In Goa, Portuguese influence is fading after 60 years of Indian rule, along with the language, although the music is being kept alive
- Few in Goa expected the influence of colonial ruler Portugal to fade as quickly as it has since sovereignty passed to India in 1961
- Its colonial architecture, culture and language are being replaced, although traditional Portuguese fado music is making a comeback
As Lorraine Alberto begins her Portuguese class at Goa University, students are in short supply. Across Goa, a tiny coastal state in India, once administered by Lisbon, there is little appetite for the territory’s 450 years of European heritage after a few generations of Indian rule.
Ramshackle colonial homes and Bollywood’s increasing cultural dominance portend the disappearance of local history in a place where speaking Portuguese was once a passport to status and power.
“My children don’t speak it at all,” Alberto says. “They just don’t see the point of learning it.”
Those who were alive in 1961, when Indian troops marched into Goa and incorporated it into the rest of the country, recall an overnight transformation. India’s exit from the British Empire in 1947 spurred many Goans to demand an end to Portuguese rule, but few expected so much to change so quickly.
“It was a very strange feeling [ …] The changes came so fast,” says Honorato Velho, a retired school principal.
