Bombay Goans: Exercising Old Ghosts

©Prax Maskaren. 8^th April 2003.
Portugal came to the East to outflank the Muslims and to project further the Crusades-inspired Reconquests. However, soon after Portugal had come out East and had seized its beach-heads, the Dutch began their protestantism-inspired war against Spain in order to gain independence and to attack the Christian religion. Unfortunately for Portugal, at this time, it's own dynasty had died out and they had been reduced to adopting the Spanish king as their king. Therefore, the Portuguese too suffered from the depradations of the Calvinist Dutch.

Portugal gathered us with matronly concern under its ample skirts and sat down upon us.

Thus it stultified and retarded our social and cultural development and evolution into self-governing states and peoples in reasonable time.
The Portuguese lost very many of their territories to the Dutch and to others who had been instigated and aided by the Dutch. It was with great difficulty that they held on to Goa.

In order to distinguish themselves from the Spaniards, the Portuguese seceded from the Spanish Crown and elected their own king. This sparked off a long and bloody war between the Spanish and the Portuguese. And in order to secure themselves from the Dutch and the Spanish, the Portuguese treated with and allied with the English protestants for mutual security.

Having warded off the threats to the remnants of their empire, Portugal settled down comfortably and went to sleep on top of us, the Goans and others whom they ruled. Portugal gathered us with matronly concern under its ample skirts and sat down upon us. Portugal gathered us into its embrace to prevent us from flying the nest, ostensibly from a genuine concern for us. Thus it stultified and retarded our social and cultural development and evolution into self-governing states and peoples in reasonable time.

More than anything else, it is this that is ultimately responsible for the predicament that we presently find ourselves in. The Indian Union would have scarcely had the gumption to invade and occupy us if we had been an independent or even a fully autonomous state.

At the same time, as the Portuguese comfortably slumbered on, sitting on their laurels, the English raced ahead and seized the bulk of the Indian Sub-Continent.

And this maltreatment and negligence at the hands of the heavy-handed Portuguese alienated the naturally-restive Goans, who were forced to look to the English and their empire for employment, etc. The Napoleonic Wars gave the English the perfect opportunity to meddle in Goan affairs and to begin the process of subverting Goans, their faith and their culture. They also co-opted Goans into the machinery of ruling their empire, by giving them crumbs off their tables and co-opting the Goans to be their subalterns.

Goans already served in Mahratta and other Indian armies, and were recruited by the English. Goans formed an important element of the machinery of British East Africa.

The Church too had to face a piquant situation. During the heydays of the Portuguese empire and expansionism, the Church had made agreements with the Portuguese by which they were granted the privileges of maintaining the Church in the East Indies, at their costs.

However, when the English came to predominate the Sub-Continent, and in their protestant zeal to harm Christianity, began to commit mischief, the Church was forced to disregard these agreements, which Portugal had failed to uphold by failing to maintain its political predominance in the East Indies, and to appoint bishops and missionaries directly, in order to protect the flock from the heretics.

Now, since the Church did not have state-support of the Protestant English, it was forced to make some compromises which mainly consisted in not denouncing and in avoiding rubbing the English the wrong way or taking cognisance of its various wrongdoings. At the same time, this also bred an undercurrent of resentment against the English, and which blinded the Goans to the dangers of cooperating with the Indians in their drive for independence.

Many in the laity, who looked to the Church for guidance, saw this spirit of political submission and mistook it for the correct attitude and adopted it.

Moreover, because they were not taught otherwise, and could not be taught otherwise with the English watching, they were taught by the English to think in line with what the English wanted them to think and to reason in the manner that the English wanted them to reason.

I call this Anglicanitis.

This Anglicanitis is demonstrated by the thoughtless mimicking of English habits,
Anglicanitis is... the thoughtless mimicking of English habits, customs and even adoption of the English language to replace our native Konkani, and in general, contempt and derogation of all things native.
customs and even adoption of the English language to replace our native Konkani, and in general, contempt and derogation of all things native. The Goans settled down and employed familiarly by the English, and who were made part of the Imperial System of Governance by being co-opted as subalterns, came to despise all things Goan and Portuguese and to worship all things English.

They not only mimicked English custom, habits, dress, diet, etc., but they also began to follow English customs of giving personal names, in place of the Portuguese language Catholic saint's names that they customarily followed. (I would have much preferred to have been christened Luciano rather than the equivalent Prakash, or even better, Raymond for my birthday saint, but for a relative who was infected with Indianitis. Only my eldest brother escaped him, and has a triple barrel Portuguese name I envy: Agnelo Venancio Xavier)

Names like Erhlich, Clifford, etc., that sound straight out of a Mills & Boon novel; high sounding English and German Lutheran and American names or even more horrifying, actual English and German surnames as first names!

The natural development of this disease Anglicanitis was Indianitis — a sub-species. These emigres came to be hypnotized by anti-Christian ideologies prevalent in England and the Continent and as a result to be swept up in the mythology of Indian nationalism with which they came to enthusiastically and unthinkingly identify themselves. They fought shoulder to shoulder alongside the British Indians to gain independence for British India, and they continued that by fighting alongsides the same British Indians to occupy the EIP's outlying districts, Dadra & Nagar-Avelim, in 1954; Lambert and Telo Mascarenhas, etc.

Others of these lobotomized traitors played a significant part in the further crimes of 1961: Erhlich Pinto, who committed acts of terrorism in Goa against the Goan Radio Station, and Laura, etc.

Thus the tragedy that has overcome us.

Today, in fighting to end the Occupation, we need to consciously fight against these monsters Anglicanitis and Indianitis and to exorcise them.

This is not so difficult a task.

These diseases have no firm foundations - they have no solid ideological, intellectual roots. It is not intelligent men, original thinkers who allowed themselves to be overrun by these foolishnesses, but the unthinking ones, prone to intellectual laziness.
These diseases have no firm foundations - they have no solid ideological, intellectual roots. It is not intelligent men, original thinkers who allowed themselves to be overrun by these foolishnesses, but the unthinking ones, prone to intellectual laziness. And therefore, it is not difficult to uproot these disease parasites from Goan minds.

However, it is necessary to make a conscious effort at uprooting these parasites. Too many people are intellectually too lazy to think and to apply their minds, and today, because of this intellectual laziness, these parasites have come to dominate Goan minds, not only of expatriates in the Indian Union, but also of Goans in Goa. Therefore Goans must be forced, coerced challenged and stimulated into using their brains to think and to think out the deaths of these (non-creedal) heresies. That is the first step in our liberation.

Prax Maskaren, Bombay.