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This month's Goanet operations sponsored by an Anonymous Donor ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Seedbed of a Goan Cosmopolitanism By MARIA AURORA COUTO macouto at sancharnet.in Panjim, with its many magnificent buildings and examples of domestic architecture, its splendid avenue of trees on which stands the Escola Medica Cirurgica de Goa, acquired its pre-eminent stature only after the Viceroy, Dom Manuel de Portugal e Castro (1826-35) committed himself to its development. Panji, Ponji, Cidade de Goa, Nova Goa, Panjim: Panaji has undergone more transformations than merely those of name. The city offers a dramatic view as one sails along the river Mandovi. I try to imagine what was once a large coconut grove with marshland, backwaters, creeks, paddy fields and sparsely populated hill slopes; I see clusters of high-rise apartment blocks and bungalows with few trees in sight -- the sense is that of a city on the move. The bustling city of today was once a neglected ward of the village of Taleigão, a village which famously tops the hierarchical order when our villages celebrate the harvest, an occasion for community worship and thanksgiving. This time-honoured practice, in Goa, is unquestioned and supreme -- the ritual cutting of a few sheaves of paddy by the priest takes place first in Taleigão. * The birth of the city of Panjim coincided with the rise of a Goan intelligentsia in a generation that was educated by reason of, and benefited from, the Marquis de Pombal's vision and the reforms introduced under the banner of constitutional monarchy. A new Goan elite was born, in the process, although it was embedded in a traditional feudal structure. Goan modernity came into being with the first flowering of the interaction of Goa with Europe, in an intellectual and cultural efflorescence that reached its apogee in the 19th century. Exposure to the ideals of the French Revolution and education after the liberal Pombaline reforms introduced a feverish pitch of political debate, a heightened awareness of human rights and civic sense in an upper class that had been galvanized by concerns that embraced all dimensions of experience. Goans became conversant with European languages other than Portuguese, students enrolled in the Escola Medica read texts in German and French; they entered the electoral process with two representatives in the Portuguese Parliament on the basis of a franchise determined by property and religious affiliation. The study of medicine flourished, with research by Goan doctors recognized internationally. It was an era when Goan members of Parliament began speaking in Lisbon on behalf of Goa and, indeed, of India. The most eminent of them was Dr Francisco Luis Gomes, a man of letters, an economist, and much else. The point to be noted is that training in the Escola Medica, preceded by education in the Liceu Afonso de Albuquerque, produced, at its best, a renaissance man -- one passionately devoted to his village heritage, yet equally passionate about being a man of the world. Such an individual cultivated a life of the mind; he sang, often played more than one musical instrument, he wrote; he was an orator, and a charming and scintillating conversationalist; he danced and serenaded in a romantic fervour inspired by the troubadour ideal of courtly love. He was a gourmet too, a bon vivant sometimes, but at heart always and ever simply a goenkar. Although there were some who could be described as metamorphosing into V S Naipaul's 'mimic men', none could be said to have lost touch with Konkani. Indeed the gentrification, political ambition and political awareness of the Christian elite gave birth to a homegrown culture. Although the upper classes transformed their food habits and dress, their forms of celebration and their music, the mando that was their most creative musical utterance was sung in Konkani. For them, perhaps up to the heady years of Republican rule, Goa was the world and they were its centre. The Escola Medica Cirurgica was indubitably the centre of this period of cultural creativity – its members had their own TUNA (academic musical group) alongside the TUNA of the Colegio da Farmacia renowned for the research work produced there at the time and indeed until the 1960s. They were great wits and produced an annual publication with skits, caricatures and impressions by the final year students. Their aspirations, whether intellectual or political, led them to journalism. The thirst for knowledge gave birth to periodicals and journals whose very titles displayed learning and aspiration. They evoked the spirit of liberty and railed against the excesses of absolutism in the late 19th century and during Salazar's dictatorship in later years. The range of talent displayed through the history of the Escola Medica Cirurgica is startling in relation to such a small territory and population. Almost every great statesman, polemicist and journalist of the time was a product of the Escola Medica -- Bernardo Peres da Silva (Member of Parliament and for a brief time the only Goan to be appointed Governor General, in 1834); Jose Inacio Loyola (1834-1902), who founded the political party Partido Indiano and the weekly A India Portuguesa; Antonio Maria da Cunha, a name to be reckoned with in the history of Goan journalism, who founded the Heraldo after years as a pioneering doctor; and Gerson da Cunha, a scholar, doctor, numismatics expert, the first historian of Bombay, renowned in India and Europe. Doctors were joined by advocates -- Bernardo Francisco da Costa (1821-1925), a professor of physics and chemistry who had his own laboratory at home, who started the first newspaper O Ultramar; Roque Correia Afonso (1859-1937); and pharmacists such as Vencatexa V S R Sardessai, who founded O Pracasha. This newspaper is where the greatest name in Goan print modernity, Luis de Menezes Bragança, found a brief freedom to write when the long arm of Salazar smashed the printing press of his own newspaper O Debate, to muzzle the man and his fearless campaigns for freedom. These individuals wrote, debated and expressed themselves in thought and deed with a sense of the Goan as a citizen of the world. What was demanded was self-determination in matters of administration of resources, planning and development of infrastructure. They sought modernity while striving to preserve the sanctity of the land, the environment, the flora and fauna, forests and groves hallowed by tradition. Their beautiful homes were set at walking distance from the estuaries and rivers that are the source of a way of life, beyond culture and religion. Indeed the Escola Medica also produced atheists and a movement of anti-clericalism. They were led by a dream, it seems to me, particularly in the years of Republican rule when everything seemed possible; they were in love with their land, with European culture, with a sense of being both of the village and of the world, representatives of a Goa in which East and West met. Goans today debate and strive to retain some of these strengths in a globalised world, where a whole way of life is threatened and culture is either State-driven or homogenized. Prosaic bureaucratese describes the elegant and graceful Escola Medica -- luminous in daylight, and imbued with a dreamlike quality when flood-lit -- as the "Old GMC Building". How would those who walked its corridors, lived, loved, created, and illumined their world have taken to the proposed commercialisation of this lovingly restored heritage site? Can its restoration not inspire a rebirth, as the focus of cultural regeneration where the unique cosmopolitanism of Goa, its celebrated harmony and great diversity, can flourish within the larger Indian tradition of history and culture? * * * * * This was published during the ongoing Aparanta, a monumental show of Goan art at the old GMC building that has been curated by Ranjit Hoskote. INDIA TODAY WRITES: With Aparanta, a large and extremely engaging exhibition of Goan artists at the Goa Medical College (GMC) in Panjim (April 11-24), the art of the coastal state finds both a cumulative voice and a cause to claim national attention. With 23 artists and 250-odd works in a range of mediums from water colours to video installations … the belated recognition of Goa's first indigenous modernist, Angelo Fonseca, who preceded Francis Newton Souza… he dared to paint the Madonna as a dark Konkani beauty clad in a sari and had to flee to Pune .... Fonseca's works were re-discovered by the likes of Vivek Menezes, a freelance journalist and art lover who has now returned to Goa after spending a long time in the US there are also a few works of Souza, Pai and Gaitonde culled from the Goa Museum, around which the works of other Goan artists are displayed. Vivek Menezes [EMAIL PROTECTED] has long been a Goanetter. ----------------------------------------------------------------- GOANET-READER WELCOMES contributions from its readers, by way of essays, reviews, features and think-pieces. We share quality Goa-related writing among the 8000-strong readership of the Goanet/Goanet-news network of mailing lists. 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