This is what a friend of mine wrote to me recently.Would the others agree with the figures?
QUOTE I was reading your [article] on the web. Very interesting. I have been trying to find numbers of Goans round the world over the years. If you are interested I can hep you with some numbers... The Goan population in the Greater Toronto area is now around 25,000. (I am a statistician by training and have been making estimates on the subject since 1982.) Your numbers on Goans in Bombay seem to be close to what I imagined. I would surmise that today they are 250,000. Your numbers of Goans in Kenya in its heyday are somewhat high. I don't believe they ever exceeded 10,000. (I base it relatively on the Goan population in Uganda that I am more intimately familiar with.) The numbers for Kampala was about 5000 and probably 1000 in the rest of the country. (We were just 200 in Entebbe by 1968.) But because we were so closely involved with each other socially, the numbers seemed greater than in reality. Likewise I would estimate that Goans in Tanzania were around 5000. (They were about the same as Uganda.) Really interested in your numbers for Karachi. I know a lot of people from Karachi here and they are clueless as to how many Goans there were. Their estimates varied wildly from 5000 to 45000. I think you have the right order of magnitude. I know that for a while in the 1960s Goans were listed separately in the censuses in East African countries.... I will search through some census documents. Unquote... Please share your thoughts on this subject. FN
