SCHOLAR, WRITER, ARTIST, MUSICOLOGIST, LINGUIST... An appreciation of the work of Dr. Jose Pereira
By Maria Aurora Couto [email protected] [Text of a speech delivered at the launch of the book 'Song of Goa' at the Hotel Mandovi, Panjim, July 30, 2010.] I feel inadequate in this role of having to present an overview of the career of Dr Jose Pereira -- scholar, writer, artist, musicologist, linguist -- whose life's work has been devoted to an exploration of the interaction between India and the West in art and culture, starting with Goa and its Latin Christianity as centre point but Indian history and culture as the matrix of artistic expression. This point of view was expressed by the fearless and peerless Jose in Lisbon in the 1950s when he was Adjunct Professor of East-West Cultural Relationships at the Instituto Superior de Estudos Ultramarinos. Of course, this viewpoint was unacceptable to the authorities there; he had to leave his teaching post and get out of Lisbon immediately. I feel inadequate because it is Alban who should have been performing this role and I find myself having to fill his shoes -- too large for me. And so there will be large gaps for I do not possess the scholarly knowledge and philosophical profundity of Jose and Alban. Although Alban's work in government took him in a different direction, they kept up the life of the mind and conversations that they had begun as undergraduate students, a conversation that has been an inspiration and an education for me as listener. Jose's capacity for concentrated work was evident from the start when he combined studying for B.A. (Hons.) in Sanskrit, (1951) at Siddharth College with a full time course at the J.J.School of Art and then opted for a Ph.D. in Ancient Indian History and Culture, University of Bombay(1958). Although I first met Jose when Alban was posted in Goa in 1962, I got to know him well when he spent time with us in Delhi before joining as Research Associate in the History of Indian Art, at The American Academy of Benares, Varanasi (1967-1969). After which he joined as Professor of Theology, Fordham University, New York. Dr Pereira has published more than 20 books and over 130 articles on theology, history of art and architecture, and on Goan and culture, Konkani language and music. I recall with nostalgic pleasure our conversations at the time including about the economics of running a home. He was engaged to be married and his spartan approach to life (No Lux soap only Sunlight will do! No butter, no jam, I can dip bread in my tea) infuriated me and in great agitation I advised him not to get married. I dare not reveal to you the violence of our disagreements. As I said yesterday at the Xavier Centre, Jose though married and a father of five children, has led a monastic life and I think we should specially applaud Sofia, his daughter who is sensitive to her father's extraordinary gifts, and brought him to Goa in 2008 to unveil the fresco in Fatorda and this time to exhibit his latest work. I recall him talking in awe of Hagya Sofia, the Cathedral in Istanbul and Alban and he discussing the intricacies and spirituality of Byzantine art. So it was no surprise when he called his first-born Sofia. We need to give her a special round of applause for the dedicated love and patient care with which she sustains her father during these trips. You must excuse me for being personal but I cannot talk about Dr Pereira without recalling the debates at home when quotations from St Thomas Aquinas, and St Augustine, Greek tragedy and Shakespeare, William Blake and Gerald Manley Hopkins, Greek philosophy and Roman orators and historians and reigning supremely, Dante, always Dante, were sort of flung at each other until Jose put a stop to it all with a long quotation in Sanskrit which he then proceeded to translate. Glorious memories I treasure. Indeed I have known Jose much more as a scholar than as an artist whom Alban knew better. I repeat what I said yesterday that this belated recognition of Dr Jose Pereira points to a certain indifference in our society to scholarship. We call ourselves an enlightened and modern society and yet gifted intellectuals or scholarly work is largely ignored. This was not always the case, but this slow descent into a form of decadence (which started much before Liberation) has to be studied and understood in order to encourage aspiration in our youth. I am delighted that Goa,1556 and Broadway Books have organized this function [July 30, 2010] not a moment too soon. Jose is known in Goa for his work on the Konkani language and for his books on the Mando, but less for his seminal work on Baroque architecture and Religion such as Hindu Theology, Thomism and the Magisterium: From Aeterni Patris to Veritatis splendor, and his very important contribution to theology in Suárez. Between Scholasticism and Modernity. When writing my book on Goa, my spirits were held up by Jose whom I used to telephone regularly when I found the going too difficult, and he cheered me up in a trice by singing a dulpod from New York, the lilting tune and witty words floated down the line to Chennai or in Goa wherever I happened to be at the moment. He seemed to have a dulpod to suit every mood. "It is your destiny to write this last chapter of a particular period in Goan history, and you must complete it". And then came another dulpod. Suarez came in particularly useful. When he read my passages on the Inquisition he immediately sent me quotations from his book on Suarez to show that there were dissenters at the time. 'Don't forget the modernist, the great Suarez!' came the voice from New York. You must forgive me for being personal but my awareness of Jose's brilliant mind and wide ranging scholarship is inextricably linked with the variety and humour of dulpods that have peppered our serious conversations over many decades. It was always a play between mind and heart, serious thought and the earthy humour of Konkani folk song, the wistful lyrics of the mando, melancholic, speaking of the unattainable, and the richness of an inheritance that has sustained us. It is difficult to speak about Jose Pereira's career except with a sense of awe at the variety and depth, the sheer range of scholarship. I told him yesterday of how I viewed his career as stages which combined into a whole, expecting argument; but he was very contented with what I said and wished Alban was around to listen. His first career as Professor allowed him the security to indulge in his passions ie Goa, and art. His publications deal with theology, philosophy but also with architectural history which I call his second career. So we have work as varied as Hindu Theology (Doubleday, 1976), Baroque India. The Neo-Roman Architecture of South Asia (New Delhi, 2000), and The Sacred Architecture of Islam (New Delhi, 2004). His one love has always been the Baroque period, which inspired. for instance The Mystical Theology of the Catholic Reformation. An Overview of Baroque Spirituality (AUP, 2006, co-authored with Robert Fastiggi) . Such work emerged from teaching the History of Religions at Fordham. This primary career gave him the financial security to indulge his passions for Goa, and baroque architecture whose study (which had little to do with his work at Fordham) produced Baroque Goa and the magnificent Baroque India: The Neo Roman Religious Architecture of South Asia: A Global Stylistic Survey. This book was published by the Indira Gandhi Centre for the Arts, a primary centre for the Arts in South Asia. In her foreword, Kapila Vatsyayan writes: Prof Pereira gives us his overview of the political history, the aesthetics of the Neo-Roman, the characteristics with Indian styles and the emergence of a distinctively Indian Baroque.... he builds up a strong case for Indianized Baroque as a regional development with characteristic features, despite its external origin. He carefully analyses Indian colonial monuments, especially the churches including those raised by Protestants in the western coastal areas, and elsewhere in India to stress his view-point. According to him the regional manifestation of the Goan Baroque also contains typical Indian elements associated with structured tradition of medieval India. E.g. presence of amalakas, lotus and cypress motifs, pot-shaped pillar-bases, Bengal-roofs etc., and develops its own structural features. He also records the presence of certain features of Baroque style in some of the Hindu shrines of Goa built during the Portuguese rule. Prof. Pereira also tries to visualize a sort of aesthetic parallelism between Hindu temples and Baroque structures. Assessing the process of Indianization of Neo-Roman architecture, he describes it as 'European in grammar and Indian in syntax, though later even grammar was considerably modified.' To complete this work Jose not only visited the various sites which contain the monuments of Indian Neo-Roman, but has travelled as an architectural pilgrim over much of the Neo-Roman world, in Europe and the Americas. He has also familiarized himself with the art-historical theories on the various styles of architecture, in particular, the Neo-Roman. He has thus prepared himself to contemplate Baroque India's contribution against the Neo-Roman background. I spoke of three careers and the third. which is actually his first passion, is as artist . The first two coalesced in the third bringing together his study of Christianity and Hinduism, the iconography and architecture of both traditions, the influence of the West and a celebration of Indian tradition, in his painting. For us his friends, and particularly for Alban who worked hard to get Jose's frescoes completed and appreciated, Jose's journey as artist is heart breaking, only redeemed by the fact that we have these brilliant pastels and earlier work exhibited at the Xavier Centre in Porvorim. We need to speak out and see that the authorities deal firmly against objections to his work, indeed against the attempts to shrink our cultural space. Subodh Kerkar withstood such a protest as you know, and has also written in support of Dr Pereira's work. The action of the protestors in the name of Hinduism flies in the face of the true spirit of India's civilisational ethos which respects creative, intellectual and spiritual freedom. And it is outrageous to suggest that Dr Pereira, a scholar whose profound humility and spirituality is palpable, who is compassionate and wise, should set out to offend anybody, least of all Hinduism. I will not speak of his contribution to scholarship on the Konkani Language and the mando but will mention in conclusion his collection , *Konkani Bhagtigitam: A treasury of Goan hymns.* 104 hymns from the 16th century to 1950 in both devnagari and Romi scripts and with a Konkani-English glossary of 300 words. Reviewing this book, Prof Nandkumar Kamat writes that the early hymns represent "an adjustment and adaptation phase for the neo-Christians and the first language and the phonetics of the hymns is similar to Fr. Thomas Stephens's Kristapurana. The oldest hymns can be attributed to an elite class of neo-Christians but later the compositions seem to lose their class character and take a more folkloric form. Fusion of local folklore, mythology with Christian image. But lexicographically these words may offer rich potential for students of comparative religions, etymology and Konkani sociolinguistics -- a task which Prof. Pereira himself could have done well but has left it for Konkani scholars." I see my role today as celebrating the life and work of Dr Jose Pereira and also paying tribute to a great friendship, cemented by love of Goa and a life of the mind that was shared and enriched in conversation, argument and perhaps unbridgeable differences! I will end with what Jose said of Alban, and Alban said of Jose's work. With his permission I am reading a tribute he wrote when Alban passed away: "I cannot begin to say anything meaningful, in a couple of paragraphs, about my intellectual bond with my friend of 61 years, Alban, a bond voiced and strengthened by our day-long heated conversations on every topic under the sun. A lyric of the Greek poet Callimachus on the death of a friend, Heraclitus by name, from the city of Halikarnassos in Asia Minor, expresses my thoughts beautifully: Someone mentioned your death, Heraclitus, it brought me to tears and I remembered how often you and I had talked the sun to set. But my dear friend from Halikarnassos you have long become ashes. Still your nightingales live on; these, Death, who snatches everything, cannot take away." Jose then lists Alban's nightingales: scholarly interests, a passion for music, absorption in philosophy and expressive writing. I have read this out to you because it expresses Jose's personality as well; a feeling heart, a mind that can connect all experience and filter it through erudition to express man's capacity for transcendence. I will end with what Alban had to say at Fatorda in 2008. He bemoaned the loss of the fresco executed in the chapel in the cemetery at Juhu decades ago and the half tragedy of the chapel of Borda when Jose was not allowed to complete the work despite permission from the highest church authorities here: "I feel that some good came from the setback at Juhu and at Borda. Jose was going through a phase of growth and development, intellectually and spiritually, the milestones and achievements captured in books of national and international acclaim. "His development as an artist and painter was proceeding in his mind, in the more difficult regions, the dark nights of heart and soul. He was searching for the beatific vision like his hero, Dante, who through Inferno and Paradiso, saw a glimpse and returned to tell us of the universal unifier where the diversities of religion and culture, flora, fauna, the earth itself was made one, whole, living and immortal. "His study of Baroque architecture in Goa, Christian and Hindu, with its play of light and shade, the tropical fecundity of flowers, animals and fish, by Hndu artisans as decoratives for church and temple, and the immanence of divinity in the plenitude of all forms of life." -- [Circulated in August 2010 by Goanet Reader.] * * * Encounter hints (and more) of the Goan life in Zanzibar, Poona, Mombasa, Basra, Dubai, and even Nuvem and Colva, Sanvordem and colonial Goa. Learn of experiences that shaped Goans worldwide. Selma Carvalho's *Into the Diaspora Wilderness* now available at Broadways Book Centre, Panjim [Ph +91-9822488564] Ask a friend to buy it, before it gets sold out. Price (in Goa only) Rs 295. http://selmacarvalho.squarespace.com/ * * *
