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------------------------------------------------------------------------ BETWEEN EMPIRES: Print and Politics in Goa. Rochelle Pinto Pp 299 hb Rs 645 Oxford University Press ISBN 9780195690477 Another aspect that might illuminate the question of Hindu Goan subjectivity is the difference in state policy towards the Hindus of the Old Conquest, and those of the New Conquests who were assured religious freedom from the time these territories were acquuired by the state in the eighteenth century. This is evident for instance in Cristiana Bastos' discussion of the religious freedoms granted to Hindu physicians, where she refers to these groups in the Old Conquests as 'Christianized Hindu elites'. The issue of a split relation to colonial culture and state power is therefore not one that has to be posed only between Catholic and Hindu populations, but between the Hindu subjects of the New and Old Conquests as well. p 10-11. [Cunha] Rivara's *An Historical Essay on the Konkani language* of 1857 is perhaps the first concerted effort to argue for state and public patronage for the language. The choice of linguists and commentators through whose works he tried to legitimize his own views was, from a linguistic point of view, arbitrary, and for this reason he is belittled by supporters of Marathi as well as those of Konkani as he evidently had little knowledge of either language. Among those cited where the Orientalist, the Rev. J. Murray Mitchell, Erskine Perry, and Robert Xavier Murphy, the translator to the gtovernment of Bombay in 1852, and the Political Superintendents W. Auld and J. Courtney who had withstood a rebellion at Sawantwadi, a British territory that shared a border with Goa. Other travel writers and lexicographers were an Italian missionary (whose dictionary of Mangalorean Konkani Rivara had published for the first time), as well as the Rev. de Kloguen who had visited Goa around 1829, Araujo de Azavedo, a Portuguese visitor, Felipe Neri Pires and Filipe Nery Xavier, both of whom had produced essays on the grammar of Konkani within the nineteenth century. Almost all of these, travel writers as well as scholars, described the language as a mixture and made a distinction between the spoken and the written forms of the language. De Kloguen for instance claimed, "The poor and those who cannot read, chiefly the women folk, speak this language only." Azavedo had the most confused listing of languages and dialects; he declared that Portuguese was a spoken language along with the 'local language', that the Hindus used a variety of scripts to write in, that those in the New Conquest could write as fast as they spoke these languages, but what they wrote was usually a mixture of dialects. Nery Xavier had a similar account but claimed that the language of the New Conquests was purer and grew more so, the further it moved from the territory of Goa (Old Conquest). Rivara established a lineage for academic interest in Konkani through this motley and often contradictory set of informants and provided proof that it was widely spoken and written. p.102 One of Axelrod and Fuerch's interesting contentions, that the Portuguese focus on trade, and Portugal's position in the world economy left the village economy relatively unchanged (in contrast to the British intervention in local economies, as well as the Spanish settler mode of colonialism), also leads them to locate resistance not in conflicts over resources, of which they say there are not many, but in cultural forms. p 263 JUST TO SAY that I have received a few copies from the author of this book in Goa. Please contact me via goa1...@gmail.com if you'd like to purchase one Rs 645 + postage/packaging (if applicable). FN, for Goa,1556 -- FN +91-9822122436 P +91-832-2409490 Konkani adages http://konkani-adages.notlong.com/ Medieval Goa http://medieval-goa.notlong.com/