Letters from Portugal: Sabores do racismo

Writing in The Guardian some time ago, and dealing with the issue of racism in Portugal, Joana Gorjão Henriques, a Portuguese journalist wrote that ‘Even though Portugal has racial profiling, race crime and the daily subordination of black people by whites, most Portuguese would deny that their country has significant "racial problems" – that's what they have in America, France or the UK. Such attitudes are a hangover from the dictatorship years and the “luso-tropicalism” ideology created by the Brazilian Gilberto Freyre in the 1950s, which spread the idea that the Portuguese were better colonisers – and that ongoing British or French soul-searching over race was a result of “bad colonizing”.

This is the curious feature of Portugal, in that as much as they aver that things have changed since the bad days of the Estado Novo, and things have changed, some things still remain; perhaps not the same but they linger. But this is another matter, and perhaps we should stick to discussing racism.

The problem perhaps lies in the fact that when we (or ‘the Portuguese’) think about racism, we think of dramatic occurrences, ‘significant racial problems’. In doing so, we seem to excuse the small, hidden acts of racism that we effect on a daily basis, that lay the basis for the more significant acts to emerge. If we acknowledged these small acts, we would realize that racism inheres not in the dramatic acts, but in these small quotidian actions. Take for example the simple act in which we brush away the ‘coloured’ peddler of wares, or jump back, even if ever so imperceptibly, when a person of colour approaches us.

Bairro Alto, one of Lisbon’s more popular night-spots has a number of street-vendors who seem to have racially divided their occupations. If ‘the Africans’ sell you beads and trinkets, the South Asians sell you roses and toys that flash with light, and the Portuguese-Gypsies politely offer you ‘drugs’ of various sorts.

It is with this background that the reader should imagine me setting off, rather dandily, on one of my first evenings in Lisbon to a dinner party. Being ever so well-brought up, I had in hand a designer bouquet for the hostess. Stopping enroute, at the Jardim Principe Real, not too far from Bairro Alto, I approached (what I presumed to be) a lady to ask for directions. The response left me bewildered for what I received was a rather rude brush-off as she rushed away saying ‘No, no, no’. Scratching my head in bewilderment, it too me some time to realize that the bouquet in my head (and probably the colour of my face) gave the good lady cause to assume I was trying to sell her my bouquet! Or take the example when another lady, seemed somewhat nervous – she actually jumped back - when I approached her (admittedly in the less secure Intendente neighbourhood) for directions to my destination.

Two swallows admittedly do not make a summer, and this is not to argue therefore that ‘the Portuguese’ are racist. It merely illustrates some of the possible flavours of racism. Indeed, one should inquire into my own South-Asian racism, when my response to such racism is to point indignantly to my class location, given that our class locations allow us so often to operate as white. One could also inquire, whether like most South Asians from a certain background, I am also not reading race whenever my ego is bruised by someone whose respect I merely take for granted. And yet, each of these inquiries should not prevent the partner in these encounters to inquire if they too sniff the odour of racism in their actions.

To repeat a point and elaborate somewhat, racism should be understood as inhering not merely in the dramatic and violent acts that attract our attention, but also in the quotidian acts that draw from gut instinct, preconceptions, and unconscious reactions. It would be impossible to deny that any of us is not racist, given that the contemporary world order is still recovering from its colonial past, a past that was actively based on racial stereotypes. If we can recognize that in this game of racism, it is not just about aggressors and the violated, but also about all of us participating in a market where we use racist ideas as capital to build on in whatever form, then perhaps we can get away from these ridiculous suggestions that we are not racist and begin to examine what exactly are the ingredients that contribute to the peculiar flavour of our individual racism.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo 16 Oct 2011)

Letters from Portugal: Little fascists in training

Last week this column discussed the peculiar traditions that mark the beginning of the academic term in the university and associated institutions in Lisbon, when students dress up in an antiquated dress (traje) and engage in ragging (praxe) the new students (caloiros).

Perhaps it is the wistfulness that comes with age, but there is something remarkably heart-warming about seeing young men and women, dress up and attempt to be adults. Traje it appears is also about self-importance, when these young people can shed their regular sneakers and clothes, and dress in capes, suits, and trot around in formal shoes. This self-importance however also comes at the cost of engaging in a sometimes disrespectful and humiliating manner with the caloiro. But all of this pales in comparison with the somewhat distressing features of the institutional format in which all of this praxe is carried out; elements that make it look, at least superficially, scarily fascist in appearance.

Fascism in its European version had an obsession with spectacle. Thus there is a concert between uniforms, a massing of people (or bodies), and the choreographing of ritual performances for this proto-mob to follow. Added to all of this, was the fascination with the medieval, and more particularly Roman imagery, thus salutes, banners and flags, oh yes, lots of flags.

Fast forward to an institute in Lisbon, that is the basis for the observations of this column, and you have a disturbingly similar correspondence to these elements of populism and fascism. The traje of the senior students is only part of the uniformed element of the praxe spectacle. The senior students in their black robes in fact operate as ‘officers’ to the recruits to the little armies of caloiros that they amass from their department. Each department enforces its own little ‘uniform’ onto their caloiros, of articulating a clever theme for the group. In addition to persecuting their individual brands of praxe, the senior students of the departments, also march the caloiros from time to time, to a courtyard in the institution, where caloiros and senior students from all the departments gather. Each department carries its own little Roman-standard-like banner, and one beholds the different groups, marked by their colours, yet united in the noisy ritual they perform together. It is an infernal din that they create together, each department yelling its chant, trying to outdo the other departments, giving the impression of a revolution or war at hand.

The most disturbing element of this entire performance however is the ‘Fuhrer balcony’ that gets incorporated into the process. The ‘Fuhrer balcony’ is the name given to the balconies that either got built on to buildings, or were used by the Fuhrer to address the adulating masses of the Nazi Reich. In any case, there is something profoundly hierarchical about a group of persons being addressed by a select elite located on an elevated platform, whether a stage or a balcony. In the case of praxe in this particular institution, in almost every setting they have chosen, a balcony has manifested itself. From this balcony, the directions for the entire performance are called out via a microphone, by a group of senior students in traje. Some of these are actively engaged in the process, others, lounge about ever so casually, marking their superiority by an apparently disinterested manner; the militarist manner of the whole drama terrifyingly obvious.

As pointed out in the last column, praxe, and the rituals that go with it, are subject of some debate in Portugal, many disapproving of it for its apparently rightist tendencies. From the manifestations in this particular Lisbon institute, these critics may have knocked a nail smack on the head!

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo 2 October 2011)

Letters from Portugal: Lisboa in Ragtime

The month of September, that marks the beginning of the school year in Portugal, brings with it a costume change to the capital. It is as if the denizens of Rowling’s wizarding world have shed their inhibitions and have decided to walk openly among the mud-bloods; as if it were Lord Voldemort who had won the great battle and not Harry Potter. The reason for the costume change however is more prosaic, though given the associations with a kind of torture that this costume change accompanies, the Voldemort reference may not be entirely misplaced.

The costume change is effected by senior students in graduate courses, dressing in antiquated styles. The dress or traje includes trousers, waist-coat and a long jacket for me, and stockings, skirt, waist-coat and jacket for women, all of this in black, except for their shirt that is white. Above all of this, these students wrap a cape, once again black, that is either worn on one’s shoulders (and this is what really makes them look wizardly) or folded smartly over their forearm or shoulder.

The purpose of this dressing up is not linked to any curricular requirements. It is not a uniform that one must necessarily wear to attend a lecture. The purpose of this dress seems largely to enable one to mark oneself off from the caloiros, students who have recently joined the university, those we South Asia would call ‘freshers’. The point of this costume change then is extra-curricular, to facilitate what the Portuguese call Praxe and what South Asians would call ‘ragging’.

The change of dress may not be necessary to participate in praxe, but it does provide the senior students with a spectacular advantage, as dressed in their antiquated garb they line the freshers up and subject them to ridiculous, and sometimes unwelcome, tasks. As is ragging in South Asia, similarly in Portugal, praxe is the subject of some debate, many holding that the practice is quite undesirable, given the excesses that it can sometimes lead to. One of my first encounters with praxe, was graffiti on the walls of a university building that eloquently screamed, ‘Praxe Não!’ Others however, hold the usual defense for the practice, it allows for fresh entrants into the university system, a forge new bonds, not only with their fellow oppressed juniors, but also with the seniors who enjoy the brief opportunity to humiliate them. In addition to this, a part of the praxe tradition seems to be the allocations of a padrinho or god-parent, who walks the caloiro through the intricacies of life in university in the first couple of weeks. It is pointed out that very often, these students are persons who have only recently come into Lisbon from the rural areas from across the country, and this is a fine way to counter the anonymity they may experience. Indeed, all too often one sees the complete abandon with which some students participate in being praxe-d (?).

There are moments when one can has to marvel at the ingenuity of the senior students who devise the routines for the juniors. There was this one memorable routine whose theme seemed to be ‘Under the Sea’. Some of the caloiros were provided with flippers and scuba-diving gear, others made to hold up little fish motifs and wait by the traffic lights. As long as the pedestrian light was green, these students were made to ‘swim’ back and forth across either bank of the road, providing much mirth to the persons in vehicles awaiting their own green light.

Such acts of transgression of boundaries, from outside of the university or institute campus into the city, at traffic lights, metro stations, side-walks in the city present a stimuli that can be variously received. On the one hand it can be most annoying to have one’s travelling meditations interrupted by quite literally a horde of students, whistling, chanting, being screamed at, jumping all in unison inside the metro carriage. On the other hand however, there is something uniquely liberatory about using, and being able to use, the city as a stage on which to act out one’s ridiculous dramas. One imagines that this sort of spilling over goes that much further to also making the praxe these students engage in that much safer, than when hidden away in the dark corners of an institutional campus.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo 18 Sept 2011)

A Goan Identity: Between a rock and a hard place

Read any tract that deals with the Goan identity, especially one that has to grapple with the Portuguese and Catholic elements in this identity and you will run up into a protest. Practically every author will take pains to point out that while the Goan is culturally influenced by the Portuguese, there was practically none of the famous Portuguese miscegenation in Goa. This is to say that the Goan remains by blood and genetics, a 100% ‘Indian’.

This statement could be seen as the necessary rhetoric by a minority group threatened by the Indian action that forcibly integrated Goa into the Indian Union. Indeed, such a statement today does a play a role in affirming the ‘Indian-ness’ of the Goan, by suggesting that unlike some kinds of Indian Muslims for example, these Goans do not come from ‘outside’, nor are they the descendants of ‘invaders’.

To stop at this explanation however, would ignore the much longer and complex history of this representation of what constitutes the Goan gene pool, for the fact is that these sorts of statements were being made much before the Indian Union ever came into existence. A good number of scholars love to point to the famous statement by Francisco Luis Gomes when he was an MP representing Goa in the Portuguese Parliament, where he claimed that he belonged to the land that crafted the famous Mahabhrarata. This statement is often given as an example of his nascent ‘Indian’ nationalism. This affirmation may unfortunately be somewhat misleading however since Luis Gomes was making this argument in an entirely different context, that the Goan people (and by this he meant the native elites) came from an ancient civilization, and being so civilized, did not particularly need a benevolent hand from Lisbon to run the territory, they could do so quite well themselves. When reading this argument today, we should not forget that this argument was made in a context where the ‘native elites’ (the Brahmins and the Chardos) were locked in a caste battle, not only with each other, but also against the local ‘Portuguese’ i.e. the Luso-descendents, who proudly claimed a Portuguese lineage. The history and presence of this group in Goa is largely erased, and when recalled they are remembered only as simpletons, or as cruel persons. Both these memories, it should be recognized, as memories ascribed by groups who were their opponents in a bitter fight for power over control of the territory.

Thus the peculiarly Goan affirmation of one’s pure blood and cultural mixture had a definite political context even in colonial times. It indicated that one was a member, and legitimate descendant of an ancient culture, while at the same time claiming the civilizing benefits of ‘Western’ culture. For the native elite at the time, it was a win-win argument.

This argument was far from the truth however, since there were marriages (and products outside of marriage as well) both among the native elites, as well as the non-elite classes. All these groups had relationships with people from metropolitan Portugal, from Africa, from China, and the claim to pure blood is largely a fiction that exists only because it serves a political purpose. Seen from a secular perspective however, this argument privileges caste superiority. It affirms a brahmanical model for the country and hence is an argument that as secularists we would do well to abandon. Indeed, it is possible for us to take this myth of sanguinary purity seriously, because we actually take the caste myth seriously in the first place, assuming that caste was in fact always a stable and rigid social formation, whose rules were always followed. A politically correct Goan identity therefore would not harp on blood purity, but amiably acknowledge the possibility of sanguinary admixture. How does it matter after all whether we are bearers of Lusitanian or Central Asian blood?

But life is never that simple is it? While living in Portugal, one is often met with delighted responses from metropolitan Portuguese who assume the Portuguese family-name that many Goans carry as a mark of Portuguese antecedents. There are a good number of metropolitan (or continental) Portuguese who are in love with the idea of their forefathers having traveled the world, leaving both a genetic and cultural presence there. While gratifying at an immediate level, these responses are simultaneously somewhat offensive. These responses are offensive because the embrace that it comes with is not based on the acceptance of difference, but because of a rejection of difference. Thus the embrace is warmer and longer if one is assumed to be the descendant of the traveling Portuguese of yore. A more sympathetic reading of Francisco Luis Gomes would admit that perhaps the good man and his compatriots were similarly fighting for a recognition of difference and the ability to self-govern, and unfortunately got dragged into the affirmation of caste for reasons that can be understood, but definitely not perpetuated today.

The politically correct Goan is faced with a pretty pickle as a result of this situation. When based in the subcontinent, political correctness demands that we affirm the possibilities of miscegenation. Not just with the Portuguese from the continent, but the Portuguese from Africa and other parts of the Portuguese empire, as well as with other groups across the world. When in continental Portugal however, one is faced with the need to refuse continental antecedents, primarily because one wishes to ensure that recognition of cultural brotherhood is based on the acceptance of cultural and sanguinary diversity. Also, we aren’t really in this game of rejecting a ‘pure’ South Asian lineage merely to wind up affirming some kind of cultural superiority of Western Europe. We are ‘Portuguese’ not because we have Lusitanian blood, or speak the Portuguese language, but also because we lived under the umbrella of Portuguese sovereignty, bound by bonds of politics and law, and now after all of this has passed, by an affective relationship that ties us to spaces beyond metropolitan Portugal, but places scattered around the world.

A contemporary and politically correct Goan identity, is one that is caught between a rock and a hard place. It would be appropriate to suggest that the construction of this Goan identity is akin to having one’s feet in two boats at the same time and having to jump from one boat to the other, constantly at the risk of falling into the perilous waters below. The point however is that in facing this admittedly tricky situation, we may in fact be working towards a situation in the future, when we ensure that both the Goan and other social groups, do not have to jump between boats or straddle worlds uncomfortably, but sit comfortable in one comfortable bark. The power of a Goan identity that is inclusive of the complex history of the territory is as yet unrealized, for it holds within it the power to alter the way we take for granted phrases that we today take for granted. Such exclusive phrases such as 'European'. To achieve this larger humanitarian end, our current discomfort would be well worth it.

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 14 Sept 2011)