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**** Annual Goanetters Meet ****
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Annual Goanetters Meet - January 3, 2012 - 12:30 - 2pm
Tourist Hostel, near the Old Secretariat, Panaji (Panjim)
Planning to attend? Send an email to [email protected] with contact details
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Put Timmayya On Trial!
Óscar de Noronha
Why can’t our historiography be a little more reasonable? No daunting
task this, if only there is a desire to be fair. But when facts are
suppressed and people demonized, the same facts and their interpreters
come under a cloud. At a recent seminar on “ Goa’s Freedom Struggle”,
participants mouthed inaccuracies, exaggerations, and half- truths. The
keynote speaker was demagogic rather than poetic when he said that the
Mandovi turned red for days together, thanks to the blood of the Muslims
massacred by the “ cruel Albuquerque, who called himself a Christian”.
In a rare moment of honesty he acknowledged that Shivaji committed
atrocities, but quickly exonerated him, saying: “ Punn to amchoch nhõi?”
(‘ He belongs to us, doesn’t he!’) Is this history or just a story? The
truth is that the Muslims were slain only when they resisted the enemy
in November 1510, and not the first time round. The speaker cunningly
omitted the fact that Goan Hindus too readily engaged in the “ massacre”
side by side with the Portuguese.
A second freedom fighter paid tributes to F L Gomes for declaring “ in
the Portuguese Parliament” that he belonged to the race that composed
the Mahabharata and invented chess. Actually, that declaration was made
not in Parliament but in a letter to the French writer Lamartine – which
would have easily passed off as an inaccuracy had the speaker not added
that the Portuguese later “ murdered” the MP for his racial pride! When
I gestured that this was a travesty of facts, the speaker altered his
statement to “ He was … like murdered!” ( sic), and finally stopped at
this: “ I mean: he was so badly treated that it was like being
murdered”! The smooth talker privately made it known that he had assumed
this because he believed that “ the Portuguese never disclosed all
facts.” Speaking on Salazar and Nehru’s theses on the Goa Affair ( 1947-
61), I stated that this was indeed a battle of wits before it became a
battle of arms. I was looking forward to a lively debate but instead we
got drawn to the 16th century.
Unmindful of nuances of the different historical eras, my contender,
after impressing upon me her family credentials, launched the usual ‘
forced conversions’ tirade. I felt compelled to bring forth my
genealogical memory: There was no record of any mental trauma in my
ancestors’ religious conversion in the 1530s.
This seminar review focuses on the nature of discourse carried out in
the name of “ freedom”. The keynote speaker lacked the grace to give
credit where credit was due: He dismissed five centuries of Goan history
thus: “ Kainch borem zaunk nam!” (‘ Nothing good came out of it!’).
History is bound to be vitiated with such puerile inputs! Finally, if
the 16th century is what beckons us, then, when we talk of Albuquerque,
let us not forget Timmayya: After all, whether a pirate or a highranking
officer in the Vijayanagar Empire, his Portuguese connection dated back
to the era. In 1510, Timmayya, with the active support of prominent Goan
Hindu families, ceremoniously invited Albuquerque to free Goa from
Muslim rule. Needless to say, he secured a plum appointment and his
family a ‘ pension’ after his death...! ( Does this ring a bell?) My
plea to whoever has a grouse against the Portuguese period of our
history and the Christian identity of our people: Put on trial Timmayya
and coterie who once held in their hands the destinies of Goa! An effort
in this direction might add an element of introspection to stock
condemnations and ongoing jubilations.
Source: http://bit.ly/OdN-01Jan12
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