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In the debate on common property resource management, asset redistribution and privatization of commons have emerged as contentious issues. This chapter uses a case study in Goa, India, to examine whether tenure security and asset redistribution can lead to environmentally sustainable outcomes. It concludes that when public policy involves institutional transition (private purchase of communidade lands), there may be trade-offs involved between equity and sustainability. Institutional change can affect social networks by triggering exit of agents who previously managed land. Due to lack of a prior history of cooperation among the new resource owners, the new equilibrium may shift to a non-cooperative regime that might endanger embankment maintenance and be unsustainable in the long run.

After arrival in Portugal, Ricci received further training at the University in Coimbra. There is a description of Lisbon, the gateway of Portugal and Europe to the world, an entrepôt of exotic products and African slaves. The Jesuits in Portugal enjoyed the patronage of King Sebastian, who sponsored their Asian missions on board royal vessels. Ricci's voyage to Goa, India is described on the basis of the journals kept by his fellow Jesuit missionaries. The long, monotonous, and perilous sea voyage took the Portuguese around the Cape of Good Hope to Mozambique, where the Portuguese had established a base. As chaplains, the Jesuits provided spiritual comfort and Catholic sacraments for the sailors who faced the dangers of the oceans. This chapter also describes the task of the missionaries in Portuguese India, where Ricci spent three years finishing his theological studies. His first letters date from this period and include sharp observations on Portuguese colonialism and racial discrimination.

The chapter investigates three cases of prolonged occupation from the post-colonial era that did not produce a settlement project: India in Goa (1961 onwards), Libya in Chad (1974-1992) and Mauritania in Western Sahara (1975-1979). The cases serve as “negative cases”.

The visibility accorded by print to the self-reflexive representations of a Catholic Goan elite helped crystallize assumptions about the century and its location within the history of colonial Goa. Goa was characterized as always out of time with civilization, a view that emerged from within Portuguese historiography. To better understand print and colonialism in the Indian sub-continent one must contend with the stronger and more obvious theorization of print in the context of colonial India. The concern with print and the nineteenth century arises from the questions that emerged in part from those strands within postcolonial studies that address the domain of nationalism, literature, and history. This book explores the politics of print in Goa during the nineteenth century. It discusses caste among indigenous Catholics, the onset of modernity within Goa, and the interpellation of the Catholic elite into race hierarchies.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos offered a theory about the subaltern status of Portuguese colonialism compared with the normative status of British colonialism, noting that since the seventeenth century, the history of colonialism has been written in English rather than Portuguese. In other words, the Portuguese colonizer has a problem of self-representation rather similar to that of the British colonized. De Sousa Santos’ description of the complexity of representational choices confronting the ‘Portuguese colonized’ is consistent with the temporal and political dilemmas of the Goan elite. Goa’s cultural histories reflect the sudden and prolific print material circulating through the nineteenth century as an intellectual renaissance spurred by the reintroduction of the printing press. This chapter examines print and politics in Goa during the nineteenth century, focusing on Portuguese and British colonialism, culture and history, caste rivalries, Indian nationalism, and reform and modernity.

One of the reasons why the colonial state’s singular positive linguistic agenda that Portuguese be taught in schools did not determine the future linguistic repertoire of Goa, was because the government in neighbouring territories had emerged with a sophisticated discourse of linguistic identity. Where Portugal could not determine how it should intervene within linguistic policy, other more powerful discourses effectively took its place. The Portuguese colonial state’s control over the realm of linguistic education was reshaped by the discourse of English colonialism and the interests of the Goan elite. Just as they had advocated the spread of English as a sign of their concern for migrant Catholics, the Catholic elite supported the demand made by Hindus for Marathi schools in the New Conquests. This chapter explores how the process by which the discursive spaces Konkani could have had were occupied by Marathi and other dominant languages.

In British India, the colonial state was assumed to be a centred and decisive entity that put in place norms and strictures concerning print which were contested and transformed in their colonial context. In Goa, print was reintroduced as a defiant declaration of constitutionalism. Moreover, print was influenced by the fact that the indigenous elite were granted representation in the Portuguese Cortes during the early decades of the nineteenth century. The formal and political implications of these print relations crucially shaped the print sphere. This chapter discusses the political nature of newsprint in Goa and how newspapers and pamphlets were used as the means by which interpretations of the political actions of chardos and brahmins could be countered or recontextualized by the other.

In Goa, the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century were marked by two instances of conflict and revolt. This chapter examines two separate sets of pamphlets to demonstrate how print could reproduce or double the closures and limits inherent to the politics of the Goan elite. This retracing of pamphlets has been influenced in part by the works of Roger Chartier and Robert Darnton, whose conclusions about political consciousness, patterns of print, and the stratification of political groups emerge from readings of empirical data about print law, publishing houses, reading practices, and censorship. This chapter analyses shifting norms for the textual representation of truth across political representations generated by rebel soldiers and peasants, the indigenous colonial elite, and the colonial state.

Literary historians of colonial India have elaborated how the spheres of education, linguistics, and literature have been reshaped under the colonial state. Compared to the domain of literature in British India, there is no detailed instrumentalist framework for the reworking of public opinion and literature in colonial Goa. Goa’s literary histories paved the way for the eventual development of a specialized set of meanings and assumptions about literary texts. The reintroduction of the printing press in 1821 was heralded not only as an intellectual renaissance but also as a moment of literary renewal. This chapter examines the divergent literary histories in Goa. It first discusses the literary genre in the print market and the linguistic histories of Konkani before considering the literary histories in Portuguese and Marathi as well as the literary production in Marathi by Goans.

The earliest novels in Goa appeared in the 1860s, synthesizing the disparities in cultural ideologies that arose from a range of contemporary concerns. Goan writers were exposed to European literature, but novels were not concealed workshops for theories of cultural nationalism. This chapter analyses two Goan novels, Francisco Luis Gomes’ Os Brahamanes and Francisco João da Costa’s Jacob e Dulce. In contrast to Luis Gomes, da Costa seemed to have written his work by repositioning the authorial voice and the subject of ethnography. In Jacob e Dulce, the consumption of print provided a metaphor through which to describe the workings of gossip. The novel explicitly articulates critiques of colonialism and its impact on Goa.

During the nineteenth century, J. H. da Cunha Rivara, the Secretary to the Governor General, and Goa’s elite advocated a wider use of Konkani despite not using the language themselves as a literary medium. The Goan elite produced a few printed texts in Konkani such as dictionaries and grammars, along with Konkani songs which were printed in predominantly Portuguese anthologies as the only available forms of Konkani literature. This chapter discusses Konkani literature, the uncertain political status of the Goan elite in British India, and how Konkani print was employed as a mechanism through which migrant Goans made their acquaintance with elements of urban modernity in Bombay. The chapter also looks at a Konkani novel, A. C. J. Francisco’s Battcara.

This chapter examines the trajectory of Goa’s experience with its Special Economic Zone policy and provides an explanation for its radical turnaround, which distinguishes it from every other state. From providing early and enthusiastic support to the SEZ policy, the Government of Goa took the exceptional decision in late 2007 to cancel all SEZ projects in the state. After examining the manner in which the policy was initiated and implemented, the chapter focuses on the anti-SEZ movement that emerged in Goa, explaining why the proposed SEZs were opposed and how the movement was built and sustained. It then addresses the ‘scrapping’ of the SEZ projects and identifies the factors that influenced the state government’s decision to reverse its SEZ policy. This is followed by a discussion of the reasons why a complete closure of the SEZ issue has proved elusive.

In his study ‘Imperial and Colonial Encounters: Some Reflections’, Sanjay Subrahmanyam argues that an account of local histories such as that of Goa can provide an alternative view of the possible connections between Asian and Latin American colonial empires. The telling of Goa’s history formed the basis for mapping one kind of narrative about the transition from Iberian to British colonialism. Hence, the nineteenth century in Goa emerges as the terrain which is extricated with difficulty from its inscription by Indian nationalism. This book explores different locations of print production by Goans to show how the representations of various groups were enabled by print. In articles that address the various strands to Goan historiography, Goa is either celebrated as an extension of Portugal’s history or integrated as an ‘integrationist’ attempt into India’s history.

In keeping with the shift of the modern Indian nation-state to the religio-political right, minority legacies in such regions as the Malabar and Konkan coasts are either being obfuscated or rehistoricized. To prove my point, I employ two botanical texts from the 16th and 17th centuries. The former, the Colóquios dos Simples e Drogas e Cousas Medicinias da Índia, was written by Garcia da Orta, a Jewish-Catholic converso who lived and died in Portuguese Goa under the threat of the Inquisition. In its efforts to represent its past and present as a modern quasi city-state in line with other Indian metros, the Goan State chose, in 2012, to commemorate the 17th century Hortus Malabaricus, an ecological treatise that, curiously, comes from the Malabar, because among its contributors were Saraswat Brahmins with a dubious connection to Goan history. That this commemoration occurred on the uncelebrated 450th anniversary publication of da Orta's opus - one of the earliest texts to be published in South Asia - underscores the State's investment in legacy-making and forgetting.

This chapter discusses the Supreme Court's ruling on the functions and duties of Bar Associations in India, looking primarily at the judgment delivered on 5 September 1995 on behalf of Justice K. R. Sawarmy and Justice B.L. Hansaria. Division Bench of two judges was dealing with a petition 'under Article 32 of the Constitution' for a writ against a statutory body, the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa, and two private bodies, the Bombay Bar Association, and the Advocates Association of Western India. The petition sought to restrain permanently these three bodies from coercing the chief justice of the Bombay High Court to resign from the office. The Attorney-General Milon Kumar Banerjee's supported the petition, suggesting that such resolutions by any Bar Association could entail contempt of court. The chapter analyses the arguments to conclude that the existence of a constitutional remedy, the provisions in the Constitution about the impeachment of judges, and the functions of a State Bar Council as defined by Section 6(1) of the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act 1980. The chapter ends by considering the handling a judge whose conduct may serve as grounds for impeachment.

The retreat of the English from the Far East was temporary. The Convention of Goa, signed in 1635, opened the gateway to Macau once again for the English vessels. The convention was signed with the view to defend both English and Portuguese interests in the face of Dutch threats in the East. English vessels would be chartered from Surat to carry goods from Macau in order to bypass the Dutch embargo. Yet, to maintain their privileged positions, the Portuguese forbade English crews to land and have contact with the local population. The English searched for other routes to set up trade with China. The English presence in the East was strengthened when Charles II received Bombay as part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry in 1662.

This chapter highlights the blurring of the well-known North–South divide in Goa, especially with the 2012 Assembly elections. The 2009 elections restored this famous divide, where the majority Hindu community has a major presence in the North, while the minority Christian community has a sizeable presence in the South. This historical social complexity crystallized into distinct political outfits – Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and the United Goans Party (UGP). The 2009 verdict maintained this status quo, with the BJP and Congress retaining their Lok Sabha seats in the state. But the 2012 Assembly polls took a very interesting turn. The BJP did exceedingly well in the North, and although the South is the traditional stronghold of Congress, it performed poorly in this region. The Assembly elections point to a blurring of the North–South distinction and in this sense the state-level elections of 2012 were more significant than the parliamentary elections of 2009.