Tag: postcoloniality

Al-Zulaij Exclusive

60 Years of ‘Liberation’: The Pressing Need for a Constitutional Contract

By THE AL-ZULAIJ COLLECTIVE

Introduction

The 19th of December 2020 marks the commencement of the sixtieth year since Goa was annexed to the Indian Union, ending Portugal’s sovereignty over the territory. To celebrate this moment, the current government of Goa has planned a 100-crore celebration, even while the pandemic, and decades-long mismanagement of the Goan economy, along with corruption and communal politics, have pushed the Goan people to the edge. Against such a backdrop, it is critical that we look beyond the celebratory rhetoric, and focus on the structural problems that were written into India’s relationship with Goa right from the start. It is our argument that Goa’s ‘liberation’ may have ended Portuguese sovereignty over the territory, but, due to the manner through which the integration with the Indian Union took place, it has produced a condition of lawlessness that is in no small measure responsible for the unfolding chaos in Goa. (more…)

Discussions, Interventions

R. Benedito Ferrão to present a paper entitled ‘With this Sea-Port I thee Wed: Of Royal Dowries and Self-Makingin Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”‘

R. Benedito Ferrão will present a paper titled ‘With this Sea-Port I thee Wed: Of Royal Dowries and Self-Makingin Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children‘ at the Oceans and Shores: Heritage, People, and Environments conference – III CHAM International conference, FCSH/Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 12-15 July, 2017.

 

Ferrão’s paper will examine how Rushdie’s novel, Midnight’s Children, uses the early modern history of sea-ports and maritime trade to underscore the postcolonial location of characters and their Lusophonic connections as subaltern legacies subsumed in post-British India.

 

In having Mary Pereira/Braganza be Goan, Midnight’s Children brings into focus the significant utility of his character’s native land in the European imperial history of South Asia. Mary Pereira evokes the figure of Goa as one of the earliest colonies and then the last foreign dominion (1510-1961) in what was to become modern day India. In adopting the Braganza moniker, the character recalls an important historical moment in the making of coloniality. The 1662 marriage of Catherine of Braganza to Charles II was orchestrated to secure the relationship between two colonial powers. Through the alliance, England received the port city of Bombay as dowry.

 

Further, in renaming herself after the Portuguese infanta, Mary Pereira also evokes that other Catherine. On 25 November, 1510, Afonso de Albuquerque took the port of Goa. It was the feast day of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and the Portuguese conqueror believed she had overseen his defeat of the Muslim ruler of the enclave. This conquestchanged the course of commercial relations between Europe and Asia, displacing Middle Eastern trade hegemonies. Simultaneously, the site where Saint Catherine discovered her faith – North Africa – doubly pagan and quintessentially “other” in the later Occidental imagination is also the continental location from which sprung the Moors: Muslims who once ruled over Iberia.

 

By centring on the iconic naming and renaming of Mary Pereira in Midnight’s Children, the paper argues that the novel uses the history of the ports of Goa and Bombay to challenge the Anglo-centrism of postcolonial thought in relation to India, especially by highlighting maritime commerce.

 

More information about the conference here.

Popular Essays

AAP Goa as Colonial Agent?

By JASON KEITH FERNANDES

 

While large numbers of its members are no doubt motivated by a genuine interest in redressing the many ills that plague Goan electoral democracy, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Goa could in fact be seen as antithetical to the pressing needs of Goans,  pushing an agenda that other national parties, operating from Delhi have done before. If the traditional national parties like the Congress and the BJP had helped, with the help of local elites, to usher in forces of unbridled capitalism in the guise of development and Hindu nationalism in Goa, AAP seems to be operating within this same model. The only difference is that AAP promises that it will deliver Goa from rampant corruption. And yet, when examined from the perspective of the nexus between New Delhi and local dominant caste landed elites AAP’s claims of difference and salvation fall flat on its face.

 

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