Remembering Albuquerque?

I  had entitled my op-ed column on Herald of 6 December “Never the same again”. That was about a fortnight after the tragic terrorist attack in Mumbai. It maybe re-read online at my Scribed archive utilizing the linkhttp://bit.ly/1Nus7Rv where I drew a parallel between the terrorist attack and the capture of Goa by Afonso de Albuquerque on 25 November 1510. The main points of comparison were: (1) use of waterways by roving bands from long distance; (2) ideological motivations and strategic planning; (3) domestic social conflicts and local collaborators. 

I think it is worth reflecting again on that event at a time when the Portuguese commemorate the fifth centenary of the death of Afonso de Albuquerque, that military stalwart of the Portuguese imperial expansion in Asia, a master strategist who foresaw the importance of controlling the straits of Melaka and Hormuz, which till our own days are vital points for the security of the shipping lanes which handle 80 % of the world trade and consequently are under constant watch of the world powers, marked by sustained turmoil and threatening at times with major conflicts.

A recent book entitled Sea Change, available online at http://bit.ly/1C1JpQs provides a theoretical justification for the Indo-American naval exercises code-named Malabar. They highlight the geo-strategic importance of securing Indian Ocean lanes against international terrorism that goes beyond the traditional piracy. K M Panikkar had already drawn our attention to this challenge to independent India in his book on “India and the Indian Ocean” (1945).

In Goa we were told by the ex-colonialists and their native beneficiaries that he saved Hindu widows from obligation to perform sati, and that he adopted a policy of miscigenation, unlike the English colonizers in neighboring India who favoured red-light areas to satisfy the sex-urge of its red uniformed soldiers and introduced ban on the practice of sati about a century later.

Albuquerque’s humanitarianism towards Indian women needs rethinking if we believe in his own report of the conquest of Goa. He wrote to his king that no Muslim residing in Goa was allowed to escape. Nearly six thousand were put to sword, and crowds of men and women who took shelter in mosques were burnt alive. 

According to very recent research, he had been a page in the ducal palace of Vila-Viçosa in Portugal where slave women were used for breeding little slaves for sale within Portugal and for export. This was the morality of a ducal house that would dedicate Portugal to Our Lady of Immaculate Conception. Was that meant as a mark of repentance? Against such an ambiguous humanitarianism, any fair evaluation of Albuquerque’s policy of miscegenation needs to be taken with a sack of salt.

The Portuguese epic writer Camões praises Albuquerque as the Terrible, in his very first Canto. That does some justice to the Portuguese imperial hero. Even a cursory look at his prolific correspondence published in 8 volumes and now available online at http://memoria-africa.ua.pt/Library/CAA.aspx can give us an idea of his terrible and ruthless behaviour. His account of the capture of Goa describes cold-blooded elimination of the Muslim inhabitants of Goa city, numbering six thousand, burning men and women alive in the mosques where they had sought shelter. No recent act of terrorism has yet reached that level of cruelty. 

His policy of miscegenation chose fair-skinned Muslim women (mulheres alvas) to marry his white men as a strategy of creating a mixed breed of colonizers attached to the land, saving any large-scale dependence upon supply of human resources from the home country. These mestiço groups that did not feel themselves integrated either in Portugal or in the local society were meant to ensure the continuity of the empire to ensure their own survival. 

This explains why the Portuguese empire lasted longer than any other European colonial empire that did not invest in miscigenation. In Goa the native elites heartily resented the arrogance of mestiços who treated them as “niggers”. Despite their better formation and skills the native elites were bypassed in official postings by the “descendentes” whose fair skin and home-spun Portuguese lingo gave the measy advantage. They also controlled the local militia until it was abolished by the reforms of Marquis of Pombal, depriving them of an instrument of domination. It was not a surprise if they vanished from Goa anticipating decolonization and fears of backlash.

In the long run, Albuquerque’s miscegenation drive failed to prop up the Portuguese colonialism, still proclaimed by some as a mild colonialism. Despite some rare attempts of Salazar regime to build the image of Albuquerque through postal stamps at the fag end of the British colonialism and during Goa’s freedom struggle, he remains forgotten in the public memory of Goa. Curiously, he has no mention in the Konkani Encyclopaedia (4 vols) published by the Goa University. It has though a place for Vasco da Gama.

A lyceum named after him is now a Government higher secondary school as any other. His greater than life size statue in Panjim is replaced with a Martyr’s memorial dedicated to those who fought for Goa’s liberation. The bombing of the warship named after Albuquerque in a symbolic last ditch battle marked the end of  a colonial Goa that had started with him. Unfortunately, the ship was sold as scrap, instead of preserving it as a prized memento in a museum of freedom struggle.

(Teotonio R. de Souza is the founder-director, Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Goa (1979-1994).