Review of Lusophone Goa: Tracing the Portuguese Language
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Selma Carvalho
Apr 8, 2026, 6:30:07 PMApr 8
to The Third Thursday Goa Book Club
A review of Aren Noronha's anthology.
Aren curates a fascinating glimpse into the Lusophone world, the lives of its inhabitants exuding a familiar sameness. If anything, the individual experiences cohere on a theme—of upper-class dominance and immersion into a culture which created an opaque, unbreachable barrier between them and the working-class population of Goa. But more importantly, this was a world of learning, of modernity, of western enculturation, and of migration.
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Selma Carvalho
Author of "Sisterhood of Swans" and "Notes on a Marriage" both published by Speaking Tiger, India.
Arthy Singh
Apr 9, 2026, 4:48:10 AMApr 9
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Gargi Guha
Apr 9, 2026, 4:48:16 AMApr 9
to goawr...@googlegroups.com, The Third Thursday Goa Book Club
Thank you for this lovely read, Selma. I picked up this book, when I went for Aren's book launch at XCHR.
I started learning Portuguese at Camões last year and this book has been such a interesting window to those who have kept the language alive here in Goa.
I particularly liked Isabel de Santa Rita Vás' piece where she talks about letter writing in those days and the addiction for reading...vício de ler, as her mother called it.
A great compilation by Aren and also a piece at the end by Mark Pinto, who is my Portuguese teacher.
Warmly,
Gargi
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goawriters2/CAF5dh%2BFWqvHyWsmJBxQZpS3bQPWuqv0vxBr%3DaKnGCkaAmVRk3g%40mail.gmail.com.
Frederick Noronha
Apr 10, 2026, 11:10:41 PMApr 10
to The Third Thursday Goa Book Club
I appreciate Selma Carvalho's engagement with this book,
published recently (Feb 5, 2026) by Goa,1556. However, some
issues raised in this review call for discussion.
By labelling Lusophone Goans as a closed-off elite group, it
risks hiding the real complexities---historical, linguistic
and emotional---that shaped the Portuguese language in Goa in
recent decades, which the book has attempted to narrate.
Lusophone Goa: Tracing the Portuguese Language, edited by
Aren Noronha and based on chapters by 45 contributors, covers
a wide range. This includes people from the diaspora,
partial speakers, non-speakers and those who connect to
Portuguese through memory rather than everyday use, besides
speakers of Portuguese. Far from being a closed,
self-contained elite this is obviously more a very mixed and
changing language community.
The reviewer’s use of phrases like “opaque, unbreachable
barrier," "upper-class dominance," and “pernicious form of
Goan racism" prejudges the material in advance. This shuts
down the kind of questions the book is trying to
explore--like how language can be a resource, an aspiration,
an inheritance, and also something that is fading.
Perhaps most significantly, the review underplays the
intellectual and archival value put in by contributors to
this volume. From its own summary, the book includes:
* Goan engagement with the Portuguese press
* Recovery of manuscript traditions
* Overlooked equations between Portuguese and Konkani
* Reflections on diasporic experience with language
* Accounts of partial or inherited language competence, etc
The 45 contributors--as described even within the review
itself---demonstrate a wide range of experiences. This
includes intergenerational memory, linguistic attrition,
diasporic dislocation and the uneven access to education.
A more persuasive critique might have recognised that
Portuguese was not merely a tool of exclusion. It was also a
medium through which Goans articulated their thoughts and
feelings over many decades, if not centuries, (as documented
rather exhaustively by Aleixo Costa, in his Literatura Goesa).
The repeated assertion that Portuguese is "fading" or "dying"
in Goa risks becoming a self-fulfilling simplification. It
also ignores so many crucial issues and justifies the fate
that smaller languages, scripts and dialects have faced in
today's Goa.
Obituaries for the Portuguese language in Goa have been
written since the 1980s, if not the 1970s, or late 1960s.
Yet the language has demonstrably persisted, even if in
transformed domains. It continues to exist in liturgical
settings, in legal and archival records, in family memory, in
popular music and in diasporic circuits. Stressing on its
supposed disappearance makes us miss the more significant
question: not whether Portuguese survives, but how and why
its function now and transmission have shifted over time.
Repeatedly reducing this trajectory to a story of "elitism"
further narrows the field of inquiry. Access to Portuguese
was undoubtedly uneven. But, the pressures on the language
cannot be explained solely through social exclusion.
Structural changes like this have wider explanations: the
changing linguistic hierarchies after 1961; the rise of
English in education (from the university to primary
schools); mobility; state policies privileging other
languages; and how cultural capital got redefined.
BINARIES, GENERALISATION
Several of the article’s claims rest on oversimplified
binaries, some historical inaccuracies, or misplaced
generalisations. For instance:
(1) "Konkani agriculturist" vs. "Portuguese speaker" as
separate worlds: Contrary to this artificial dichotomy,
linguistic repertoires in Goa were (and still are) layered
and overlapping. Many Catholic agrarian communities used
Konkani in domestic and village life while also engaging with
Portuguese in education, administration or ecclesiastical
contexts.
(2) Marathi as the spoken language of the "Goan hinterland":
This is historically misleading. Marathi has long functioned
as a literary and liturgical (prayed and read) language in
Goa. (Post-1961, Marathi schools and newspapers grew, with
some official support, especially among Hindu communities.
It was the language of theatre for some.) But Marathi was
never the primary Goan spoken language of the "hinterland" in
any sense. Konkani, in its varieties, remained the dominant
spoken language across social groups. The statement confuses
script, literary culture and speech.
(3) Portuguese speakers as uncritical subjects of Lisbon:
They are portrayed as folks who "acknowledged Lisbon as the
metropole" and aligned themselves unproblematically with
Portugal ignores reality. Yet, some of the most
prominent figures to challenge the Portuguese were also
Portuguese speakers themselves. Figures such as Luís de
Menezes Bragança, Tristão de Bragança Cunha, Telo de
Mascarenhas, Julião Menezes, Laxmanrao Sardessai and
Francisco Luís Gomes used Portuguese to argue for civil
liberties, constitutional reform, and, even the end of
Portuguese rule. To conflate a Lusophone identity merely
with political loyalty to the colonial state is untenable.
(4) Portuguese speakers as agents of English "gatekeeping"
post-1961: Attributing the rise of English as a "gate-keeping
language" to those who remained in Goa after 1961 is an acute
misreading of structural change. The shift toward English
was driven by national policy, educational institutions,
preferences of the new Anglicised bureaucracy, the
perspectives of some expat Goans from the former British
colonies, and global economic incentives in postcolonial
India. Individuals adapted to these conditions; they did not
create or orchestrate them. How the Portuguese speakers enter
this equation boggles the mind.
(5) Mischaracterisation of Sandra Ataíde Lobo’s work: The
statement that Ataíde Lobo wrote a PhD "on the colonial
press" is a misreading. Ataide Lobo's work engages
with the intellectual and political history of Goa,
particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with
the press as one among several sites of inquiry. Narrowing
her scholarship to "the colonial press" diminishes its scope
and misreads its emphasis. Am open to correction if wrong.
(6) Portuguese as uniquely tied to "Goan racism" and
"whiteness": The argument that Portuguese enabled a
"pernicious form of Goan racism" at the intersection of
whiteness and wealth, while ignoring similar dynamics in
English, (Nagri) Konkani, or Hindi, is inconsistent. All
languages connected to systems of education, administration
and prestige can function as markers of distinction and
exclusion. To single out Portuguese as uniquely culpable,
without applying the same analytical lens to other languages,
seems like a selective moral framing.
(7) Daman–Goa–Africa connections and "agents of Empire: There
were real links between Goa, Daman and Portuguese Africa, but
suggesting migrants from this section were “agents of Empire”
is too much of a blanket label. Goans moved for many reasons
(jobs, for better opportunities, education or simply to earn
a living... you get a hint of this from the essays in the
book itself). They worked as clerks, teachers to doctors,
among other jobs. Some were part of the colonial system, but
many were just getting by within it.
The review speaks of the "erasure of the Luso identity" after
1961, but later acknowledges that "its legacies live on,
mutated perhaps." These positions are conceptually at odds.
Erasure implies disappearance, whereas mutation implies
transformation and continuity. The review does not let us
know whether it sees Lusophone identity as extinguished or
reconfigured.
Instead of letting the different voices in the book speak for
themselves, this comment flattens out their perspective under
a single idea about class, exclusion and language. Thus, it
may not match either the contributors’ own perspectives or
the complex and changing situation of language in Goa today.
Nonetheless, this could arouse the curiosity of those who
would like to hear what the book actually contains; and for
this, I am again grateful. FN
published recently (Feb 5, 2026) by Goa,1556. However, some
issues raised in this review call for discussion.
By labelling Lusophone Goans as a closed-off elite group, it
risks hiding the real complexities---historical, linguistic
and emotional---that shaped the Portuguese language in Goa in
recent decades, which the book has attempted to narrate.
Lusophone Goa: Tracing the Portuguese Language, edited by
Aren Noronha and based on chapters by 45 contributors, covers
a wide range. This includes people from the diaspora,
partial speakers, non-speakers and those who connect to
Portuguese through memory rather than everyday use, besides
speakers of Portuguese. Far from being a closed,
self-contained elite this is obviously more a very mixed and
changing language community.
The reviewer’s use of phrases like “opaque, unbreachable
barrier," "upper-class dominance," and “pernicious form of
Goan racism" prejudges the material in advance. This shuts
down the kind of questions the book is trying to
explore--like how language can be a resource, an aspiration,
an inheritance, and also something that is fading.
Perhaps most significantly, the review underplays the
intellectual and archival value put in by contributors to
this volume. From its own summary, the book includes:
* Goan engagement with the Portuguese press
* Recovery of manuscript traditions
* Overlooked equations between Portuguese and Konkani
* Reflections on diasporic experience with language
* Accounts of partial or inherited language competence, etc
The 45 contributors--as described even within the review
itself---demonstrate a wide range of experiences. This
includes intergenerational memory, linguistic attrition,
diasporic dislocation and the uneven access to education.
A more persuasive critique might have recognised that
Portuguese was not merely a tool of exclusion. It was also a
medium through which Goans articulated their thoughts and
feelings over many decades, if not centuries, (as documented
rather exhaustively by Aleixo Costa, in his Literatura Goesa).
The repeated assertion that Portuguese is "fading" or "dying"
in Goa risks becoming a self-fulfilling simplification. It
also ignores so many crucial issues and justifies the fate
that smaller languages, scripts and dialects have faced in
today's Goa.
Obituaries for the Portuguese language in Goa have been
written since the 1980s, if not the 1970s, or late 1960s.
Yet the language has demonstrably persisted, even if in
transformed domains. It continues to exist in liturgical
settings, in legal and archival records, in family memory, in
popular music and in diasporic circuits. Stressing on its
supposed disappearance makes us miss the more significant
question: not whether Portuguese survives, but how and why
its function now and transmission have shifted over time.
Repeatedly reducing this trajectory to a story of "elitism"
further narrows the field of inquiry. Access to Portuguese
was undoubtedly uneven. But, the pressures on the language
cannot be explained solely through social exclusion.
Structural changes like this have wider explanations: the
changing linguistic hierarchies after 1961; the rise of
English in education (from the university to primary
schools); mobility; state policies privileging other
languages; and how cultural capital got redefined.
BINARIES, GENERALISATION
Several of the article’s claims rest on oversimplified
binaries, some historical inaccuracies, or misplaced
generalisations. For instance:
(1) "Konkani agriculturist" vs. "Portuguese speaker" as
separate worlds: Contrary to this artificial dichotomy,
linguistic repertoires in Goa were (and still are) layered
and overlapping. Many Catholic agrarian communities used
Konkani in domestic and village life while also engaging with
Portuguese in education, administration or ecclesiastical
contexts.
(2) Marathi as the spoken language of the "Goan hinterland":
This is historically misleading. Marathi has long functioned
as a literary and liturgical (prayed and read) language in
Goa. (Post-1961, Marathi schools and newspapers grew, with
some official support, especially among Hindu communities.
It was the language of theatre for some.) But Marathi was
never the primary Goan spoken language of the "hinterland" in
any sense. Konkani, in its varieties, remained the dominant
spoken language across social groups. The statement confuses
script, literary culture and speech.
(3) Portuguese speakers as uncritical subjects of Lisbon:
They are portrayed as folks who "acknowledged Lisbon as the
metropole" and aligned themselves unproblematically with
Portugal ignores reality. Yet, some of the most
prominent figures to challenge the Portuguese were also
Portuguese speakers themselves. Figures such as Luís de
Menezes Bragança, Tristão de Bragança Cunha, Telo de
Mascarenhas, Julião Menezes, Laxmanrao Sardessai and
Francisco Luís Gomes used Portuguese to argue for civil
liberties, constitutional reform, and, even the end of
Portuguese rule. To conflate a Lusophone identity merely
with political loyalty to the colonial state is untenable.
(4) Portuguese speakers as agents of English "gatekeeping"
post-1961: Attributing the rise of English as a "gate-keeping
language" to those who remained in Goa after 1961 is an acute
misreading of structural change. The shift toward English
was driven by national policy, educational institutions,
preferences of the new Anglicised bureaucracy, the
perspectives of some expat Goans from the former British
colonies, and global economic incentives in postcolonial
India. Individuals adapted to these conditions; they did not
create or orchestrate them. How the Portuguese speakers enter
this equation boggles the mind.
(5) Mischaracterisation of Sandra Ataíde Lobo’s work: The
statement that Ataíde Lobo wrote a PhD "on the colonial
press" is a misreading. Ataide Lobo's work engages
with the intellectual and political history of Goa,
particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with
the press as one among several sites of inquiry. Narrowing
her scholarship to "the colonial press" diminishes its scope
and misreads its emphasis. Am open to correction if wrong.
(6) Portuguese as uniquely tied to "Goan racism" and
"whiteness": The argument that Portuguese enabled a
"pernicious form of Goan racism" at the intersection of
whiteness and wealth, while ignoring similar dynamics in
English, (Nagri) Konkani, or Hindi, is inconsistent. All
languages connected to systems of education, administration
and prestige can function as markers of distinction and
exclusion. To single out Portuguese as uniquely culpable,
without applying the same analytical lens to other languages,
seems like a selective moral framing.
(7) Daman–Goa–Africa connections and "agents of Empire: There
were real links between Goa, Daman and Portuguese Africa, but
suggesting migrants from this section were “agents of Empire”
is too much of a blanket label. Goans moved for many reasons
(jobs, for better opportunities, education or simply to earn
a living... you get a hint of this from the essays in the
book itself). They worked as clerks, teachers to doctors,
among other jobs. Some were part of the colonial system, but
many were just getting by within it.
The review speaks of the "erasure of the Luso identity" after
1961, but later acknowledges that "its legacies live on,
mutated perhaps." These positions are conceptually at odds.
Erasure implies disappearance, whereas mutation implies
transformation and continuity. The review does not let us
know whether it sees Lusophone identity as extinguished or
reconfigured.
Instead of letting the different voices in the book speak for
themselves, this comment flattens out their perspective under
a single idea about class, exclusion and language. Thus, it
may not match either the contributors’ own perspectives or
the complex and changing situation of language in Goa today.
Nonetheless, this could arouse the curiosity of those who
would like to hear what the book actually contains; and for
this, I am again grateful. FN
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/ Frederick Noronha फ्रेडरिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا
_/ AUDIO https://archive.org/details/@fredericknoronha
_/ http://goa1556.in +91-9822122436 784 Saligao Goa
_/ Frederick Noronha फ्रेडरिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا
_/ AUDIO https://archive.org/details/@fredericknoronha
_/ http://goa1556.in +91-9822122436 784 Saligao Goa
_/ Goanet :: 30 years of discussions. goa...@goanet.org
_/ http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/
_/ http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
--
Jeanne Hromnik
Apr 11, 2026, 7:09:29 AMApr 11
to goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
Dear Frederick
Why do you always miss the point? Of course there was an exclusive Portuguese elite in Goa (ask Maria Couto, alas no longer alive but 'a child of two worlds'). No doubt nuanced, speaking Konkani, fighting Portuguese colonialism, nevertheless implicated in racism and overt discrimination.
But I don't think there was ever a Goan 'working class'. We Goans just don't form working classes. We're too idle, ineffective and selfish.
Call it sussegad.
:-)
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