Is it Goan or Goanese?

Photo Credits: EDIT main

As these things go, a recent debate erupted in Goa’s literary circles over whether we can ever legitimately be called Goanese? Curiously, I am still at times called Goanese here in the United Kingdom, and I have never resented this quaint word nor have I ever assigned any negative connotation to it.

Any word, however legitimate, can over the years fall from grace and become a pejorative. The hugely offensive word ‘n-word’ originated simply from the Iberian word ‘n****’ meaning black, and its initial usage was neutral. It quickly became a pejorative and the word ‘coloured’ replaced it. Today, ’coloured’ itself has fallen into disrepute and has been replaced by ‘Black’.

For a word to be considered a pejorative there has to be a history of abuse associated with it. Having researched countless original documents, colonial newspapers, reports and letters emanating from the desks of British administrators in India and more specifically East Africa, I have yet to come across the word Goanese being used in a negative light. In fact, in East Africa, to the British who coined the word, the ‘Goanese’ were the favoured race – the gentle, docile, pliable, law-abiding citizens; faithful and loyal always to Portugal and Britain. They were erroneously thought to have Portuguese blood running through their veins, which made them ‘half-castes’. The term Goanese was at times used interchangeably with Eurasian. Frequently, the categorisation for administrative purposes was ‘Eurasian (a reference to Anglo-Indians) and Goanese’. Religion (Christianity) and language (at the time Portuguese or English) became the civilisational boundary between Goans and other Asians, and earned them sundry privileges within the British empire.

Perhaps then, the negative connotation associated with the word Goanese has its genesis in Bombay. This led me to read, rather hastily, the book ‘Goa and the Continent of Circe’ by Robert de Souza. The entire book is a rebuttal to another book ‘The Continent of Circe’ published by Nirad Chaudhuri. A known agent provocateur of his time, Chaudhuri alleged that Goans were little more than half-caste meztizos who supplied Bombay’s cooks, waiters, fiddlers, maid-servants and bordellos. Souza naturally, if somewhat defensively, rebuts this assertion illustrating the long history of Goan accomplishment in Bombay. So the word Goanese possibly by the early 1900s, had become entangled in a fine-wire mesh of prejudice associated with the commonness of dockland Bombay Goans, living on the fringes of economic destitution and moral degradation.

To Souza’s credit, he is rightfully proud of the contribution to Bombay of many working class Goans who migrated to that city of light. In fact, he quotes the Inquiry Committee Report of 1931, which sets out Goan occupations and their importance: ‘Especial mention deserves the classes of tailors, musicians, masons, seamen and domestic servants.’ Perhaps it had escaped Chaudhuri’s attention that this same report also noted that ‘the Indo-Portuguese community is intellectually one of the most advanced in British-India’.

But whatever became of those men Chaudhuri so contemptuously dismissed as fiddlers and cooks? By the mid-1800s, the fiddlers became bandmasters in royal courts in India and then across the seas in Zanzibar and Kenya. Diogo Santa-Anna de Souza, Camillo A. Saldanha and Isaac Souza, all in turn headed the Sultan’s military band in Zanzibar, and Felicio Caetano Pinto for many years led the King’s African Rifles band in Nairobi. They directed elaborate marches and waltzes by major European composers and even wrote their own music. The Inquiry Committee Report of 1931 noted the extent of their popularity: ‘The class of musicians counts more than 700, the majority being in Bombay and the rest disseminated everywhere. This profession is almost a monopoly thanks to the talent and artistic education in the parochial schools of Goa.’

What of the cooks? By the end of the 19th century quite a few had letters of recommendation from governors and visiting dignitaries. Invariably the visit of a monarch to the colonies had a Goan chef catering for the royal entourage.

With both sides of the debate scoring a nil point, the only argument worth considering was one put forward by media consultant for Deutsche Welle, Sajan Venniyoor, when he wrote: ‘The only rule, if such a thing exists, is that we must respect the wishes of the people as to what they would like to be called. If the people of Goa wish to be called Goans, that then is the rule. And if someone wants to be a Mancunian, a Cantabrigian or a Scouser, one can only acknowledge the richness and variety of language.’

If we take this yardstick, then the issue is settled. In my research, I have yet to come across documentation where Goans refer to themselves as ‘Goanese’. They called themselves Goano, Indo-Portuguese or more simply Portuguese. By 1900, the change in the names of their institutes from Indo-Portuguese to Goan, reflects this patriotic pride. Hence we have the Goan Institute of Nairobi, the Goan Union, the Goan Academic Association of Calcutta and so on and so forth. Despite the original neutrality of the word Goanese, we can all respect the fact that the population of Goa wants to be known as Goans. However, it is a waste of energy arguing needlessly if by chance someone does refer to us as Goanese, for indeed like many British to this day, they may mean nothing by it other than a reference to an ethnicity, and so I find the outrage to be misplaced.

Selma Carvalho is the author of A Railway Runs Through: Goans of British East Africa, 1865 - 1980. Between 2011 - 2014, she headed the Oral Histories of British Goans project in London