Resumo de The Third Culture - Alberto de Noronha

Alberto de Noronha, The Third Culture ? Some Aspects of the Indo-Portuguese Cultural Encounter, Panjim, The Third Millenium, 2006, pp. 189, Price: Rs. 250, $15, ? 12. It is with a mix of sadness and satisfaction that I am writing these few lines about this author whom I did not get to know personally during my Goa phase of life. To enhance my sadness, I received the book by mail with a covering letter dated 16th October 2006 and signed by the author three weeks before he died. The tone of the letter written in Portuguese mentioned the diagnosis of terminal cancer, which added to his advanced age of 80s, made the production of this book his last great challenge in life. Cites Sydney Smith who seems to have provided much needed inspiration: "It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can do only litte. Do what you can". Alberto de Noronha ends his note with a humble request to me to provide some of my precious time to say if his book deserves scholarly merit. He hoped that my opinion could bring some weight of publicity in the Goa-based press. I feel honoured by the gesture of the author in sending me his book, which I shall cherish as "in manus tuas commendo" votive offering. There is little I need to add to the appreciation of the book in its Preface by Maria Aurora Couto. The book reveals a meticulously planning, a very liberal and critical mind, very up-to-date readings on the subject (including a reference to me on page 128, where the author cites a long passage in a funny mix of Portuguese and Konkani (transliterated from Devanagari script), which I did not even remember I had included in a paper I had presented at a local history seminar of Goa University but which I had never seen in print), and a pleasant and measured style of presentation even while quoting from Conde de Ficalho «Os portugueses saquearam a India; a India corrompeu-os. Ficaram pagos", which he translates neatly: The portuguese plundered India; India corrupted them. Thus they got even with each other (p.18). Right through the book the author seeks to identify and sum up the mutual impact of the cultures of the rulers and the dominated people. That is what constitutes the two Parts of the book, beginning with «the Indian influence spreads in Portugal» in Part I, and «the Portuguese make their influence felt in India» in Part II. It is to be noted, however, that while Part I covers meagre 20 pages, Part II covers the rest of the book from p. 44 till p. 169. Would this disproportion mean insufficient interest or insufficient knowledge about the matters included in Part I? The author has drawn his information largely from the 19th and early 20th century publications of A. Lopes Mendes and A. B. Bragança Pereira on Goan anthropology and ethnology. Neither the author, nor the general reader of The Third Culture may be aware of the ideological leanings and implications of those two writers. This is where I shall leave a caveat. Some conscious or unconscious bias can also be sensed in the bibliography at the end of the book. We see very good reference material, but for the themes covered one could hardly ignorethe scholarly works of the Goan authors like Carlos Mercês de Melo or Leopoldo Rocha. However, I do not hesitate to say that since J.N. Fonseca's An Historical and Archeological Sketch of the City of Goa or Claude Saldanha's Short History of Goa História de Goa in 2 vols), we had not seen anything so comprehensive and readable on Goa, written in English for general public, as this little book of Alberto de Noronha. The author and this book will remain with us and the generations to come as cultural representations of Goa presented to us in The Third Culture.

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