This is an excerpt from the two new books titled Goan Anthropology: Mothers, Miracles and Mythology [http://bit.ly/RSN01] and Goan Anthology: Festivals, Films and Fish [http://bit.ly/RSN-02]. The author speaks on his work of researching Goa over four decades at the XCHR (Alto Porvorim, Goa) on Friday, February 1, 2019 at 5.30 pm.
Robert S. Newman [email protected] I originally wrote this chapter for a festschrift in honour of Teotonio de Souza, in 2007. It was called in *Metahistory: History Questioning History* and was published Lisboa by Vega press, edited by Charles J. Borges sj (from Goa) and M.N. Pearson (from Australia). The days when I could go to Goa on a regular basis to do anthropological research were long over. Similarly I had no access to Goan libraries. So, in order to contribute something, I had to think about Goa from a distance. I had to think about "overarching ideas", a theme that often occurred to me as I had written about Goa over the years or lived among the Goans. The way other writers: ecclesiastic figures, colonial officialscolonial official(s), travellers, and politicians, Goans and non-Goans, had written about the place impressed (or depressed) me. It seemed to me that there were a wide variety of views, but they could be compressed into some large categories. Most of all these views seemed to be free from input by actual Goans. This chapter is an attempt to deal with such categories. I felt that over centuries Goans had not been able to present themselves very well. In the 19th century some Portuguese literature did appear. This literature is being analyzed by an international group called Pensando Goa in the second decade of the 21st century. Also in the last quarter century a large amount of Goan literature has appeared in English and Konkani. I hope the long silence of Goan voices is finally ended. Myths, by common definition, are not always true. They are stories, or patterns of narrative, that spring up over time and provide the basis for many commonly held beliefs. Whether we talk about religious leaders from the dim past (Moses, Krishna, Jesus, Buddha) or national heroes (William Tell, Daniel Boone, Robin Hood, Maharana Pratap), cultural heroes (from Ram to Luke Skywalker) or even national stereotypes ('the cowboy', 'the samurai', 'the kungfu warrior', 'the Aussie bushman'), myth provides the basis of our knowledge and our understanding of what the lives of these figures mean. Myths can describe places too. This paper is about such a mythological place, "Goa". Myths may arise as to the nature of society at a certain point in time. Like dreams, myths penetrate our psyches directly, not after much thought. Their narrative explains society to itself and/or to others. Myths assist us in forming a picture of a certain place or society, though academic accuracy is another question entirely. Myth may be as some people say, an ill-founded belief held uncritically by a people (or an individual) to explain what otherwise is or seems to be inexplicable.... [and] psychologically a myth can be wish fulfillment (Freud), an expression of an unconscious dream of a people (Jung) or, more simply, an invented, irrational story to explain what is mysterious in order to provide assurance. 1 But such words as "ill-founded" and "irrational" belie the importance of myth; they make myth too easily dismissable as unimportant or primitive. Myth still has a great hold over the human race. The proximity of myth to Truth is not necessarily relevant, then; what is relevant is that people believe the myths to be true. Outside the pages of academia, and sometimes within them, explanations of history and culture are often found in the halls of mythology. One of the key elements of myth, perhaps the most important, is transformation. In myths, changes are explained, the hero transforms the world or is transformed himself, or if the myth is of a place instead of a hero, changes are promised. If you get to... (Mecca, Rome, Kashi, Graceland, Tahiti, Goa) you will be a different person. Anderson, in his writing on "imagined communities"2, talks of how images of the nation are shaped and formed. In a paper on Goa, not a nation after all, we will not speak about "national feeling" or "nation building" but rather identity, the idea of Goan-ness, and the image that Goans have of themselves. "Goa" is created in people's minds from the daily interactions of family and community, the religious rituals, participation in state institutions (education,education medicine, tax offices), interactions in public spaces -- shops, streets, parks, beaches, taverns, etc., and the images provided by the printed or electronic media. While it is the job of modern historians and social scientists to endeavour to describe Goa as accurately as possible -- now or in the past -- the myths of Goa, both old and new, tend to be stronger, more widespread, and more enduring. Like any other people, Goans derive part of their self-image from the views reflected back to them by others. They may absorb the views of those others as being at least partly true. If those views emanate from the realm of myth, then Goa may be known and identified, even among its own citizens, in a way more mythological than real. What is more, if Goans do not create their own images and do not propagate their own self-image in some way, they risk becoming the victims of other people's mythologizing. I would say that this has happened in the past and still continues. This paper explores some of the myths that have been created and disseminated about Goa. II Since the Portuguese conquest that began in 1510 and differentiated Goa from other ports and coastal areas of western India, Goa has assumed many identities, almost all created by others, almost all in the realm of myth. I will enumerate some of these, then discuss a few in greater detail, though it seems to me there is scope here for a far larger work. First is the image of Goa as "Fleshpot of the East", which, strangely enough, existed simultaneously with an image of "the Rome of the East". These images arose from the accounts of Portuguese and other Western travellers. Goa's Portuguese "glories" began to decline. By the nineteenth century, we find the image of Goa as a decayed tropical colony, a pestilential spot inhabited by "less-manly races" and "mixed breeds". Richard Burton's writing is typical of this style.3 Goa's small size in relation to British India would never have allowed it much attention in the wider world, but the disdainful northern European attitude towards Goa and its Latin colonizers reflected and was created by such a myth. In the twentieth century, the Portuguese created a picture of Goa (myth) through their census and ethnographic work, much as did the British throughout India as a whole. By concentrating on the variety of castes and worshipers of different gods, the colonial powers denied that Goans or Indians had anything in common. They created a myth of "myriad separations", and, since such a diverse population was "too difficult" to manage for "mere locals", this myth also created an excuse for their continued presence. Later, as colonial rule crumbled, two opposing myths of Goa sprang up. The Portuguese created one which we may title "Goa: the Beacon of Christianity and Portuguese Civilisation in India", while independent India created "Goa: the Brutal Dictatorship of Cruelty and Oppression". The Portuguese propagated the myth that Goa was entirely European, Catholic and culturally unlike any other part of India, thus to be maintained as the separate entity that "it always had been". The Indian government emphasized the lack of political freedom under Salazar's repressive rule, discrimination against Hindus and Muslims, and Portugal's poor economic performance in Goa. The opinion of Goans was not writ large in either of the myths. The relevance of these contradictory myths expired in December 1961, but they still resonate with many Goans, whose very identities are bound up in one or another of the two. In the 1960s, as adventurous foreign tourists first made their way to Goa's beaches for a hippie lifestyle, a new myth sprang up that penetrated even to remote parts of the world: Goa as a Hippie Heaven. As an anthropologist who has worked on Goa for over twenty-five years, living in both Australia and America, I have yet to meet a person, even in academia, who knows something of Goan realities if he or she has not been to Goa. But, on the contrary, nearly everyone knows Goa for its beaches, raves, and Goa trance. This is a most powerful myth. It is difficult, at such distance, to distinguish Goans from the drugs, nudity, and beach life. It has helped give rise to the final myth, the one current in India itself: Goa as European Corner of India (where freedom reigns or runs amuck). The Indian film industry has created this myth, the results of which are all too physically real, as we shall see below. III Boxer, de Souza, Pearson4 and others have written of the importance of Hindu merchants and moneylenders to the Portuguese colonial enterprise, yet that reality was not much the stuff of legend. Information on Goa from many sources generally emphasized either the religiosity of Goan society or its licentiousness. Goa abounded in churches, in church-run institutions, nuns and priests. The whole Christianising effort in the East was run from Goa, that is why St. Francis Xavier, who died in China, was ultimately brought back to be entombed in Goa. Goa was "the centre", the Rome away from Rome, the den of the Inquisition, that European institution transferred to Asia. Boxer notes that on the surface of things, Catholicism was very strong in Goa, that many converts were made and churches constructed (often on the sites of destroyed temples or mosques).5 We may agree that superficially Goa could have been called "the Rome of the East", that it attracted money and attention as the "gem of Portuguese" around the rim of the Indian Ocean. Portuguese priests and ecclesiastical authorities may have gravitated to Goa thanks to this myth. The other side of the coin lies in the "Fleshpot of the East" image. Portuguese dreamed of reaching Goa and discarding their lowly status. In Goa, a European swineherd, field hand, or carter could become a fidalgo. With a bit of luck, he could serve in government, rise in the military, or become a commercial success. He could live in a fine house, dress in luxurious garments, and have a host of concubines and servants. As Rao writes, "the history of Goa has been one of luxury, ostentation, and decay" and further, "Golden Goa appeared a place of fabulous wealth...." "According to a proverb of those days, 'whoever hath seen Goa need not see Lisbon'"6 Penrose sums up this Goa myth most succinctly, calling Goa the preposterous and monstrous boom-town that was at once the political capital, the commercial emporium, the religious sanctum sanctorum and the ville d'élégance of the Portuguese Indies. Camões once called the city "A Senhora de todo o Oriente" and another time "the mother of knaves and the stepmother of honest men."7 Reading the accounts of such European travellers as Tavernier, Thavenot, Pyrard, Linschoten, and Fr. Manrique, we realise that indeed they saw the Portuguese in Goa living high off the hog, trying to emulate their highborn countrymen. There are many descriptions of the sexual, culinary, and fashionable excesses of the Portuguese. In the "Rome of the East" myth, Portuguese "civilisation" has been successfully transferred to the East, whose inhabitants are glad to receive it. It is not unlike the American desire to believe that their style of democracy can be transplanted to any other part of the world to the applause of the eternally grateful recipients. The East is thus transformed. In the "Fleshpot of the East" myth, the Portuguese who successfully arrive in Goa are transformed. They achieve their wildest dreams (if you can imagine the dreams of, say, a sixteenth century Alentejo swineherd). The onlooking European travelers criticize the lasciviousness and the pomp, but one senses more than a little envy. So, Goa is, in this myth, a place where dreams are realized, where life is luxurious, and servants (never Portuguese) are cheap. These myths, created by foreigners, both Portuguese and others, are long-lasting and very pervasive. They have been lovingly detailed in any number of history books. What relationship do they bear to the actual conditions in Goa for Goans at that time? I would guess -- relying on the scholarship of de Souza and Pearson, -- not much. Myths of Goa without Goans! The flamboyant tales came to stand for Goa in the eyes of the world, and eventually, I would argue, in the minds of many Goans themselves, who still use that phrase "Golden Goa" so easily. Leaving analysis and discussion of the nineteenth century travelers' descriptions of decadence and decay for writers such as Filipa Vicente8, along with the myths put about by Portuguese census takers and ethnographers, I will move on to just a few sentences about the political myths of the period 1947-61. IV The "Beacon of Christianity and Portuguese Civilization" story was a continuation of the old Portuguese "Rome of the East" myth. They told themselves how they had "civilized" a part of Asia, which had come to stand for their (perhaps now lost) greatness. They wrote about it in numerous books, pamphlets, in newspaper reports and travel accounts. The last symbol of their Lusitanian heroes' glorious deeds was Goa, with its churches. Aqui é Portugal, they cried. This was a story of transformation indeed: an Asian land turned into a transplanted bit of Europe. Those Goans, mostly of the elite, who believed firmly in Portuguese civilization, left Goa in the ships for Portugal in 1961-62, giving up their beautiful land forever, transforming their lives and the lives of their children. The contrasting myth, "Brutal Dictatorship of Cruelty and Oppression", came from India, which wished to be rid of all traces of foreign rule in an era of nationalistic muscle-flexing round the world. In order to justify the ousting of the last European colonialists (who admittedly, had not done much in the way of education or economic development over a 451-year period), a myth of brutality was created, a myth of arrogant imperial occupiers putting the boot into the suffering Indians of Goa. Indian news media poured out stories of Portuguese brutality, of the backward conditions in Goa. The myth produced satyagrahis who in some cases lost their lives in the freedom struggle. Eventually, concrete steps had to be taken. The Indian Army "liberated" Goa. [Personally I do believe it was a liberation, but my opinion may be beside the point.] Did anyone actually ask the Goans if liberation were their goal? No. Did either of these two visions of Goa mesh with what the majority of Goans thought? It is unclear. Was Goa so Portuguese in reality? Was twentieth century Portuguese rule so awful? I would say "no" in both cases. The myths still resonate more strongly than any perceptible reality. Those particular stories died, only to be reborn as the "realities" propagated by opposing political parties in post-Liberation Goa. V In April, 2006, the *New York Times* ran an article entitled "A New Generation of Pilgrims Hits India's Hippiehippies Trail". It concerned only Goa. Thanks to nearly forty years of being a major hippie gathering center (along with Pushkar, Varanasi, Kulu and Kovalam, plus Nepal and some sites in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia), Goa has been transformed into a "magical place outside normal time", in other words, a place in the realm of myth. Come to Goa! Change your mind! Change your way! There ain't nothing like this in the real world.... [Goa] a venerable Catholic-Hindu enclave where American hippies came to turn on, tune in and drop out in the late 1960s, and where globe-trotting spiritual seekers, party kids, flag-wavers of the counterculture and refugees from the real world have fled ever since.9 Despite some doubts as to the nationality of the vast majority of these "seekers", the description is true. Like the Portuguese of old, Westerners of certain kinds still come to Goa seeking personal transformation, if not a sudden rise in luxury and power. The myth that lures them has little or nothing to do with Goa. Odzer, in her frank description of drug-fueled hippie life in Goa10, shows her absolute ignorance of everything Goan, but really, Goa serves only as a backdrop. Goa was my dream, my fantasy paradise. I couldn't leave it. What a life in Anjuna Beach! Warm, salty, sandy, swimming, sunning, dancing, lazy and stoned. Weeks went by like one long day. No one possessed a clock. The only schedule was that of the moon.... No day had a name.11 On the other hand, books such as hers ignite a desire to experience such a place in the hearts of thousands. Travel brochures, newspaper articles, television spots, and travelers' tales have spread the myth of Goa, the Paradise, around the developed world. Tourists arrived, hippies or otherwise, expecting a certain reality. They wound up creating it, whether they found it or not. Goans helped them do it. But, like the sixteenth and seventeenth century Portuguese, the foreign hippies came to comprise an enclave "in Goa", but certainly not "of Goa". Their myth of personal transformation appropriates Goa's space in the wider world. Goa's image is subsumed in the hippie legend of freedom, drugs, nudity,nudism, nudity infinite leisure, and cheap prices. Goa is not a spiritual centre, Goa is not less real than other places, Goa is not a counterculture centre except among hippies. Goa has its own history and a set of pressing problems. The world's media portrays it otherwise -- 'the globe's most enduring and constantly adapting tropical getaway for alternative living'... `every road seems to lead to an organic restaurant or a massage clinic.'12 Mythology indeed. Indian publications throughout the Sixties and Seventies gave ample play to Western flower children's near-nudity on Goa's beaches. (There was total nudity also, but the publications could not show it.) Indian tourists began to visit Goa for the "free show" and for cheap alcohol at a time when many Indian states had prohibition. The Hindi film industry zoomed in on this trend and turned it into another myth of Goa. VI After many visits to Goa over many years, living in towns and villages, I knew that the small coastal state attracts large numbers of tourists and has staked much of its future on attracting more. I understood why foreign tourists come (see above and just because it might be a safe, cheap, beach holiday). But Indian tourists also came in increasing numbers. When I learned that 1.7 million Indian tourists had visited Goa in 2002,13 I was astounded. Why did they come? Having lived in India for a number of years, I realised that a) knowledge and interest in Indo-Portuguese history and Goan culture was minimal, b) the vast majority of Indians do not know how to swim, nor do they like to sit in the sun, but c) the rising middle class might like to luxuriate in top class hotels in an exotic location and enjoy drinks and food not easily found in their home cities. I still could not account for that huge number of tourists coming specifically to Goa. I began to wonder how to explain it. Something was pushing Indians towards Goa. I realized that the Goa Tourist Bureau Bureau might have very effective advertising, but surely not that effective! I inclined to believe that Indian would-be tourists were influenced by some media. Newspapers, weekly magazines, and television might play their roles, but I decided to investigate the role of Hindi language Bollywood films, because of their powerful place in Indian life. (Not knowing Tamil or Telugu, I have not been able to document any influence from that quarter, but I would guess that it is similar.) I began to seek out films set in Goa, or at least partly set in Goa. There were quite a number. I subsequently watched as many as I could find. Full discussion of Goa's image in filmsfilms can be seen in the companion volume to this one in a chapter entitled "Goa at the Movies". Hindi films have established a most powerful mythological image of Goa. It resembles in some ways the “sexual paradise” myth of the South Seas in Euro-America, but in other ways is just the opposite. While Western mythologymythology provides images of “the primitive” and “the innocent or unspoiled” in the palmy isles of the far Pacific, where love or sex is easy to find because the grass-skirted girls are always willing to be seduced by white heroes, Goa, as pictured in HindiHindi (language) films,films is the modern paradise in Western style. Romance is easy, people dance, sing, and celebrate at the drop of a hat. All kinds of enticing activities can be found in Goa, invisible in the rest of India, but associated with the West by most Indians. Modesty in dress and puritanical rules of conduct do not exist. It's free. “Freedom” is the operative word. While “riches” might have attracted the PortuguesePortuguese in former times, and “simple life with spiritual overtones” may have attracted the hippies,hippies the myth of modern Goa in HindiHindi (language) filmsfilms is that not only is Goa modern, luxurious, and Westernized, it is free. Goa may not be bona fide “Western”, but the “freedom” of Goa is waved before the Indian public. It can operate as a stand-in for the West. Visas to the West are hard to get for Indians and, once there, everything is expensive. Plus, Westerners have many strange customs and some may not like Indians. Goa, on the other hand, is close to home. Filmfilms Goa is filled with luxurious fantasies, Goa has no history, language or culture of its own. It is merely the backdrop for the realization of the dreamsdreams of others. Above all, Indian youth can do what they like in Goa, they are free. Girls are available, romance is easy, and the puritan moral strictures of the rest of India fly away. As one hero in Dil Chahta Hai says as the group sits at the top of Fort Aguada, looking down to Candolim and Calangute beaches, “You know what? We should come to Goa every year.” This is the modern Indian myth of Goa — those who manage to reach it will be transformed. Goans still do not create their own mythology.mythology They, like the South Sea islanders, live at the receiving end of tourists who come imbued with a set of images and beliefs that stem from stories that have no connection with Goan realities. VII In conclusion, I would say that since the arrival of the Portuguese in Goa, various myths have sprung up which describe Goa in terms that often have little or nothing to do with the realities for Goans. A number of academics, both historians and anthropologists, have written more realistic pictures of Goa. At least they have tried to avoid succumbing to myth. Unfortunately, their work has little effect. The early myths that spoke of wealth, licentiousness or piety concerned the Portuguese or foreign population. Similarly, the decay and the description of Goa by census takers and ethnographers created a picture of Goa as seen by foreigners. The opposing politically-inspired mythologies of the mid-twentieth century also stemmed from outside sources, from Portugal on one hand, from New Delhi on the other. After Goa's final integration with India, the tourist mythologies arose, one from the foreign tourists that arrived to live along the beaches, and the other from the Indian film industry, which, I would claim, today inspires millions of people to come to Goa. In no one of these cases can we claim that the mythologies are without any basis in fact. For example, as regards the film myth of Goa: Goa does have Carnaval, there are dances (if very subdued), European hippies do prowl the beaches in extreme states of undress, churches are prominent, women do wear skirts, and liquor is indeed cheap. However, the distortions and exaggerations, coupled with the complete neglect of Goans themselves in these mythologies -- those people, Hindu, Catholic, and Muslim who have lived in Goa over the centuries, struggling to make a living; religious, conservative, and with a rich culture -- have created the image of a mythical place called "Goa". Though it is in India, it is Western. Though you can speak Hindi, you can behave as though you were in your imagined West (not the real West, which remains unknown). You enjoy a life of luxury and licentiousness. You become a different person, your life is changed, if only you can reach Goa. As Hindi films have long been based on fantasy, the makers needed a place where these fantasies might seem true. If you can't emigrate to the West, if you can't even visit the West, you can travel to a substitute "Western place" in India. Goa has been coopted as that place. What influence these myths have on Goans is unclear. People are influenced by the opinions and images of others, especially if those images are far more prevalent than any countervailing ones. Do some people believe that Goans are "less Indian" than others? I fear that, since Goans are a small group and have little power in the media, the ultimate fate of Goa may be to be a victim of 'too much mythology'. FOOTNOTES 1. Boyd C. Shafer, Faces of Nationalism, New York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1972, p.313. 2. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, New York, Verso, 1991. 3. Richard Burton, Goa and the Blue Mountains, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991. 4. C.R. Boxer, Chap. 3 'Converts and Clergy in Monsoon Asia', in The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415-1825, UK, Pelican, 1973, pp. 66-84. Teotonio de Souza, Medieval Goa, New Delhi, Concept Publishing Co., 1979. Michael N. Pearson, Coastal Western India, New Delhi, Concept Publishing Co., 1981. 5. Boxer, Chap. 3, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire. 6. R.P. Rao, Portuguese Rule in Goa 1510-1961, Bombay, Asia Publishing House, 1963, p.37. 7. Boies Penrose, Goa -- Queen of the East, Lisbon, Comissão Ultramarina, 1960 p.39. 8. Vicente, Filipa L. Entre Dois Imperios: Viajantes Britanicos em Goa, Ediçŏes Tinta-da-China, Lisboa, 2015. 9. Seth Sherwood, 'A new generation of pilgrims hits India's hippie trail', The New York Times, New York, Sunday, 9 April, 2006, pp. 7. 10. Cleo Odzer, Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India, New York, Blue Moon Books, 1995. 11. Odzer, Goa Freaks, pp. 2 + 38. 12. Sherwood, 'A New Generation of Pilgrims', p.7 13. See www.indiainvites.com/datagoa2002.htm
