Portuguese Empire Over Goa
©Prakash John Mascarenhas. Bombay, India. 22nd August 2003. This page is copyright.
The tendency to seek and hold empires is an ancient habit of man. Portugal, which had been invaded and occupied by the Arab Muslims shortly after the inaugeration of Islam, fought and obtained its liberty and then set out to further pursue the same agenda against the Empire of Islam. That course brought it to Goa, which it liberated, at the urgent requests from the Goans, from the Muslim kingdom of Bijapur.
Having liberated Goa, Portugal next set out to impart Christianity to the Goans — successfully, as the vast majority of Goans became favourable and embraced Christianity, though a small minority sought to create trouble and were expelled for their troubles.
Portugal never made Goa a Portuguese colony. A colony is a territory whose original inhabitants are displaced and replaced by a new people of a different race and ethnic group, the colonists. We can easily understand that concept: Brazil was a Portuguese colony, Quebec was a French colony, New England an English colony, South Africa Dutch, Edo-Hokkaido Japanese. On the contrary, Goa was merely a dependency.
In the history of the Greeks, which is a classic of anthropology, we see the phenomena of city-states sending out colonists and founding colonies. However, these colonies were not dependencies of the mother-state, the metropolis, but were independent republics in their own rights.
However, when the Europeans, following the Renaissance, began to sail the seas and found empires and colonies, they did not stay true to the ancient Greek tradition of the colonies being permitted to go their own way when they had matured, but sought to keep them continously under the domination of the founding or ruling state, the Metropole.
This was unnatural and injurious to the development of these communities as mature human societies.
As a result, these dependencies and colonies were forced to take to arms in order to overthrow the Metropolitan political domination and achieve independence.
And this natural movement for seeking freedom and recognition and a place in the community of mankind as rightfully sovereign peoples and states, was even more naturally taken advantage of by unsavoury characters - antisocial elements and those who wished to overthrow the prevalent social order.
This was the fate of Goa also.
It was good that Portugal liberated Goa from Islam, in the political sphere. It was also good that Portugal imparted us the Gospel of Christ, freeing us from the slavery to Satan that was ours for millenia, in the spiritual and cultural spheres. And for this I am unabashedly grateful.
But the Portuguese had an obligation further to aid us to stand on our own feet and set us free to pursue our own course. That they refused to do, and that was and is wrong.
It is astonishing how emotional a people can be when confronted with the prospect of being ruled by others and yet consider with a dead equi-animity the prospect of ruling others!
The Portuguese were not too happy to be ruled by the Muslim Arabs and fought long and hard for liberation. And when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded, they fought in alliance with all his enemies to overthrow his empire and regain their freedom. And yet so callously did they insist upon imposing themselves upon Goans and on others!
Portugal, soon after it won its empire in Asia, was confronted by the Dutch Calvinists out to wreck havoc on the Catholic Powers. Portugal lost many territories and compromised with Protestant England in order to survive against the Dutch and also against the betrayed Spanish. And then, having managed to fend off the threat to its empire, Portugal gathered together its hostages of empire and spreading its ample and matronly skirts over them, it proceeded to sit down upon and insist upon hatching them to maturity indefinitely.
Thereby, Goa, among other victims of Portugal's refusal to act sanely, was stultified in its development. With the result that the Protestant English found it easy to tap into Goan discontent by giving them an opening for progress by serving the British Empire. This brought with it a subtle programming against Catholic values, against Goa and Portugal.
This programming created a bastard race of brain-dead zombies who were cued to jump to the orders first of their English masters and then to the Hindu baboos to whom the English bequeathed their Indian empire.
But I do not blame the English — or the Indians, so much, for our plight, as much as I find the Portuguese culpable. They, the Portuguese, have used us to satiate their ego for empire and have callously washed their hands off us when we are no more of any use to them.
They have callously covenanted with the invading Hindu baboos of the British Empire to surrender Goa without so much as consulting us Goans.
That is adding insult to injury.
We were not Portuguese. We are not Portuguese. We were and are Goans. Portugal took upon itself the responsibility to create and mold us, our psyche, and brought us into existence, into this world. And yet Portugal has treated us like an adopted orphan, a Posko for which it has no enthusiasm.
To salve its conscience, Portugal goes under the motions of gifting us the doubtful privilege or rather alms of Portuguese citizenships — without vindicating our injured honour — if we will only consent to beg and humiliate ourselves for these alms and make a spectacle of ourselves for their amusement and sport, and if we can, after doing a lot of gymnastics and overcome each and every obstacle that every Portuguese administration has, since 1974, so enthusiastically put in our way, still persevere and reach the objective.
That "negative enthusiasm" is in sharp contrast to the markedly positive enthusiasm that Portugal demonstrates in welcoming and bending all the rules to do so, the monied Hindu baboo who is willing to purchase Portuguese citizenship or fabricate a Goan identity.
Therefore, it is — or should be evident that more than anybody, more than the Indians or anybody else, we must take Portugal to task.
However, even if Portugal should have been honest and upfront in according us Portuguese citizenships, it would not be of benefit to us. That is because it is not in our interests or the interests of Goa that we, the Goan Christians should abandon Mother Goa to the uncouth barbarous boors and philistines who have swept over her, who contaminate and pollute her with their presence, but that we should preserve and rally to her, defend her and purge our holy land of these.
Instead of awarding us or gifting us Portuguese citizenship, which is not what we and Goa needs, Portugal has the obligation of fulfiling its duty towards us and to Goa, to bring us to liberty. That is Portugal has these clear obligations:
Portugal not only refused to perform its moral and Christian obligations towards us — it persists in doing so.
Therefore, I say, let us not be under any mistaken and deluded notion that we owe Portugal any obligation or duty. Let us not be under any mistaken and deluded notion that we are or ought to be Portuguese.
Let us be true to ourselves and to our own manifest destiny as Goans, in recognizing that not only are the Indians our enemies, but also that Portugal has betrayed us and refuses to resume its duties towards us and fulfil them.
That obstinate and contumacious refusal is in sharp contrast to Portugal's desperate efforts — bordering on the veritably and distinctly ridiculous — in the matter of East Timor.
That refusal is in contrast to England's behaviour towards Ian Smith's Rhodesia, with its Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in order to avoid black majority rule.
I would remind you that England sought continuously to mediate and solve the festering problem there, to fulfil its responsibilities. And finally, when a solution was agreed upon, it was on the basis that the UDI be negated, that England should resume its overlordship over Rhodesia and conduct a universal referendum or plebiscite to arrive at a popular government.
This, clearly, ought to be Portugal's course. This, equally clear, is what Portugal refuses to do. On the contrary, Portugal has not only refused to complete its obligations, it has actually stabbed us in the back, aggravating its crimes by formally covenanting with the invaders and robbers to "legitimize" the invasion and occupation of Goa, and that without even the pretended courtesy of a Goan consultation and plebiscite.
I will therefore ask to be excused and excluded from the requirement of brainlessly chest-thumping and or cheerleading for the Portuguese Empire over Goa, whether past or future. I want nothing of it.
As I said, and this should be obvious to one and all, we Goans, for all the part that Portugal played in bringing us into existence as a Christian people, are definitely not Portuguese nor ever were, and it is not in our interest to be or to pretend to be.
Once we get this fact right, we can proceed without any unnecessary intellectual baggage to work to end the occupation of Goa, to chastise the invaders and to bring the traitors and collaborators - not excluding Mr. Mario Soares - to book.
This, and this alone, should be on our minds.
If Portugal wishes to have a relationship with us, it is for them to prove themselves, that they have reformed, and that they respect us as a distinct people, formed by the Portuguese but not Portuguese. If Portugal wants us to be friends, then it must earn our respect. Let us not be deluded by any foolish emotionalism or nostalgia over this.
Our future is in our own hands. No one, not the Portuguese or anyone else can or will make it for us. We will need to earn our freedom, fight our own wars.
Portugal and its empire is our past. A free, sovereign Goa is our future.