Again, some difference of opinion.... How should the current-day Goan position himself/herself vis a vis the rivalries of the past (which have, in significant measure, lead to the building of the Black Legend about Portuguese Goa, the Inquisition in Goa, etc)?
I would not see things in terms of Them (the Dutch, the Protestants, the Jews, the Hindutva lobby) versus Us (the Catholics or 'Portuguese side' of the story). At best we are only the section that gets hit as part of the collateral damage of these myths in today's world. We were never intended to be part of the story, at least not until the 20th century, when local electoral rivalries entered the phase, and the post-1961 dynamics came into play. The challenge is to build a post-colonial understanding that doesn't get caught up in mere side-taking, but in building an independent perspective (to whatever extent this is possible) that is both accurate and not caught up in the colonial (and other) rivalries of the past. FN 2009/6/21 Gilbert Lawrence <[email protected]>: > Not long ago, a poster from Holland wrote to me > privately requesting information on the inquisition > in Goa. I asked the poster if she had researched > the atrocities of the Dutch in its colonies; of which > we only know only a little, when we read about > Fr. Joseph Vaz in Ceylon. She declined to continue > the dialog. I guess this is the modern day version > of the Dutch-Portuguese animosity, which still is alive. -- FN * http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com http://twitter.com/fn M +91-9822122436 P +91-832-2409490
