The Mahabharata story is known: Eklavya, Nishada prince, not Brahmin or Kshatriya, learns archery by watching Dronacharya from forest. He becomes better than Arjuna. Drona, bound to make Arjuna best, asks guru-dakshina: your right thumb. Eklavya cuts it. Gives it. Cannot shoot again. One thumb cut in forest. Today, in new India through SIR – Special Intensive Revision of...
Goanology: An Anasemic Analysis of Hindutopia to Hindudystopia
The New Indian Express Magazine (Nov 1, 2026) article Hindutopia: A Neo-Orientalist Fantasy critiques a term coined by Portuguese scholar João Pedro Oliveira in 2025 – Hindutopia, Hindu + utopia. Oliveira argues Indian myth-fiction writers are lumped into one Hindu box to serve new middle class after 1991. The Express article says this itself is lazy neo-Orientalism: Europe supplies...
Out-Ironying the Aura: Irony as Quiet Resistance from Goa to Gen Z India
Irony begins as a quiet discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, or between appearance and reality. It does not always announce itself with a force of reason . Classical irony, from Socratic questioning onward, often works by pretending agreement or ignorance so that the other person’s position is forced to reveal its own fractures. The listener...
The Creation of the Category of Caste in Portuguese India: Discursive Formations, Goan Encounters, and British Transformations
The category we today call “caste” did not emerge fully formed from the ancient Indian past as an unchanging essence of the subcontinent’s social order. Rather, it took shape through layered historical processes of translation, classification, and power. Portuguese colonial encounters in India, particularly in Goa from the early sixteenth century onward, played a formative role in circulating and...
Theologizing in Goa
The landscape of Christian theology in Goa forms a distinctive tapestry woven from European doctrine and South Asian cultural heritage. The early centuries of Portuguese presence were marked by the institutional importation of Western theological frameworks. Yet alongside this process, the region generated a highly adaptive and inculturated expression of the faith. From its beginnings, Goan theology moved beyond...
Susegado Culture and Interfaith Dialogue in the Service of Global Peace and Sustainability
In an age marked by escalating conflicts, ecological crises, and deepening social fragmentation, the world urgently needs frameworks that foster genuine peace and sustainable living. One such overlooked yet profound resource emerges from the coastal state of Goa in India: the cultural ethos known as Susegado. Far from the colonial stereotype of laziness or passive indifference, Susegado represents a...
An Anasemic Analysis of Konknitva
Some time back I coined the word correctly. If Hindutva is Hindu + tva – essence that must be purified of the accidental, Konknitva is Konkani + tva – essence that must be purified of the accidental script, the accidental Catholic, the accidental plurality. Definition: Konknitva is coined to show one language and one script that wants Nagari script...
The (Un)Homing of a Pillar: An Anasemic Analysis of the Changing Status of Pilorino Novo in Old Goa
Introduction For 400 years, Goan Christians walked past it and called it what it was. Pilorino Novo, the New Pillory. A black basalt pillar on a circular pedestal, near the Basilica of Bom Jesus, under what is now the flyover. Every child who grew up during the colonial times in Old Goa knew: this is where the câmara proclaimed...
Romi vs Nagari: An Anasemia of the Konkani Script War in Goa
Introduction Every Goan knows the wound, even if we pretend it is settled. Konkani is the mother tongue of Goa. In 1987 the Goa Official Language Act made Konkani the official language and declared Devanagari as its official script. The Sahitya Akademi had already recognized Konkani in Devanagari in 1975. On the ground, the fact is different: the oldest...
The Living Mesh of Goa: Beyond the Politics of the Frozen Object
Goa is routinely captured, framed and preserved as a static artifact. In tourist brochures, it is a timeless paradise of golden sands and colonial architecture. In political rhetoric, it is an idealized, frozen cultural landscape that must either be fiercely guarded from change or systematically mined for capital. Both perspectives treat Goa as an isolated object, a passive backdrop...
