"Borrowed" from Research, and I wish to thank D. Teotonio. Eric Pinto.
--- On Sat, 7/18/09, Teotonio R. de Souza <te Panjim, Herald, 18 July 2009 http://bit.ly/ k6Kcm Goan Ethnography and Colonial Anthropology by Teotonio R. de Souza Continuing his survey of Goan ethnography, TEOTONIO R DE SOUZA takes a look at the development of colonial anthropology The Introduction of the Ethnography of Goa,Daman and Diu refers to the earlier publication of J N da Fonseca's Historical and Archaeological Sketch of the City of Goa (1878) as part of the British Imperial Gazetteers. Curiously, there is no reference in Bragança Pereira's Etnografia to this classic work in the field. There is just one acknowledged reference in the text to a long quotation of description of wildlife hunting drawn from the excellent 2-volume ethnographic study of A Índia Portuguesa by A. Lopes Mendes (Lisboa, 1886), even though there is extensive borrowing of the illustrations without any credits to that author, who had drawn many of those sketches himself during his field trips as State agronomist in Portuguese India during 1862-1870. At least two such illustrations borrowed from Lopes Mendes appear in the end-papers of the English version. A comparative study of the two texts reveals textual borrowings: the parallel in the description of jackfruit on p 140 of Ethnography with that of p 141 of Volume II of Lopes Mendes is one such case. A critical edition could have pointed out to such unacknowledged borrowings. In the pre-internet times, cross-checking of plagiarism was not easy, except for specialists in the field. Very deafening is also the absence of any reference to his widely recognized colleagues and scholars Pandurang Pissurlencar and Germano da Silva Correia, both of whom produced scholarly research about the Maratha castes, including Chardós and Ranes in particular. We can now understand why Pandurang Pissurlencar may have been ignored. It is not very difficult also to guess the author's allergy to the militant of the racial purity of the descendentes, who for Bragança Pereira were just a random mixture of the ethnic Portuguese with the locals. That is at least what we read in the `Goa Portuguesa' cited below. We are told in the new Ethnography that no Portuguese scholar studied Goan society before Orlando Ribeiro and his team. If so, who was the Fonseca Cardoso, mentioned on p 56, confirming the Rajput origin of the Ranes by antropometric research? Armando da Fonseca Cardoso was a military man, who served in India and Angola, and died serving in Timor in 1912. A perusal of the recent research of Ricardo Roque, published as Antropologia e Império: Fonseca Cardoso e a expedição à Índia em 1895 (Lisboa, ICS, 2001) helps to appreciate the pioneering place of Fonseca Cardoso's O indígena de Satari in the evolution of Portuguese anthropology. One thing he learned from the experience: no one in Portugal was interested in his `native of Satari' or in orientalist research before he died! It was only after 1916 that he was resurrected by anthropologist Antonio Mendes Correia, founder-secretary and president of the Portuguese Society of Anthropology and Ethnology at Oporto. Mendes Correia occupied important offices during the Estado Novo under the Salazar regime and convinced the government about promoting research in overseas colonies, giving a place of honour to the so-called Colonial Anthropology. The Exposition of Oporto was part of the First National Congress of Colonial Anthropology. The `native of Satari' by Fonseca Cardoso figured prominently in the proceedings of this Congress and Fonseca Cardoso was named the pioneer of Portuguese colonial anthropology. Germano Correia also took active part in the national and international congresses of anthropology and sought to develop a theory of `selective anthropology' of colonial acclimatization. He believed in the need of guaranteeing the racial purity for the colonial future. He set up a laboratory for anthropometric studies in Luanda when Norton de Matos was there as Governor (he had been Forest Officer in Goa earlier). Later he set up similar laboratory at the Goa Medical College and developed it into a full-fledged and State-financed Gabinete de Antropologia do Estado da Índia after 1926. Bragança Pereira's first studies on ethnography need to be placed in this context and ideological trends. The valuable contribution of Constâncio Mascarenhas (1898-1978) to anthropological studies, in Goa and in Oporto, could also deserve some mention in the Introduction. A B de Bragança Pereira acted as President of the Permanent Commission of Archaeology during the two decades of 1931-1951. He gathered assiduously in the Epigraphic Museum of Old Goa many Hindu idols destroyed during the early Portuguese conversion drive and inscriptions on stones that lay uncared for all over Goa. He resumed the publication of the journal O Oriente Português, and from 1934 initiated the publication of a new series of Arquivo Português Oriental, to which we have already made a critical reference earlier. Bragança Pereira did not take part in the much publicised First Imperial Exposition of Oporto in 1934, nor in the international exposition `O Mundo Português' (The Portuguese World) in 1940. His son believes that his father sought to avoid expressing publicly any view that could run counter to his judicial functions. Apparently, it was for the same reasons that he avoided studiously to pronounce about the political implications of the controversial Acto Colonial. However, he did not shy away from participating in the State-organized Provincial Congresses or collaborating actively in the newspapers Debate and O Heraldo. I presume that there were other political rivalries that hijacked the participation in the expositions of Oporto and Lisbon. Bragança Pereira wrote about `Goa Portuguesa' in the proceedings of the Colóquio Internacional de Estudos Luso-Brasileiros held in Washington in 1950. It was reprinted by the Goa Department of Information in the series of `Divulgação e Cultura' or cultural propaganda. It was nothing better than that, instead of an expected grand crowning finale of reputed scholarship. Intellectual production within the colonial system meant self-censorship for Goan scholars at all times, and this became a more pressing requirement during the Salazar regime. Filipe Neri Xavier was a pioneer who left a series of documentary collections of great value and indispensable reference for any modern researcher on Goan traditional social institutions. Even though the author lived in an atmosphere of relative constitutional freedom, he did not find the courage to venture beyond compiling documents. There is no attempt at interpreting the data or imputing blame to anyone. In an introduction to Part II of the first edition of his famous Bosquejo we read: "I have not taken upon myself the task of presenting my reflections upon the content of the documents published herein, not only because it would be alien to my intended goal, but also due to my lack of sufficient strength to do it." P S S Pissurlencar presented a paper at the Congress on the Portuguese World (1940) on `The Hindu collaborators of Afonso de Albuquerque' . He also compiled a massive volume on Agentes da Diplomacia Portuguesa na Índia (Bastorá, 1952), seeking discreetly to prove that the Hindu community had served the colonial masters with unremitting constancy and zeal. This truth may give little comfort to those making political capital today out of their little knowledge of the past. A B Bragança Pereira was no different in this respect, but ironically and unfortunately for him, unlike F N Xavier and P S S Pissurlencar, he died in independent India and with greater freedom to continue praising the glories of the Portuguese colonial achievements than in his homeland of Goa. __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database «Research» is not bias-free, but we can try to make it emotion-free! [Moderator] Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! 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