BOOK EXTRACT Poetry, Politics, and Newspapers in Portuguese: Laxmanrao Sardessai and Goa in the 1960s
D.A. Smith In 1964, after more than 30 years of writing short stories in Marathi, Laxmanrao Sardessai did something that, on the face of it, was quite unexpected. The 60-year-old Goan writer and teacher, imprisoned twice by the Portuguese colonial authorities for his efforts to end colonial rule -- achieved in December 1961 when the Indian army swept into Goa and evicted its long-standing Lusitanian rulers -- started publishing poems in Portuguese. Sardessai's familiarity with the Portuguese language is not the unusual part of this story. As the official language of the Estado da Índia, Portuguese was used by administrators and Goa's Catholic elite, and was studied by upper-caste Hindus, such as the family into which Sardessai was born. After 1961, however, Portuguese lost its official status and its social cachet: of the two Portuguese-language newspapers in which Sardessai's poetry appeared, A Vida and O Heraldo, only one would still exist twenty-two years later, when it would be known as the Herald and would publish entirely in English. Whereas Portuguese was the language of government and colonial rule, Konkani was the language of the masses, despite not being recognized as an independent language by the Indian state until 1975. It took another 12 years for it to be declared Goa's official language, and even then, debate continued over Konkani's relationship to Marathi, which was the language of education and literature for much of Goa's Hindu population. Konkani's use as a literary language grew throughout the 20th century, and in his later years Laxmanrao Sardessai wrote in Konkani, but Marathi remained his primary linguistic vehicle. Why, then, did Sardessai switch from writing short stories in Marathi to writing poetry in Portuguese, the rapidly disappearing language of his former jailers? The most obvious answer is politics. Although not all of Sardessai's poems in Portuguese deal with political issues, those that do make it clear that he held strong opinions about Goa's relationship with India, primarily a vehement opposition to Goa's incorporation into Maharashtra -- the sole question that would constitute the Goa Opinion Poll of 1967. Sardessai's opposition to merger was shared by his Lusophone Catholic neighbors, and so his writings in Portuguese found a ready audience. Thankfully, Sardessai did not write exclusively about politics, for two years' worth of free-verse political screeds would have tried the patience of even the most die-hard anti-merger partisan. He also wrote about Goa and its people, metaphysical and philosophical concerns, the role of the poet, and whatever else he saw fit, and this wide range of topics indicates that Sardessai saw Portuguese as a literary tool as well as a political one. The result is a collection of poems that serve as literary and historical snapshots of Goa facing its first major post-Liberation political crisis, and of the Portuguese language on the eve of its virtual disappearance from the territory. THOSE who had supported, or at least prospered under, the Portuguese regime were not the only ones concerned about their future in the years following Operation Vijay, as the Indian military's swift intervention in Goa was known. Goa's political status remained up in the air: although it had been declared a union territory, there were those who wished to see it integrated into the neighboring state of Maharashtra, as well as a strong contingent that favored maintaining a separate Goa, either as a union territory or a full state. Laxmanrao Sardessai was firmly in the second camp. Vimala Devi and Manuel de Seabra note that in 1964, after returning to Goa from Delhi -- where he had worked in the Portuguese and Konkani section of All India Radio -- Sardessai founded the Anti-Integrationist Front (Frente Anti-Integracionista), the very name of which makes his position on the matter abundantly clear. That same year he published his first Portuguese poems in A Vida and O Heraldo, though none of them dealt explicitly with the merger issue. The battle lines over integration with Maharashtra were roughly drawn between Catholics (the bulk of Goa's Lusophones) and upper-caste Hindus on the anti-integration side, and lower-caste Hindus and Marathi speakers on the other. In the union territory's Legislative Assembly, which included seats for the former Portuguese enclaves of Damão (Daman) and Diu, the United Goans Party and the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party represented the anti- and pro-integration camps. Although there were other political parties in Goa, the UGP and the MGP were the only ones with seats in the assembly (aside from the two held by Daman and Diu), and subsequently dominated the discussion of the integration question. The matter of integration was finally settled in January 1967 by the Goa Opinion Poll, a referendum to decide whether Goa would merge with Maharashtra (and Daman and Diu with Gujarat), or remain a separate union territory. After the votes of over 80% of eligible voters were counted -- 317,633 of them—victory was declared for the supporters of Goan independence from its neighbor: 54.2% (172,191) of voters opposed merger, while 43.5% (138,170) supported it. Statehood and the recognition of Konkani as Goa's official language did not arrive until 1987; until then, Goa maintained its unique identity and union territory status. It is difficult to gauge how much Sardessai's poems influenced popular opinion. Earlier in his career, according to Prakash Thali, Sardessai himself wondered how much good his literary activism (in the form of "sangram-katha," or "agitational stories" in Marathi) had done for the struggle against the Portuguese, but the support of a well-known Hindu writer with an established pedigree of activism could only have bolstered the anti-merger cause. Sardessai's adoption of Portuguese is evidence that he was willing to cross the barriers of language and religion to secure the independence of his beloved Goa. Once that had been achieved, and Maharashtra no longer loomed over the territory like a "bird of prey", as Sardessai describes it in "A ave da rapina", he set the old colonial language aside and returned to writing in Marathi and Konkani. No more Portuguese poetry flowed from Sardessai's pen, and after the mid-1960s what little writing he did in Portuguese was limited to short stories that, as Paul Melo e Castro has noted, may have been Sardessai's own Marathi stories translated into Portuguese, or Portuguese originals of stories rewritten in Marathi. This raises an entirely different set of questions about Sardessai's relationship with the Portuguese language, which I will leave to others to answer. ONE OF THE MOST fascinating aspects of Laxmanrao Sardessai's poetry has little direct relation to the poems themselves, yet still allows us a broader view of the time and place in which they were written and published, and thus a greater sense of the role poetry can play in everyday life. In our day and age poetry increasingly seems to be the province of academics and aficionados, its audience minuscule and relegated to the fringes of literary production and publication, so it is almost jarring to read through old issues of A Vida and O Heraldo and find poems within their pages. Encountering poetry in newspapers may be especially surprising to an American like myself, but it is safe to say that in this market-driven era, in which the printed newspaper is on the defensive around the world, anything that does not generate profit is relegated to obscurity, and places where poetry rakes in money are, to put it mildly, few and far between. In 1960s Goa, however, there was clearly a demand for literature among newspaper readers, as Sardessai's poems appear on a regular basis between 1964 and 1966. He was not the only writer to provide the papers with something other than pure journalism: Epitácio Pais, Maria Elsa da Rocha, and Walfrido Antão wrote short stories and crónicas for various Portuguese-language newspapers after Liberation. This was not a new development, but the continuation of a tradition of Lusophone Goan newspapers publishing literary works that stretched back to the 19th century. One can see this tradition at work in Lengthening Shadows, Paul Melo e Castro's anthology of translated Portuguese-language short stories from Goa: most of the stories therein made their first appearance in newspapers or similar journals. That said, when looking at Portuguese-language newspapers after Liberation, and how, as institutions, they shed light on the state of things in Goa, there are a couple of factors worthy of consideration. The sudden disappearance of official support for the Portuguese language, and the Indian government's promotion of English as its replacement, effectively spelled the end of regular Portuguese literary production in Goa. Hindsight allows us to see just how swiftly, and to what degree, this actually happened, but even when Sardessai was publishing poems in A Vida and O Heraldo, the future of the language must have seemed rather grim. Although we can only speculate as to how desperate for material the editors of Lusophone papers really were in the 1960s, it is hard not to consider the possibility that editors might have been willing to publish nearly anything in Portuguese, especially when deadlines loomed and pages needed to be filled. (Also worth noting is that a good amount of Sardessai's poems were published during the monsoon, which conjures up images of the poet trapped indoors, writing furiously, and newspaper editors grateful for something to print during a slow news season.) The extent of the decline of Portuguese in Goa is thrown into even sharper relief when one recalls that the colonial authorities imposed heavy censorship on the press. In theory, the lifting of censorship should have led to increased literary production from a greater range of voices, but it appears that little of that writing was done in Portuguese.... LAXMANRAO SARDESSAI'S poetry can be roughly divided into two varieties: the personal and the political. The poems I categorize as personal involve things other than politics: philosophical musings, spiritual and metaphysical matters, odes to nature, reflections on the poet's life, and the like. The political poems deal with merger with Maharashtra, Goa's new administration, caste issues, and a general concern for Goa's future. While it's doubtful that Sardessai felt the need to categorize his poetry at all, or that readers will notice any dramatic difference in Sardessai's style based on content, I make the distinction in order to demonstrate Sardessai's willingness and ability to write in Portuguese about a variety of topics, as well as for the sake of convenience. Had he stuck to politics -- for example, only writing poems in the vein of "Avante, goeses! avante!" and "'Zalach Pahije!"' -- Sardessai would likely have been saddled with a reputation as a mere anti-merger propagandist. Luckily, he let his mind and pen wander, and gave us poems such as "A velhice e a poesia" ("Old Age and Poetry") and "Sou um mistério" ("I am a Mystery"), which means that posterity has been left with a more well-rounded poet, one capable of using Portuguese to extol and exhort, as well as excoriate. Furthermore, his engagement with topics beyond politics shows us that Sardessai was interested in more than just warning Goa's Lusophones of the dangers of merger and loss of identity. (Readers of Portuguese-language newspapers, of course, would not be strangers to such admonitions, even if they came less frequently from Hindus like Sardessai.) While he plainly believed in the struggle against Goa's envelopment by Maharashtra, the variety of non-political poems he produced is ready proof that he had more to say, and decided to say it in Portuguese. In A Literatura Indo-Portuguesa, Devi and Seabra note that "O português de Laxmanrao Sardessai é plástico e vivo, mas a própria natureza dos seus temas impede-o de fazer grande uso dos peculiarismos linguísticos goeses" ("The Portuguese of Laxmanrao Sardessai is plastic and alive, but the very nature of his themes keeps him from making much use of Goan linguistic peculiarities"). While this assessment describes Sardessai's short stories, it is also applicable to his poetry. Sardessai's Portuguese is fluent, but not extravagant. In "A simplicidade" ("Simplicity"), he begs God for the gift of plain speech. This prayer was evidently answered, for throughout his poetry Sardessai uses simple, direct language. His verse, however, is not spare to the point of minimalism: at times, such as in his poems about Goa's beauty -- "Os nossos rios" ("Our Rivers") and "A arequeira" ("The Areca Palm") come to mind -- Sardessai revels in an openly sensuous vocabulary and phrasing. Aside from a few transliterated words from Konkani, just enough to demonstrate his willingness to step beyond the strictures of the colonially approved version of the language, Sardessai's vocabulary and syntax present no particular difficulty for readers of standard Portuguese. This accessibility is in keeping with Sardessai's desire for simplicity, yet does not restrict his ability to use expansive, metaphorical language when he so wishes -- the "linguagem telúrica, rica de qualidades descretivas" ("telluric language, rich in descriptive qualities"), that Eufemiano de Jesus Miranda finds in Sardessai's poetry.... -- [*Avante, goeses! avante!: The Portuguese Poetry of Laxmanrao Sardessai* is translated by D.A. Smith and contains both the original and translated version of Sardessai's poetry besides an introductory essay. It is available by mail order from goa1...@gmail.com ]