Portugal and Spain in what is known as the Age of Discoveries, the 15th and 16th centuries. This civilization, the creation of the Catholic Church, shared some of its creator’s sense of catholicity. One of its ideals, as expressed by the preeminent theologian of the age, Francisco Suarez (1548-1617), was the union, in one commonwealth, of the members of the human race, all of whom were judged equal. As the Doctor Eximius (the Uncommon Doctor) noted: “The human race, however much it be divided among various peoples and kingdoms, has always a certain unity, one that is not only specific [i.e. as a species], but also in a sense political and moral, a unity proclaimed by the precept of mutual love and compassion, extending to all, even to strangers, and of whatever condition. Hence, though each autonomous commonwealth, republic or kingdom, is in itself a complete community, dependent on its own members; still, any of these communities is also in a way a member of this world, in so far as it relates to the human race. For these communities, taken as single units, will never be so totally sufficient to themselves that they will not be in need of some reciprocal assistance, fellowship, and communication, sometimes for a better life and greater advantage, and sometimes indeed out of moral necessity and need, as the state of affairs [in the actual world] demonstrates...” But the propagators of Western civilization, in their wanderings over the globe, had other motives besides a concordant unification of the oikoumene — the crusading motive and the economic one. The crusading motive was inspired by the hatred that the Iberian peoples had developed for the Muslims who had long ruled them, hatred which never missed an opportunity of venting itself in fury on the now technologically disadvantaged former masters. The economic motive, which combined with power generates greed, incited the Iberian adventurers and officials to acts of ruthlessness. The harsh behavior of the conquistadores was further aggravated by their sense of racial superiority. Thus a civilization of universal concord was anomalously imposed by force. Imposition of civilizations by force is no novelty in human history. What is remarkable is that some of these civilizations were ardently received by the victims of the imposition. The force is the condition on the imposition, but the ardent reception can only be ascribed to the allure that the imposed civilization exerted on the conquered by providing them with the outlets for their creative energies that their own cultures had failed to do. Roman civilization was imposed on Gaul, and eventually produced the cathedral of Chartres. Islamic civilization was imposed on India, and eventually produced the Taj Mahal. Imposed too, on the New World, was Western civilization, both in its Latin and Anglo-Saxon modes: who can say that it has not luxuriated there, and that it has not generated cultural phenomena that are at least the qualitative equals of those brought to light by the Aztecs and Incas? In Kerala: Unworthy though many of the bearers of Western civilization may have been, they propagated a civilization that differed from the others by its greater curiosity and openness, its propensity to constantly criticize its own postulates and established norms, and its restless desire to experiment in new things. However, the initial impact of this dynamic and innately beneficent phenomenon, on the part of the non-Western world on which it first impinged, in 1492, was catastrophic: the unresisting tribes of the entire Caribbean were exterminated, so initiating the many acts of genocide perpetrated in the American continent. Western civilization was introduced again in the American mainland, with less destructive and more positive results, in Mexico in 1519, in Colombia in 1525 and in Peru in 1532, from which point it became embedded in American soil and has been developing creatively ever since. However, the first implantation of Western culture anywhere in the non-Western world, with continuous development and without genocidal impact, was in India, in the year of the arrival there of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524). Implanted were the fine arts of the West, sculpture, painting and architecture, the latter producing the more impressive results. The first capital of the growing Portuguese empire in Asia, Kochi/Cochin, was also the first Western-style city raised on Indian soil (the last, as built by a colonial power, was New Delhi, inaugurated in 1931). It was in Kerala that India, of all the lands of the non-Western world, was first exposed to Western music, with its panoply instruments unknown in that world, as well as to its new musical texture, harmony. There, too, a beginning was made in the study of ethnomusicology, but does not appear to have been further pursued there. The capital of the Portuguese empire in the East was transferred to Goa — conquered in 1510 by Afonso de Albuquerque (1453-1515) — from Cochin in 1530, from which moment the task of continuing the pioneer work initiated in Kerala passed thence to Goa, where too the impact of Portugal endured the longest (1510-1961). Now though the Westernization of India was initiated in Kerala and evolved in Goa, it did not cross the boundaries of those west Indian regions to any noteworthy degree. It was from eastern India, from Bengal, that the expansion of Western culture to the confines of the subcontinent was launched — an expansion that was initiated in the 16th century, but gathered momentum only from the 18th, and attained consummation in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1509, a year before Goa’s conquest by Albuquerque, Diogo Lopes de Sequeira sailed into the Bay of Bengal. Not long after, around 1517, Portuguese merchants opened trade between Bengal and China: the Westernization of the ‘paradise of provinces’ was begun — through trade, settlement, and even piracy (particularly after the Mughal sack of the Portuguese colony of Hooghly in 1634). Portuguese activity in Bengal left an impress on its language, literature, architecture and temple sculpture. The impress on the language was extensive; on the literature marginal; on architecture insignificant (little remains of Portuguese building before the 18th century, when the models for structures were no longer Portuguese but British). But the Portuguese pirate provided an exciting topic that would occupy the attentions of the Bengali temple sculptors for many years. Yet it was not the Portuguese variety of Western culture, conditioned by the Renaissance and the Baroque and filtered through Goan minds, that was to shape Indian culture in Western moulds, but the British variety of it, qualified by the Enlightenment of the 18th century and interpreted by Bengali creative genius. -- Dr Jose Pereira, a scholar with a wide range of interests and expertise, was professor at the Fordham University in the US till he retired recently in his early ‘seventies. He is from Curtorim. ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
