The Ghosts of the Past: Beyond Goan Exceptionalism in the Konkan

• In Event: Other Horizons: Geographicities in South Asia

Abstract

The place of Goa in South Asian historiography has generally been one of exceptionalism. A long history of Portuguese colonialism and its final incorporation into the Union of India through military means has meant that Goa does not fit into the rubric of much (post)colonial South Asian historiography, dominated by the experience of British colonialism and its aftermath. Goa’s Catholic, Portuguese heritage has meant that it is often viewed through the prism of Portuguese imperial history, or, as a Facebook forum dedicated to the field designates it, “Indo-Portuguese history.” This exceptionalism has meant that only rarely has Goa been incorporated into the conceptual framework of South Asian historiography, or even regional historiographies of the Konkan coast.
Though self-identified speakers of Konkani inhabit the zone from the south of Mumbai to northern Kerala along the western littoral, the Konkan, traversing old imperial and modern state boundaries, remains ill-defined, understudied and under-theorized. Goa, with its Portuguese past, appears particularly disruptive to the production of a conceptual framework of the Konkan. This paper will attempt to disrupt the geographic exceptionalism of Goan history by arguing for a notion of ritual and linguistic continuity across the Konkan coast which violates the carefully policed colonial boundaries of Portuguese imperial and Catholic missionary power. Through an exploration of early Jesuit texts produced in seventeenth century Salcete, this paper will attempt to excavate a Konkan past in Goa, with a particular focus on local ghost (bhut) cults.

Author

• Ananya Chakravarti, Georgetown University