A Tale of the Tongue Forgotten
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By Frederick Noronha

In many ways, Portuguese is still seen as the not-to-be-trusted, not-to-be-liked language in Goa. On the other hand, a small band of die-hard supporters maintain their Lusostalgia over everything they miss, including the language.

Those not knowing the language are to be looked down upon, or sneered at. In between these extremes, it may not be surprising that there’s little space for the language’s growth in today’s Goa. Even if some signs are promising.

Can time play the role of the healer?

In late May 2013, the researcher, writer and Goaphile Dr Carmo D’Souza of Calangute, and his team at Ismilda Research Consultancy, brought together a small group at the Salgaocar Law College to focus on the Portuguese language and literature in today’s Goa. Some interesting issues came up here.

The Portuguese language’s role in Goa rakes up strong views, which is a little strange considering how much acceptance the former coloniser’s language of English has gained in the rest of India. Indians are making a name worldwide for their writings in English. English is increasingly seen as a link language within India and a window to the outside world. Nobody will question the Indianness of a Salman Rushdie, an Amitav Ghosh, an Upamanyu Chatterjee, a Rohington Mistry, a Vikram Chandra, an Aravind Adiga or a Kiran Desai.

In Africa too, the role of European languages in a post-colonial world has been heatedly debated. The Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o renounced writing in English. The Nigerian novelist, poet, professor and critic Chinua Achebe, who passed away in March this year, wrote his novels in English and defended the use of the “language of colonisers”, in African literature. In Goa, we seem to be at neither end of this spectrum. Instead, we are caught up either pretending the language doesn’t exist for us, or floundering over what would be the best way to continue our relationship with the Portuguese language, even if we want the links to continue in some form today.

Dr Carmo D’Souza makes a strong case for understanding Portuguese as a “researcher’s repository”. In pre-Liberation Goa, Portuguese was the official language, the language of courts, daily newspapers, the medium of instruction, books, party politics, manifestoes, appeals, political assemblies, novels, poems, recipes, home diaries and even invitations. Those who knew the language could understand sociological trends in yesterday’s Goa. D’Souza pointed to the Coimbra-centered writers of Goan origin who were influenced by the writing of Tagore (perhaps his recent Nobel Prize in the early 20th century had something to do with it), and how India held a fascination for them even in their Portuguese writing.

“People who have the documentation should collect it and keep it. In the future it could be valuable,” D’Souza suggested. He pointed out how Goa’s traditional knowledge — related to coconut cultivation and bund-making — was preserved within the Portuguese language. Goan recipe books in Portuguese held knowledge of another day too.

But the subject can be read at another level too.

Sandra Ataíde Lobo traces her roots partly to Goa itself and is a PhD researcher at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Ataide Lobo argued that Portuguese could well be seen as a Goan language. She sees Portuguese as “a language sufficiently relevant to Goan interests today”. And it played a role in the past too, even if often dismissed only as a language of the elites. Ataide Lobo notes that the Goan played a significant role in promoting the Portuguese language and culture in “Indian, European and American academic centres”.

For instance, Goan migrants started various newspapers and magazines, mostly bi-lingual in British India, such as O Anglo-Lusitano. Jose Gerson da Cunha presented the a sketch of the Portuguese language in the East to the Royal Asiatic Society in Bombay.

Another Goan, professor and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine Acácio Gabriel Viegas, managed to get Portuguese in as a second language in the University. Plácido de Bragança Cunha, one of the lesser known brothers of Tristao de Bragança Cunha, pushed for the creation of a chair in Portuguese language and literature at the University in Calcutta. His elder brother Vicente de Bragança Cunha completed his studies at London University, travelled to Bombay in 1915, and organised a series of conferences dedicated to Portuguese literature, Athaide Lobo noted.

Such a significant role by Goan intellectuals of the time in the international promotion of Portuguese, is still to be acknowledged, even by the Portuguese, says Athaide Lobo. Since the end of the 19th century, a group of Hindu intellectuals in Goa too argued that the community should seriously invest to overcome their disadvantage in the Goan public sphere due to its lack of skills in Portuguese.

And, of the 733 writers listed in the monumental Dictionary of Goan Literature of Aleixo Manuel da Costa (a new volume of which has just reached the bookshops), as many as 86 per cent of the authors published in Portuguese in those times, says Athaide Lobo. This compared with 16 per cent in English, 15.5 per cent in Konkani and 2.5 per cent in Marathi.

Another scholar, Dr Paul Melo e Castro, is professor at the University of Leeds and reminds Goa about the stories that our state choses to forget. He looked at the “Goan subaltern” in the short stories of three writers from here — Vimala Devi (Teresa da Piedade de Baptista Almeida), Maria Elsa da Rocha and Epitácio Pais.

Says he, after a fascinating and insightful review of their work: “All three writers, I contend, deserve a readership in twenty-first century Goa.” Elsewhere, Melo e Castro has compared the writing of Laxmanrao Sardessai’s “O Barco de Africa/The Africa Boat” with the work by the Mozambiquan writer Mia Couto. Coincidentally, Couto recently received the Camoes Prize, which at 100,000 Euros is among the richest literary prizes in the world, awarded by the Portuguese and Brazilians to an author of an outstanding work written in Portuguese. It is often regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Literature!