Author: Jason Keith Fernandes

Popular Essays

Dreaming Dignified Public Transport

I resume this column after a gap of six years, three of which – thanks to the pandemic which prevented smooth international travel – have been spent outside of Goa. Returning to the patria after these same three years has, therefore, been something of a shock. From the moment one leaves the airport one is witness to numerous grade separators, elevated expressways and other infrastructure. The change has been so huge that in some cases the new landscape is virtually unrecognisable, and one gets the sense that one is in uncharted territory. (more…)

Books, Interventions, Talks, Webinars

Jason Keith Fernandes, ‘CONTEMPLATING CITIZENSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA’ Special Lecture at the Tamil Nadu National Law University,13 July 2021

Abstract

Citizenship has been at the heart of many of the more recent controversies within India – be it those linked with the revocation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution and the dismemberments of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, the National Register of Citizens, or the Constitutional Amendment Act. The polemics around these issues have demonstrated with uncomfortable clarity, however, that there is much confusion between the terms nationality and citizenship, with the latter often being understood to mean the same as the former. Drawing on the legal history of the subcontinent, including spaces from outside of British India, particularly Portuguese India, Dr Fernandes suggests that there is a fundamental distinction between the two terms and it is necessary to maintain this distinction if the citizenship rights of Indian nationals are to be preserved.

 

Popular Essays

Para que os subalternos não falem: a oclusão do património português entre os goeses

Por JASON KEITH FERNANDES

Ninguém sabe ao certo como tratar o denominado património português em Goa. A confusão deve-s ao facto de que este património não se refere apenas a alguns monumentos ou práticas do passado, mas é um património vivo e que respira, corporeamente materializado nas pessoas de Goa, como um todo e, particularmente, nos católicos. Isto faz com que se trate de um património volátil e, por isso, muitos esforços académicos têm sido investidos em negá-lo ou rejeitar a sua complexidade.

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Books, Interventions, Interviews

Jason Keith Fernandes: The Suppression of Romi Konkani and the Shaming of a People

Courtesy: Joao Roque and Malavika Neurekar

The history of the Konkani language has been fraught with conflicts of all shades, including a complex relationship with the colonial Portuguese state, a movement to establish its existence as separate from Marathi in the 1960s, and a widespread controversy around the medium of instruction in state schools in the early 1990s. But its most interesting episode is perhaps also the least talked about.

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Books, Interventions, Interviews

Jason Keith Fernandes: Interviewed about “Citizenship in a Caste Polity”

Courtesy: Jane Borges, Mid-Day.

LONG after the Portuguese left Goa in 1961, the erstwhile colonisers were still in vogue in the coastal belt. Cars and three-wheelers displaying Portuguese flags, national colours and emblems would amble down the quaint gullies and streets, as if India was not mothership yet. Jason Keith Fernandes, who was pursuing his doctoral research then, remembers being intrigued by this practice, common among the working-class and lower middle-class Goan Catholics. This, he’d learn, was not just their attempt to demonstrate claim to Portuguese citizenship, but also distinguish themselves from the rest of the population in the state. (more…)