• 1 Rochelle Pinto, Between Empires: Print and Politics in Goa, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 200 (...)

2I would argue that 2010 offers us one such opportunity. It should be seen not just as the moment when we mark five hundred years of the establishment of the Estado da India, for 2010 commemorates other events in the history of the Estado da India, not least of which is the declaration of the Republic. 2010 therefore, is the moment when we can launch a renewed field of inquiry. This field of inquiry would recognize the significance of the former Estado da India as one located «between Empires»1 and explore from this context the dilemmas and insights that the experience of the people within this time-space location bring to broader fields of inquiry. Toward this larger project, this paper should be considered a hesitant contribution.

• 2 My description of the arguments of the Association comes from a study of their petition before the (...)

4The first part of this paper will introduce us to the institution of the Comunidade, wrought into being through the hand of Afonso Mexia. Subsequently, the second section will present the arguments of the Association2. These arguments have a possible emancipatory potential, in that they could alter the nature of the relationship between State and village. However, this argument is not without serious social implications and the fourth section will examine these implications and the context from which these emerge, leaving for the end, a discussion on how this entire process reflects on the attempts at incorporation into the citizen body.

• 3 Rowena Robinson, «Cuncolim: Weaving a Tale of Resistance», Economic and Political Weekly 32, n. 7, (...)

5The nature of political and socio-cultural arrangements prior to the arrival of the Portuguese is not a settled subject and is still up for debate. Indeed, as a perusal of the arguments of the Association will indicate, it is precisely this ambiguity that allows for its argument to be made. However, we do know a number of facts about the socio-political order in Goa, both prior and consequent to colonial presence. We know that while controlled by the Bijapuri Sultanate the area that became the capital of the Estado da India lived under the influence of the Vijayanagara Empire. We know of the structure of the village associations as captured by Mexia, and features of the Comunidade and village communities in Goa today. Based on these assumptions, it would be useful to argue that the temple lay at the centre of the village communities in this territory3.

• 4 Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian kingdom, Cambridge: Cambridge Universit (...)
• 5 David Mosse, «Honour, Caste and Conflict: The Ethnohistory of a Catholic Festival in Rural Tamil Na (...)

6In his description of the power structures of the kingdoms that followed the Vijayanagara Empire, Nicholas Dirks4 points out that a system of pyramidical political patronage developed where power at every level lay in the ability to direct ritual and material systems of distribution rather than through outright domination and control of resources. In such a system, the deity was seen as the sovereign. Kings recognized this overlordship through the process of their service to the deity, either in the form of worship or gifting. The acceptance, and return of these gifts by the deity, confirmed the king to the community as their temporal overlord. Subsequent receipt of honours and shares in the temple played a significant role in welding different caste groups within the community into a single yet hierarchical entity5.

• 6 M.N. Srinivas, The Dominant Caste and Other Essays, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 7-9.

7It appears that the village system in the region that came to be known as Goa bore a similar pattern, one that has also been described to us by Srinivas; of a dominant caste, with its associated service castes, and the crucial role of the control of land and temple in the acquisition or maintenance of dominance and status6. Within this framework, the choicest lands of the village were reserved for the maintenance of the temples, produce from these lands devoted to its upkeep and that of its servitors.

• 7 David Mosse, «Honour, Caste and Conflict: The Ethnohistory of a Catholic Festival in Rural Tamil Na (...)

8This system underwent a radical change with the establishment of the Estado da India. The lands formerly reserved for the temple were handed over to the local church. The income from these lands now funded the erection of the church and its continued maintenance. Once transferred to the local church, control of these properties was made over to the Fabrica – the local church association whose property it became, and whose functioning was regulated under an act of the Government, the Lei das Fabricas. In this context of change, displaying the clerical «accommodation of caste»7 the dominant castes were given gãocarial rights and privileges within the context of the Church. In the process of colonial translation from contemporary practice to codified law, the dominant castes of the village were recognized as gãocars or founders of the village. Gãocars literally translates to creators of the village, or those who made the village happen, derived from the words ganv for village and karne for to make or create. What this translation failed to recognize however, was that it was not just the dominant castes who were responsible for the ritual «making» of the village, but all castes who contributed to this making. Confrarias, semi-religious confraternities with ritual obligations within the Church were created to accommodate the village hierarchies within Catholic ritual. These confraternities were divided along caste lines, and continued to privilege the gãocars of the village. In addition, the organization of the fabrica twined village community and church, since it was run with the assistance of members (s)elected from among the gãocars.

• 8 R. Gomes Pereira, Goa: Vol. II Gaunkari: The Old Village Associations, Panaji: A. Gomes Pereira, 19 (...)
• 9 J.C. Almeida, Aspects of the Agricultural Activity in Goa, Daman and Diu, Panaji: Government of Goa (...)
• 10 Shrikrishna Vanjari, «Feudal Land Tenure System in Goa», Economic and Political Weekly 3, n. 22, 19 (...)

9The lands not dedicated to the temple, came to be organized under the Comunidade, now governed by the Código das Comunidades (Code of the Comunidades). The Comunidade comprised the gãocars, male members of these founding families, who managed these lands, auctioning the right to cultivation periodically, using this income for public works, operating akin to a local municipal authority run by oligarchs8. Some of these public works, like the kilometres of dykes were, and remain critical to the existence of coastal Goa. Much of the land in coastal Goa is below sea-level and reclaimed from tide influenced riverbeds. The intricate system of dykes is what allows for habitation as well as agriculture in areas that would otherwise be brackish river beds. At the time just prior to the ouster of the Portuguese from Goa the average Comunidade expenditure was estimated to have 22% going to administrative expenses, 19% towards land tax and quit-rent, 16% on ordinary and extra-ordinary services, 6% on religious and social works, 2% on amortization of lands and payment of interests, 19% under miscellaneous heads and 16% was distributed as zonn9. Zonn was a remnant of the honour system from pre-Portuguese times, but now an amount that was distributed only to gãocars10, from a division of the surplus left over after the Comunidade met all other financial obligations.

• 11 Foraes were royal charters designed to regulate the rights and duties of an administrative unit wit (...)
• 12 Teotonio De Souza, Medieval Goa: A Socio-Economic History, New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 1 (...)

10The Comunidade emerged through the agency of the Vedor da Fazenda da India Afonso Mexia via the formulation of the Foral de Usos e Costumes dos Gaucares11 (the Charter of Customs and Practices of the Gãocars) that was formally issued by Dom João III, and thus enacted into law, on September 16, 152612. In what was probably the first attempt at colonial ordering and mapping for revenue of an Asian territory, this attempt to document the operation of village life in the island of Goa soon became the template for the regulation of Comunidades in all subsequent acquisitions of the mainland.

• 13 Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India, Princeton: Princeton (...)
• 14 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, «The Romantic, The Oriental and The Exotic: Notes of the Portuguese in Goa», i (...)
• 15 D. Gaonkar and P. Kunkolienkar, «Our point of view: Tribal Voices from Goa» (presented at the Eight (...)
• 16 Teotonio De Souza, Ob. cit., p. 60.
• 17 Idem, p. 55.

11This colonial mapping of native practices should not be assumed to be a faithful representation of the existing reality13. S. Subrahmanyam points out that Mexia in fact attempted to wipe out the Indo-Persian administrative structure, and «in a sense the purpose of the Foral of 1526 was to create a direct link between the Portuguese fiscal administration, its rendeiros and tanadares, and the gãocarias»14. In the process of eliminating one set of elites however, it appears Mexia created another set, the gãocars. Thus while the votaries of the comunidade system make claims of being indigenous persons of Goa and use this as one of the grounds for the revival of the Comunidade, tribal activists in Goa argue that the Comunidade was an institution that was created by the Portuguese colonizers in association with local elites who converted to Christianity or in other ways supported the new regime15. Teotonio De Souza in his work on the village communities of Goa16 points out that Mexia was aided by learned Brahmins from the island of Goa and other natives, no doubt as learned or conveniently placed in the social hierarchy. Mexia was unable to get beyond the founding myths of these classes, and eventually gave up, concluding that «it was impossible to discover anything more about the origin of the village communities»17. That at least some amount of this impossibility was the result of the methodology adopted by Mexia, is evident from the fact that some of the taxes that had been levied by the Bijapuri Sultanate had been conveniently if not understandably forgotten by the «learned natives» while cooperating with Mexia in his exercise in codification. Reading Subrahmanyam and De Souza together therefore, and the bulk of the literature that deals with the colonial translation of indigenous practice into codified law, we can safely assume that what Mexia was doing was in fact feeling his way through the local systems as he tried to put in place a system that would allow for both the erasure of Bijapuri administrative systems, and the legitimacy of the State, and also fix an administrative framework that would allow them direct contact for the purposes of revenue collection with local communities. In other words, a complex system where the temple was the node of distributing both social and material resources was, with the active collaboration of local elites, translated into codified law to privilege the dominant groups within the village, now cast as gãocars.

• 18 Panchayati Raj is the Indian Republic’s system of local self governance. Comprising three levels be (...)

12With this brief introduction to the Comunidade we can now direct our attention to the arguments of the Association. Established in 1995 by a group of around 40 individuals interested in the revival of the Comunidades, the Association represents the Comunidades as the only authentic Goan communities. Every native Goan, they argue, would be the member of some comunidade in some part of Goa. Those who do not have membership in, or other relationship to, these institutions are clearly outsiders to the territory. Their primary objective lies in reviving the institution subsequent to its marginalization following the implementation of land reforms in the territory of Goa in the 1960’s after the Indian action. The land reforms in the territory resulted in the Comunidades being seen as just another landlord. As a result, the Comunidades ‘lost’ vast tracks of land, either to persons who had taken these lands on auction, or were tenants to those who at these auctions successfully bid for lands too large to cultivate individually. With the loss of the revenue from the auctions and the emergence of the Village Panchayat, through the Panchayati Raj system18, as the institution of local governance, the Comunidades faced both a symbolic crisis, as well as a material crisis. Now rendered irrelevant to village administration, they were also unable to obtain funds to pay zonn and thus reproduce ritual hierarchies.

• 19 Paul Axelrod and Michelle A. Fuerch, «Flight of the Deities: Hindu Resistance in Portuguese Goa», M (...)
• 20 Emphyteusis in Roman law is a perpetual right in a piece of land for which the yearly sum is paid t (...)

13It is to face these, and other social and cultural strains within Goa, that the Association was formed, and the reason for which it has filed a challenge before the High Court of Bombay at Goa. The crux of the legal argument of the Association goes back to the Foral formulated by Afonso Mexia. In describing the land tenure of the gãocars, Mexia used both the terms foro (taxes paid by the landowner) and renda (rent paid on a lease). This imprecision created a great deal of confusion and as per the narrative of the Association resulted in centuries of debate regarding the nature of the Comunidades’ relation to the land. As a result of his imprecision, it was now unclear whether the lands were possessed in perpetuity by the gãocars or at the pleasure of the government to whom the taxes were paid19. This confusion was resolved only in 1961 when following a review of the Code of the Comunidades the colonial government abandoned the idea that the Comunidade held the lands in emphyteusis20 where the State was the ultimate owner of the lands. The wording of this recognition captured in the Preamble to the Code states:

• 21 Conventionally built of mud and stone, these dykes require constant maintenance that subsequent to (...)

18The objective of the legal argument of the Association is fairly obvious, it seeks to revive the Comunidade and place it once more at the centre of the ritual and administrative life of the Goan village. The Association is arguing for a rolling back of the State and the elevation of the ‘traditional’ local government in order to let those who set up the village, whose ancestors have created the land, and have a history of managing the land and public services for the village to regain this right. They believe that this would result in an idyllic situation, with the gãocars, who have a natural love for the land, managing it in the public interest. Also since the government would be located within the village, there would be no need, as is currently the case, to take permission from huge bureaucracies, which not only increases the time taken in redressing matters (like those of breached dykes)21 but also allows scope for corruption. As for the State, it could be managed by elected representatives from the State (from areas in Goa where there is State land) and representatives from each Comunidade. The net effect of this rearticulation of the village-State relationship therefore, is to also rearticulate the basis of citizenship within the territory of Goa.

• 22 Chhatrapati Singh, Common Property and Common Poverty, Delhi: Oxford U. P., 1986, p. 26.
• 23 Veena Das and Deborah Poole, Anthropology in the Margins of the State, New Delhi: Oxford U. P., 200 (...)

19The Association’s argument is clearly problematic in that it seeks to privilege a group of ritual elite over the remainder of the village, who will now be cast as service groups. What the argument is trying to achieve is to enable the reversal of existing relations between State and the village. As of now, by virtue of the recognition that it is the State that has settled the village, and that it creates the Panchayat, the power relation is weighted in favour of the State. To recognize the argument of the Association causes us to reject the entire legal basis of relationship between the State and village which is premised on the understanding that the sovereign owns all land that is then parceled out via occupancy rights to persons who are settled in villages22. When this premise is challenged and it is accepted that the State has not settled the land, created the village or created a relationship that requires the citizen to compulsorily pay tax to the State this premise is challenged fundamentally. The established relationship between State and village is no longer natural and it is possible for us to see an alternate «imagination of the State as that to which power is delegated, rather than alienated from the subjects» as is currently the case23.

• 24 Eminent Domain is the principle of law that as articulated by Hugo Grotius holds that the property (...)
• 25 The timing of this concession to the Comunidades does raise the question however, if this was an at (...)

20To this extent, the argument of the Association can be seen as similar to the arguments raised by tribal and rural communities in India that have been protesting against the forest and developmental policies of the Indian government. These policies and projects that require the forced displacement of these segments of its population for the establishment of developmental projects are empowered by the principle of Eminent Domain24 that allows the State to decide what is in the public interest. Of late there have been requirements for public hearings where the voices of these marginal sections of the nation-state can be articulated. Invariably though, these voices are not responded to and despite fierce local opposition the projects continue and the local population displaced, or its resource base destroyed. This displacement and destruction of the resource base results in their being pushed into a downward spiral of impoverishment, reducing an at times already marginalized population into absolute poverty. One of the reasons for deliberately ignoring these voices is the nature of the relationship between State and community, which is weighted against the community. To recognize the community as constituting the State and not the other way around, would theoretically allow us to address the problem of the marginalized voices in the State not being heard, as well as ensure the enforcement of local decisions over that of large capital and the central State. To this extent therefore, the legal precedent set by the Portuguese State in India, for whatever possible reasons25, might be a lesson for the former British-Indian legal system, offering an opportunity, through the rejection of colonial and imperial statal formations, for genuinely postcolonial politics. And yet, as the following section will elaborate, this option is not without the dangers of falling back within the trap of the dominance of ritual and caste elites in villages, which is exactly the situation that Dr. B. R. Ambedkar wished to avoid when drafting the Indian Constitution.

• 26 P. Geschiere, and F. Nyamnjoh F., «Capitalism and Autochthony: The Seesaw of Mobility and Belonging (...)
• 27 Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India, Princeton: P (...)

22In their discussion of autochthonous movements in Africa, and with reference to other parts of the world Peter Geschire and Francis Nyamnjoh26 suggest that regional and local elite associations play a critical role in the articulation of discourses of autochthony. Critiques of Indian politics have also similarly pointed out that the fears of Hindus being reduced to a minority in India, and concomitant fears of pseudo-secularism stems primarily from the insecurities of upper-caste groups threatened by the growing democratization of the polity and break-down of traditional social control mechanisms27.

• 28 It perhaps needs to be emphasized that the Comunidade is not an institution specific to Catholics o (...)
• 29 Robert S. Newman, «Konkani Mai Ascends the Throne: The Cultural Basis of Goan Statehood», Of Umbrel (...)
• 30 Rowena Robinson, Conversion, continuity, and change: lived Christianity in southern Goa, Sage: New (...)

23From a superficial review of the argument of the Association and the implications it presents, one imagines that the members of the Association can be located rather clearly, as members of a local and upper-caste elite. While it is true that the members of the Association are all gãocars and therefore members of a ritual elite, it would be a mistake to assume for them a universal elite status. To begin with, not all gãocars are necessarily Brahmin or Chardo, the two dominant Catholic castes in Goa28, they include also in a number of villages, Sudirs (which translated from Konkani into English would be Shudra, the lowest order in the classical four-fold division of the caste system). The arguments of the Association can therefore also be articulated by those from outside of the groups conventionally understood as upper. While Goan, and especially Catholic, society is represented as consisting of neat blocks of caste groups29, such representations possibly do more to reinforce intra-group solidarity, rather than represent existing social conditions on the ground. This intra-group solidarity was especially necessary in the case of the inter-caste rivalry between the Brahmins and Chardos that was especially marked in colonial Goa, and cannot be said to have entirely disappeared today. In her work on a South Goan village, Rowena Robinson refers to a status distinction among the Chardo caste she studied. There existed Chardos of the high or first class and Chardos of the low class30. This distinction can be extended to the Brahmins as well. Probe vigorously and the assumedly monolithic block of the Catholic Brahmin breaks down to reveal the existence of sub-castes. These include real Brahmins, merchant Brahmins, tailors, candle makers, and the lowest category of all, the field-working Brahmins. The high class group, Robinson indicates, was Portuguese speaking and better educated, followed western table manners and dress modes. The low class members of the same group were, till recently, not very different from the sudras and other lower groups in terms of economic position and lifestyle. There were not too many marriages between members of these classes within the same caste, and if so, were hypergamous. That there were gãocars who were the landlords of the village, as well as gãocars whose economic position was not dissimilar to the service castes of the village, was a feature that was remarked on by the Goa Land Reforms Commission in its Report in 1963 when it noted, that «in the case of small owners (i.e. gãocars with small leases of land)… (their) circumstances are not so different from those of tenants».

• 31 M. N. Pearson, «The Portuguese in India», The New Cambridge History of India I, 1, Cambridge: CUP, (...)

24Whether the nature of these groups is that of economic status groups or sub-castes opens up a new area for research on understanding caste among Goan Catholics. Regardless of this debate however, we should take note of the fact that there existed among the gãocars, groups that were clearly subaltern in terms of economic and political power and definitely lived in the shadow of the dominant gãocar families. Their life stories revealed that despite their privileged ritual position within the village, some of my informants clearly came from peasant backgrounds. They had emerged from out of the shadow of the larger landowning gãocar families of the village only after the Gulf boom of the 1950’s-60’s that along with the land reform legislations in the mid-60’s aided the destruction of the feudal order within Goa that until then dominated the social life of most Goans31.

• 32 Robert S. Newman, «Traditional Colonial to Bourgeois Capitalist», The Transforming of Goa I, Norman (...)

25The argument of the Association therefore, seems to stem from these late arrivals on to the scene, who having finally accrued the money to act like the aristocrats of the village, find that the ritual structures of the villages have broken down. It is perhaps for this reason that Arcadian logics, concern for the environment, for the acres of paddy fields left uncultivated, or used to develop housing estates, forms another aspect of the arguments of members of the Association. In such a context Robert Newman32 has remarked that «capital in Goa comes from the destruction of land, not from the careful use of it». It is true that the collapse of the Comunidades has coincided with the collapse of a larger ecological system. However, the agrarian landscape of Goa was also the basis for its colonial social order, a marker of the ritual importance of the gãocars of the Comunidades. Thus while it may appear that land is being destroyed, or not being carefully cared for, what is in fact happening is that the landscape is being deliberately converted to allow for the articulation of a different social order. It is perhaps for this reason that even while we have huge political rallies gathering under the battle-cry of «Save Goa», the permanent destruction of these agrarian landscapes continues steadily. These rallies for all their rhetoric do not achieve a sustainable land-management policy, but they do manage to provide groups such as those like the Association, with the feeling that they still manage to make a political statement in contemporary Goa.

• 33 Rowena Robinson, Conversion, continuity, and change: lived Christianity in southern Goa, Walnut Cre (...)
• 34 David Mosse, «Honour, Caste and Conflict: The Ethnohistory of a Catholic Festival in Rural Tamil Na (...)

27What perhaps aggravates the problem is that even within the Church, once the space where caste hierarchies were displayed and reaffirmed; the old order has been done away with. Feasts of local churches which were clearly assigned to specific caste groups33 or to the gãocars, are now perforce celebrated as feasts of the entire village. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church has been laying emphasis on the fundamental dignity of the individual since the profound changes of the Second Vatican Council that in Goa coincided with the passing of the Estado da India. This marked a profound change for Church policy in India, where until then (or at least until the early decades of the twentieth century), caste was «mostly viewed as a social institution, comparable to the «Estates» in Europe». Religious equality, as in the right of all caste groups to hear mass in the same church and honour the saints at their festivals was stressed, but this did not bar the expression of social hierarchies within the church or the festivals of the church34. By the 1980s the Church in Goa, which in earlier times relied on the village community for funds, was now able to tap into other resources, not least those who, flush with money from the Gulf boom, were able to give outside of the traditional routes of supporting the Church. While on the one hand, with this breakdown of the feudal system, the Church was able to now exist independently of the Comunidade; on the other with the emergence of a context where there is a more lucrative market for property, and hence revenue to be earned from the sale of property, members of the Association argue that the Church has now begun to represent that the lands that the Comunidades once dedicated to its expenses are its own and the property of the Bishop.

• 35 B. de Sousa Santos, «Between Prospero and Caliban: Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Inter-identity (...)

29The argument of the Association however also has some significance for allowing us to contemplate the experience of citizenship of Goans – at least those who were gãocars – both while citizens of the Portuguese State, as well as when within the Indian Union. Portuguese colonialism we are frequently told35 was different from that of the colonialism of the British. A significant marker of this difference was the status of the colonized (at least in the case of the Goans, but not so for other groups, like those in Africa) within the Portuguese Empire. And yet, what was the nature of their citizenship experience? We know that the Goan elites were able to participate in the Empire, especially in the case of representing the Empire in Africa. However, what of the more humble denizens of Goa, those who did not share in these dubious glories of the Empire and stayed put in Goa?

• 37 Bahujan Samaj refers to the Hindu working class, lower caste community.

32This complaint could prove to be the start for an interesting investigation of their citizenship experience pushing a number of issues onto our research agenda. First, the need to spend more time articulating an ethnographically informed account of the citizenship experiences of Goans even while within the Portuguese Empire. How are we to make sense, for example, of the claim of a Goan activist from the Bahujan Samaj37, that he (and his people) first experienced equality, not under the operation of the Indian Constitution adopted in 1950, subsequent to the departure of the British, but in 1910 when liberated from caste oppression by the declaration of the Portuguese Republic that gave them citizenship and equality? Such claims force us to train our sights on periods other than the establishment and initial decades of the Estado da India and explore the social impacts that other significant moments, such as the declaration of the Portuguese Republic, on the other-than-elite denizens of the Estado da India.

• 38 Raghuraman S. Trichur, «Tourism and Nation-Building: (Re)Locating Goa in Postcolonial India», in Me (...)
• 39 Jason Keith Fernandes, «Panjim: Realms of Law and Imagination», in Law and the City, ed. Philippopo (...)
• 40 Robert S. Newman, «Konkani Mai Ascends the Throne: The Cultural Basis of Goan Statehood», Of Umbrel (...)

34The mere fact of political integration and Goa’s continued existence within the body of the Indian Union should not erase the need to explore the complex issues of the manner of incorporation of the territory into the Republic. Goa (my point of reference in discussing Portuguese-India) did not share the formative experience and common history of the nationalist struggle that transformed British India into the Republic of India. How then does the Goan fit in, or fitted-into the nation-state? Trichur responds that the imagination of Goa as the pleasure periphery of India is one way in which this relationship seems to have been imagined38. Here the former British Indian takes on the lens of his colonizer to create relationship similar to that between the Northern European and the Southern European. Thus Goa fills in as a pseudo-Southern Europe, operating as the space of leisure where quotidian moral codes can be dispensed with39. This relationship is however complicated by the processes within the former British-India itself, where the dominant tendency has been to imagine being Indian as being Hindu. Other ways of finding a place within the nation have been through structuring the State on the basis of a sub-national linguistic community, as was done in the case of most of the Indian federal units in the late 1950’s. In the case of Goa, this process started with the mobilizations around the issue of merger of the territory to Maharashtra soon after Indian military action in 1961. This issue, and the threat perception generated, was effectively addressed only in 1987 when, following a significant language agitation, Konkani was declared the Official State Language of Goa and statehood was secured for the, until then, Union Territory40.

• 41 N. Desai, «The Denationalization of Goans: An Insight into the Construction of Cultural Identity», (...)

35This desire for incorporation into the body of the State is perhaps felt more keenly by Goan Catholics. Since Liberation, partly due to the propaganda of the Estado Novo prior to Indian action and partly due to the nature of relationships between Goa and the nation-state it was integrated into, the Goan Catholic has acutely felt the sense of being a threatened, even persecuted minority. In the course of speaking about the argument of the Association, one of the members recollected taunts directed to the Catholics, implying that collaborators with the earlier regime were nobodies in free Goa. Building on these taunts, has been the manner in which the polemic tract, The Denationalization of Goans by T. B. Cunha, a Goan nationalist has been used. The tract was directed to the Goan upper class, decrying the failure of this Lusitanised upper class to identify with the Indian national struggle and against the Portuguese colonial regime, pleading with them to recognize the change in the times. It has subsequently been converted into a defacto denunciation of the Goan Catholic in general, the idea having taken firm root in the Goan imagination41 and a burden that politically conscious Goan Catholics come to realize they live with.

• 42 Devanagari is the traditional script in North India for brahmanical religious texts and for long as (...)

36Perhaps not least of these burdens, and the manner in which upper-caste or brahmanical sensibilities determine the culture of the nation-state are the recent conflicts around the officially recognized version of Konkani itself. Recognized only in the Devanagari42 script, groups have begun to mobilize arguing that the Roman script, traditionally used by Catholic groups in Goa, has been marginalized most unfairly in the process. These mobilizations are demanding the inclusion of specific reference to the Roman script in the Official Language Act, indicating that to exclude Roman in this manner is to disenfranchise them.