A Goan reading of the cultural impact of the Colonial Act: Introducing intellectuals and periodic press through the Anglo-Lusitano of July 7, 1934

Abstract

The Portuguese colonial legislation summarized in the segregating measures of the Colonial Act of 1930, the year that inaugurated Salazar's dictatorship in Portugal after the 1926 military coup, had unavoidable consequences. Our goal is to demonstrate the importance of this political measure through the journalistic production of the Goan intellectuality, that is, the political culture that arose from the clash between the defenders of the regime and those who advocated solutions of freedom and democracy in autonomy or independence. After a comprehensive Goan press survey, the choice of a special issue of O Anglo-Lusitano to present as historical foundation in this study was due to the fact that owing to its broad spectrum of cultural and political participation, it served as medium for ascertaining the existence of a crossroad of visions of the imperial whole, in the construction of intellectual networks of opposition and resistance, both from Goa and exile, enunciating the end of the Portuguese empire.

Dear Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru: Goa and the Foundations of the Indian National Liberation Movement

“…The act furthermore affirmed that it was part of Portuguese essence to possess colonies and civilize its populations with Western Christian values. In Goa and among the Goan community in British India, as in other parts of the Empire, the legislation was received with commotion and raised a wave of protests (Lobo, 2013;Machado, 2020). Cunha's cousin, Menezes Bragança declared, on behalf of the opposition at the Government Council, that "India does not renounce to the right, that peoples have, of reaching their full individuality, until they constitute units capable of directing their destinies, as it is an original right of their organic essence" (Lobo, 2013, p. 518).…”

Crítica Anticolonial no Império Português: perspectivas culturais e políticas

“…A unilateralidade do decreto de Salazar revelava uma cultura política baseada no argumento de autoridade metropolitana. A criação de uma ontologia do povo português com a missão de civilizar e colonizar, juntamente com uma releitura da história dos descobrimentos centrada na heroicidade dos dirigentes portugueses, formou um conjunto que foi trabalhado pelo aparelho de propaganda do Estado e desdobrado pelos programas escolares durante várias gerações (Machado, 2020). Utilizando todos os meios de produção intelectual que vemos promovidos e divulgados pela imprensa -os concursos literários sobre a temática colonial, as coleções editoriais como os Cadernos Coloniais, as Exposições como a do Mundo Português em 1940, o curso da Escola superior colonial -, foi sendo construído o ideário imperial (Vieira, 2010) a que o ideólogo do Estado Novo Alves Azevedo chamou a Mística Imperial.…”