Month: May 2017

Image credit: Memórias da India Portuguesa

The lecture will be a part of the South Asia Seminar Series, more information can be found here.

Kaustubh Naik will present a paper titled, ‘Navigating the ambivalence – O Bharat and the Hindus of Portuguese Goa’ at the International Congress on Politics and Culture in Colonial Periodical Press, to be held at the New University of Lisbon, Portugal. The Congress will be held from 22-25 May, 2017 and the concept note of the Congress is available here.

Naik’s paper looks at the end of constitutional monarchy in Portugal and its subsequent transition into a Republic in 1910 as a critical moment in the history of Portuguese Goa, as it enfranchised Goan Hindus into the state administration, albeit in a restricted manner. Among other implications of this moment, perceived as a step towards freedom, the printing and circulation of Marathi periodicals in Goa saw a surge post 1910. Marathi periodicals in Goa have been regarded as the proof of the cultural inertia of the Goan Hindus, who shielded themselves from so called ‘westernization’. These periodicals, post-1910, emerged as sites that were representative of the efforts of the Goan Hindu communities that were repositioning themselves in an ambivalent political future that loomed over the initial half of the 20th century in Portuguese Goa. As an illustrative case for this observation, this paper will focus on the writings published in O Bharat, the longest running multilingual periodical (1912-1949) published from Portuguese Goa. Through critical analysis of these writings, this paper seeks to foreground the manner in which the Goan Hindu communities were mediating the Indian nationalist discourses originating from the British India while simultaneously grappling with the autonomy of the Portuguese Republic.

Dale Luis Menezes will present a paper titled, ‘Global News, Vernacular Print: A Study of Political Ideas in Modern Portuguese India (1880-1975)’ at the International Congress on Politics and Culture in Colonial Periodical Press, to be held at the New University of Lisbon, Portugal. The Congress will be held from 22-25 May, 2017 and the concept note of the Congress is available here.

Menezes’ paper looks at the print-culture of Portuguese India which existed in diverse languages, such as Portuguese, Marathi, English, Nagri Konkani, and Romi Concanim. These newspapers are a source of constructing the intellectual history of modern empires. Print-culture has received a decent amount of attention in recent times with scholars like Rochelle Pinto and Sandra Ataíde Lobo working on the intellectual production of elite Goans. However, we do not know much about the subaltern, working class sections of Goan society. How these publications in various languages engaged with news and events from across the globe, and how they selected news items according to their ideological and political proclivities, and their location within empires indicates how politics was negotiated within the setting of the Portuguese empire. This study proposes to focus on three newspapers: the weekly Ave Maria in Romi Concanim, Porjecho Adar a bilingual weekly in Romi Concanim and Portuguese, and the weekly O Bharat in Marathi. It is only by trying to be as representative of the print-culture of Portuguese India as possible that one can make sense of the global and local circulation of ideas, through the medium of news reports. Focusing on global news as reported in the local or the vernacular press would help us understand the intellectual ideas with which the ‘local’ actors engaged.