# If Goanet stops reaching you, contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # Want to check the archives? http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others #
##########################################################################
On Sun, 31 Oct 2004, Teotonio R. de Souza wrote:
I was for some years on the Govt.-appointed Place Names Committee, and I presume such a committee exists. Are the municipal corporators free to decide changing road names without consulting that committee? Goa's genuine freedom fighters may need recognition and naming streets after them could be one way of doing it. But it need not be done by ignoring all Goa's past. Diogo do Couto, for instance, was the founder of Goa's Historical Archives. Have the corporators decided to do away with it as well? Why not? It was set up by the Portuguese! Perhaps the corporators could not find any Goan equivalent of VK Rajwade, GS Sardessai or JN Sarkar?
Teo, This is interesting.
At one level, the debate is how we should deal with our past. Do we deny it, try to settle scores with it, or just leave it there without feeling in any way inferior over what happened at a time when we were not around to influence the course of history.
But leave aside this issue of approaches. From a more practical plane, someone who grew up in the post-1961 generation (like me) would like to know (i) the meaning of these names (ii) which had a colonial connotation and (iii) which, if any, were names which transcend nationalism (whether Portuguese or Indian).
Take, for example, the Rua de Hormuz. Maybe my understanding is flawed but I thought this was a reference to Ormuz, in today's Oman. (Ormuz was one of the strategic sea-points, along with Goa, Cochin, Malacca, Sri Lanka, etc which together dominated the sea-trade of the region, and which the Portuguese once also controlled.)
It would be nice if Teo or someone else with a historical bent could explain where these names came from. Of course, some would obviously be part of colonial hagiography. Fact is, leave alone use them, I doubt most of the people of Goa even knew that these names existed!
But then, politicians do need issues to keep people divided... without taking on the tough ones that make a difference to everyone's lives. FN
