The African in Goa: Village Goa beyond the Gãocaria

Every month the Xavier Centre in Porvorim hosts History Hour, a platform for local (national and international) scholars to discuss their works. In doing so it provides happy stimulation for a diverse audience. Last Friday the Centre played host to the release of Beyond the Beach: The Village of Arossim, Goa, in Historical Perspective. The work of Dr. Themistocles D’Silva, the book is a history of the village of Arossim from which Dr. D’Silva hails from.

The work is clearly a labour of love from one of its native sons, perhaps born from the nostalgia that émigré sons feel for their motherland. Dr. D’Silva’s work however also continues a longer tradition, that initiated by his father, Justino da Silva. Justino da Silva, was an archivist of village history, having laboured over the genealogical charts of the prominent families of the village. In his presentation of the work at the Xavier Centre, Dr. D’Silva pointed out that he hoped that his book did not remain an isolated work. On the contrary, he pointed out that there was a need for greater numbers of us to put into writing the histories of our villages, increasing the documentation on the rich histories of Goa beyond the beach. Such histories also go beyond the Goan histories obsessed with the sixteenth century and the Portuguese governance of the territory. Indeed, in the course of the presentation Dr. D’Silva pointed to the urgency of the task given that many of the older generation and their memories are passing away, and that private archives fall victim to the ravages of insects and weather. On this front perhaps Dr. D’Silva was being kind to the custodians of these archives. Though Goan society has produced a number of luminaries, the same intellectual drive that powered these luminaries is not necessarily passed on to the next generation. Many archives have no doubt been discarded into dust heaps and kitchen back-yard fires.

What is most interesting in this book, is that Dr. D’Silva has written it by combining the various influences that have moulded him as an individual. In doing so, he brings to the fore a central problem in the manner in which we think about the Goan village, and thus Goan identity.

A member of the village elite of Arossim, his book locates the village gãocaria (or Comunidade) as one of the points of departure for his narrative. This is not entirely out of place; the Comunidade was a powerful institution in our history and to speak of a village history without delving into the history of the Comunidade would produce a dull, incomplete history. However to speak of the village from the point of view of the Comunidade alone does not exhaust the history of the Goan villages, since there were (and are) a number of people who while living in the village, were not gãocars of the village. What would the history of the Goan village look like if we were to write a village history from their point of view? The threads that Dr. D’Silva draws out gives us a hint into this possibility.

Dr. D’Silva points out in his book a fact that has by and large been left unsaid and unspoken in the public sphere about the Goan village. This fact is of the presence of African slaves within our village communities. The few voices that do mention the presence of the African are Dr. Savia Viegas, Adv. Valmiki Faleiro, and Margaret Mascarenhas in her novel Skin. While speaking of the presence of the African slave in Goa, Dr. D’Silva manages to point out to us that the Goan village was not an idyllic, happy setting for all. These slaves were ill-treated sufficiently to make them want to escape. And escape they did, into the jungles of British-India where slavery was abolished much earlier than it was in Portuguese-India. Dr. D’Silva made reference to the fact that the failure of their master’s to provide a nutritious diet to the slaves forced the latter to poach for fish from the village ponds at night. He also pointed to the fact that these African slaves and their descendants lived at the edges of the villages, pointing to their social marginalization.

When we speak of the African slave’s presence in Goa’s villages, we must recognize that their descendants married local men and women, or if they did not marry, in any case produced babies with local persons. This gives to a good amount of Goans, a history different from those of the gãocars – who in any case could not have been a majority of the population. When speaking of the Comunidade we often create – as did Dr. D’Silva - for the Goan, a Hindu pre-history. If we recognize the presence of the African’s as a part of the Goan village – by not being obsessed with gãocarial histories – we create a Goan with an African history. And what a different, richer and more exciting history that would lead us to!

The entire row over a proposed mosque close to the site of the former World Trade Centre resulted, among other things, in a couple of discoveries about US History. It was pointed out that by virtue of the presence of African slaves in early USA and the site of New Amsterdam (subsequently New York city), early American history includes the history of peoples who professed an Islamic faith. True many African slaves were baptized when they were brought to Goa, but as the Hindu-past obsessed histories tell us, mere baptism does not drive away former influences. In addition to these African slaves, Adv. Valmiki Faleiro has pointed out the presence of Chinese labourers (who worked the railway line that passes through Arossim) and of their marriage to local people. In addition, we have the presence in pre-Portuguese Goan history of the many Muslims who converted to Christianity to save their lives and properties.

All of these people contribute to the histories of Goan villages, which we, befuddled by Gandhian idiosyncrasies, often erroneously believe to be where the real Goa resides. To effectively write about these histories, or to even realize that they exist, we need to move beyond the framework of the Comunidade centered histories that we still take as the central focus of our local history writing. While largely within the frames of this traditional perspective, Dr D’Silva was possibly able to move beyond this traditional framework because of the fact that he is not trapped by traditional social-science ways of writing about Goan history. Or the fact that he has clearly spent a good amount of time in and interacted with the politically inclusive trends of thinking about society within the United States.

For his effort we must thank Dr. D’Silva, buy his book, and then go write our own village histories!

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 12/ 11/ 2011)

Wheat from Chaff: The Catholic Bigot, the Hindu Right and Goan Citizenship

‘Ghar ki murgi dal barabar’ (the gravy of the home-bred chicken tastes like lentil soup) and ‘the grass is greener on the other side of the fence’ in addition to the obvious, also seem to capture perfectly a widespread social tendency. Very often we are so bothered with what is going-on on the other side of the fence that we forget to adequately focus on issues that crop up within our ‘own’ backyard. Oftentimes it may seem that I am so caught up with decrying the histrionics of the Hindu Right, both in Goa and elsewhere, that I forget to focus adequately on the Catholic bigot (CB). There was however, no way I could ignore this bigot given a number of emails I have recently been subject to, which seem determined to painfully flesh out every nuance that the CB holds.

Despite the fact that I often time focus on caste and class location as a way of identifying social tendencies, I would like to identify the CB not with caste or class – though these definitely play a role – but with a mindset. Perhaps belonging to the Catholic club allows one to forget one’s social location and think like the bigots, given that these bigots ruled the Goan roost for a long, long time. Thinking like them, who knows we might persuade them and ourselves that we are like them?

At the risk of committing a grave historiographical error, let us locate the origins of the Catholic bigot in the circles of Goa’s colonial Catholic elite. These ladies and gentlemen used Portuguese as a way of distinguishing themselves, not just from the lower orders among the Catholics (who spoke Concanim) but from the ‘Hindus’ as well. The Portuguese language was, as is the case with certain varieties of Konknni, their caste marker. With the rise of Indian nationalism across the border with British-India however, they persuaded themselves to think better of their caste brethren in the Hindu fold. Nevertheless the fact that they were not Catholic or linked to the Portuguese colonial power structure in the same social network ensured that they always thought of their upper-caste cousins across the religious divide as the poorer, less civilized cousin. Indeed, a good amount of the Hindutva animosity that the Goan Catholic has to deal with today is linked to this cultural superciliousness. We should not forget however that the non-elite Goan too suffered from this superciliousness, at the hands of these CBs. Given that these elite groups effectively represented themselves as the paragons of Goan Catholic culture, they wound up giving all Catholics a bad name. A case of pretty houses, but such bad manners!!! This cultural superciliousness however, is one of the significant burdens that a number of Goan Catholics unwittingly carry, even though their own personal histories are not twined with those of those who originated it.

These CBs for the most part loved Tio António Oliveira Salazar. The days he presided over Portugal (and this included Goa) are indeed the glory years in CB imagination. Those were the days, we are told, when ‘we’ had genuine law and order in Goa. Order equaled the oppression of the ‘lower’ social orders and ensured a situation where everyone knew their ‘place’. This is not to say that the CBs were the only one who loved Tio António, but let us leave the colonial Goan Hindu elites alone for now. The problem with social oppression however, is that you are oppressed yourself, even while you oppress other people. Add to this our noxious caste hierarchy and you wind up with an elaborate ladder of social oppression that rests critically on constant humiliation. Thus, it is possible to find a good number of CBs from outside of the absolute top of the social ladder, merely because it was so much fun to spit on someone lower than you and pretend like you were one of those at the top. Nothing, it appears, salves a wound better than the spit you hurl at others.

Another feature of the CB is their self-love of their social backgrounds; their ‘Good’ and ‘old’ families. Their self-understanding is of being cultured, which however is in fact the mere ad nauseum repetition of social traditions of the past, and the display of inherited furniture (and other heirlooms) that keep diminishing with every passing generation. So concerned are they with keeping up appearances, an integral part of a social system based on scorn for the inferior, that innovation is by and large discouraged by the CB. And hence, they continue to churn out provincial Doctors, Engineers and Lawyers, most of who are marked by their singular inability to innovate or engage with new ideas or arguments, wedded as there are to their own blinded and devastatingly outdated ideas.

Given their love for Uncle António Oliveira’s Estado Novo the Indian annexation of Goa was a devastating blow for the CB. Their entire vapid social order of privilege and oppression came crumbling down in an instant. Their anger against the Indian State and post-colonial Goa then is not the anger at the illegality of Indian action, or the Indian State’s bias towards National Hinduism, but the anger that the unjust system that generated their privilege, was shut down. They do not, indeed cannot, recognize that the Indian State’s otherwise illegal and unethical action was in fact ‘Liberation’ to a new social and economic order for thousands of Goans otherwise chaffing under domestic feudal rule.

It is for this reason that the objections that so many of them – both overseas and within Goa – raise to the sabre-rattling of the Hindu Right are so pathetically funny. A particular gentleman sitting in the far reaches of the East comes to mind. A regular Dom Quixote he tilts against every imagined Indian aggression, seeing Nehruvian conspiracy in every little thing. The poor man fails to realize that through his inane babbling he does greater harm to the cause of minorities (and this includes Hindu minorities) faced with the growing might of National Hinduism. Indeed, when the ancients pronounced that it is better to have a clever enemy than a stupid friend, they probably had this Goan Quixote in mind! The problem of the CB with Hindutva (or National Hinduism) is at the end of the day cosmetic. They have a problem with the cultural manifestations of Hindutva, for example the ban on beef, or the restrictions or ban on the consumption of alcohol; but not with the power relationships that Hindutva proposes; namely control of the lower social orders and their service to the dominant castes of India. Little wonder then, that the CB’s of the capital city have often re-elected a representative whose promises often sound like those of the Estado Novo.

There is a genuine problem that most non-dominant caste Indians face in the coming decade. Within Goa this threat manifests itself as the delegitimization of all that is seen as Catholic. There is also a problem that the nature of Goa’s integration into the Indian Union continues to pose for the Goan. Because of the manner in which India is defined as Hindu, being Catholic is a favoured identity choice for many Goans who are not offered many options, or indeed ignored, by the Indian State. However the real danger that they (we?) face, is that given the dominance of the CB in the sphere of cultural representation, in articulating our valid dissent, we may unwittingly choose the route of the Catholic Bigot. This would be a tragedy, because what we would be doing would be to only engage in useless polemics (a favourite pastime of the colonial Goan elite), and lend our muscle power to the definitely anti-democratic social imaginations of the CB.

May God save the Catholic…and grant you a good year!

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times on 5 Jan 2011)

Social-engineering and Re-education camps: Preparing the killing-fields in Goa

‘The way anti-national elements within the country are cropping up, there is need for re-nationalisation’.

My blood curdled when I read these words, reportedly made by a prominent Goan at the ceremony in the town of Vasco-da-Gama held to purify the waters of the Arabian Sea. The sea had apparently been polluted by the presence of the Portuguese naval ship Sagres. The gentleman in question is used to a somewhat bombastic turn of phrase, and perhaps his own social location (‘upper’-caste and Hindu) blinded him to the connections that other persons not so comfortably located (‘lower’ caste and non-Hindu) make when they hear such phrases. Let us contemplate for a moment then, the analogies that could be made to similar statements from history and their contexts.

Take as a first example the Chinese experience of the Cultural Revolution launched by Mao in his effort to regain power over Communist China. In his attempt to maintain hegemony over the country and remain in power Mao insinuated that the revolution was being infiltrated by liberal bourgeois elements that would threaten the recent successes of the communist revolution in China. In the turmoil that followed this move for power, large numbers of persons were sent for re-education. This process of ‘re-education’ included the exiling of persons to distant parts of China where they were engaged in hard labour, and publicly humiliated, submitted to torture and public lynching, sometimes killed. The Cultural Revolution was an unsafe period in China where persons who were skilled above the average were targeted by the mob, where personal vendettas were carried out justified by the ideological language of the revolution, and where minority groups were forced into assimilation programs. Thousands were killed, maimed or their life-chances destroyed as a result of the Cultural Revolution that insisted, as was insisted in Vasco, that there was a threat to the country and a need for re-education.

A second example, once more from Asia is that of the Khmer Rouge. Originally inspired by communism, the Khmer Rouge sought to create a nationally appropriate form of the ideology for Cambodia and create an agrarian utopia. The result of this was a project of social engineering which unfortunately, and not unsurprisingly, turned into one of the worst genocides in human history. About two million Cambodians are estimated to have died in the in waves of murder, torture, and starvation, aimed particularly at the educated and intellectual elite, but included other groups – including ethnic and religious minorities - as well. As was suggested in Vasco, re-education was attempted by the Khmer regime, that like in China subjected persons deemed to be against the regime, to hard labour, humiliation, torture and death.

The Cultural Revolution and the regime of the Khmer Rouge are just two of the horrific examples from Asia. In both cases dominant groups within the country subjected vast numbers of innocent persons to torture and death for failing to meet the national ideal as articulated by these groups. These groups were those groups that could not, according to the logic of the dominant, be re-educated. All horrific experiments like the two presented for contemplation begin with innocent ideas and grandiose statements like those made in the town of Vasco-da-Gama. It is for this reason that we should not brush this episode under the carpet but take it very seriously indeed.

India is no stranger to experiences like those in China or Cambodia. The Muslim populations of India have been subject to such experiments as well. One does not have to look far, but only toward the experience of Gujarat, where Gujarati Muslims were demonized over a long period of time. As a result when the proper environment was created it was possible to kill them in the thousands since they were no longer seen as human beings, but as enemies of the State and society. We all know of the days in the early 80’s and before when Muslims were seen as being unpatriotic for allegedly celebrating when Pakistan won cricket matches. How innocent that Indian nationalist annoyance seems today when compared with the violent killing of Muslims that took place in Gujarat in 2002.

The statement made in Vasco-da-Gama belongs to the kind of imagination that converted Modi’s Gujarat, Mao’s China and the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia into a horrific examples of human savagery. What was scary about the sea-purification episode in Vasco-da-Gama was that it targeted not only the Portuguese, but local Goan Catholics as well. It put the Goan Catholic who may culturally identify with some aspects Portuguese, on the same level as the Kashmiri who demands Azaadi, or the Indian Muslim who is deemed to be rooting for Pakistan. This is a matter of concern that we should not take lightly. It is only a troubling portent of darker times to come.

(A version of this blog entry was first published in the Gomantak Times 29 Dec 2010)

Taking photos: The visual archiving of Goa and its challenges

For sometime now, there have been a number of Goans engaged in documenting our state visually. Two of these photographers are, the USA based Rajan Parrikar, and the anonymous JoeGoaUK. The impression that one gets is that this visual archiving of our state is motivated by the not-unfounded-fear that the Goa that they (and we) knew, is fast fading into oblivion. For this archiving, future generations of Goans, and no doubt others as well, will be grateful.

In embarking on this project however, these people have embarked on an ethnographic project. As basketfuls of anthropologists have indicated in debates within this academic discipline, the ethnographic project is not without its problems. For example, what is the gaze, or view, that one adopts when documenting? For a space like Goa that has been, for at least fifty years now, ceaselessly pictured as a tourist paradise, is there a way in which we can see the non-touristic side of Goa? Goa’s representation has thus far been equally (but silently) dominated by ‘upper’-caste visions, is there space for the representation of Goa by marginal groups?

Thus while there is much that is being archived and documented, there is equally much more that is not. And this gap is significant. It represents that which the archivists do not see, or consider trivial or not important enough to document. Despite this gap, it is from what is captured that a reality is constructed. Indeed, scholars such as Nicholas Dirks make an important argument about the ethnographic project. They point out that the British launched this project as they sought to understand the general features of the subcontinent they were beginning to administer. In the process, they froze certain aspects of society and made these permanent features of ‘Indian’ society. An example of this would be the images that we often come across depicted ‘A Hindu holy Man’, ‘a banian merchant’ and such like. These images further depicted these people engaged in their ‘traditional task’. Thus images that were representative of a particular time and circumstance were frozen to become the ‘traditional’ image of the subcontinent and the various groups that these images became representative of.

A similar process underway inspired this column. Another Goan interested in documenting his homeland put up images of his project and lent captions to these images, very much in the style of the colonial anthropologist- ethnographer. The caption that caught my eye was one that read ‘Bamboo weaver - Paitona’. What was remarkable was the similarity of this caption to colonial era ethnographies that similarly described these images. What were missing were details that could give us an insight into this particular basket weaver. His name, his age, perhaps a story that drove home the point that this ‘basket weaver’ was an individual with his own history and story to share. To be sure the mere presentation of this data may not suffice to do justice to this man, but perhaps it would mitigate the possibility of his being captured for posterity with out the dignity of a name and his own personal story.

The need to give dignity is an issue of importance because of the context of the image. Goa apparently had a rather rich tradition of weaving baskets of various shapes and sizes that is now almost extinct. The reason for this was that as soon as they could, the Mahar community that engaged in this weaving gave up a practice that marked them as untouchable and brought them no respect. From within Goa one hears stories of these basket-weavers who were not allowed to come up to the house to deliver the basket, they had to throw the basket so as not to pollute the ‘upper’ caste home. The ‘upper’-caste Goan is largely clueless to this history, and mourns only the loss of the basket-weaving tradition. The weaver is largely, unimportant. Perhaps it was this entire background that I read into that little caption that innocently contextualized the image.

It would be unfair to demand that the visual archivists, who are going about a task they clearly love, also engage in collecting the stories and voices of the unheard peoples in Goa. This column seeks only to point to what we are leaving out, and contemplate a situation in which we could possibly amplify the effort of these archivists. Indeed, a contemplation of these issues could allow the same archivists to be sharper and more discerning in their capturing of Goan images.

In the context of these ‘basket-weavers’, their name was unimportant. They had to merely produce and deliver. They were not the individual artisan or artist whose work was celebrated. Perhaps even if we provided only a name for this individual in the image we would take one more step toward a more equal and inclusive Goa. Transform the nameless basket-weaver into an individual, a man who has a name, and who, in addition to the many things he does, is also an artisan, able to weave magic with bamboo.

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 15 Dec 2010)

Political systems, journalists and ethics: Anti-democractic tendencies of the face of a democratic nation

This column must begin by acknowledging that perhaps some of the ire directed against Barkha Dutt susbsequent to the release of the ‘Radia tapes’ is unfair. Barkha, as she never fails to point out, is but one of the many journalists, and public figures who have compromised themselves through their conversations with Nira Radia. To focus entirely on Barkha would be to forget about the other significant issues that this scandal has revealed. Nevertheless Brakha Dutt’s responses raise significant issues that are worth probing independently.

First, the force of the backlash against Dutt should be seen as a backhanded compliment. It was only because Barkha actually attempted to, and (sadly) succeeded in representing herself (and NDTV) as the face and voice of the nation, that the shock of the Radia tapes has ricocheted on to her in this manner. As the old saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. It is to this monumental significance that NDTV and Barkha Dutt sought to achieve that this column will refer when discussing some of the ethical issues that emerge from this case, and Barkha seems unwilling to address.

This discussion of the issue takes as its focus the interaction engineered by NDTV between the editors of various print media and Barkha Dutt. In this discussion, despite a suggestion from one of the editors that ‘we all make mistakes, one can say sorry and move on’, Barkha seemed to obstinately refuse this possibility. All that she was willing to admit to was, ‘an error of judgment’. This seems like the first steps towards an apology, but the mea (maxima) culpa was significantly absent.

Both Barkha and various persons in support of her have more or less argued that her conversations with Nira Radia constitute the way Delhi works. There are a number of people who want favours in return, and to get the information that one wants, one has to ‘string them along’ even if one will not in fact do so. The suggestion that they make, is that to act as a go-between, to trade favours is not ethical, and hence they refrain from acting in such a manner. Let us concede for the sake of argument that these journalists are in fact sticklers for such ethics. But is one able to keep stringing this person along ad infinitum? And if one is able to do so, what are the ethics regarding the relationship with the person you string along? Are these persons occupiers of significant positions of power, or are they smaller cogs in the larger mechanism, hoping that the trade of these small details will give them the dignity that is otherwise denied to them? Let us not forget that the political mechanism in India (and publicly on display in darbar style in Delhi) is one that is built on an hierarchy of humiliation and material deprivation. Such stringing along then, ultimately amounts to an abusive relationship with people who may be unable to retaliate.

Journalism and journalists occupy a central position in democratic societies because of the belief that they will speak truth to power; that through presentation and discussion of critical issues in the public fora they will maintain the vitality and spiritual purity of the democracy. The practice of democracy then, rests not only on the periodic elections, and the honest functioning of elected officials, but also on the ethical behaviour of the democracy’s journalists. In the case where Nira Radia is a peddler of corporate interests what would be the ethical response of a democratic journalist? The response would rely on the recognition of a number of factors. First, that a democratic polity is in fact constituted to further the interests of ‘the people’. These ‘people’ are not the fictional personalities that private corporations are, but the real people who vote governments and politicians into power. These interests are further not the interests of either the majority or minority, but of the ensuring a uniform and just access to resources to sustain livelihoods. This access is eventually enabled through the sustaining of working democratic systems, where one is not allowed to take short cuts based on who you are, who you know, or on how much money you have.

What is galling about Barkha’s response that ‘this is the way Delhi works’ is that she seems willing to allow the system to work the way it does. She will play the game, since otherwise she would not get any information. This is however not her fault. She is the member of a profit-making organization, and while democracy is good, it cannot be allowed to get in the way of the generation of profits. Its action is not to speak truth to power, but to not get in the way of the functioning of power, and ideally get in bed with it. Indeed, a careful observer of NDTV presentations will indicate how they have continuously flaunted their access to power, whether it is through referring to Union Ministers by first name when conducting interviews, or through their body language that suggests an off-screen camaraderie, or at least the desire for such.

If Barkha were to conform to the ethical position of the democratic journalist, then her ideal response when first propositioned by Radia would have been to respond, ‘I’m sorry Radia, but I think you’re approaching me in this manner is unethical and I would be forced to include such propositions as part of my coverage.’ Matter ended. We are not obliged to always follow the ethical position, because admittedly real life is somewhat more complex than the ideal ethical positions. But the beauty of a legal system (and ethics is a certain kind of legality), is that you are free to ignore the law, but when you get caught, at the very least you acknowledge your mistake, and pay the price for the transgression. Further, an ethical system is never ideal. It is always opposed to the ways of the world. But this gap between reality and the ideal is critical. It is this gap, that allows for the realization of utopia. Without the gap, there would be nothing to challenge the status-quo. And the status-quo, based as it is on power, is always oppressive.

Barkha Dutt fails to show remorse or acknowledge her guilt apart from an ‘error of judgment’. Given that in the interaction with the editors she presented herself as a ‘political journalist’ suggests to us that either her understanding of a democracy is rather shallow, or she is wholly committed to a different form of political arrangement; an oligarchy. A system of democratic values holds no particular significance for her. In addition it forces us to ask the question if both NDTV and Barkha Dutt would prefer to persist in the lie that they dispassionately represent the nation; that their presentation of news and views is not deliberately slanted to favour the oligarchically-inclined class (regardless of the red herring that political party represents) from which they emerge and belong to.

(A version of the post was first published in the Gomantak Times dated 8 Dec 2010)

Innocence and desire: Tourism and the continuing colonial project

A fortnight ago I had suggested an odious content to three posters that were used a year ago in a lottery competition in Portugal. Responding to this, two persons suggested that I was over-reading meaning into these posters. These individuals suggested that the persons who designed the posters and the ad campaign ‘were not that smart’ and that they were not drawing on nationalist and Lusotropicalist formula but international formula associated with tourism.

In response to this suggestion, my response was to acknowledge the possibility of over-reading on my part, but to also point out that tourism is not an innocent activity but one that is integrally tied to the colonial project. This column will elaborate on that argument.

Tourism is not an innocent activity. It is an activity that is firmly located within power relations. On the inter-personal level, it is one where the tourist is invariably economically superior to the host. On an international level there is invariably a power relation between the tourist who comes from the global North and travels to the global south. Travel for a long time was the privilege of the elite. In particular, within the international context, it was the privilege of the white elite. These folk traveled either to Southern Europe, namely Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece, whose people were deemed to largely be not-white. In these spaces they engaged in activities of leisure and pleasure-seeking. In this process, they created the image of the romantic and sexy Latin lover. These white folk, also traveled to Africa and Asia, where they ‘discovered’ strange lands and exotic peoples. The pleasure of sexual experimentation was not missing here either.

These images continue to populate the realms of tourist-speak today. Thus the largely white consumer is encouraged to come and ‘Discover India’. The colonial sub-text of the invitation is hardly hidden. India and a variety of countries in the global south are consistently marketed as ‘exotic’. And it is not some evil, neo-imperial foreign master who does this, but very often the neo-colonial national state that does so. Thus the Indian state, as the neo-colonial successor to the British-Raj, markets its own land and people for tourist consumption.

Tourism is not an innocent activity. It is an activity firmly located in the project of performing white-ness. Contrary to popular perception, white-ness is not only about skin colour. It is about social and geo-political location, it is about class, and it is about how one behaves and thinks. One can have ‘white trash’, only because skin colour does not make a person ‘white’. Social behaviour and culture does. Thus Southern Europeans were until recently not considered properly white. Thus many Indians, can and do attempt to pass off as white folk. In fact, tourism is one of the ways in which elite Indians attempt to produce their whiteness. To do so, they reproduce the activity of the white colonial masters. Thus if colonial whiteness was produced, among other things, by traveling to Southern Europe, then the elite Indian has holiday homes in Goa; her own piece of Southern Europe. That both Southern Europe and Goa have similar models of tourism – invasion by charter tourists from the European North, should indicate that there is more than just coincidence operating here.

Further more, travel continues to be a privilege of the elite, requiring not only surfeit of cash (or a favorable currency exchange rate) but also the ability to transcend geo-political boundaries that are selectively permeable. There is no denying that it is much easier for a poorer Briton to travel to India, than it is for a socially comparable Indian to travel to Britain. Leisure travel or tourism then, produces white-ness for larger groups of people, even as it creates black-ness for those who are unable to travel for leisure. It is no surprise then, that the advertising campaign that was referred to a fortnight ago held images of primitive ‘black’ people holding symbols of a ‘white’ culture, rather than some entirely different set of images.

To assert that tourism is not an innocent activity is not to assert that the project of tourism is animated by deliberate intention. It is for the large part not. These power-relations of race, class and power that mark national and international relations also mark tourism, and for the most part operate silently in the background. It is this silent operation that allows tourism to so innocently reproduce itself, and contribute to the fixing of peoples and locations in colonial imagery, even as sovereign colonial power has been replaced with sovereign national power.

As any initial student of economics will know, demand for a consumer product does not just emerge, but is cultivated in an individual. The seed of this desire is planted in our mind, it is watered and nourished and encouraged to grow so that we come to believe that some insatiable need in our life will be met by our consuming that product. The tourism industry operates similarly, it creates certain desires, or amplifies desires that lie in our subconscious. To do this, it draws, either consciously or unconsciously on ideas that already exist, or creates them afresh. Tourism sells to us our desire to be powerful and elite. It sells to us exotic dreams. Its allure lies not only in the possibility of sexual experimentation, but also in the knowledge that we are doing what Kings and adventurers, business tycoons and heroes did before us. It is for this reason that we should not really be surprised that tourism takes recourse to colonial imagery when selling us our tickets…

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 1 Dec 2010)

Drama around the NRP Sagres II : Attempting an inter-cultural dialogue

Last week this column tilted at the protests by the ‘freedom fighters’ and the ‘Hindu’ nationalists suggesting that they were contributing to the problem rather than resolving one, by creating an environment where dialogue was not possible. In the process however, the column also suggested that all was not well with some strands of contemporary Portuguese nationalist tropes that draw on colonial images and understandings. One of the arguments the column sought to make, was that both these nationalisms worked to support each other, and continue the post-colonial mess we find ourselves in.

However it is because we are inextricably twined together that dialogue is both necessary and the only option. Demonstrating perhaps the value of dialogue, the column generated a response from three Portuguese men, all of who have some sort of connection with, or interest in, India. Today’s column will extract portions of these responses from ‘the Portuguese’ and seek to dialogue with them, conceding some arguments, and disagreeing with others.

One of the respondents argued that “Saying there's a transfer of culture does not mean you don't recognize other peoples’ cultures. I suggest you read Fernão Mendes Pinto who in the XVI century spoke of the superiority of the Chinese over the Europeans! But you need a really very sharp anthropological look to recognize your cultural debt to the Bororo people... Even in India, tribals are seen as less civilized, aren’t they? I don’t agree, but that they are seen as such is a fact.”

The second of the respondents partially disagreed saying, “Good points, but not sure I share your conclusions towards the end. In any case, "a disco of fados, a Gallo de Barcelos, and scarves celebrating the Portuguese football team" are not "culture" (in general) but "a culture" (specific). And yes, I would say that, in comparison with other colonial encounters, the Portuguese was far more symmetric in terms of what you call mutual transfer/exchange of culture.”

The third of the respondents felt that “Jason falls into that common trap of academics: over-interpretation. The posters say nothing of what he reads there, they are not that smart. Their inspiration is not nationalistic tropes about civilizing missions, it is the internationalistic tropes about tour operating.”

To the first of the respondents, I would like to agree that the descriptions of Portuguese culture do not unilaterally deny the transfer of culture from the various parts of the world, and the former Portuguese territories to the Portuguese metropolis. On the contrary, there is a good amount of the mythology of the country that acknowledges and celebrates this mixture. However, we must acknowledge, if we are to challenge and move forward, that there is a dominant tendency, that seeing Portuguese culture as European, falls into the trap of acknowledging it as superior and having contributed more than it has received. As an illustration, but also to complicate the image and point out that it is not always an ‘us’ south Asians (colonized etc.) versus ‘them’ Portuguese (colonizers etc), contemplate the following anecdote, recounted by a Portuguese historian. He pointed to the historical works of Teotonio De Souza as significant to the intellectual world of the Indo-Portuguese. Too many of the rest he argued, were still using terribly antiquated notions. He pointed with some horror, to the works of a Portuguese historian of Goan origin who still used ideas like India being in a state of barbarity until the Europeans (namely the Portuguese) brought culture and Christianity!

Sticking with history, the first respondent should be reminded that merely because Fernão Mendes Pinto spoke of Chinese superiority, does not make him representative of Portuguese society for that time, nor for the same society in different other periods. Once again, this does not deny the capacity of the Portuguese to recognize superiority or merit in the Other. It merely affirms the fact that societies are polyphonic – they speak with many voices. The voice of Fernão Mendes Pinto was one of these voices, and possibly at times, a marginalized voice.

The more interesting observation of the second respondent was to repeat the Lusotropical illusions that the Portuguese colonizers were more symmetric in the exchange of culture. Lusotropicalism thrives on the idea of Portuguese colonialism being a good, equitable and gentle colonialism. A response to this idea would not be to counter Portuguese colonialism as bad, violent and inequitable, but point out that the reason we do not see British colonialism as symmetric, is because of the way the British colonial state represented its colonialism; as non-interfering in the cultures of others, and of not mixing racially with its subject populations. The transfer of culture is not a conscious choice, it occurs through unconscious actions in the daily lives of people. Where the colonial state was not around to bar such quotidian mixings, as very often the Portuguese state was unable or ideologically unwilling to do, one sees a greater amount of mixing. We have to bear in mind that we should not, as we often do, take the representations of the colonial British too seriously.

To finally address the last respondent; yes, it is possible that the last column was an over-interpretation. That possibility exists. But as with all columns, the point was not to establish an unassailable and definite truth, but to contemplate the possibility of the general points being argued. The posters of the Euromilhões lottery were merely an excuse. To however deny entirely the possibility of colonial stereotypes continuing to populate contemporary Portuguese imagination would be to affirm the possibility that colonial imagery still does play a role, and that the contemporary Portuguese are unwilling to talk about it. Furthermore, tourism is not an innocent bread-winning exercise. Tourism rests critically on colonial imagery, as well as colonial relations. One does not see mass-tourism from the global south to the global North. The touristic locations of the North are marketed differently from those of the South. Furthermore, as the subsequent column will go on to explain, the character of tourism in Goa, is not so distinct from that in Portugal.

To conclude, dialogue, as in the act of speaking to each other, may possibly help more than violent protests. Dialogue is not a one-way street, in pointing out possible problems with the Portuguese we open up the space for them to point out our own weaknesses. For example, as first respondent pointed out, don’t most Indians see the tribals of South Asia as less, or uncivilized? Do we not for this reason see our colonization of resources in their homelands as legitimate?

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 24 Nov 2010)