Goan Diaspora

Since 1961 the relatively tiny ex-Portuguese Goa has been transformed from a rather forgotten and underdeveloped colonial enclave to a state within the Indian Union with a strong tourism sector and one of the highest per capita-income of any Indian state. The success of Goa today allows one to forget that its colonial past resulted in thousands of Goans being forced to migrate to ‘British India’, East Africa and the Persian Gulf. Historical research has tended to focus on 16th and 17th century “Golden Goa” or its liberation. At the same time 19th and 20th century histories of the Persian Gulf and East Africa have been Eurocentric in focus or have stressed indigenous narratives in the post-colonial period. Both of these directives have excluded the migrant story, and it is this hidden history that is investigated in this paper, with particular reference to the development of an army of Goan administrators for the areas under the jurisdiction of the Bombay Presidency of British India. The paper also sets out to identify the relationship between Goans and their colonial rulers in East Africa and its implications for cross-cultural relationships between Goans and other Indians as well as Africans.

This paper examines the representation of the Goan ayah in the recent history of Goa. Taking Damodar Mauzo's Karmelin (1981), a novel which portrays the life of a Goan woman who migrates to Kuwait for employment, as an entry point, I will attempt to discuss the various issues pertaining to the representation of the Goan ayahs found in the historical record. It is claimed that the figure of the Goan ayah was viewed with suspicion when they migrated from Goa to Bombay, to be employed as domestic helpers. I attempt to highlight how Goan men and a few upper-class Goan women, in Goa and Bombay, shared an anxiety that in the anonymity of the metropolis the Goan ayah might transgress various boundaries: sexual, religious, caste, moral, and societal. Following this logic, I argue that rather than being a complex narrative about Goan women, Karmelin is a reiteration of a form of representation that harbors suspicion and anxiety about the migrating woman. Karmelin places the figure of the Goan ayah as central in its storyline precisely because stories about the 'scandalous' behavior of the ayahs in the diaspora have been circulating in Goan society for many years.

Indian nationalist discourses in Portuguese India have a direct relation
with the political developments in British India. I use the terms
‘British India’ instead of ‘India’ and ‘Portuguese India’ instead of
‘Goa’ (and the territories of Daman and Diu on the coast of Gujarat),
in order to critically re-think the writing of history from an Indian
nationalist and post-colonialist perspectives. The post-colonial
reality of Portuguese India under the Indian nation-state after 1961
does not readily fit into the imagination of Indian nationhood. Nor
does it fit easily into the theoretical perspective emerging out of a
reading of the British colonial archive. This is due to the fact that
modes of colonialism of the Portuguese and the British differed from
each other. Since the perspective of British India ultimately became
the norm, there have been attempts to fit the ill-fitting history of
Portuguese India into the British Indian mold. This has serious repercussions for understanding the history of Portuguese colonialism.
It also has repercussions for understanding the political representation
and identities of the various communities living in Portuguese
India under Indian nationalism and the Indian nation-state.

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Os discursos nacionalistas indianos na Índia portuguesa têm relação
directa com os desenvolvimentos políticos na Índia britânica. Uso termos
como ‘Índia britânica’ em vez de ‘Índia’ ou ‘Índia portuguesa’ em
vez de ‘Goa’ (e os territórios de Damão e Diu, na costa de Gujarat),
de forma a repensar criticamente a escrita da História segundo as
perspectivas nacionalista indiana e pós colonial. A realidade pós-colonial
da Índia portuguesa sob o Estado-nação indiano depois de 1961
não se encaixa de forma imediata no imaginário da nacionalidade indiana.
Também não se encaixa facilmente na perspectiva teórica que
emerge de uma leitura do arquivo colonial britânico. Isto deve-se ao
facto de os tipos de colonialismo britânico e português diferirem um
do outro. Desde o momento em que a perspectiva da Índia britânica
se transformou em norma, houve tentativas de encaixar a história
da Índia portuguesa no molde britânico. Isto tem sérias repercussões
para a compreensão da história do colonialismo português. Também
tem repercussões para a compreensão da representação política e das
identidades das várias comunidades a viver na Índia portuguesa sob
o nacionalismo indiano e sob o Estado-nação indiano.

This study is the second part of investigative research into early Asian presence in the Atlantic. The first investigation focused on the islands of Macaronesia (Canary Islands, Madeira, Azores and Cape Verde Islands), and resulted in a better understanding of the motives, means and influences that defined Asian presence in some of these islands, and not in others. It identified the existence of a maritime "Lusitanian space" which provided the vehicle of culture contact, and conveyance of Luso-Asians into the Atlantic World primarily through maritime employment, the work of the Society of Jesus (commonly known as the Jesuits) and within the entourage of people in governance and social prominence. This initial multi-disciplinary investigation hinted at a connection between Portuguese Asia and Brazil, which forms the basis of this research study.

What strikes one immediately on reading the Goan-Norwegian author Ivo de Figueiredo’s memoir, A Stranger at My Table, is the beauty in its narration. This 321-page account of a man’s search for his father – and, in turn, discovering his own community – is rich in some of the finest, very lovingly crafted passages I have read lately. The book raises crucial issues of identity, nationality, religion, class differences, racism, and the position of women, as well as personal ones like love, isolation, estrangement, age, grief, and helplessness. In other words everything that matters to us today. Here is my review first published online in Scroll on Saturday, 01-June-2019: https://scroll.in/article/925276/a-norwegian-biographer-writes-movingly-of-his-goan-father-who-was-largely-a-stranger-to-him

Resumo: Este artigo apresenta um breve enquadramento histórico do aparecimento de literatura goesa em língua inglesa, apontando algumas das suas caraterísticas. Em segundo lugar, aborda-se a literatura goesa da diáspora, visto que a literatura goesa em inglês está intrinsecamente associada às rotas de emigração da comunidade goesa. Por outro lado, aborda-se um dos mais reconhecidos romances da literatura goesa em língua inglesa, sobre Goa na atualidade. Trata-se de Skin (2010) de Margaret Mascarenhas. Por fim, analisamos dois romances do autor indiano Amitav Ghosh, sobre as comunidades de marinheiros e migrantes do Oceano Índico, entre os quais se conta a comunidade goesa. Abstract: This paper presents a historical perspective to comprehend the advent of Goan literature in English, highlighting some of its characteristics. Secondly, the dynamics of Goan literature in English is discussed as a literature of diaspora since it is intrinsically connected to routes of emigration by the Goan community. Then, one of the most acknowledged novels in contemporary Goan literature in English, Skin (2010), by Margaret Mascrenhas, is analysed. Finally, this paper addresses two novels by the Indian writer Amitav Gosh, who writes about communities of migrants and seamen in the Indian Ocean, among which the Goan community is represented.

The high profile of individuals of the Goan communities within the nation-states of the North Atlantic (Canada, USA, UK and Portugal) is at variance with the low numbers and paucity of research on these communities. The relative invisibility of these communities in local, regional and national statistics has prompted the use of innovative research methodology utilising developing cyber technologies to understand the multiple migration and multi-generational identities to the process of neo-culturation.
This chapter also examines the adoption of developing technology in the process of transculturation and therefore the development of new “spaces” of transnational community identity among the worldwide Goan diaspora.

Combining oral history, family history, British overseas records and British private company records to produce biographies of people whoe role in history is forgotten, and continues to be erased under a tide of nationalism. This particular example is on Goan telegraph workers of the Eastern Telegraph Company in Aden and Zanzibar.

The First World War was a war of empires that took place on land as well as at sea. National identities are based on many of the land battles and especially those sea battles in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. However the Indian and Pacific Oceans were also places of action, where the physical, political and cultural relics of previous dominant empires continued to play a maritime role.
This paper is focused on the Luso-Asians, a disparate group of people from former Portuguese colonies in Asia who served under foreign flags and on foreign ships often before Portugal actually entered the war in March 1916.
This research is new, having been compiled in the last three years from multidisciplinary sources around the Pacific and in the United Kingdom. It provides an insight into the continuation and adaptation of maritime cultures to cope with changing imperial fortunes and labour demands and focuses on the emerging evidence from the Great War.

A talk mainly on the encounters between the East India Company interlopers as traders and the native peoples of the Northwest Coast of America (Alaska, British Columbia and Washington State) in the eighteenth century. The talk provides thoughts on early Asian-First Nation encounters  as well as the role of British Maritime trade from Asia in the formation of what is now BC.