So, someone asked this question in cyberspace: "I genuinely wanted to learn more about this. I have watched a few videos on YouTube, but they are mostly from people with agendas and don't make sense to me as they do not validate their claims with facts. What did the Portuguese loot? How did they do it?"
These days, we are getting increasingly caught up in fighting battles over the past. Our economy, the difficulty for our youth to find jobs, and the crony capitalism is only getting worse. Together with this, the tendency to blame the past for all our present-day ills is also getting more acute.
Most commentators here have ridiculed the chief minister's view of the need to wipe out the Portuguese imprint on Goa.
Many see this past as a mix of both good and not-so-good, even the good brought on by the law-of-unintended-consequences and the spillover of bonuses (like European nationality for Goans), plus the bad and the terrible. But history is not just a one-way street.
Because the case against the Portuguese is being so obviously over-stated, it is also likely that arguments favouring our Luso rulers would be as exaggerated.
People will vote with their feet, decide their own self-interest, and make up their minds about what they want to claim about their own pasts. With or without Shivaji statues that sprout overnight.
The Portuguese were here as rulers, and they did not come to do social work. This is also true of our other rulers, pre-1510 and post-1961. Including the BJP and the Congress, or for that matter, the regional parties when they held power.
As children of the 1960s, we too grew up on a staple of over-nationalistic history texts. We were taught that foreign rulers were bad and that local ones were good.
Writing online, the young Salesian from Mangalore, Jason Joseph Pinto, pointed out how Portuguese colonialism was a mixed bag for us on the west coast. Without eulogising the former colonial rulers, he tongue-in-cheek called for wishing away the other side of the picture too.
For instance, sati being abolished early on in Goa's history, a "Uniform Civil Code" (not exactly, but quite), architectural influences which have become part of our DNA. Fruits from across the globe, a style of dress, odd forms of collaboration with local elites, and even protests against Portuguese rule...
Shriniwas Khalap pointed to the Portuguese influence even on the Marathi language. There were Hindu influences in the Catholic world, and influences which cut across religion. Ruling dynasties gave way from one to another, and therein lies another tale.
Our logic seems to be based around certain assumptions (1) The Portuguese were rulers from afar, with another culture and religion, and therefore had no business to be here (2) To have gained so much, they surely must have looted from Goa (3) Colonisers don't rule for the benefit of some distant folk in some other land.
All of this is true, yet the conclusions our politicians are arriving at need not be true.
One book should be made compulsory reading for post-1961 Goans (who are almost as Lusophobic as the pre-1961 Goans were Lusostalgic). This is Martin Page's 'The First Global Village: How Portugal Changed the World'.
Let me assure you this work is not an apologia for colonialism. It is written by a Briton, and the Brits tend to have very dismissive views of the Portuguese colonial enterprise. But it offers unexpected insights into the doings of a tiny nation which reshaped the world... not just Goa or tiny pockets of India.
Page talks of tiny Portugal's history -- from the Old Testament and Greek and Latin descriptions of the "land beyond God's reach", to the Carthaginians' discovery of vast mineral wealth there.
Julius Caesar won the governorship of Portugal in a lottery, and made his fortune there to "buy his way to power in Rome", he writes. Later, the Romans "made themselves at home" in Portugal, and changed the people's laws, diet and language. Soaring taxes caused the Portuguese to sell themselves into slavery.
Christianity arrived there from North Africa, and there were uprisings against the Romans. An Arab raiding party unintentionally became an army of occupation. Sounds familiar?
After going through the nitty-gritties of history, we hear of Portugal's loot of North Africa and the trade in African slaves. Before we get self-righteous over this, let us not forget that prominent Goan trading houses later had a part in the slave trade, and even opium exports in another era. History is indeed complex.
Page points out that Vasco da Gama came as an ambassador, "not a discoverer, his voyage no more random than a modern space mission". The contests of the Portuguese was with the Arabs, for mastery of the Indian Ocean. There are many more details which would surprise the Goan reader, brought up as we are on a staple of anti-Portuguese bigotry.
Another fascinating book, 'The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice', tells us the story of Venice, Lisbon and Amsterdam. It says that "their single-minded pursuit of spice helped to make (and remake) the Western diet and set in motion the first great wave of globalization". Does this amount to "Portuguese loot"?
One day, as more complex histories of Goa's encounter with the Portuguese get to be written, we might be able to understand the actual encounter and what it involved. Both positive and negative. Maybe then too, we will realise that politicians pushing for their own selfish interest helped us to get to this point. Maybe they deserve our thanks...
