New book takes a close look at International Catholic migration from Goa

Dec. 25, 2011 - PRLog -- In places like London, Bahrain, to Bombay and Karachi, Sydney, Nairobi, Lisbon and Toronto and beyond, Goan communities have set up base and retain a complex relationship with home, suggests Dr Stella Mascarenhas-Keyes in 'Colonialism, Migration & the International Catholic Goan Community'.

Just published by Goa,1556, the 454-page book was released at the international seminar held at the Goa University on the weekend.  It is based on Dr Mascarenhas-Keyes' PhD thesis, which was the first doctoral study of Goan migration when first done in the 1980s.

This books looks at who migrates and why, the destination of migrants and the organisation of migration, and the effects of migration on the sending society.  It studies the wider setting of Goa, its Portuguese colonial era, post-colonial times, and the characteristics of the village that it focuses on.

Besides, it also looks at the patterns of international migration in the village.  Dr Mascarenhas-Keyes focuses on the Portuguese role in Goa, and how this resulted in the emergence of a 'Local Catholic Goan Community'.

She points to the way in which colonial Goa deteriorated, and the changes in the agrarian economy while the region was under the Portuguese.

Says the book: "Deprived of the means of earning a reasonable livelihood from land, and unable to obtain alternative employment in Goa because of the lack of agricultural and industrial development, the Local Catholic Goan Community increasingly turned to job opportunities arising outside Goa."

The rise of European -- particularly British -- colonialism, initially in India and particularly in the vicinity of Goa, and later in Africa and the Middle East, generated a diversity of work opportunities.  More recently, this has shifted towards Europe, Australia, and even distant North America.

Separate chapters of this book look at migration from Goa, marriage and kinship, and socio-economic links.  In particular, the book pays attention to the remittance economy, house ownership in Goa, and changing land rights in Goa and its implications.  It studies the "structure and function" of voluntary associations in Goa, and outside.

The book points to the role played by the Goan woman in enhancing access to education for her children, and how, together with their shifting geographical location, the international migrant from Goa also accessed better skills, education and jobs over the generations.

Its author comments: "I was born and brought up in Nairobi (Kenya), and although I had only visited Goa twice before the research, at the ages of 4 and 18, I was not a strange to the people living in Goa."

She says that when she did the study as a young researcher (1979-81), India was already well known for its diversity "but relatively little was known about Christians and the Roman Catholics in particular." The study also reflected her own search for "roots" and an identity -- "to locate an autobiography within a cultural biography".

Once she shifted to the UK from East Africa, where she had sent two decades "cocooned within a close-knit Goan community", the author had to face repeated questions over why she did not have an Indian first name and surname, did not ware a sari, could not speak an Indian language, and why her parents came to live in Kenya and then had returned to Goa.

"I had no convincing answer," she notes. She says she knew more about the Tudors and Stuarts (though being educated in the Goan community school, the Dr Ribeiro Goan School) than Goan history, and more about Western culture than Indian.  "I realised that as a Catholic Goan I was not alone in this state of ignorance," she comments.

She then did one of the early social anthropological studies on Goa, and spent 22 months in Goa.  Mascarenhas-Keyes, who traces her roots to Saligao, stayed and worked mostly in the village of Amora (a pseudonym), lived in Pernem in the hinterland of Goa and also in Salcete with the families of Kunbis working in Amora.

She spent several weeks gathering data on repatriates, who were the main population of Mira Mar, the suburb of Panjim.  Dr Mascarenhas-Keyes also conducted interviews with Catholic and Hindu Goans living in Bombay, Bangalore, Poona and Delhi.  Her book draws not only from her ethnographic research and experiential knowledge but also on historical sources.

The book contains a foreword by prominent Indo-Portuguese historian Dr Teotonio R de Souza.  It has an annex in the form of Dr Mascarenhas-Keyes' essay titled 'The Native Anthropologist', an interesting comment on the "constraints" and "strategies" she faced or had to deploy in the course of her research in Goa.

This work also contains some 28 pages of useful biographical references, which give an interesting insight into other research done worldwide that is of relevance to the Goan community worldwide and at home.  The book is priced at Rs 395 in Goa, Rs 450 in the rest of India, and UKP 19.95 overseas.  It is available at local bookshops in Goa, and via goa1556@gmail.com

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