TRIBUTE
John Correia-Afonso
Illustrious Academician and Historian
John Correia-Afonso had a brilliant academic career in history and economics, which he taught before joining the priesthood. His contributions to the writing of Jesuit history comprise his Jesuit Letters and Indian History, The Ignation Vision of India and The Jesuits in India. But it was his realisation of the workings of a pervasive force that animated the structures of Goan society that led him to modify the interpretation of history as conditioned only by the material means of production.
ALBAN COUTO
W
This metaphysical influence is palpable in the career and work of John Correia-Afonso. His family, deeply religious, was imbued with a broad liberal culture. His father, Francisco, an eminent educationist known for his erudition, wit, and repartee, was a star in the cosmopolitan and intellectually challenging life of Bombay of those times. They venerated the English writer, Chesterton, known also for his wit, and in Francisco’s words of “a rich humanity sublimated by transcendent spirituality; a flaming devotion for democracy and liberty, together with a deep reverence for authority and tradition”. These, John sought to combine with the sense of mission which he found in Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus. A brilliant academic career in history and economics, which he taught before becoming a jesuit priest in 1946, was enriched by studies in theology and philosophy in Sri Lanka, Spain and US. He could hold his own with some of the sharpest intellects for which the Society was well known.He rose rapidly and reached virtually the highest rung of the society, becoming its secretary-general in Rome during 1967-70, and then regional assistant (for India) to the superior general during 1970-75.
Departure from Rome
There were rumours as to why he left Rome for India. Was his departure connected to the misgivings in Rome about the course of policies followed by the jesuits in developing countries especially in Latin America, where the conduct of liberation theology of national identity and social justice seemed to be pushing priests into politics? The changes were effected in the top order of the jesuit hierarchy which eventually led to the change of superior general. Whatever may have been the reasons for John’s departure, it did not dim his vision. It was expressed quietly and firmly in his academic work as principal of the St Xavier’s College, and then as director of the Indian Institute of Indian History and Culture from 1976 to 1990,which was renamed as the Heras Institute to commemorate his mentor’s pioneering work and scholarship in Indological studies and history.
The writing of history was itself undergoing radical changes, moving away from
Economic and Political Weekly January 21, 2006 the dry-as-dust narration of battles and political acts of rulers. The new emerging dimensions of the study of history were debated and discussed in their bearing on research in Indian history in workshops and seminars organised by John. In Historical Research in India (1979) edited by him, comprising papers and reports of seminars, a noteworthy contribution was made by Ashim Das Gupta, head of the department of history at Santiniketan, who referred to the inter-disciplinary approach mainly within the social sciences. “Indian history has emancipated itself from the earlier preoccupations with politics understood in terms of the individual actors and is moving towards an exploration of the structure within which the individuals acted”.
This approach to Indian history also meant the assessment of external influences that were adapted by and assimilated in the pluralism of the Indian tradition. John took the stand with many others against the trends that sought to denigrate and even eradicate such influences. He initiated the safeguarding of heritage structures of Anglo-Portuguese-Indian synthesis. He established the Bombay Local History Society and organised walks that explained the value and significance of Bombay’s heritage. But there were difficulties in the acceptance of Portuguese influences which contributed to the shaping of Indian history. The obduracy of the Salazar dictatorship in refusing to agree to the voluntary transfer of Goa and Daman and Diu to the Indian union and to follow the precedent established by the British and the French had its fall out on the study of Indo-Portuguese history.
Contributions to Indo-Portugese History
After the liberation of Goa in 1961 and later the establishment of a democratic republic in Lisbon which recognised the integration of Goa in India, the way was made for normalcy in the relationships between India and Portugal. This afforded an opening up of access to sources that could give further material for study and interpretation of the complex forces and of the many players that have contributed to Indian history. An important part of this conspectus was revealed in the seminars on Indo-Portuguese history initiated by John in Goa and subsequently every two to three years in other parts of the world. In Goa, the opposition to preserving the Indo-Portuguese heritage is dwindling, but it is still there. Last year, heritage restoration in the city of Panjim was vandalised, but fortunately the heritage work and walks in the city and other sites in Goa have continued with greater support and appreciation.
An idea of his own writings in developing a niche of history may be gleaned from the titles of some of John’s work in the large output of his published work: Jesuit Letters and Indian History, Letters from the Mughal Court, The Ignation Vision of India, the Jesuits in India, Enrique Heras Historiador de La India, the Soul of Modern India and Indian Historical Records in Lisbon. He was inclined to be dismissive of his work as fragmentary; his first work, Jesuit Letters and Indian History, written appropriately from the “attic” view of history, was dedicated to his mother, with the concluding inscription “of no historical value”. An objective evaluation of his work, while not putting him in the front rank of D D Kosambi, will accord him an honoured place as a path finder, scholar, and humanist in the study of Indian history.
Insightful Writings
As evidence of his objectivity and critical perspective, one may cite his Jesuits in India 1542-1773 published in 1997. Here, John describes and analyses the rise, decline and fall of the Jesuit organisation in India from its apogee in Goa at the time of Francis Xavier to its humiliation and expulsion by the very Catholic state power of Portugal that had brought the organisation to India. It is a tragedy where the antagonistic forces prevailed over the positive and the hope and the lesson, not without contemporary significance, is to set the balance right. The positive was the appreciation and study of cultures and languages by jesuit missionaries other than their own, their achievements in the arts and sciences adapted to the environment and which have endured, their complete identification and empathy with the cultures of India as shown in their mastery and propagation of Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi and Konkani; in their translations of Christian texts reflecting the bhakti devotionalism which was widespread at that time as a reaction to the dogma, ritual, and casteism of organised religion, and their view that conversion was futile and counterproductive when applied to India in its alien character that was derived from Catholic-Protestant schisms of Reformation and Counter Reformation Europe.
On the negative side, the jesuits during their progress in India abandoned their identification with indigenous cultures and took the easy way out, for instance in Goa where Konkani was allowed to be suppressed; natives were, at first, not considered fit to be priests and Francis Xavier was guilty of adhering to this view until he was overruled by Ignatius; later it took time, and not without agitation, by the native clergy to secure high offices; as state power increased in area so did Jesuit power and influence, thanks to their organisational abilities. They became landlords, diplomats, entrepreneurs and traders. They were insensitive to the needs of social justice for the poor. Their accumulation of wealth may have been selfless but it aroused the greed of the state which resented their encroachments in the political arena. It was a primary factor that led to their expulsion and dispossession.
There were other negatives that titled the scale against them; they acquiesced in the enlargement of scope of the dreaded inquisition which was brought to Goa by Francis Xavier against the Jews, and then proceeded against Christian converts who clung to their traditional way of life and against Hindus who did not convert. They rationalised the perpetuation of caste as a social not a religious distinction and in the process aggravated discord among the converts. The abandonment of identification with indigenous culture and the failure to create a self-reliant native clergy was a contributory factor to the “association of missionaries with the colonial powers (which has) remained graven in the minds of the Indian people, and has remained to this day”. Other “unsuccesses” of the jesuits in India stemmed from an exclusiveness and fundamentalism that were foreign to their own calling and this was demonstrated when they had reached a level of power and influence in imposing the Latin form of Christianity on the Syrian Malabar Christians, an imposition that still continues to fester. For the longer view, which saw intrusions as exemplified by the jesuits from Europe, as necessary to break up rigid, hegemonic stratifications and to bring in winds of change, some of it with the values of reason, science, and humanism.
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Economic and Political Weekly January 21, 2006
