L27: Goan Identity

Good morning, everyone! Welcome back. What a journey we have been on in this unit. From the revolts against Portuguese rule, through Operation Vijay, through the administrative transition, the language debates, the Opinion Poll. Today — Lecture 27 — we arrive at what I think is the most philosophically important question in this entire course. What is Goan identity? What does it mean to be Goan? Quick recap. In Lecture 26, we examined the Opinion Poll of 1967 — the vote that preserved Goa's separate political identity against merger with Maharashtra. We saw how that vote reflected deep community divisions but ultimately affirmed a distinctly Goan political self-determination. Today we take that political outcome and ask the deeper question: what is the cultural substance of that identity? [0–10 minutes: Introduction] Let me start with an apparent paradox. Goa is one of the smallest states in India — roughly 3,700 square kilometres, smaller than Brunei. Its population of about 1.5 million is smaller than many Indian cities. And yet Goa has one of the most internationally recognised and widely discussed regional identities in the world. Ask someone anywhere in the world what they know about Goa — a backpacker from Germany, a journalist in New York, a filmmaker in Japan — and they will have an image. Beaches. Sun. Susegad. Churches. Feni. Carnival. Christmas. But those images — the tourist images of Goa — are not the same as Goan identity. They are a surface, and often a misleading one. The real substance of Goan identity is far more complex, far more multilayered, and far more interesting than the tourist brochure version. And understanding that real identity — its historical roots, its current tensions, its future trajectory — is the task of today's lecture. [10–40 minutes: Core Content] Let me organise today's discussion around four dimensions of Goan identity: historical, cultural, communal, and diasporic. First — the historical dimension. Goan identity is inseparable from its history, and that history has two defining characteristics: extraordinary diversity and extraordinary duration. Goa was Hindu, then Buddhist, then Hindu again, then Muslim-ruled, then Portuguese Catholic, then Indian — all within roughly a thousand years. Each of these phases deposited cultural sediment. The temples of the New Conquests — the Shri Mangesh temple at Priol, the Shri Shantadurga at Kavlem, the Mahalasa temple at Mardol — are not just religious sites. They are repositories of a pre-colonial Hindu cultural identity that survived the Portuguese period through strategic relocation and communal tenacity. The churches of the Old Conquests — the Basilica of Bom Jesus, the Se Cathedral, the Church of St. Francis of Assisi — are not just European imports. They are expressions of a Goan Catholic identity that absorbed and transformed European religious forms through four centuries of creative adaptation. The historical Goan identity is therefore not a single thread but a braid — multiple strands twisted together into something that is stronger than any single strand. Second — the cultural dimension. We have spent much of this course cataloguing the specific cultural forms that express Goan identity: the mando, the tiatr, the cuisine, the architecture, the communidade, the naming system, the life-cycle rituals. What I want to emphasise here is that all of these cultural forms are marked by a quality of negotiation — they are the products of cultures meeting, negotiating, adapting, and creating something new. The concept of susegad — which we discussed in Lecture 16 — is perhaps the best single shorthand for a specifically Goan cultural attitude. The susegad sensibility is not just laziness or passivity as critics sometimes claim. It is a genuine cultural value: the belief that quality of life matters more than the relentless accumulation of productivity and status; that relationships, food, conversation, music, and the pleasure of the physical world are proper goals of human existence. This is not the European Calvinist work ethic. It is not the frantic pace of Bombay or Delhi. It is specifically Goan, and it is rooted — I would argue — in the particular ecology and history of this place: the fertile land, the warm climate, the relative security of the communidade system, and perhaps the Portuguese-Mediterranean cultural influence that also values la dolce vita. Another key cultural element is the Goan festival culture. Carnival in February, Shigmo in March, the Easter celebrations, the Sao Joao well-jumping festival in June, the Bonderam festival on Divar Island in August, the Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations in September, the village festas of the Catholic parishes scattered throughout the year — Goa has an extraordinary density of festival life. These festivals are not just entertainment. They are the mechanisms through which community identity is renewed and expressed. Each festival brings people home — the Goan diaspora returns for the village festa, for Christmas, for the Shantadurga festival. The festival is the community's annual reaffirmation of itself. Third — the communal dimension. Goan identity is not monolithic. It is made up of communities — Hindu and Catholic, Brahmin and Bahujan, Old Conquests and New Conquests, Goa city and coastal village and ghats. These communities have historically had different relationships with the Portuguese, different economic positions, different cultural practices. The Opinion Poll vote revealed how these differences map onto political choices. One of the most important and most sensitive aspects of Goan communal identity is the relationship between Goan Catholics and the Portuguese cultural heritage. For many Goan Catholics, the Portuguese period is not primarily experienced as colonial oppression but as the cultural formation that made them who they are. Their names are Portuguese. Their religion was transmitted through the Portuguese missionary encounter. Their music — the mando — emerged from the Portuguese-Konkani synthesis. Their architecture, their cuisine, their literary tradition in Portuguese — all of this is theirs. They cannot simply discard it as colonial imposition any more than any person can discard their own upbringing. At the same time, there is a Goan Hindu identity that sees the Portuguese period as a chapter of religious persecution and cultural suppression from which Goa is still recovering. From this perspective, the liberation of 1961 was a return — a restoration of Goa's connection with its deeper, pre-Portuguese cultural roots. The Hindu revival of the post-liberation period — the restoration and expansion of temples, the promotion of Marathi and Sanskrit learning, the reassertion of Hindu festival culture — is an expression of this perspective. These two perspectives — Catholic Goan and Hindu Goan — are not irreconcilable, and in daily life most Goans navigate between them with remarkable ease. The Hindu family and the Catholic family in the same village go to each other's festas and festivals. The Hindu businessman and the Catholic farmer deal with each other through the communidade. They share food, share public space, share a common Konkani language. The everyday reality of Goan life is far more integrated than the political rhetoric of communal identity sometimes suggests. Fourth — the diasporic dimension. Goa has one of the highest emigration rates of any Indian state. Goans have been leaving Goa for work for well over a century — to Bombay, to Karachi, to Mozambique, to Portugal, to the UK, to the Gulf, to Australia. Today the Goan diaspora is estimated at over a million people — roughly as large as the population of Goa itself. These diaspora Goans maintain their identity through food, through music, through the tiatr, through the festa, through family connections. The Goan community in the UK — particularly in areas of London — is a living example of how a specific regional identity can be maintained across generations in a very different cultural environment. But the diaspora also changes Goa. Remittances from the Gulf and from the UK and Portugal have built the large houses you see in Goan villages. The diaspora brings back new ideas, new technologies, new expectations. The relationship between the diaspora and the homeland is a two-way street, and it is one of the defining features of contemporary Goan society. I want to end this section with a word about the contemporary threat to Goan identity. The rapid growth of tourism since the 1980s and 1990s has brought enormous economic benefits to Goa but has also created serious identity pressures. The influx of domestic migrants — from Karnataka, from Maharashtra, from Uttar Pradesh — has changed the demographic composition of Goa's urban and coastal areas. The colonisation of Goan coastal villages by the tourism industry has displaced local communities and transformed the physical landscape. The casinos, the large resort complexes, the nightclubs — these serve a national and international tourist market that has very little connection to the actual cultural heritage of Goa. There is a real concern among many Goans — including many young Goans — that their identity is being diluted. That Goa is becoming a brand, a tourist product, rather than a living culture. The beaches are still there. The churches are still there. But are the communities that gave them meaning still there? That is the question. [40–55 minutes: Activity and Discussion] Alright, I want to hear from you. I am going to ask you to do something slightly uncomfortable. I want you to finish this sentence, in writing, in two or three sentences: 'Being Goan means...' Be honest. Be specific. No generalities about beaches and food — get to what really matters to you about being Goan. Take three minutes. [Allow three minutes] Who wants to share? Aarti? [Allow student response] Thank you — that is beautiful and specific. You used the word 'belonging' — and I think that is precisely it. Goan identity, at its core, is about a specific kind of belonging. Belonging to a place, to a community, to a set of practices and relationships. Marco, what did you write? [Allow student response] Interesting — you mentioned the tension. Feeling Goan but also feeling like Goa is changing in ways that make it harder to be Goan in the traditional sense. That tension is real, and it is the defining tension of Goan identity in the twenty-first century. So let me ask you this: Is Goan identity resilient — will it survive the pressures of tourism, migration, and globalisation? Or is it fragile — a specific combination of conditions that are being steadily eroded? What would you point to as the most important evidence for one view or the other? [Allow discussion — ten minutes] [55–60 minutes: Summary and Assignment] To close. Today we explored Goan identity across four dimensions: historical — the braided heritage of Hindu, Muslim, Portuguese Catholic, and Indian civilisational threads; cultural — susegad, the festival culture, the specific art forms and cuisine that mark Goa as distinct; communal — the different but complementary perspectives of Catholic and Hindu Goans on their shared history; and diasporic — the million-strong community of Goans living outside Goa who maintain and transform Goan identity across distance. We also addressed the contemporary threats to Goan identity from tourism, migration, and cultural dilution. Your assignment: write a personal essay of one page titled 'What Being Goan Means to Me.' This is not a research assignment — it is a personal reflection. Be honest, be specific, and connect your personal experience to at least one concept from this course. Bring it to class. We may share some of these in the next session. Next lecture — Lecture 28 — we examine the Medium of Instructions controversy in Goa's schools. This is the practical battleground where all the abstract debates about language and identity become concrete. Which language should Goan children be taught in? The answer, as you will see, is still being fought over. See you then!