Frederick Noronha
Take a thick tome (preferably in hardcover). Succeed at getting it published by a Big City publisher. You can expect to get quite some visibility. The end result: most would probably make many believe that this is indeed a laudable work, deserving of all the encomiums it receives.
Selma Carvalho’s fourth book on the Goan diaspora (largely in Africa) is subtitled The Epic Story of Goans in Zanzibar. Like well promoted books, its online (and print) mentions have been overwhelmingly positive or promotional. Maybe it’s time for one which is genuinely critical.
This hard-bound May-published 458-page book (Speaking Tiger, 2026, Rs 999) has been called an “act of profound historical healing”. The author herself has noted that it got “recommended/reviewed, platformed or interviewed” by over a dozen spaces. Expats from Tanzania, especially earlier linked to the island of Zanzibar, which this book is based on, have also evinced interest in getting to know more about it.
The book isn’t about the Zanzibar Goans as a community. Instead, it looks closely at the lives of half a dozen prominent individuals from among them (some focussed on deeply, some laudingly, others with persistent critiques). Through this, one gets an insight into the successes and failures, the trials and triumphs of some of the big names from the Goan community there.
By some coincidence, one chanced upon one’s own review of Carvalho’s earlier book The Railway Runs Through (The Navhind Times, July 6, 2014, Celebrating the Africander Goan... in text and pics’). It brought about a sense of deja vu, as there is a significant overlap (or, should one say, revisiting and further developing) of the themes taken up a dozen years back. 5C That text was self-published, slimmer in size, more pictorial. It also focussed on the wider area of Goan migration in East Africa. This one focuses on Goans in Zanzibar (that too, mainly prominent ones).
Zanzibar, for those unfamiliar with the geography, was a sovereign state that united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form Tanzania. It is 98% Islam by faith, is two-thirds the size of Goa and has a population a little more than our state’s. It consists of many small islands and two large ones: Unguja (Zanzibar) Island and Pemba Island. Zanzibar City’s historic centre, Stone Town, which some Goans had a hand in building, is now a World Heritage Site.
But Guts, Glory and Empire looks at another period: 1865-1910. This has its pros and cons. It offers insights into a world most of us would know little about; on the other hand, it sometimes has to resort to some surmise and conjecture to create this “non-fiction/history” book.
Like her work of nearly a dozen years ago, Carvalho lists among her dramatis personae once more: Caetano Rosario (CR) Souza, who she describes as “one of Zanzibar’s richest merchants”. Also D.B. Pereira,
There are some new names too. Chapter 14 gives their local connections of the ‘four pioneers from Bardez of the mid-19th century’–Ângelo Maria Albuquerque (b.1847, Anjuna); D.B. Pereira (Sangolda), João Pedro Souza (Siolim); António Luis Silva (Reis Magos).
The Salcete protagonists include CR Souza (of Velsao, mentioned above) and Francisco Piedade Paixão Noronha (possibly Verna). They too get significant attention, which perhaps helps to correct the Goan migration story usually being dominated by Bardez narratives.
On the positive side, this book has come about in times when cyberspace, repeated book releases or discussions and some enhanced (but not enough) visibility for Goa amidst “national” book publishers has somewhat changed the rules of the game. So, it’s easier to build visibility and attention far and wide. Whether this converts into book sales and actual readers is anyone›s guess.
Also on the positive side is the focus on Zanzibar, a small part of a one of the smaller countries (Tanzania) in East Africa, where Goan migration played a significant role, and also changed the home-villages of the diasporeans in mostly unnoticed ways. This book, of course, is not focussed on that, but one does get hints of it.
To understand the size and impact of Goan migration there, one needs to jump across many pages, where estimates or official figures of Goan settlers have been mentioned. (In those times, Goans didn’t get merged into the wider pool of Indian migration, due to nationality differences.)
The detail one comes across can both be an advantage or not. There›s so much of it, that it›s easy to lose the wider point in the specific details and narratives. At 458 pages one would need a close interest in the subject to undertake a cover-to-cover read.
But a more significant concern here is the dependence on official archives (especially the British, and British-published colonial newspapers) to create an image of Goan immigration. Colonial archives are not neutral. They disproportionately look at the lives of people who came in contact with consulates, courts, hospitals, missions and administrative institutions.
This is not to say that the British archives are inherently inappropriate; far from it. For a book about Goans in colonial Zanzibar and British East Africa, British records are obviously indispensable. Yet, should these (as seems to be the case) become the dominant lens through which the Goan experience is reconstructed?
Without doubt, the British colonial records are exceptionally rich, well catalogued and relatively accessible to researchers in London. So are the Portuguese (despite some language barriers for us today), which are opening up increasingly, including online. One could say that Goans are at fault for not being better at record-keeping for their own stories; but this is not so simple an issue.
The people who appear most clearly are often those who interacted with colonial institutions (merchants, professionals, intermediaries, litigants, criminals, officials and elites). On the other hand, the less powerful, including Africans and poorer Goans, may remain comparatively silent. Or even nameless, as seen sometimes.
At some points, Carvalho rubbishes the terms used by the colonials, or represents these sarcastically in chapter titles: like half-caste Portuguese of Goa, cooks and ayahs, half-caste interpreter, and so on. But the archive-keeper›s voice is so strong that it’s obviously hard to go beyond such framing.
Another issue is that Carvalho invisibilises much of the earlier Goan writing on Africa. Many texts are not referred to, and a couple important analytical constructs are cited without any credit (more later)
The suggestion that this book sets new standards in diaspora histories risks overlooking a substantial body of earlier Goan and East African scholarship. Writers and historians including Teresa Albuquerque, Stella Mascarenhas Keyes, Cynthia Salvadori (dealing with wider migrations), Margaret Frenz, Mervyn Maciel, Cypriano “Skip” Fernandes, Braz Menezes in Fiction, J.B. Pinto and others had already placed individual migrants or families, migration trends and achievements, and community networks at the centre of their narratives.
Another issue: This book (though only in a blurb) mentions Goans acting as a “subaltern elite”. This conceptualisation has a significant prior genealogy in Margret Frenz’s scholarship. Likewise, the concept of Goans acting as “cultural brokers” in different settings is mentioned, without giving any credit to the person who earlier created this important argument (which, unless mistaken, was Peter Nazareth).
At another level, expat Goans have been discussing their stories and realities for decades now, often through cyberspace. One can find such discussions on the extinct Tanzanite Goans, the existing TGoans groups, and even Goanet. The archives of the latter show how many scores of issues have been discussed. https://tinyurl.com/zanzibar-goanet The question that comes up: were the inputs built on sufficiently credited?
All in all, if you have a connection with East Africa, you›d want to check out this book,
for sure.
