Lusophone Goa India wrote: >we are pleased to inform you about the following news of LSG - Lusophone
>Society of Goa: > >Please read the Message in Portuguese >here<http://lusophonegoa.org/en/2013/01/recognizing-publicly-the-historical-legacy-of-portugal-in-india-that-is-what-counts-luis-filipe-castro-mendes-former-ambassador-of-portugal-in-india-in-a-special-message-to-lsg-lusophone-socie/> Folks, The link provided above does not work. Here is a mechanical translation of the message, which I found interesting. I later found out that the ex-ambassador is also a poet, which explains his sensitivity. India and Goa had a gem of a person in this man. I do not know what he accomplished during term but this is the kind of person who can lay down some good ideas. Mervyn -------------------------------- Culture "Recognizing the historical legacy of publicly Portugal in India. That is what counts. Message from Dr. Luis Filipe Castro Mendes to LSG - Lusophone Society of Goa on his personal experience in India. Dr. Luis Filipe Castro Mendes was Ambassador of Portugal in India between 2007 and 2010 and is currently Ambassador Permanent Representative of Portugal to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. While Portuguese India struck me, not while discovering me through another (as happened to me in Brazil), but this discovery as "essential heterogeneity be" a poet who spoke Spanish that much like (Antonio Machado) this heterogeneity that is so close, so intimately close, our own identity. And now I think the question should be put to the contrary, that is not what struck me in India? It is difficult to speak of India, when it sticks to everything we say the ballast so many speeches, so many looks, so many interpretations by which we tried, we both West Indians like you (yes, because there are also "Orientalists" in the East), summarize the a formula, an interpretation, a treaty that "multiple splendor" (I like to cite this commonplace of Han Suyin) for which India hides and reveals itself in the same movement to our senses. He wanted me to speak from the heart. But beginning at the head and, following the lesson of a classic Portuguese, Camilo, will not forget the stomach. The raison d'être of modern India is evidently taking its rightful place in the world with the full weight of his strength, his ability, his wealth and his intelligence. But the heart does not forget the women raped in buses from Delhi, Dalits humiliated at the gates of cities or the tenderness of an unexpected look from within the neighborhood of misery. And the stomach: hunger countered by those millions of peasants without profitability for modern economic calculations, but with no alternative in sight for empty stomachs. Modernity and most sophisticated intelligence may well coincide with barbarism? But this is not unique to India, as we know too. Walter Benjamin said that "the whole monument of civilization is at once a monument of barbarism." Ajanta Caves or the Sistine Chapel, slaves and humiliated passed through there and its shadow weighs in memory of the vanquished. Mughal invasions or occupations Portuguese, English wars, colonization, massacres by the sword, the sound and fury of history linger in memory music obsessive. But I did not go to India to participate in the ritual genuflection before the colonizers and the colonized. Incidentally few already today in India are concerned with this issue. When Europe was provincializa, certain anti-colonial eruptions have the ridiculous rents and charm of old camphor stored in a vault. So who are today the colonized? I saw the fishermen of Goa escort, with red and green streamers on their boats, our school ship "Sagres", who had come to India on an official visit at the invitation of the Indian Navy. They did it, not to dream of the return of the caravels, but to state publicly that they did not want to deny the past. Idea which incidentally never heard any Indian authority in New Delhi: quite the contrary, I heard the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to publicly recognize the historical legacy of Portugal in India. And that's what counts. Contrary to what some would wish, slaves did not become masters for the masters become slaves. Somehow understand today that we are all at the same time, masters and slaves: masters, even the extraordinary experience of knowing ourselves globally and in the same instant in treating; slaves, yes, a universal system of instant effects, which crosses spaces and nations and understands only power relations and wealth differentials. The culture, then we can say, is the monument that responds to our barbarism? I saw the smile elegant Shiva on Elephanta Island and the pitying gaze of Our Lady Mother of the Church in Panjim. A look at the other is the most common of human faces, with a mysterious irony, the avatars of history and pride of men. Luís Filipe Castro Mendes Strasbourg, 14 January 2013
