Category: Interventions

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…)

Books, Interventions, Interviews

Amita Kanekar: Fear of Lions

Courtesy: Christine Machado, Navhind Times.

Q. What made you choose the Satnami Revolt as the focus for your new book?

I wanted to write about social revolutions, or attempted social revolutions. And professor Irfan Habib mentioned in one of his books that this peasant rebellion of 1672 was one of the few overtly anti-caste movements that South Asia has seen. So, given that caste is the root evil at the heart of most of South Asia’s problems, it seemed an interesting topic, also because few people know about it. (more…)