Fresh insights into one’s society as seen through others’ eyes are helpful (EDITORIAL)
Goa can be understood, portrayed or deciphered in different ways, and that is just what is happening all the time. Bloggers and Bollywood, visitors and viewers, writers and wanderers have all interpreted this region in their own way; sometimes insightful, at times with their own biases or misunderstandings. However, these mirrors held up to one’s own society can be helpful, as they offer fresh perspectives, insights and even potential misinterpretations.
Recently, some such opportunities offering a ‘mirror to Goa’ emerged. Just over is a two-day event, ‘India-Portugal: Confluence of Cultures,’ an international conference. Few can deny that Goa has played the role of a meeting point. This not only happened after the near-accidental arrival of the Portuguese here, but also long before that. The term ‘confluence’ means a meeting of multiple rivers to become a single river. In a broader sense, it could also be taken to mean the “coming or flowing together”.
Part of this event was Yale, the Ivy League research university, and the third-oldest higher education institution in the United States. In particular, the MacMillan Centre’s Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies, headed by the long-time Goa hand Prof Kenneth David Jackson, Professor of Luso-Brazilian literature, who has been researching Goa and its literature for nearly five decades. Can such initiatives connect this region with the outside academic world more effectively?
Amidst discussions on Indian philosophy and its influences on the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, understanding Goa “beyond the Portuguese gaze” (including through photographs depicting simple Goan life in colonial times), the Goan Diaspora in France, and a range of other subjects, new perspectives have a chance to emerge. There were also perspectives on Goan food, the diversity and pressures on Goan rice, language connections, and more. In this discourse, there was scope to reflect the intensely multilingual nature of Goa, covering Marathi, English, Goan Portuguese, Konkani novels and more.
Agreed, the conclusion of Portuguese rule in Goa came about on a rather sour note. Yet, six decades later, maybe it’s time to take a less-emotive view of the past. We need to cope with its many challenges and pressures and sometimes even acknowledge the positive that might have come from this ‘confluence’.
In our globalised world, the jostling between conflicting and contrary ideas needs welcoming. There is enough space for everyone to coexist and compete to find out which carries greater weight.
It might be interesting to see how scholars overseas view Goan literature, why a Portuguese scholar “fell in love” with contemporary India, and how the Luso language itself got shaped by the complex Asian reality over the centuries. Even if Goa seemed as if it was turning its back on its Portuguese past in recent decades, one suspects this region still has the potential to play the role of a 21st-century networker and help complex parts of the world, and ideas from there, to encounter themselves in our backyard.
As we grapple with the reality of being part of an increasingly globalised world, tiny parts of the globe, like Goa, need to rethink their equation with the wider globe. Unlike larger parts of India, we here have less of the luxury of being an inward-looking society.
After all, as some wag said, “Where you stand determines what you see.” In other words, your physical location – or even understanding of your place in the globe – can affect what you see, how you see it, and what you choose to do. All crucial choices in our fast-changing globe.
