Dear Selma,
reading your response has left me with a consolatory feeling that the end of
this debate holds for us an accord on several unresolved aspects of this
argument. With this perspective, a broader one I admit, a lot of unnecessary
strife
between Catholics and Hindus in Goa can be avoided.
However, as long as Goan Catholics altercate with their Hindu counterpart
nothing
solid can be built upon this lovely, to borrow a Nascimental
term, "fusion". This fusion is a result of the Portuguese colonisation of Goa,
an
inadvertent gift of that tyranny. I am inclined not to miss the unintended
value of
the gift.
It would be idiotic not to keep the gift, but to adulate the undeserving gifter
is
fallacy. The Portuguese have done nothing to improve life in Goa or elsewhere
by helping the "natives" develop on their own indigenous line of development.
Instead
they imposed their religion, often very cruelly, on locals simply because they
were
convinced of their superior ways and all this not with any genuine intent to
'save' the
native, but to simply expand their numbers using religion, something vital to
the
cultural health on any people.
There is another admissible thought that assimilation of foreign element
(social, cultural, political) is in the very genius of India, which may be the
real cause
for this fusion. A more watered-down version
of this genius is the prevalent view of many who perceive Indians as good
imitators.
I do not know what was happening to the relationship you mention soon after the
sacking of the Portuguese. I am curious to know whether the patch-up that
eventually
came about in the form of return of our gold and initiation of Orental
foundation,
embassy, etc. was more due to the efforts of Goans or it was a Portuguese
initiative.
Like any reasonable man in 2010, I am not unenthusiastic to embrace the
Portuguese
as world citizen, but the political reality makes it impossible for me to do it
unconditionally.
I may not put conditions when India regains its lost place among the leaders of
the world,
for I believe that we are second to none. The Indian term is addwiteeya.
