Dears I notice that on the East African Goans called "Black Europeans" thread, some of the letter - writers seem to be full of guilt and almost seem to be accusing themselves of racial bias. That was there no doubt. And I wrote about this in a slightly different context when reviewing a book called "Songs of the Survivors," ed. by Yvonne Vaz Ezdani,
Some excerpts : " When one thinks of Goa and the colonial experience, it is the Portuguese who immediately spring to mind, given that since the 16th century uptil 1961 they ruled over Goa. But Goans also had to deal with the British who held sway over the rest of India as for one reason or another they had to migrate to territories controlled by the British. [These] migrant Goan Christians share some of the traits of [the jackal] ...[Like] this scavenger... Through most of the years of the Raj, they followed the conquering British Lions into their colonies where they became a buffer between the rulers and the colonised and in the bargain helped themselves to the left overs of the masters until these peoples were liberated. In that essay I argued that Goan Christians were essentially peasants who were struggling to become part of the modern middle classes. I also think that they were brought up in an environment where discrimination of one kind or another was an accepted feature of life - whether of caste, creed, colour or race. So whether I was right in pouring scorn on them can be debatable. But there is another side to the story. And this I will allow the reviewer of a book - http://firstandsecond.com/store/books/info/search.asp?styp=tle&tle=from+Jhelum+to+Tana Kiran Doshi, a former High Commissioner to Kenya to tell. "The British with their knack of putting every word of English on its head, like to say that they 'opened up the country' and 'civilised ' the natives, The truth now forgotten by even the Kenyans, is that the British settlers who loved the country and despised its people, destroyed the people, not just by grabbing their lands and subjugating them, and killing them in their thousands when they fought back, but by also in the end making then into what they were not. In the 1890's when it all began, Africans had refused to work onthe white man's plantations; because they had no use for money. By the 1990's Kenya had become one of the most corrupt countries on earth (more than even India) and Nairobi a city of dread. What is more, since the evil that men do live long after them, the wedge that the British drove between the Africans and Indians in Kenya through their racist policies, and divide and rule practices has remained a wedge, ...Throughout British rule in Kenya, Indians there were humiliated, reviled, suppressed and segregated. ...Time and again Indians fought for justice, for themselves as well as for Africans. Their 'ringleaders' had been fined, deported, incarcerated, shot at or hanged in public. Undeterred and at great personal risk, Indians supported the famous Mau Mau...They deserved to be embraced as brothers when Kenya became independent in 1963. They were not. Instead they were forced to leave Kenya in droves (to be followed by 'Asians' from Uganda and Tanganyika) They did not 'return ' to India. India had no use for them They went ironically, to England, and thence to Canada, America and Australia. They have prospered in their new homes, and added to the prosperity of others ..." - Asante sana, dear Kiran Doshi. So whilst we should become self-aware about ourselves it is also necessary that we understand how we were once exploited, and can in future be still exploited. Cheers Augusto -- Augusto Pinto 40, Novo Portugal, Moira, Bardez, Goa, India E [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] P 0832-2470336 M 9881126350
