I feel that Professor Teotonio's work combines thoroughness with
readability, for a general public not inclined to patience with academic
methodology. It's possible that some may fault him for 'naming names', but I
hope that all of us can try to appreciate the complex variety of personal
opinion and impulse under trying socio-political conditions.
We know good friends who are identified as having been on either side of the
divide; or perhaps sitting on the fence; or maybe running with the fox one
day and the hounds the next.
In my view not one of them need be in the least defensive or apologetic for
what their intuition/cultural conditioning/or whatever led them (or their
forebears) to think, say or do.
Sending the saffron shawl to the reigning prelate was, to my way of
thinking, a 'low blow'---hitting below the belt; so a historical referee
might justly declare 'a foul'---but even there, let them (wherever they may
be in the here or the hereafter) sit out whatever kind of penalty the great
game of History can declare.
Meanwhile, more power to Professor Teotonio De Souza. He need not assume the
role of historical referee, so long as he clearly sketches the vista
revealed by his painstaking scan of an epoch soon to disappear from our
sight, gone beyond our horizon---"And our little life, is rounded with a
sleep".
