GOANS AND THE PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE

Author(s): Alfred F. Braganza

Source: Journal of South Asian Literature, Vol. 18, No. 1, GOAN LITERATURE: A MODERN
READER (Winter, Spring 1983), pp. 150-154
Published by: Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40872550
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Alfred F. Braganza

GOANS AND THE PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE

It is a truism that linguistic domination follows upon political domi-

nation. It happened in India. When the Moghuls held the sceptre, Persian
became the privileged language; when Muslims were in power, Urdu reinforced
with Arabic became the ruling language. With British domination came the reign
of the English language, but much before it the Portuguese conquerors ushered
in the supremacy of the Portuguese language on the West coast of India. It
happened likewise in Pondi cherry where French became the official language.

The English language came to India about three centuries after the
Portuguese language. Though the East India Company began to spread its
commercial activities in India in the early 18th century, neither the efforts
of Charles Grant in 1792 nor those of the East India Company in 1813 bore
any tangible fruit. Strangely enough the fervent plea to introduce English
in India came from a staunch nationalist Raja Rammohun Roy, in 1823 when he
wrote a letter to Lord Amherst, a letter that has since been described as
a classic. It marks him out in effect as the Prophet of New India. In 1835
when the Committee of Public Instruction was equally divided between Arabic
and Sanskrit on the one hand and English on the other, the towering figure
of T.B. Macaulay persuaded it to enforce English as the medium of instruction
throughout India. The idea initiated by him was finally sealed by the famous
Despatch of Sir Charles Wood in 1854, a Despatch which is looked upon as
"The Magna Carta of English Education in India."
It is to the credit of Indians that they not only succeeded in mastering
so foreign a language as English within a generation, but in creating the
beginnings of Indo-Anglian literature. Delicate Toru Dutt of Bengal first
lit the flame of poetry in English, which later has been handed down successively
to Aurobindo Ghose, Sarojini Naidu, Harindranath Chattopadhaya, Armando Menezes,
Ragha vendra Rao, Dom Moraes, etc. Novels in English have been written with
equal success by R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Kamala Markandaya, Lambert
Mascarenhas, Naintara Sehgal, etc. Sparkling English prose has flowed from
the golden nibs of Roy, Srinivasa Shastri, Ranade, Aurobindo, Vivekananda,
Tagore, Nehru, Radhakrishnan, Rajagopalachari and others who have preached the
gospel of nationalism in this foreign language. Indian journalism without
English would have been all the poorer. English helped it to set new standards
in India.

When all this was happening in the vast sub-continent, the Portug
language had already taken root on the Western coast of India, and a
number of Portuguese words had been naturalized and absorbed elsewher
Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and other languages. Today linguistic fads a
little Roghuviras, go all out to weed out English terms, but will not
words derived from the Portuguese, like tv.al, baldi, lilaon, kamra, chep
pagar, zonel, etc., simply because they have long forgotten their or
In Goa and other parts where the Portuguese established their dom
much before the other foreigners like the Dutch, French and British, th
language began to be spread by force as early as 1545 when the Portugue
Viceroy D. Joao Castro ordered the opening of Portuguese schools in
villages in Goa. Soon, different religious orders established their o
Colleges of higher learning with Portuguese as the medium of instru
first printing press in India was set up in Goa in the year Ib56, whi
the spread of Portuguese to a great extent, whereas in the then Brit
it was established only in 1675 to disseminate tnglish.

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 Thus Portuguese linguistic proselytization descended on India much
earlier than the English one. It pervaded the educational set-up in Goa. The
Portuguese assimilation was intensive, the English one extensive. In fine,
the English language coming as it did much after, i.e., some three centuries
later, is more "foreign" than the Portuguese language.

Goans took no time to master the language of the rulers. From 1840 on-
wards, literary almanacs in Portuguese appeared, wherein Goans proved their
talent in art and literature. The themes could not be other than Indian, and
more specifically Goan. In the almanacs some literary talent budded and
blossomed forth: Barreto Miranda, Gerson da Cunha and others who wrote on
the history of Goa, the Konkani language and folklore. Elsewhere Goans
also made a mark in the same field: Fr. Jacome Gonsalves1 writing showed
great Tamilian and Singhalese influences, apart from his compiling a Tamil-
Singhalese-Portuguese dictionary as early as 177z. Here it may be mentioned
that Goa and even India, as a whole, excited the imagination of even the
pure Portuguese writers from Portugal. Many of them wrote sincerely and
dispassionately about the various facets of Goan life. They are the Goan
Annie Besants and B.G. Hornimans. In the first century of foreign domination
in Goa, Portuguese historians, like Correia, Barros, Couto, Castanheda,
wrote massive volumes on the history of Goa. In the 18th century the best
friend of Goa and the Konkani language was Cunha Rivara, who also published
weighty research papers on Goan archaeology. Osório Castro's excavations,
"Hindu Monuments of Goa" (1904) and other important research works are
entitled to a place in this survey. However, a name stands out head and
shoulders above all--Thomas Ribeiro. A native of Portugal, he came to Goa
as Chief Secretary, after already carving a niche for himself in Portuguese
literature with his heroic poem, "D. Jaime." He was quick to recognize that
"the land of India is a land for letters." Among his notable works are
"Amidst Palm Trees" (1870) and "Vespers" (1880;, which describe the scenic
beauty of Goa and her people. His best poems, however, are in "Old Goa
City" (.1880) and "The Golden Bell of Goa" (1898J. It is he who is responsi-
ble for the foundation of the Vasca da Gama Institute in 1871, now
re-baptfzed after the great Goan savant; Menezes Braganza. A cursory glance
through the many issues of its periodical will suffice to convince anyone
that this institute, far from being a centre of Portuguese culture, as some
outsiders are made to believe, is in fact an institute of Indian culture in
the Portuguese language. It is Shakuntala in Portuguese skirts. In those
issues Goan scholars discoursed on themes essentially India. Suriaji Anand
Rau, Tolentino Ferrão (a great Sanskrit scholar), Ismael Gracias, Cristóvão
Pinto, Julio Gonsalves, Antonio Noronha, Wol fango Silva, Benedito Gomes,
Propercia Correia Afonso, . . . Braganza Pereira and Pandurang Pissurlenkar
wrote abundantly on subjects dear to their hearts through the medium of
Portuguese.

And so we have Goan litterateurs writing in Portuguese on subjects

that are essentially Indian. An Englishman, Edmund Gosse, advised Sarojini
Naidu not to write any longer of "robins and skylarks" but to turn to her
own country for inspiration. Unlike him, the Portuguese were only too eager
to impose their culture. None of them tendered similar advice. Notwith-
standing the dominance of the Portuguese language for over four centuries»
it is to the credit of Goans that Portuguese did not tear them off completely
from their cultural moorings. There are Goan poets in Portuguese. There are
Goan novelists in Portuguese. There are other writers in Portuguese in the
different genres of literature. The recurring theme is either Goa or India.

This is deeply felt and more perfectly expressed by the poets. Poets,
endowed with a deeper sensibility and profound sense of awareness, are
never satisfied with the artificial. They think and feel on deeper planes of
consciousness. That is why Goan poets writing in Portuguese searched and
re-searched the real essence of the Goan personality that was fundamentally

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Indian. Floriano Barreto wrote "Night Moths" (1898) , and "Posthumous Book"
(1 906). His most exquisite poem, full of lyrical sweetness, is the "Dancing
Girl of India»" though most of his poems savour of local colour. Mariano Gracias
was profoundly influenced by Budhistic philosophy: "Land of Rajas" (1925) is
his outstanding contribution. His important poems are "Prayer to Surya" (sun),
"Goa" and "Metempsychoses-" Paulino Dias, who earned a name in science and arts
alike, wrote "Lyre of Science" (1896), "The "Goddess of Bronze" (1909),
"Vishnumlal" (1919) and the sonnet "Vyassa" on the author of the Mahabharata.
His thorough knowledge of the complex cosmology and mythology of Hinduism
is revealed in his voluminous, posthumous publication entitled "In the Land
of Surya." This poet also laid bare the measure of his genius under the
pen-name Priti Das (the slave of love). A similar literary Indian nom-de-plume,
Nitipal (protector of justice), was used by a poet of extraordinary sensibility--
Nascimento Mendonsa, whose posthumous book, Vatsala (1939). marks him as the
Shelley of Goan poetry. Like Floriano Barreto, he too goes into raptures over
the dancing girl who, since she cannot entice a Rishi, poisons him in order to
at least find solace by jumping into his pyre, in a few bold strokes he gives
us the poetic delineation of Apsaras, Sadhu, Purohit. His "The Dead" (1917)
is based on some elements of the great Indian epic, the Ramayana. Other
praiseworthy books of his are Herbs of Hind (l91z), Lotus of Blood and Ideal
(1913), Temptation of Vaissia, and a posthumous novel t The Gods of Benares (1940).
Adeodato Barreto's The Book of Life (194Ö) is highly influenced by Tagore's
poems; some of them do not cross the stage of adaptations. His powerful poems,
"Ishvara Speaks" and "The End, "are redolent of Indian pantheism.

Apart from writing a treatise on "Hindu Civilization" (1935), Adeodato

Barreto, together with Telo Mascarenhas and Jose Paulo Teles and others, founded
an Indian institute in Coimbra in 1928 from where the Goan intelligentsia edited
a journal in Portuguese called New India, Lven India's national bard,
Rabindranath Tagore, got intensely interested in their work which was a kind of
replica of his Shantiniketan. Tagore sent them a message dated November 6,
1927: "I send my greetings to Portugal in recognition of her old bond of
relationship with India and in expectation of the opening of a channel of
cultural communication with her for the furtherance of the cause of Visva-
Bharati which is to create an international mind." Other Goan poets like
Barreto Miranda, Hipólito Rodrigues, Jasso Pereira, Carmo Vaz . . . have
all handled themes of the soil in Portuguese language.

In the domain of fiction, five Goan novels remain outstanding. Though

written in Portuguese and three of them published in Portugal, their characters
are Indian to the core, and even the action is unfolded in Indian surroundings.
Indian Sceneries (1894) is a novel by Leopoldo Dias, the action of which
takes place in a Goan village, Betalbatim. "Jacob and Dulce," written by
Francisco da Costa in 1907, has absolutely local hue and character. But a
great novel came from the reputed writer and parliamentarian, Francisco Luis
Gomes, who in his letter to Lamartine, took pride in belonging to that race
that invented chess and composed the Mahabharata. It is entitled The
Brahmans (1856). This novel has its dramatic action unfolded in Fizabad in
northern India. It is pregnant with the message of liberalism. The white
Brahmanism (greed to dominate) of the Englishman is set against the brown
Brahmanism of the Indian. The message is universal: Brahmanism anywhere in
the world is to be condemned. Social taboos like untouchability also come in
for censure. Other works of his, both in Portuguese and French, such as "The
Liberty of the Land and the Rural Economy of Portuguese India," brought him
international repute, being acclaimed by both Portuguese and French savants
like Lamartine and Victor Hugo. Recently Orlando Costa earned a niche among
the Portuguese intellectuals with his Under the Spell of Ire (I960), a novel
that grows out of the soil of Goa. Agostinho Fernandes1 Bodki (1962) deals
with Goan life wrapped up in the pall of superstitions. Alberto Rodrigues1
three novelette?., Pathways of Light (1958), and short stories in Portuguese
such as those of Laxmanrao Sardessai and Elsa Rocha, constitute other examples
of the same type.
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 The same Indianess runs through the lectures, prefaces and essays
in Portuguese written by Goans for journals, almanacs, magazines and chiefly
in the periodical of the Menezes Braganza Institute. Tagore seems to be the
pet subject of many an eminent Goan like Amancio Gracias, Propercia Correia
Afonso, Antonio Miranda, Froilano de Melo, etc. The Goan or Indian treatment
of themes was taken up by others such as Wolfango Silva, Vicente Braganza
Cunha, Jaime Rangel, Ermelinda Gomes, etc. But for the ugly decade of the
1950's, journalism in Goa has been a continual fight for the freedom of the
press. It held the mirror to Goan life and customs, heritage and traditions.
Apart from the Portuguese historians, Goans too published work of historical
research and studies on the different facets of Goa. A work of great merit is
the History of Village Communes (1 852; by Filipe Neri Xavier. That Goan
writing in Portuguese dealt with themes essentially Indian is proved beyond
doubt by the research of the following scholars: Ismael Gracias, who wrote
among other works Printing Press in Goa in 16th, 17th and 18th centuries (1880);
Cristovam Pinto 's The Village Communes of Goa (188U), Prehistoric India (1909);
Antonio Maria de Cunha, who also penned Ancient and Modern India (1935); Messias
Gomes' The Kingdom of Chandrapur^ (1896) and The Sumerian Civilization in India
(1937); Antonio Noronha's The Hindus of Goa and Portuguese Republic (1923);
Ermelinda Gomes' Historical Sketch of India (1930); and India Woman (1934),
to mention only a few. Foremost among the research scholars two have won wide
repute: Braganza Pereira and Pandurang Pissurlenkar. Both, particularly
the latter, have left painstaking researches in Portuguese covering impor-
tant aspects of Goa and India from the historical and archaeological point
of view. They wrote in Portuguese on Indian topics, for the same reason which
led Aurobindo, Radhakrishnan, Nehru, Humayun Kabir and others to write in
English. If English became nationalized, Portuguese became regionalized, and
both became democratized. They were no longer the monopoly of the conquerors.

Goa 's fight for freedom created a vast body of literature in Portuguese.
Among authors and pamphleteers, mention must be made of Tristao Braganza Cunha,
the father of Goan nationalism, who wrote, besides other works, Goans Denationa-
lized (1947), and Telo Mascarenhas, whose satirical, at times sardonic, vein
is brought to bear in his political anti-Portuguese work, Handcuffs and
Chains (1952). Telo also translated into Portuguese important works by Tagore,
and wrote Kailas - Tales and Legends of Hindustan, The Indian Woman, Rama
and Sita, and Masters of Indian Tales (1950), apart from founding the Orient pub-
lishing house, which specialized in Indian publications in Portuguese. Like
him, there were others who propagated the ideal of Indian nationalism among
the Portuguese-speaking people. Santan Rodrigues wrote Contemporary India,
Contemporary Indian Literature^ Indian Swaraj (1929), apart from his
monumental work,, Dynamics of Thought, highly appreciated by Freud and Bergson.
Froilano Melo wrote The Indian Woman (1927). Aquino Furtado's Visions of the
East (1929), Lucio Miranda's India and Indians (1936), dealing with Tagore
Gandhi, Buddhism, etc., Druston Rodrigues' biography of Vi jayalakshimi Pandit,
entitled The Leader of Men (1951), B.M.S. Sardessai's Where is Truth? (1953),
discussing the quintessence of Hinduism, Rajaram Kelekar's Bhagawat Gita (1956),
all in Portuguese are works on Indian themes. Leopoldo da Rocha, Carmo Azavedo,
Keshav Bhembro, Lucio Veiga Countinho, Renato Sa, Mukund Kelekar, Jose Rangel,
Gopal Kamat and many of the living generation discuss in essays themes of
socio-political import. Fil into Cristo Dias, Antonio Colaço, Ramchandra Naik,
Vi thai Sukhtankar, Joseph Barros, Megashama Deshprabhu and many others have been
devotees of the Portuguese language.

The century-old fight for the recognition of the Konkani language as the
medium of instruction in Goa accounts for a vast body of writing in Portuguese
from Cunha Ri vara to Dal gado and Mariano Saldanha. The philologist and research
scholar of international renown that was Rodolfo Da I gado left a rich legacy of
massive volumes such as his Konkani-Portuguese Dictionary, Portuguese- Konkani
Dictionary , Portuguese Vocables in Asiatic Languages, and Indian Vocables in
European Languages-.

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 This Indo-Lusitanian literature, which is fundamentally Indian, does not
include the bulky technical literature in Portuguese produced by Goans on
subjects such as law, medicine, pharmacy . . . and even atomic energy, which
are universal in significance and application. The other literature which
may be described as Indo-Portuguese for its faithful transplantation of
Indian books into Portuguese literature figures such names as Bernardino
Gracias, who translated Kalidasa's Shakuntala and Megadooth, besides writing
Indian Music and Drama in Indo-Aryan Literature (1929;. Like his, Telo
Mascarenhas1 writing is both Indo-Lusitanian and Indo-Portuguese. He also
translated some major works of Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography.

These are Goans, pure-blooded Indians, though most of them with

foreign names and surnames. There are still some Goans of mixed descent
who wrote in Portuguese but on Indian themes. A few names rightfully
deserve an honoured place: Thomas Mou rao, who wrote on Goan Mangos (1873) and
other subjects; Fernando Leal, whose poem on the legend of "The King of
Benares" (1888) and the translation of "Elephants and Monsters" (1876) from
the original in French based on the First War of India's Independence of
1857; Adolfo Costa, whose poems full of Indian flavour are collected
in Suryanas (1937); Ferreira Martins, who translated Kalidasa's Shakuntala
(1911) and Tagore 's chi tra (1914) and Gitanjali (1916). I have not mentioned
here the innumerable works of Portuguese metropolitan writers from the 15th
to the 20th century, notable among them being the epic writer Camões and
Bocage.

Mahatma Gandhi wisely said: "Let all cultures blow about me, but I
refuse to blow off my feet." This can be understood only by big hearts
like Nehru's. While speaking on the future of English about two years
before Goa's liberation, he said, 'Tor that matter, even Portuguese has
become an Indian language." After having attained political freedom, no
purpose is served in waging a war against Portuguese, Lnglish or any other
foreign language and thus erecting narrow walls of linguistic chauvinism.
Portuguese in Goa has been for centuries the medium of expression for
Indian themes. It is by no means a strange language. True, it is a foreign
language that the colonialists foisted upon Goans, like French and English
in the rest of India. And all along Goans have been conscious that it is
not their language. Else what does the recurring expression cmòhi bhas (our
language), while referring to Konkani, mean? However, it is an unquestionable
fact that English is more "foreign" than Portuguese. The mere fact that
the vast majority of Indians learnt English, which undoubtedly helped to
unite India, does not in any way endow it with more rights than the Portuguese.
For the sake of argument, we can well imagine what would have happened if
the British had ruled Goa and the Portuguese the rest of India.

While a plea for the retention of the Portuguese language in Goa is

just, English should not be neglected. The three-language formula may be
followed, since English is not only the functional, federal, link-language
of India, but a world language. Indeed, great disservice will be done to
Indian culture, which is composite, if India neglects the two important
layers-Portuguese and French, which have become part and parcel of that very
culture, by virtue of having been long used by Indians. The battle of languages
in India is essentially a simple problem unnecessarily complicated by senti-
mental politicians and pseudo-patriots. If the ghost of linguistic controversies
is to be laid to rest, an easy way out would be to allot different time limits
to different communities in India according to their linguistic affinities
with the national language, Hindi. Only thus can Indians make their country
one and united culturally, as nature made her long, long ago, walled by the
Himalayas and the Indian Ocean, ere her people themselves tore her off by
fissiparous tendencies of many brands eating into the very vitals of this
essential unity.

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