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On Sun, 24 Oct 2004, Gabriel de Figueiredo wrote:
My pronouncements have little to do with sneaking (or otherwise) admiration for the pre-1961 Portuguese *regime* - people & environment & conviviality = yes, regime = no. Please understand what Bernardo, I, Paulo and others are stating here. It has zip to do with the Salazarist regime.
By saying pre-1961, I don't refer just to the Salazarist regime.
Besides, there is an attempt by some apologists of the pre-1961 era in Goa to separate Salazar from the rest of Portuguese history. This argument acknowledges that Salazar's rule was bad (and implies, often without saying so, that the other forms of Portuguese rule were good.) I don't think Salazar can be separated from the rest of Portuguese colonial history. Portugal was shaped by its own history, including its colonial history. The fact that it was a decaying European power by the twentieth probably lead it to look to Salazar-type solutions.
Can we separate the two, criticise one and implicitly praise the other?
Remember that Goa in 1961 was governed by and large by Goans (read what judge B.K Bohman-Behram wrote in 1955 in "Goa and Ourselves" ). The police consisted mostly of Goans, the army was a hotch-potch of people from various colonies including Goans as well.
Ditto for post-1961 Goa. Are you saying you don't recognise them as "Goans" just because they belong to another religion and another strata of the class/caste hierarchy?
The police, till date, consists "mostly of Goans". (That people like Parrikar seem to be doing a reverse-engineering and carrying on the religion-based bigotry of the Portuguese in terms of whom they hire, and then justifying it, is another matter.)
In the immediate post-1961 years, a whole lot of officials were brought into Goa. Old-timers and 'sixtyers on this list would talk about the deputationists. But that had more to do with internal Goan contradictions, the bitter distrust between different groups, and the jockying for different groups to get on top... rather than an "imposition from outside".
Who brought them into Goa? Wasn't it a Dayanand Bandodkar?
Even today, the bureaucracy is overwhelmingly "Goan", whatever that is supposed to mean. There are a few (literally, a handful) of top-officials, who are often controlled by politicians in power. The tugs-of-war between the past police chiefs and the chief ministers of Goa (particularly Parrikar and Pratapsing Rane) are indicative here.
It is the "Goan" officials and local lobbies who are to be primarily blamed for causing much of the mess. In addition, I think one needs not just to look at numbers, but also the role played by different individuals, and the power wielded. For instance, in post-1961 times, the "Goan" officials know-tow to those in power (whether in Panjim or Delhi), while I have no reason to believe the situation was any different in pre-1961 times (though the interests were in Pangim and Lisbon, respectively).
BTW, I have seen some very good and concerned officers coming in from Delhi, mostly in the pre-1987 era, when Goa was still a union territory, and local lobbies weren't yet so powerful enough.
I understand that one of the military people on the Portuguese side that was killed at Anjediva in Dec 1961 was a Goan, Vassu Damuno Ganencar. Goans were working towards independence, not just "liberation".
This seems like episodic evidence to me.
All the talk at the "Pedda" in Loutolim, from what I can remember as a child, was about "independencia".
Hind-sight? I suspect many of these groups and individuals were quite happy and content (unlike the bulk of the non-elite citizens of Goa) with their Portuguese fate.
We've also heard on this Net how Portugal apparently propped up these groups after New Delhi's military action in 1961. So, was it simply a red herring?
What seems more realistic is that a section of elite Goa (that is, the elite of those times, not the one built up on its ruins and flightloads departing for Portugal) never could come to terms with the developments of that fateful day in 1961, for the way in which it changed their earlier top-of-the-pack status in Goan society. Some did so largely for emotional, religious or sentimental reasons however.
It reminds one of what the Portuguese felt in the mid-sixties. They would still then believe, "One day, we'll be back in Goa!"
Whatever the detractors to this idea may think of or might have thought of, there was a good chance that there could have been a symbiotic relationship between Goa and India, and the intellectuals of the day (like Bruto da Costa) were working on this idea (albeit in fear of PIDE and Salazar) until Nehru (or rather Menon) provided a "short-circuit" that cost Goans their chance to prove themselves that they could stand on their own feet and not be "aided" by a "liberator". That is probably why some of the real freedom-fighters left Goa in disgust.
There were also quite a few intellectuals who preceeded Bruto da Costa, who saw Goa as part of a wider Indian reality. Whether it was FL Gomes (when he spoke of "my civilization... which invented chess and wrote the Mahabharata") or T B Cunha (never mind that the Indian National Congress rebuffed his attempts to get affiliation for the National Congress Goa), and a number of others.
The armed action of India is the reason why I don't feel Indian. I might come from the Indian sub-continent, but I consider myself as a Goan. I was made to feel Indian by force, not by affection; by betrayal, not confidence.
I personally feel that the imbibed racism of a number of Goans is the reason why they don't "feel Indian". They arrogantly consider Indians to be lowly, poorly-educated, ill-mannered, and a whole lot of unflattering stereotypes. Added to that, an arrogant belief in the superiority of one's own religious and cultural beliefs. That many of these perspectives are trapped in the realities of the 1940s or 1960s is another issue.
If we had an India which was affluent, respected in other parts of the globe (as it is in Silicon Valley), then we would see a number of Goans thumping their chests about this ancient connection, I guess ;-)
