Fake news about Goa

30 views
Skip to first unread message

Pedro Mascarenhas

unread,
Dec 12, 2023, 3:30:04 PM12/12/23
to Goa-Research-Net
In Goa we are all Catholic so we eat everything, except the chairs and tables.” -

A Lady of Goa resident in Auckland «broadcast» a fake news. And most of the Hindus in Goa, they don't exist? The readers of this newspaper swallowed the lie. In this way false information are spread on other continents.






Roland Francis

unread,
Dec 12, 2023, 3:40:20 PM12/12/23
to goa-rese...@googlegroups.com
This is terrible. Even in Portuguese times Catholics were not in the majority.

Roland Francis


On Dec 12, 2023, at 3:30 PM, 'Pedro Mascarenhas' via Goa-Research-Net <goa-rese...@googlegroups.com> wrote:


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-research-n...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/1592662121.242803.1702384191635%40mail.yahoo.com.

fredericknoronha

unread,
Dec 12, 2023, 3:42:01 PM12/12/23
to Goa-Research-Net
I think she was wrong. We also don't eat doors and windows!

More seriously though:

(i) Shouldn't the newspaper also carry part of the responsibility for deciding on such a click-baitish headline, without verifying the facts and just accepting what they were told?

(ii) From a newspaper point of view, isn't it a great headline which not only makes us look at some small newspaper in a remote part of the globe? Not only that, it also made me Google to find out what Te Upoko o Te Ika refers to...!

(iii) Due to the general crisis in the ad-dependent newspaper revenue model, and its consequences, I'm not sure how many trust the way large parts of the media function these days.  The newspaper in question has a circulation of circa 30,000. FN

Joao Paulo Cota

unread,
Dec 12, 2023, 5:22:11 PM12/12/23
to Goa-Research-Net
When village people, possibly Siridao and Agacaim meetup with Kiwi farmer background reporters, this is the result.
Sheer ignorance.
That expression probably originates around China, where, when I was once on a teaching assignment at Shanghai, I was told at a dinner that 'the only thing the Chinese do not eat with four legs are the tables'.
The only consolation is that that newspaper has a microscopic circulation and most of them must had been recycled on their fish and chips takeaways.
Worth writing to the editor to correct the statistics though...  before it is cloned elsewhere on another website... and then becomes a 'fact'.

From: goa-rese...@googlegroups.com <goa-rese...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of fredericknoronha <frederic...@gmail.com>
Sent: 12 December 2023 20:42
To: Goa-Research-Net <goa-rese...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [GRN] Re: Fake news about Goa
 
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-research-n...@googlegroups.com.

fredericknoronha

unread,
Dec 12, 2023, 5:33:04 PM12/12/23
to Goa-Research-Net
I don't agree with this class-based slur against the people of "Siridao and Agacaim". On what basis?  

That they may be sons and daughters of the soil, and less burdened with the overload of a formal education and "knowledge"? Or that they are more recent migrants to the Western world, including NZ, maybe lower down on the pecking ladder? And then, what do we have against "Kiwi farmer background reporters"? Either they do their job well, or they don't. Background is immaterial here. Besides this, the current crisis in the media makes people do strange things too! Click-bait headlines is just one of these.

So, I don't agree with you, João Paulo. 

Let us not forget that even supposedly educated Catholic migrants to East Africa often believed that "Goa is Catholic". In their case, the only "excuse" they had was that the Goan diaspora in that part of the world (definitely till the 1960s) was 99% Catholic... and that is all they saw.   Nobody has a monopoly over being ill-informed. Or even not wanting to let the facts come in the way of a good story and/or headline.

FN

fredericknoronha

unread,
Dec 12, 2023, 5:34:54 PM12/12/23
to Goa-Research-Net
You got it wrong, Roland. They were, till around 1925.
Not that I believe this makes a difference -- except for manipulating electoral politics sometimes. FN

Joao Paulo Cota

unread,
Dec 12, 2023, 6:33:24 PM12/12/23
to Goa-Research-Net
Fred,
These are not assumptions, these are facts.
There is a place in the UK called Swindon where for some reason, most of the Goan population there originate from these two specific villages - Siridao and Agacaim. It is like entire villages are teleported here. 
They also bring in their age old feuds and other maladies here. They were neighbours in Goa and they choose to be neighbours here... totally absurd.
Even the local British police now know every single Konkani bad word, wish you could see the street fights these Goan people have here... similar to the widely uneducated Portuguese emigrants from the country side and the islands, who pickup fights amongst themselves after a few drinks during Portugal day (the venue gets changed regularly due to the local authorities banning them from their land).
These Goans are mostly uneducated folk, who come here and only tarnish the good Goan image that existed for a long time. Their kids, who are supposedly more educated, even take their own parents to court in case they get shouted at or smacked. So the parents have no control of themselves leave along of their very own kids.
Some kids even claimed that they have forgotten Konkani after a year or so and claim they are British now!
Nothing to do with professions, purely manners and education.
They are absolutely raw.
Similar kind of pattern of Goan migration to Australia and New Zealand, it is all about education. Not class based comments.
These new 'Portuguese passport emigrants' don't represent the vast majority of Catholics settled here in the UK who are quite educated, had been here for decades and have integrated into the general society. The former live in a gheto kind of style, hence the problem... 
I have nothing against them personally, but many Goans here in central London and elsewhere distance themselves from these two villages' citizens. They are an embarrassment, specially when the local press publishes articles about problems and issues with that Goan community, everybody gets painted by the same brush...
They are entitled to their opinions, no problem there, but these opinions are not representative of the vast Goan majority here.
That is why they get the statistics all wrong, yet, they are taken at face value, which shouldn't be the case.
The Kiwi reporter should had done a better job, had they been to a proper journalist course - one has to validate data given. Hence he/she must be some local farmer lad who just got a job as a journalist and did not do their homework before publishing.
Hope you understand my point.
JP


Sent: 12 December 2023 22:33
To: Goa-Research-Net <goa-rese...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [GRN] Re: Fake news about Goa
 
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-research-n...@googlegroups.com.

John Nazareth

unread,
Dec 12, 2023, 8:38:04 PM12/12/23
to goa-rese...@googlegroups.com

I just went back to the original article written in “The Post” in New Zealand and found it a nice article.

It wasn’t purporting to be an intellectual statement of any sort. To recap:

The Portuguese planted Catholicism in Goa during several hundred years of colonial rule and Doreena, laughing, reckons this might help to explain her gustatory enthusiasms: “In Goa we are all Catholic so we eat everything, except the chairs and tables.”

The unfortunate thing is that the paper chose those words to use as a headline.

If they had chosen some other headline, people would have accepted that paragraph for what it is – hyperbole.

(It’s a bit like saying all Moidecars are “half-crack”. (NB I’m from Moira.) For me, I embrace it – I tell people that we are the only Goans who don’t have to tell a joke to make people laugh; we just say we are from Moira and they laugh.)

Don’t spoil an otherwise nice article. For once Goans have got noticed in New Zealand.

There will be time to educate them more fully.

(On the other hand, I have tried to convince others that people from Moira are real very smart, but they keep on telling me now we “fertilized” the foundations of the church to make it grow… Ah well….)

John Naz

Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages