"Authenticity" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (15 June 2013)

I recently attended a Siddi wedding in Yellapur, a town located in Karnataka, a couple of hours away from that state’s border with Goa. Witnessing the wedding traditions being celebrated, what became apparent to guests in attendance from Goa was the congruence between this African Indian community’s customs and their own. Additionally, the Catholic nuptial mass was conducted in Konkani, which is not entirely unusual, since the language is spoken in Karnataka, too. The priest that officiated the wedding said that he had familiarized himself with the vernacular of his predominantly Siddi congregation, and that it was a pidgin form of Konkani with elements of Kannada. This prompted a conversation among the Goan wedding guests who began discussing what the most authentic form of spoken Konkani is. It struck me that what was being considered while guised as a debate about the purity of linguistic expression - itself troubling because it participates in a politics of casteist hierarchies and exclusionary difference - was whether there might be an authentic connection between Siddis and Goans that went beyond language and culture.

That the Portuguese enslaved Africans and transported them to Goa in the Early Modern period has been documented, as well as the subsequent flight of these slaves to neighbouring Karnataka, outside the Portuguese Indian realm. There, they formed communities that continue to exist. “With Cultural Strings Attached,” an article in last week’s The Goan, chronicles the existence of other geographic communities of Siddis – an identification given to all Indian groups of African origin regardless of their lack of historical connections to one another. In the article, Ammu Kannampilly notes that “since 1956, [Siddis] have been the beneficiaries of affirmative action policies in India. The Sports Authority of India (SAI) even launched a special Olympics training centre in Gujarat in 1987, in an attempt to capitalise on the athleticism of the African-origin [people].” Not much more need be said about the inherent racism of this alleged “affirmative action” effort, which presses stereotypical notions of racial ability into specialised labour for the benefit of the multicultural nation. What is also telling is that after centuries, Siddis continue to be looked upon and classified by the State as not authentically Indian. By this I do not simply mean that Siddis have been acculturated as Indians, but that they are also biologically so after having been in the Indian subcontinent for several generations. 

In Routes (1997), James Clifford explains that “multilocale diaspora cultures” have the ability to “connect multiple communities of a dispersed population.” In the Goan context, its most readily identified diasporic communities are the ones in East Africa, the Middle East, Britain, and even Bombay. Their global dispersal notwithstanding, what connects these multilocale diaspora cultures, among other elements, is the commonality of ethnicity. If members of these diaspora locations are culturally hailed as Goans despite their distance from the homeland, then the absence of Siddis in the Goan cultural imagination needs to be viewed as an unexamined racial bias. Doing so requires not only the acknowledgment that Siddis share a Goan heritage that includes biology, but also that Goans have black blood in their veins.

To see this post as it appears in its print version, visit here.

"The Taste of Vinegar" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (Goa - 15 September 2012)

“Business is good,” he said in reflective response to the question, “but it’s difficult to get vinegar.” Continuing the conversation in Konkani, the historian commented, “But you were getting a regular supply from Tony, no?” The restaurateur’s visage grew pensive as he remarked, “Tony died a few months back.” Pondering this, the professor solemnly said, “I didn’t know...”

The deceased Goan man was unknown to me, but I shared in this moment of loss along with the other four present. The group comprised of a colleague who is a prominent writer on Goa, the owner of the restaurant who had joined us during the course of our lunch, the historian – an eminent scholar of Goa and a long-time friend of my father’s, and his spouse. It was my first Goan meal on this my first trip to Lisbon where I had attended a conference. Preceding the visit I had felt ill at ease, but this sombre moment had the paradoxical effect of providing me with a sense of calm. Perspective, even.

As I prepared to journey to Portugal, I had felt the weight of history. I was the first in my family to make this trip. Neither of my parents, nor their parents before them, had ever been. The irony of this is that they had all, with the exception of my mother, been born Portuguese citizens of Goa. My mother’s British citizenship had been of an odd variety – as with other residents of colonial East Africa, there was no pretence that her circumscribed rights were on par with those of Britons in the colonizing homeland. Living in Britain, any contemplation I had of a familial history that linked me to the land of my residence was ambivalent at best. As it were, there were plenty of other reasons to reflect critically upon the post-imperial and still imperious British nation. However, Portugal presented a whole other set of challenges – far more personal and now unavoidable.

The meal at the Goan restaurant, nestled on a cobblestone Lisbon street, had been the tastiest one I had had in Portugal. My only experience with Portuguese cuisine had been the dishes my father had learned to prepare. Little did I know that his interpretation had been severely Goanized: lots of pepper and other spices flavour his bacalhau, for instance. I was surprised to find that the “authentic” version of these dishes were bland in comparison. If the Portuguese had journeyed to Goa five centuries ago in search of spices that would preserve food and mask the taste of decay in a time before refrigeration – an effort that led to Goa’s colonization – then contemporary Lisbon had foregone this history in serving up its less than piquant fare. 

 

And, yet, here was this motley group of Goans I found myself amongst in the postcolonial city, lamenting the loss of an erstwhile traveller. Like Vasco da Gama and de Albuquerque before him the Goan man had also journeyed. Clandestinely, he had ferried the flavours of Goa to the once imperial centre. Those bottles of vinegar - an elixir, so potent and integral to a way of life – retain the flavour of colonial history and make it relevant far away from home, wherever it may be.    

An online version appears here.

"Shippies" - O HERALDO: The Transient (Goa - 14 April 2012)

RMS Titanic

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912, yet the event continues to haunt. This is not least because, in its time, Titanic was a testament to technology – a wondrous accomplishment that something of its size could travel so speedily. In its sinking, however, it also revealed the vulnerability of humanity despite scientific progress. While the ship was meant to be a luxury liner whose primary purpose was the transport of well-heeled travellers, it also profited from others taking the maiden journey. Passengers ranged in class, and this was true of the crew as well. These economic distinctions are notably captured in James Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic, which has been re-released this year. In it, star-crossed lovers - an aristocratic lady and a stowaway - deal with societal differences and the wrecking of their vessel. Though the film reveals that people of various means travelled in the days when ships were a primary mode of long haul transport, it does little to foreground the racial diversity of those who made the often perilous journeys. For Goans, those travels have been part of our lore and familial legacies for centuries.

MV Dara

Journeys by sea have played a major part in Goa’s history. The start of the region’s colonization by the Portuguese was effected by Vasco da Gama’s 1498 landing on Calicut’s coast and, then, Afonso de Albuquerque’s naval conquest of Goa in 1510. In the colonial era, the once familiar waters that Goans as a coastal people had known so well and relied upon for subsistence would be left behind for the shores of the European empires in Africa and other parts of Asia. If the ocean is an archive, then the stories of tarvotti, men of the sea from Goa, have often been submerged in favour of a grander narrative of diaspora – projects that align the foreign-travelling Goan with the ethos of colonial exploration and “discovery.” No doubt, even the working class Goan seafarer has contributed to the perpetuation of colonial projects, but might these other perspectives offer nuance or even rupture to how a Goan history of oceanic travel is understood as not being a monolithic experience?

Gregory Fernandes

The tarvotti of yore may appear to be hidden in the mists of time, but the sea continues to employ Goans. In January this year, Goan crewmen aboard the Costa Concordia escaped the cruise liner which capsized in Italy. The phenomenon of Goans being employed aboard ships is so commonplace that these seamen have been given their own cultural designation – the term “shippies” renders them as present-day tarvotti. Unlike Concordia’s survivors, stories of shippies have not always been ones of luck. In April 1961, the M. V. Dara saw the largest loss of life after Titanic. A bomb blast aboard the ship, docked in Dubai, took the lives of over 200 people, many Goans included. In 2007, Goan sailor Gregory Fernandes was killed in a racist attack. He was on leave in Southampton, which was the port from where Titanic’s one and only journey began. This April, as that journey is recalled, it is also occasion to surface the economic and racial diversity inherent to maritime history.

An online version of the print article appears here.