What Did The Portuguese Ever Do For Us?

©Lúcio Mascarenhas, Aug 22, 2004.
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To Ms. Chairmaine Rebelo,

Dear Ma'am,

"What did the Portuguese do for us?" And what should they have done for us, young woman? There is a bad habit among South Asians, a carry over from Brahminical Hinduism, that we are entitled to be coddled and pampered. That is the remains of the Brahmin attitude of social parasitism. How stupid of you to ask!

Of course, the Portuguese did a great lot for us, but I will come to that later.

Repeating slanders against the Portuguese, of the alleged 'atrocities' they perpetrated when they first came to Goa, is not the opposite of ignorance, but is the typification of ignorance. The opposite of ignorance is to get at the truth, and not merely to parrot the lies put forth by the enemy.

It is not true that the Portuguese forced Goans to convert to Christianity; the conversion was voluntary and free, procured by a combination of the good feeling towards the Portuguese, for liberating Goa from the tyranny of the Muslim Sultanate of Bijapur, and by the flood of European missionaries into newly liberated Goa.

Certainly, this popular conversion was followed by an expulsion of the remaining Hindu minority, but that was something they brought upon themselves by their sedition, and again, as I have conclusively proven again and again, this minority was both too insignificant and also parasitical, so that their going was of great moral and material benefit to the remaining Goans.

Again, it is also certainly true that the near en-masse conversion of Goans to Christianity was followed hard on heels with the destruction of the Hindu temples and their replacement by Churches. However, it is stupid to blame the Portuguese for this.

Firstly, it is the law of God that Christian governors should not tolerate demonaria in the lands entrusted to their care, as the Bible so emphatically emphasizes, or that they would be liable to punishment at His hands.

Secondly, these temples were community properties, built by the village-communities when they were Hindus.

Again, do not forget that in most of India, while a small minority converted freely to Hinduism from Buddhism, the vast majority of the population were forced to become Hindu, at sword-point.

Buddhist temples were destroyed to make way for Hindu temples.

Since they were community property, and since no Hindus remained, or if remained, they were too few or a minority, it was right and proper also that the communities demolish them and replace them with churches.

This much should be obvious to even the village idiot. (Santosh Helecar wishes us to believe that he is a greater idiot than we knew, but that is his problem.)

To the believing Christian, and one who reveres the Holy Bible, the Inquisition and its penalization of the contumaciously wayward is something to be proud of. For me, that first age, before the Perversions of the Marquis of Pombal, was the true Golden Age of Goa!

Consider what Pombal did: The missionaries educated Goans and brought them up the world standard. They set up something like three universities, including that of St. Paul, in Goa, besides St. Anne's in Bombay (now the bus stand at Mahim, near St. Michael's), etc. And Pombal, by expelling the Jesuits and religious orders, devastated Goan education and learning, destroyed these universities and set back Goa into the barren darkness. That began Goa's troubles. This expulsion of the religious orders, combined with Pombal's re-admission of the expelled Hindus to, and forced re-settlement of the expelled Hindus in, the Old Conquests, procured the Goan Christians' backslide to paganism, superstition and darkness - a decline checked only by the work of Dom Agnelo Gustavo de Sousa!

Conversion to Christianity does not necessarily entail learning to speak Portuguese and an abandonment of one's native tongue, or to adopt Portuguese names, apparel, diet or customs.

However, in the peculiar case of Goa, that became necessary, when the small minority of hardcore Hindus began to intimidate the converts and to entice them to backslide.

Therefore, the imposition of the Portuguese language, names and customs, and the simultaneous prohibition of pagan practices became both necessary and beneficial.

That is morally irreversible, for to even seek to reverse them is to ratify that what they were adopted to avoid.

[However, as I never tire to point out, any one wishing to return to the vomit and the muck is free to do so. No one compels you to remain Christian. If you believe that your ancestors were forced and compelled to convert, you have a moral obligation to return to the darkness which they came away from. Remaining a Christian for name's sake while you deride and badword Christianity is both dishonest and charlatanry!]

Portugal never colonized Goa, and Goa was never a Portuguese colony. Brazil was the only Portuguese colony. We Goans are not descended, in the main, from Portuguese settlers and colonists in Goa, which would have been the case if Goa had been a Portuguese colony. That is the case, in the main, with Brazil.

It is odd that you repeat unthinkingly the slander that the Goa under the Portuguese was backward or that the Portuguese did little benefit to Goa. You are merely unthinkingly parroting the malicious slanders and libels of the English, who being Protestants and White Racists (which is one and the same thing), despised the Catholic and mixed-race Portuguese (with their admixture of Arab and Berber bloods) and Goans.

Odd, since India itself admits that Goa is the most progressive "part" of the Indian Union.

That, dearie, is the most damning admission, inadvertent though it is, on the part of the Indians. Damning, too, for the English.

Compare what state the English left British India in, and what state the Portuguese left Goa in.

Of course, when making that admission, the Indians did not use their brains, or they would have scrupulously avoided making it, exposing themselves as it does.

Let us then catalog the heritage of the Portuguese.

For one, unlike the Protestants, who, following John Calvin, believed in the innovation and heresy of White Supremacy, the Portuguese, as Catholics, believed in the unity and equality of all mankind, Iberian and Goan Portuguese, white, black, blue, red and green, all descended from the Patriarchs Adam and Noe.

They treated us as being just as human as themselves, and they were never ashamed to marry our sisters and daughters—or, what is far more important, give us their sisters and daughters in marriage.

Secondly, and this too is carrying on from the first, they admitted us to equal worship, for unlike the English with their racism, they treated Goan converts to Catholicism as equal to themselves. That too is something to be grateful for.

Thirdly, and this too carries from that, they fully integrated us into Portuguese society, both civil and ecclesial. Goans held important civil, military and ecclesiastical positions in the Portuguese state: the Goan Custodio do Pinho was de facto Archbishop of Goa during an interregnum, and consecrated the next Archbishop; a Goan even held the position of the Supreme Military Commander of the Portuguese forces!

Imagine a British Indian being appointed Supreme Military Commander of British Empire forces during the Raj! Unthinkable!

Why are the Goans, without any industrial development, so much more progressive socially than the Indians? The credit for that, dear, goes to the Portuguese and only to the Portuguese. That legacy compares rather well as against that the English left to the Indians, eh?

But, again, why is it that Goa has not had any industrial development? Don't blame the Portuguese, dearie, because they are not to blame. There was no significant industrial development in mainland, Iberian Portugual either.

History supplies the reason why. The English and other Protestants are to blame once again.

History will tell you how the Protestants from without the Catholic countries, and their agents, the Freemasons and Anti-Clericals, conspired to keep the Catholic states constantly disturbed by civil wars, with an effort to break them away from Christ and His Church. It is this constant "revolution" that prevented the Catholic countries of the world from developing and competing with the Protestants.

Yet, nevertheless, and even despite the worst mischief of the English, the Goans are intellectually and socially more progressive than the Indians, which is to the credit of the Portuguese, and of the Portuguese alone!

Yet you are ungrateful and go on brainlessly badmouthing them!

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Why do you blame the Portuguese for "destroying" the sense of Pre-Portuguese Goan history? Did they manage to get control of the entire Indian sub-continent? What of the Hindus who were expelled from Goa? Why did they not have written accounts of pre-Portuguese Goan history?

Don't blame the Portuguese for a crime they never committed.

There was no proper local records of history anywhere in the Indian sub-continent with the exception of Kashmir. The Hindus only believed in keeping falsified, mythological versions of history, glorifying their 'gods' and providing opportunities to ratify their sexual and economic immoralities. It is this near-universal tendency not to keep true history that prevented a proper history of Goa before the advent of the Portuguese, and not some non-existent action by the Portuguese to destroy prior Goan historical records, documents and monuments!

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Learning from their ancestors—parasitical Brahmins who always whine that the world owes them a living, and that they do not have to work for their bread, some Goans whine that the Portuguese did nothing for them.

This is even today, typically Indian. The Indian Union's newspapers are full of whines and tantrums thrown by present or ex-celebrities or public figures, or civil servants, etc., whining of the sad economic or social state that they have fallen to, and expecting the People of India to always carry them to the Public Breast, milk-feeding them!

Instead of being grateful for the opportunities that the people have provided them, and being self-reliant, they act as if they have some kind of Divine Right to suckle at the Public Breast for eternity, and even to pass on that "privilege" to their progenies!

This is the carry-over of Brahminism, of Brahminical parasitism!

But what is it that these whining Goans expected from Mother Portugal? That she carry them around, fully grown, keeping them to the breast?

Is it not that a grown up and intellectually well developed people ought to be ashamed of such an attitude?

These Goans give the rest of us Goans a bad name, what with their contemptible, parasitical whining!

Loyal Goans, like your parents, on the contrary, who, despite your fond self-delusion, are much more rational and sober than you, never whined and begged for scraps; on the contrary, they put their shoulders to the wheels of state, alongside their brethren from the rest of Greater Portugal and worked and sweated for their bread, alongside them.

Goan pioneers helped open and secure Portuguese Africa and even so in the Indian sub-continent, where Goans and white Portuguese found eager market for their military skills, until the English, with their "Subsidiary System" excluded the Goans and Portuguese from the military services of the native princes!

The Portuguese admitted Goans on an equal footing and made of us a martial race; in contrast, the English degraded us to menials!

The only use the racist English could find for the Goans was that of butlers, footmen and peons!

Don't blame the Portuguese for our present sad state; lay the blame where blame is due—at the door of the White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants!

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More of that brainlessness is exhibited by the callous, unthinking repetition of the Indianist lie that Goans are Indians. Certainly, we are by race Indians, or more precisely, Indic, but then so are also the Pakis, and Afghans, and Bangladeshis, and Ceylonese, and others. British and Portuguese Indias were only two of the political entities that lay in the far more extensive East Indies, which also includes the former Dutch India, now Indonesia, and Spanish India, now the Philippines.

It is ironical that the "Irredentism" of the Indian Union could only extend to the enclaves of French and Portuguese India, and not to Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon, etc. which were but recently separated from it, and which were separated for admittedly inadmissible reasons.

It is ironical that the Indian Union frantically avers that it has no ambition to recover these lands, but that she has imposed herself, without the leave of its people, upon the enclaves of Portuguese India!

India's claims upon Goa does not have any true moral basis, whether in irredentism or anything else. Its claims are based solely and absolutely upon land lust, land grab, robbery and rape of a weak and defenceless neighbour.

Politically, we, Goa (a term that includes Dadra, Nagar-Aveli, Damao, Dio and Anjediva), are lawfully and integrally and inseparably a part of Greater Portugal—even the people of Iberian Portugal, despite their secession from Greater Portugal, and despite their laughable "treaty" with the Indian Union, "recognizing" Indian occupation, cannot alienate and exclude us—Goa—from the legal and social Community of the Greater Portuguese State. We were historically freely admitted to Portugal and we freely accepted that admission, and this integration is now long irreversible. Greater Portugal is a non-contiguous state, embracing a free and voluntary community composed of different races and of people inhabitating non-contiguous territories.

Such a concept (of a non-contiguous yet socially integral political community) would be impossible for the English, given their racial consciousness. But the very Catholicism and anti-racialism (which are one and the same thing) of the Portuguese made that possible.

Your parents have the right idea. You have no reason except in stupidity and ignorance to look askance at their loyalty to Portugal. It is you that is aberrant and it is you that needs to correct yourself, to overcome your ignorance and the induced anti-Goan, anti-Portuguese propaganda of the Protestants and English, which they have subtly induced into you.

Return to your roots, young woman!


Lúcio Mascarenhas

What did the Portuguese ever do for us?

This summer will be memorable for me because of one event: Euro 2004. Patriotism overcomes the country as we get excited—maybe overly so—at the idea that England may actually win this time! For someone who can be cynical about the country I was born and raised in, I surprise myself by how much I get caught up in this feeling.

Imagine my dismay then when during extra time of the tense, all-important game between England and Portugal my mum enters the room and starts cheering on Portugal! All right, before—and after—they played each other I was giving silent support to Portugal, but how interesting that my mum showed more affinity with Portugal than with England. Why? Well, we're Goans. It's not just our surnames that are Portuguese; Goan music, food, art and customs are undeniably Portuguese influenced. In short, many of our parents' generation consider themselves as Portuguese as they are Goan. My dad sings along to the Portuguese national anthem. Doesn't that say it all?

Although I also have this affinity with Portugal, I feel we're guilty of ignorance here. Have we forgotten that the Portuguese were once our colonisers? That once upon a time they landed on Goan shores and forced our ancestors to convert to their religion and imposed their own customs on them, with a concerted attempt to strip them of their own. This wasn't a 'would you like to come to our church service?' kind of conversion but went along the lines of: destroy their temples and threaten/ punish/ torture/ kill 'em!

Although that took place many moons ago, over the 400 odd years we had them the Portuguese were pretty lousy, as colonisers go. Although Goa became a prosperous trade capital, this soon diminished and by the time Portugal was forced to give their colony up, it was evident the area was lacking in investment.

The result of this is that Goa remains startlingly underdeveloped compared to neighbouring states. Much of our history pre-Portuguese has also been lost. Goans don't call themselves Indian even though Indian elements have survived in Goan culture and we have also been part of India for around thirty years. We need to be realistic though—Goans are Indian. We may be different from Gujratis or Sikhs, but India is diverse enough to include us as one of its own. At the same time, it's understandable to identify ourselves with Portugal. Let's just not forget why we do so.


Charmian Rebel

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