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
