"The Lost Generation: 1990" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (21 February 2016)

Is it still home if it no longer exists? Reflecting on Goan history through the memory of expulsion, the writer asks if it is ever possible to recover what was lost. 

My father sends me an image over WhatsApp. “Tony took this photo,” he explains. “Do you recognize it?” I squint to decipher what it is I’m supposed to see in the tiny picture on my phone. The photograph, taken from the inside of a car, is mostly subsumed by the rear-view mirror, with towering skyscrapers in the backdrop, reaching into the sun which reflects blindingly off their mirror-like exteriors. “You see the small building?” dad coaxes. And then I notice it, a miniscule boxy structure, dwarfed by the high-rise modernity around it. “That’s where you grew up.” 

Even now, Kuwait will catch me unawares. I’ve been struck by how many times in the last few weeks mention of the place has come up. While I was in Beirut last month for a conference, I met several Arabs who, while not Kuwaiti, had been born in Kuwait, just like me, my sister, and my cousins. We reminisced about our childhoods, our recollections of school, the Hungry Bunny jingle on TV, and going to Entertainment City – the amusement park. Pieces of the past come back to me from the dim fog of juvenile memory. But it is also evident to me that more than twenty five years since the Iraqi invasion and the ensuing Gulf War, there has been a collective recall of that time and place in the contemporary moment. Note the January release of the Indian film Airlift (2016), which chronicles the Indian government’s evacuation of expatriates from Kuwait during the invasion – the largest of its kind by a civilian air carrier in history. Sure, it’s not the first time that 1990 has returned to remind us of its impact; Al Jazeera has often run stories about that year, such as their series “Kuwait: Class of 1990” (29 July, 2015). “The occupation of Kuwait may have only lasted seven months, but the memory of it remains strong, not least in the minds of the children of that conflict,” the lead piece in the sequence muses. 

Neither my family nor I had been in Kuwait when the invasion occurred. My parents had decided to return to Goa the year before. But in a matter of months, we would be reunited with the many Goan families we had known in the Gulf state. The war had brought several people I had grown up with ‘back’ to Goa. We were the lost generation: Goans our entire lives, suddenly plunged into a foreign place called home. For some, there was no getting over the culture shock. Like many other ‘Gulfie Goans’ of my generation, I went abroad to continue my college education. My journey to California in 1993 called for a change of planes in a country I thought I would never see again. My non-Kuwaiti blood having disbarred me from being a citizen, I was only permitted to view my birthplace from the airport. There was war damage that was still being repaired. 

Certainly, I felt a sense of saudades – that Portuguese word adopted by Goans to explain feelings of loss, yearning, and nostalgia; a word that has no equivalent in the English language. In his biographical introduction to his wife Violet Dias Lannoy’s novel, Pears from the Willow Tree (1989), Richard Lannoy refers to the writer and her first husband, Behram, as members of the Lost Generation, the fledgling postcolonial cohort that saw the promise of decolonization rent asunder by “[t]he communal bloodshed of post-Independence India” (xv). For Dias Lannoy, this shattered promise reverberated in the Indian annexation of Goa, much to her shock as an activist-teacher who had worked with Gandhi. In her novel, the Goan protagonist Seb struggles to find his place in the new country, only to realize that it can never be his but not for lack of trying. The theme of loss due to invasion is a recurrent theme in Goan history and that of its diaspora. Much like the expulsion from Kuwait, many generations of Goans remember the exodus from Burma when Japanese forces occupied the region during World War II. 

My attempts to write about my childhood in Kuwait often feel like they meet with failure – the lost words of a lost generation. In this recovery effort, I am reminded of a photograph in my aunt’s home in Miramar. “It is nowhere,” she responds puzzlingly to my query of the image’s provenance. “We lost our albums during the invasion. I had no photos of me and uncle. Your cousin recreated this one from two separate pictures.” The collage is proof of the past, much like the image of my childhood home proves it still exists. Even so, is it the place I remember? 

From The Goan.

"The Enemy Within" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (10 January 2016)

In exploring how Goans with familial ties to Pakistan are dispossessed through the Enemy Property Act, Konkani film Enemy? questions the state’s relationship to the nation. 

 

Saturated as much with colour as symbolism, a pivotal scene in the film Enemy? (2015) comes to mind in epitomising the film’s success in delivering its message, but also its heavy-handedness. Set against the backdrop of a deeply hued sunset, a meeting between an informant and government officials ends with the former satisfied that the evidence he has offered about an enemy property in his village will allow him to occupy the seized house, which belongs to a relative. Upon his departure, the representatives of the Indian state deliberate over their own designs for the grand old edifice, and smirk about how they have duped their Goan informant. As they bask in the moment, the iconic beauty of Goa sparkles in relief behind them, palm-fringed and sun-drenched. Revelatory, even if heavily didactic, the audience is given to understand that the relationship of India to Goa is one of desire – a covetousness of its land, accompanied by a disregard for its people, both facilitated by law.

Directed by Dinesh P. Bhonsle, the plot of the Konkani film revolves around events that transpire in relation to the seizure of a family’s ancestral home under the aegis of the Enemy Property Act of 1968. Created in the aftermath of the India-Pakistan War of 1965, the Act was instituted to allow the Indian government to take over the properties of those deemed citizens of enemy nation-states. The Act targeted Pakistani nationals, and primarily those who would have been displaced by Partition, post-Independence, but as Enemy? reveals, it also affects the lives of many with a tangential connection to Pakistan. 

Despite attempts to amend the Act in 2010, its intent remains problematic, as does its name. An op-ed in The Hindu notes: “The issue is simple: the property rights of a section of Indian citizens were wrongly taken away and a limited attempt is now being made to restore them. In fact, the government should have … change[d] the very name of the Act, which not only projects a wrongful image of Indian Muslims, but also implicitly carries the suggestion that all Pakistanis are enemies of India. As the ‘enemy properties’ were left behind by migrants to Pakistan, not during a war but due to the exigencies of Partition, there was never any justification for the name …” (28 October, 2010). For the many Goans targeted by this Act, it was not Partition that cleaved them from their land, but the annexation of Goa by India. 

In flashbacks, Enemy? communicates how Mrs. Almeida, a widow, came to own the home she loves so much. Shortly after she is married, the newly named Mrs. Almeida discovers that her father has a second family in Pakistan, where he is employed. Upon this revelation, his Goan wife asks him to leave for good. In bidding his daughter farewell, he bequeaths the house to her, and tells her to take care of it and her mother. Mrs. Almeida, at first tearful, steels herself and, like her mother, spares no more pity for her cheating father. From then on, she takes residence in the house and comes to raise her only son there. As must now become clear, Mrs. Almeida is dispossessed of this very house, because her father was a Pakistani national and the house was not officially in her name. Envisioning the Church as a supporter of the community, rather than a patriarchal force, the film uses the figure of Father Britto – a friend of the Almeidas – to stress the need for Goans to be more mindful of legal matters pertaining to land ownership.  

Despite Mrs. Almeida’s son being a Captain in the Indian Army, they are evicted. That her son is named Sanjit is meant to indicate the change in political dispensation between the time of Mrs. Almeida’s father’s employment in Pakistan and then her son’s occupation in the Indian armed forces. It was likely Mrs. Almeida’s intention to have her son ‘blend in’ in a post-Independence India by giving him the more Hindu-Indian name of Sanjit in comparison to his Portuguese Catholic family name. Yet, neither this nor his allegiance to the nation as a soldier is sufficient in helping the family regain their land. 

As the aforementioned flashback chronicles, it was not uncommon for Goans from Portuguese India to work in Pakistan when it was part of the British Empire, just like India once was. In effect, Portuguese India had a very different relationship with the world outside itself in comparison to the contemporary associations between post-Independence India and those countries it has named its enemies. That Goans now finds themselves trapped within the political machinations of histories external to their own is epitomised by the plight of those affected by the Enemy Property Act. The appropriation of the Almeida home is thus symbolic of a double occupation, where law and postcolonisation combine to ostracise Goans within their homeland and the nation that claims to be their home – further proof of the region’s status as the colony of a postcolony.

From The Goan.

"Afonso de Albuquerque, a Journey of Self-Making" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (13 December 2015)

On the 500^th 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 500^th 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.

"António by Way of Alexandria" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (29 November 2015)

St. Catherine of Alexandria’s feast day links the Portuguese conquest of Goa and António Costa’s rise to power. But what are the pitfalls of believing in such coincidences?

Much will be made of the fact that António Costa became Prime Minister of Portugal on 25 November, 2015, his ascension to power occurring on the anniversary of the conquest of Goa, just over 500 years ago. On that day in 1510, Afonso de Albuquerque defeated Adil Shah, then ruler of Goa, and dedicated his victory to St. Catherine of Alexandria, whose feast day it was. Five centuries later, and on such a significant date, that a person of Goan descent should now be at the helm of the nation that had previously colonised the homeland of his ancestors is an interesting fact, but it would be erroneous to think of this political event as being a reversal of the colonial past. In other words, Costa’s Goanness may be undeniable, but his rise to power should not be seen as a Goan takeover of Portugal. 

Indeed, the major difference between de Albuquerque’s defeat of Adil Shah and Costa’s ascent in Lisbon is that the latter was born in the country he now runs and came to power via democratic process. On the other hand, de Albuquerque seized power in Goa, having come to the region in the aftermath of Portugal’s search for the sea route to the Indies. Rather than continue to allow traders who happened to be Muslim to control their access to, and the price of, spices and other desirable commodities from the East, the Portuguese attempted to navigate to Asia themselves. Having once been ruled by the Moors who were African by origin and Muslim by faith, cutting out the Muslim middlemen in the early modern sea-trade game may have allowed the Portuguese to feel like they were avenging that past, even though there was little more than a shared faith that connected Iberia’s former rulers and the Eastern tradesmen. In addition to its Moorish past, Portugal shared Europe’s fears of an “Islamic threat”, the Crusades having played their part in widening religious differences amidst power struggles prior to the Age of Discoveries. Thereupon, that the Portuguese would have encountered a ruler in Goa who was Muslim and that victory against him came to them on the feast day of a saint whose defence of her Christian faith led her to be martyred in Alexandria – a Middle Eastern site of mercantile importance – would have borne much portent for the Iberians who were now poised to start an empire in Asia.

Yet, there is a deep irony to be found in the choice of Catherine as the patron saint meant to herald the imperial pursuits of the Portuguese in the East because of the steadfastness of her faith. The Roman Emperor Maxentius, who was pagan, had decreed that Catherine should be put to death as she refused to recant her Christian faith. The daughter of a Roman governor in Alexandria, she is believed to have lived around the third or fourth centuries, AD. However, the similarities between Catherine’s life story and that of the pagan figure Hypatia of Alexandria, caused the Christian martyr’s legend to come under scrutiny. This resulted in a removal of her name from the Catholic calendar in 1969, a decision that was reversed following popular protest.

The Church’s flip-flopping on Catherine occurred within a few years of the change in Goa’s colonial status in 1961. Following the short war waged between Portugal and formerly British-colonised India in December that year, Goa went from being an overseas territory of Portugal to then being a colony of a postcolony. It was also the year of the birth of António Costa, the son of writers Maria Antónia Palla, who is ethnically Portuguese, and Orlando da Costa, the renowned Goan author of mixed race origins. Like the once celebrated Catherine, da Costa, too, had links to Africa, having been born in Portuguese Mozambique. And it is precisely the Portuguese citizenship of both his parents, in addition to his own Portuguese birth, that makes the current Portuguese Prime Minister distinctly Portuguese. Despite being of mixed race origins, Costa is no less Goan, but his ethnicity is still the product of a past when being Goan was tantamount to being Portuguese, albeit in geographically distant locations. Simultaneously, Costa’s contemporary Portuguese identity harkens to Goa’s past, one written about by his father. Just as America’s Obama cannot be seen as a Kenyan simply due to his ethnicity, it is still arguably his African heritage that makes the world view him as being better informed about more than just his nation. So too one might hope for António Costa, a leader whose heritage crosses continents while he leads a country whose multicultural legacy he epitomises.  

From The Goan.