Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490 Jeanne Hromnik of South Africa drew my attention to the book THE RISE AND FALL OF PHILANTHROPHY IN EAST AFRICA: THE ASIAN CONTRIBUTION by Robert G Gregor, and in particular to the chapter on literature and the arts.
It was a pleasant surprise to see how the small Goan community has been rated. Some quotes. -- FN The Asians' concern for literature and the arts apparently was manifest from the time of their earliest settlement. It was first expressed in the activities of their communal organizations. The Asians met regularly in the Jamat Khana, the Muslim Association, the Gujarati Samaj, the Marathi Mandal, and other organizations to sing hymns, recite holy verses and produce religious plays. An exception was the Goans, who, because of their Western orien-tation, suffered no religious restraints in their enjoyment of European arts and literature. As early as 1908 there was a Goan Drama Club in Nairobi, and in 1909 the Goan Union of Mombasa was presenting stage performances to audiences as large as three hundred.... Peter Nazareth, East Africa's foremost Asian novelist and literary critic, began essentially as a dramatist. He wrote several plays, the most successful of which before 1975was Brave New Cosmos. A study of the interaction between two African undergraduates and an African teacher, the play was the first by an East African author to be presented by the BBC African Service and was later produced by the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. Two other very successful plays, also written for radio, were The Hospital and X. Set in postcolonial Africa, they focused on the plight of individuals in a society that had little concern for human values. The one portrayed a person condemned to death in a callous, impersonal hospital, and the other described an individual who was increasingly turned into a cipher, conscious that he was being brainwashed at one level but completely unaware that he was also being seriously affected at another Ievel. Nazareth had an outstanding literary career. A Goan, born in Uganda in 1940, he attended the Senior Secondary School in Kampala where he was inspired by Ganesh Bagchi, his teacher. In his senior Cambridge examination Nazareth stood first in Uganda. At Makerere he was one of the founders and first editors of the English Department's magazine Penpoint (later Dhana). He also started the first jazz society and dance band at Makerere and helped begin the university newspaper, The Makererean, for which he was a sports editor. At Makerere he wrote Brave New Cosmos. After taking an English honors degree Nazareth taught school briefly, then moved to England to study and eventually receive a postgraduate diploma in English studies at Leeds University. In England he wrote the other two plays for the BBC. He then followed a typical Goan path by entering the Uganda civil service. For the next seven years he held a post in the Ministry of Finance, but he continued to write, and the publication of a novel led to a fellowship at Yale University.... Despite lack of recognition in the anthologies on East Africa, the Asians' most successful poet in these years was probably Hubert Ribeiro. Unlike the others, he wrote from the beginning as an expatriate in isolation. He was born in 1942 into a well-known Nairobi Goan family. His grandfather was Nairobi's first medical doctor. After local schooling Ribeiro was sent to the Huddersfield College of Technology in Yorkshire, where, inspired by a professor, he developed a keen interest in the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. He then enrolled in Trinity College, Dublin, concentrated on English literature and metaphysics, and took up painting and photography as well as poetry. His plans for an academic career were terminated by tuberculosis, and in 1971 after two operations he returned to Goa to live splendidly but alone in the family's three hundred-year-old home. His first volume of poetry, El Peregrino (The Wanderer), was rejected by an East Africa publisher as not East African. "But I am East African," Ribeiro argued. "My only commitment is to my art." Later he admitted, however, that all his sympathies were A nglo-Irish. "I write for them, not the Africans." The volume was soon published (1971) in California and went through three editions. By 1973 Ribeiro had written poems for two other volumes to be issued under the same title. His work poignantly reflects the mind of a dispossessed Asian who has not yet found happiness in another society. "I have a problem of self-identity," he confided. "I don't fit anywhere!" The following poem, one of his best known, was written three years before the beginning of Idi Amin's rule in Uganda: MOMBASA Think how a flower's martyrdom Adds to the beauty of poinciana Trees, and tell me if a people's Slaughter gives a country glory. For standing on this brilliant shore My mind is vexed with prophecy: Tangles and drifts of dark bodies Turn in the loud waves; others, logged On the sand, await an avenging tongue. But now, only the wind, picking At their delicate garments, sighs. Ribeiro eventually moved to Toronto, where under the pen name Hubert de Santana he wrote several articles, published a book on sports, and interviewed famous personalities for Maclean's. The dramatists Sadru Kassam, Jagiit Singh, and Peter Nazareth also wrote short stories. Two of Kassam's stories were broadcast by Uganda Radio, and Nazareth by 1975 had published even short stories. Another Goan author from Uganda, Lino Leitao, wrote several stories set in East Africa that he included in an anthology, Goan Tales.... ...some Asians did produce books. Peter Nazareth, Bahadur Tejani, and Mahmood Mamdani published novels. Nazareth's In a Brown Mantle is a political study of a Goan who joins Africans in developing a multiracial party but eventually discovers that he has been used, is distrusted as an Asian, and will soon be rejected. Despite the depressing theme, the novel is not an expression of Asian disillusionment. Nazareth intended the audience to be critical of his narrator. A testimony to his understanding of the communal conflict in East Africa is the fact that the novel predicted not only Amin's coup, but also the Asians' expulsion. The novel sold out its first printing and, as mentioned, led to Nazareth's Yale fellowship.... ...Ladis da Silva on Zanzibar described his own East African community in a larger history of the Goans, and Nanji Kalidas Mehta, the Uganda industrialist, John Maximian Nazareth, the Kenya advocate and political leader, and Sophia Mustafa, the Tanzania politician, issued autobiographies. A considerable number of Asians, including Ghai, amdani, Mangat, Motani, Sheriff, Shivji, Tilak Banerjee, F. R. S. de Souza, Visho B. L. Sharma, and Shirin Walji, completed Ph.D. theses in the humanities and social sciences. While many were conspicuousin literaturea nd the performing arts, very few Asians have been noted for achievements in the visual arts. There was no prominent sculptor. Artists from India were commissioned to sculpt the statue of Gandhi in Nairobi and the busts of Allidina Visram and J. B. Pandya in Mombasa. In photography and painting, however, East Africa did produce at least two outstanding artists. John Shamsudin Karmali, the Nairobi Ismaili whose unique multiracial school is discussed in Chapter 9, became one of East Africa's foremost photographers and compiled two extraordinary photographic studies of East African birds. He was honored with a fellowship in Britain's Royal Photographic Society. A . D. Oza, a Uganda Goan, concentrated on painting African peoples and landscapes and is noted for a portrait of Tagore.... FN +91-832-2409490 or +91-9822122436 (after 2pm) #784 Nr Lourdes Convent, Saligao 403511 Goa India http://fn.goa-india.org http://goa1556.goa-india.org