On
the 500th anniversary of Afonso de Albuquerque’s death, how does his
conquest of Goa serve as a metaphor of the complexities of Goan and Portuguese
identities?
At a recent conference presentation
where I considered the differences between Portuguese and British
colonisations, a member of the audience insisted that such nuances were
negligible. It struck me that, in raising this concern, my interlocutor had
been focused exclusively on the role played by the colonisers, completely
eschewing any consideration of how the colonised might have exercised power
within colonial systems. For instance, I explained, Goans travelled between
Portuguese and British India, most notably in the nineteenth century, in
pursuit of employment opportunities, and then to other parts of the British
Empire for the same reason. Often, these Goan travellers, generally Catholic,
parlayed their Portuguese colonial identity as cultural currency, having been
set apart from other South Asians in such multicultural locations as British
East Africa. That Goans were then slotted into and partook of a racialised
system that disprivileged black Africans is also important to note, as is the
fact that the Portuguese supported the distinction drawn between Goans and other
South Asians in the British colonies, particularly as decolonisation movements
ramped up in the twentieth century. Indeed, as we approach the 500th
anniversary of the death of Afonso de Albuquerque, who perished at sea near Goa
on 15 December, 1515, it is useful to think about how this Portuguese figure
influenced the ways in which Goans and Lusitans would come to be defined for
half a millennium.
For instance, examining de Albuquerque’s
legacy reveals that the making of Catholic Goanness began, not with groups that
we would now refer to as Hindu, but with Muslim women. Upon his defeat of Adil
Shah, ruler of Goa in 1510, de Albuquerque had the widows of the deposed king’s
soldiers baptised, whereupon they were married to the various members of the
Portuguese fleet. Historians have commented on the colonial pragmatism of this
move, which was meant to instantiate a new ‘race’ – an intermediary between distant
Portugal and the Indies. And even as de Albuquerque hoped that his Politica dos Casmentos (a law
promulgating mixed marriages) would create a white race in Goa that would expand
Portuguese power in Asia, this racial fantasy had as much to do with remaking
Portugueseness as it did with establishing Goanness.
Because the Portuguese had been reigned
by the Moors for some 700 years – rulers who had only been ousted a short
period before the Iberians began to explore the sea routes to Africa and Asia –
the conquest of Goa, whose potentate, like the Moors, happened to be Muslim,
functioned as a retroactive avengement of Portugal’s occupation by that race. Yet, this conquest also provided the
possibility of remaking whiteness. Iberia – Spain and Portugal – in having been
a former Moorish enclave, could not and cannot forego a history of being
marked, culturally or racially, even after the conquerors’ exit. The creation
of a new state allowed for the making of new laws and, therein, generated the
potential to remake the European self by creating a new Indo-Portuguese breed
in Goa.
Nonetheless,
this attempt to recast whiteness through miscegeny would inherently bear
witness to the impossibility of purity. Reimaging the miscegenated identity of
the first Indo-Portuguese as an authentic reflection of Portugueseness remade
Goan and Portuguese identities. In
effect, it established a global Portuguese identity in a new world order. Additionally,
inculcating Catholicism beyond Iberia’s shores, would not only lead to the
localisation of that faith, but also the creation of Europeanness outside
Europe through non-white bodies. It should thus be noted that even as the
Portuguese tried to check Islam during the Age of Discoveries, their conquest
of Goa may have limited the rule of Adil Shah, but did not succeed in wiping
out the presence of Muslims in the soon-to-be colony. Rather, by favouring the
Muslim widows because of the lightness of their skin, de Albuquerque’s conversion
of them to Catholicism inadvertently guaranteed that their bloodline would be
part of the founding of Portuguese India and, moreover, that this heritage would
be protected and perpetuated under his aegis.
It
is evident even from his name, an Arabic derived one, that de Albuquere’s
family’s legacy was, at least culturally, influenced by the rule of the Moors
in Iberia. Five hundred years later, in recalling his time in Goa, it serves as
a reminder of the complexity of identity in the region and the need to question
origin myths as claims of purity.
From The Goan.
