This article serves as a response to Sir Andrew
Green’s comment on the alleged misuse of Portuguese citizenship by Indian
nationals of Goan origin whom the Daily
Star and the Daily Mail have
characterized as immigrants who travel to Great Britain to take advantage of
it. Green’s perspective from a few months ago mirrors prevalent xenophobic views
on the rights of immigrants to Europe; hence, the counterpoint offered here
hopes to challenge such bias as it will surely continue to be expressed.
On 13 May, 2013, the Goan Ethernet was aflame with outrage at
statements made by Sir Andrew Green, chairperson of Migration Watch, and carried
in the Daily Star and the Daily Mail. The Daily Star reported, “An Indian national from Goa can obtain
Portuguese citizenship if their parents were Portuguese citizens prior to
1961,” and quoted Green as
saying, “They can then move straight to the UK with their family. On arrival
they can avail themselves, immediately, of all the benefits available to UK
citizens.” The Daily Mail seems to
have been spurred on by Green’s statement, going on to claim that “[a] number
of Indian nationals from the former Portuguese territory of Goa are thought to
have taken advantage of the loophole. Indians living in Goa can claim they have
Portuguese heritage and so claim Portuguese citizenship. They can then move
directly to Britain - without ever having to visit Portugal - and bring a
family without meeting any qualification test.”
Given the manner
in which the matter regarding Goan access to Portuguese citizenship has been
reported in the British press, as academics studying Goa and the Goan
community, we believe that there is a need to redress such misrepresentations
and firmly call out, not only the wilful amnesia about Britain’s imperial past,
but also the Anglo-centric interpretation of colonialism, the post-colonial,
and de-colonised world order that motivates such representations. In so doing,
our aim is to address not merely a need for Goans and others of former
Portuguese India to assert the legitimacy of their actions, but to also enable
a view of the global order from a position that is more respectful of the
formerly colonised.
Addressing the
aforementioned inherently Anglo-centric bias of the colonial and post-colonial
context requires commencing with a review of the Western European encounter
with South Asia. This engagement traces back to the late 15th
century with the Portuguese “discovery” of the sea-route to the fabled Indies.
It resulted in the establishment of what came to be known as Estado da Índia Portuguesa, or the
Portuguese State in India, which was centred in Goa in 1510. The boundaries of
Portuguese India, which extended to other enclaves beyond Goa were firmly fixed
only in the 18th century in the face of contestation with, not just
local, but other European powers as well. As a result of this early entry into
South Asia, by the time the British departed from the subcontinent upon handing
over power to two nation-states - India and Pakistan - the Portuguese State in
India would outlast their English counterparts and have existed for approximately
450 years. This Portuguese state was markedly different from the one that the
British had created in the course of their time in the subcontinent. Most
significant, for the misrepresentations that we seek to correct, was the fact
that through the length of its presence in the subcontinent, the Portuguese state
attempted to recognise natives as citizens, or bearers of rights equal to those
of persons from the metropole. As a consequence, Goa was represented by
non-white parliamentary representatives from 1834 when the declaration of the
constitutional monarchy in Portugal created the space for a national parliament.
These rights were extended universally in 1910 with the commencement of the
First Portuguese Republic, only to be eclipsed somewhat during the course of
the dictatorial Estado Novo, or New
State, headed by Dr. António Oliveira Salazar. Nonetheless, the rhetoric of
equality was firmly established and constantly referred to by Portuguese
Indians, whether living in Goa, or as migrants to British India or, indeed,
British East Africa where many Goans lived and worked, as bearers of Portuguese
citizenship. Within this colonial framework, even if only in legal theory,
racial and cultural difference was in fact surmountable.
This situation
was certainly different from that existent in British India, or in any other
part of the British Empire for that matter, where the only status enjoyed by
the natives was as that of subjects
of the British crown. As a result, one could argue that it was the failure of
the British state to extend the much coveted status of imperial citizen to the
comprador British Indian elites that caused members of that echelon to then set
up their claim for independence from the Crown. The nationalist claims that
these elites initiated rested on the creation of a national culture that
accepted the racial and other differences that the British colonial system enforced.
This situation ensured that extant differences were perpetuated rather than
challenged.
The Portuguese
State in India came to a definitive close with the actions of the Indian state
in 1961, when the
Indian armed forces invaded the Portuguese territory of Goa. While
an anti-colonial movement was afoot in the region, the eventual decolonisation
of Goa cannot be said to have resulted primarily from the anti-imperialist
movements of its own soil due to the military intervention of the Indian state and
its subsequent denial of the right of self-determination to the Goan populace.
Additionally, in an imperialist act that was echoed in the newly independent
nation’s actions in Kashmir and the north-east of the country, the formerly
British India unilaterally integrated the territory of Goa into itself. If
India was able to get away with this, it was because the developing
post-colonial order was awash in racist and ethnocentric perspectives
engendered to a large degree by British colonial practices. These were
predicated on the assumption that territorial contiguity and the presence of
the Hindu religion across the geographic expanse, though not exclusively or
without diversity, gave India ample right to take over marginal territories
such as Goa and Kashmir.
The significant
fact that the Goan people were legally
Portuguese citizens was given short shrift and eclipsed by an act of the Indian
parliament that bestowed on them Indian citizenship. Hindered by an effectively
xenophobic understanding of Indian-ness, and its relationship with the
countries that surround it, in contrast to many other legal regimes, the Indian
state does not permit its citizens to
hold multiple nationalities. Therein, unlike British Indian subjects, in being
made a part of the Indian state, Goans and other Portuguese Indians lost their Portuguese
citizenship, and the ability to be both South Asian and European, only to have
Indian citizenship thrust upon them, and be fixed as solely Indian.
It was only
subsequent to the normalization of relations between India and Portugal that a
number of former citizens of the Portuguese State of India were able to reclaim
their Portuguese citizenship. It is precisely because of the unfounded
allegations of the Daily Mail that it
should be stressed that these Portuguese Indians are not petitioning for new citizenship,
nor exploiting a loophole. What they are doing is reclaiming a legitimate right
that was lost owing to the actions of the Indian state. There is no need for
them to prove their Portuguese character as the Daily Mail suggests, for their parents, if not they themselves,
were Portuguese, and 450 years of Goa being a part of Portugal has made those Goans
as Portuguese as any other person in continental Europe who holds Portuguese
citizenship. The Daily Mail’s claim
is profoundly offensive since it is based on the racist assumption that only
Caucasians can be Portuguese and European. This assumption is of course
buttressed by the fact that the colonial practices of states like Britain
considered only whites to be properly British or European.
The British nation’s
historical record when it comes to matters of who is deemed British enough is a
controversial one. Note that in the 1960s and 70s, the aftermath of decolonisation
in East Africa and Africanisation policies, emergent from impoverishment due to
colonisation, saw the vilification and expulsion of Asians who were then denied
entry to the United Kingdom despite being holders of UK passports as
colonial
subjects. In 1972, when 50,000 Asians were expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin,
the very notion of the Commonwealth was proven to be one in name only because,
by 1968, the right of colonial-era UK passport holders to enter Britain had
been withdrawn in response to an increase in economically induced out-migration
from Kenya in 1967. It is important to stress here that not only were Asians –
Goans included – in East African countries because the British administration
of those colonies had recruited them, but also that their labour had benefitted
the Empire. Goans were given British subjecthood to serve the colonial administration
in many cases. In so much as Goans were nominally British, their UK passports
served more as travel documents than a guarantee of citizenship rights, as
became painfully evident in the post-colonial period. While Goans and other
colonised groups had been British “enough” to serve the regime, it became
apparent that was no longer the case once their usefulness had been outlived.
This was a profound abdication of national
and legal responsibility, not least for the
racialised political climate induced by years of British colonial rule in
Africa. In fact, the colonial legacy continues to reveal itself as is the case
with the revelation this year of the destruction of records relating to violent
and deadly atrocities committed against Kenya’s Mau Maus who rebelled against
British rule.
For all the
problems that Portuguese colonialism produced, and the racism that accompanied
it, what must be underscored is that it is also differentiated by the legal
rhetoric that recognised, and continues to recognise, the multiple groups
outside of Portugal as equally Portuguese. Thus, the Portuguese Indians who
recover their Portuguese citizenship and then migrate, not merely to Britain
but across the world, trace a path similar to other Portuguese nationals who
are currently in flight from a Portugal laid low by the European
crisis. Portuguese
legal history and flows of migration are often ignored by the largely
Anglo-centric understanding of the world. The recognition of the Lusitanian
milieu allows for a reconstruction of European-ness outside of the racist
frameworks that currently delimit it.
It
permits a corrective to the manner in which the post-colonial world was
constructed along racist lines, restricting the ability of persons to freely
move internationally. While white privilege has ensured an ease of travel for
some, the accompanying racism leads to the outcries as evidenced in the reports
by the
Daily Star and
Daily Mail, as well as the ritual
humiliations of non-white travellers at embassies, consulates, and immigration
check-points globally. In challenging this racism that underlies the statement
attributed to Sir Andrew Green, there is also an option opened up for Europe
wherein the racism that undergirds the European project can be challenged, and
in re-understanding the flows of capital and populations that have contributed
to European hegemony today, the current crisis can be utilised as a way to
reimagine the European Union’s association with the world outside itself and as
the product of its own history.
Seeking a sense
of familiarity, I followed the spice route – or at least the fragrance of
spices – in the narrow hallways of the building in which I was rooming and
arrived at a tiny Indian eating place. It was so nondescript, it could not even
be called a restaurant. Mostly incongruous because it was nestled in a
skyscraper, it fit right in with the other eateries and little guest houses
crammed into the many floors of the building. Throughout this Kowloon landmark,
backpackers, entrepreneurs, and clients from across the globe made up its
hustle and bustle. Infamously captured in a Wong Kar Wai film, the ground floor
shopping area had been reduced to nothing more than a seedy underworld. There
was much comfort to be had in this world within, ensconced as I was among these
fellow migrants of similar hue. It was the best Indian meal I have ever eaten.
True, I do not even recall, now, what the dish was. All that mattered was that
it was eye-wateringly pungent and that the South Indian waiter, who nodded a
welcome, had filled my plate with more food than that of any of the other patrons
there. 
Nearly twenty
years on, at a dessert cafe in a back alley that can only be described as a
hipster paradise because we are seated by the side of trashcans and the weekend
crowd we are engulfed in would not have frequented this neighbourhood in times
past, I tell the people I am with that I had been to the now-Chinese territory
before. They are a group of expatriate architects that I meet because of the
conference I am attending in Hong Kong. “I’m sorry,” one of them scoffs when I
say the name of the place where I had resided. He recapitulates quickly upon
not receiving the reaction he had expected. “They’ve cleaned it up lots, I
believe,” he equivocates. 
