Dear all After England's April showers that bring in the darling budding flowers of May, it was a pleasurable experience driving through the spring sunshine with the added splash of colour.
The launch started on time and I take this opportunity of congratulating Selma Carvalho and her team on their research including going into the bowels of the British Library and presenting us with a salad bowl of our past in East Africa in the form of the book "A Railway Runs Through" which Rose and I will get down to reading before winter and no doubt will be of interest to other readers. The President of the Goan Association (UK), Mr Ravi Vaz, opened the launch, it was optimistic to hear him talk of us being around in 200 years time especially in view of today's frontpage news headlines in England's Sun newspaper "Changing Face of Britain - Melting Pot UK - Third of population non-white by 2051 - MPs warned not to ignore minority vote - The Policy Exchange think tank warns politicians will have to stop treating non-white voters as if they are one huge single ethnic group." It was therefore disappointing to hear Mr James D'Souza, a representative of our learned youth and former President of the Young London Goan Society (YLGS) in his address indicate that we will in future years all be one colour. He also talked about being surrounded by Goan products in UK supermarkets, movies filmed in Goa, etc. but I cannot recall him saying that our brand "Goa" is being marketing by everyone else as a valuable stream of revenue because we do not market "Goa" ourselves. Let me explain my school of thought. Many years ago when the whole of Europe was fueding and carving up Africa and discovering the rest of the world Britain and Portugal were the closest allies even during the evil slave trade, monuments of which can be seen in Lagos, Portugal and Bristol, England. I can picture the journey of human beings shackled to wooden benches in Arab merchant ships for transportation to work in the West, no different to today's seating plan on aircrafts with the seat belt on. The only difference today is that you are free to walk about and pay for your journey including government taxes. When Britain controlled India and Portugal controlled Goa this friendship blossomed. It was during this period that our people sought opportunites to work outside Goa and favoured an education in English to avail of such job opportunities forsaking our mother tongue Konkani. This move by our people came in very handy for the British. They did not have the problem of divide and rule as our community was (and still is) divided. Money lured the Christian English speaking element of our community to be imported to Africa and today we can easily describe our people as "expendable administrative coolies" oiling the British administration in Africa. Those who pleased their colonial masters were elevated to what we today call "top shots" as looking around people in our administrative managements of various community and village organisations in the UK I can still spot "coolie" thinking that can only be hereditary and I am sure mirrored across our organisations around the world. It is therefore important each and everyone one of us recapture what we have lost, our identity through our language and celebrate World Goa Day for generations to come. Melvyn Fernandes Thornton Heath, Surrey, United Kingdom 6 May 2014
