New flags go up, and people who never moved find they belong to a different country. East Pakistan becomes Bangladesh in 1971, in a war told here in letters home. In Bombay, Goan musicians trained in parish schools write the sound of Hindi cinema and are billed as assistants. In December 1961 India takes Goa, and a Goan clerk in Kampala becomes Indian by an order made three months later and backdated. Ten years on, Uganda gives its Asians ninety days, and a Goan family leaves Kampala with 220 kilos and lands at Stansted in the rain.
Listen straight through, or choose a song. Words underlined in gold translate; a
magnifying glass opens the sources.
19१९੧੯۱۹
19. EKATTUR
1971: three letters from a son to his mother, and a fourth he'll deliver himself
3:06
In November 1970 a cyclone struck the coast of East Pakistan, and relief came slowly from a government a thousand miles away. In December the Awami League won 160 of East Pakistan's 162 seats, a majority in the national assembly, and the assembly was postponed. On the night of 25 March 1971 the army moved on Dhaka. Nine months of war followed, with about ten million refugees in India, until Pakistan's forces surrendered at the Race Course on 16 December. The song is three letters from a composite student-turned-fighter to his mother: in April, in August, and in December. The last one he doesn't post. He brings it.
Three letters home The song is three letters from a composite student-turned-fighter to his mother, written in April, August and December 1971, after published collections of letters from the war. AI illustration, in the manner of Bengal patachitra storytelling scroll (village patua painting)
Verse 1
The Bhola cyclone The Bhola cyclone of 12–13 November 1970 was one of the deadliest on record, and anger at the slow relief effort fed the election result. AI illustration, in the manner of Bengal patachitra storytelling scroll (village patua painting)
,April, seventy-one. I'm writing from over the border. Don't tell anyone where.You remember . The sea came over the islands in one night,and the relief took weeks, from a government a thousand miles away.Then we voted, and we won out of a hundred and sixty-two,and they put the assembly off., they came to the university.Soldiers of the Punjab Regiment. , where the Hindu boys lived.Ten of our teachers. Then .And the Minar, মা. Our Minar. Rubble, with a signboard on it that said mosque.
Operation Jackpot Bengali naval commandos trained at a camp on the Bhagirathi at Plassey, where the Company took Bengal in 1757, and mined ships in several ports on 15 August 1971. AI illustration, in the manner of Bengal patachitra storytelling scroll (village patua painting)
মা,August. Monsoon. They've taught us to swim., on the river where Clive took Bengal in seventeen fifty-seven.Each of us gets fins, a knife, swimming trunks, and a mine.The signal is a song on the radio. When it plays, we go.Fifteenth of August, India's birthday, we swim out into the harbour in the dark,put the mines on the hulls, swim back, and the ships go down behind us. over the border now, in the rain.Don't write back. The post opens letters.
A teacher's empty chair Munier Chowdhury, playwright and designer of the Munier Optima Bengali typewriter keyboard, was abducted on 14 December 1971, and his body was never identified. AI illustration, in the manner of Bengal patachitra storytelling scroll (village patua painting)
মা,Sixteenth of December. I'm in Dhaka. It's over., where they told us Urdu only,where we were told ., both born in the Punjab. The one signing for India was born in a village that's in Pakistan now.But two days before, on the fourteenth, :teachers, doctors, writers, taken from their houses.My teacher. . , who taught me Bangla,who wrote a play in jail for the dead of fifty-two, who redesigned the typewriter.They haven't found him. They're finding the others in the brickfields at .And in Mirpur, the Urdu-speaking families, the ones they call ,are behind locked doors, and some of our boys are knocking.
Refrain
The sixteenth of December Nine months of war, with about ten million refugees in India, ended when Pakistan's forces surrendered at the Race Course in Dhaka on 16 December 1971. AI illustration, in the manner of Bengal patachitra storytelling scroll (village patua painting)
I'm coming, Ma.I won't post this one. I'll bring it.Put the rice on.
On 1 August 1971, at Madison Square Garden in New York, Ravi Shankar and George Harrison staged two benefit concerts for the refugees, with Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and others. It was the first benefit concert of its kind. The live album won a Grammy.
Operation Jackpot: Bengali naval commandos trained at a camp on the Bhagirathi at Plassey and mined ships in several ports on 15 August 1971. Plassey is where the Company took Bengal in 1757 (DIWAN).
Lieutenant-General Jagjit Singh Aurora, born in Jhelum district, now in Pakistan, signed for India. Lieutenant-General A. A. K. Niazi, from Mianwali in Punjab, signed for Pakistan.
Between 10 and 14 December 1971, Bengali academics, doctors, writers and journalists were abducted and killed by the Pakistan Army with the Al-Badr and Al-Shams militias. 14 December is Martyred Intellectuals Day in Bangladesh.
Munier Chowdhury (1925–1971), playwright (see EKUSHE), who also designed the Munier Optima Bengali typewriter keyboard. He was abducted on 14 December and his body was never identified.
Urdu-speaking Muslims, many of whom had come from Bihar after 1947. Some were killed in reprisals in 1971–72; many lived stateless in camps, including in Mirpur, until a 2008 court ruling recognised their citizenship.
The Goan musicians who wrote the parts for Hindi cinema and were left off the poster
3:40
Portuguese Goa's parish schools taught music: reading, writing, sums, and Latin church music with solfège. Centuries of that produced a generation of Goan musicians who could read Western notation and play in orchestras, and in the 1940s and 50s they went to Bombay. They played in the dance bands, and then, in the film studios, they wrote the parts. The music director's name went on the poster, and the arrangers were billed as assistants, or not at all. This is the album's joy track and the most arranged thing on it. It credits four of them by name: Chic Chocolate, Sebastian D'Souza, Chris Perry and Anthony Gonsalves.
The parish schools Parish schools in Portuguese Goa taught reading, writing, sums and church music; the song follows the usual account, which dates the royal order to 1546. AI illustration, in the manner of hand-painted 1960s Bombay film poster
Credits
With
arrangerSebastian D'SouzaReis Magos
trumpetChic Chocolate (Antonio Xavier Vaz)Aldona
conductor, uncreditedChris PerryMargão
violin, and his studentsAnthony GonsalvesMajorda
And the rest of the string section
Verse 1
Bombay's jazz age From the 1930s Goan musicians filled the sections of the bands in Bombay's hotels and ballrooms, then led their own. AI illustration, in the manner of hand-painted 1960s Bombay film posterWhose bit is it? The preludes, interludes and bridges were very often written by the arranger; the music director's name went on the poster, and the arrangers were billed as assistants. AI illustration, in the manner of hand-painted 1960s Bombay film poster
Fifteen forty-six. The King of Portugal writes to Goa:. Reading, writing, sums, and music.Latin music. Do, re, mi, in a village between the paddy and the .Any boy who can sing twelve Masses gets handed a violin.Four hundred years of that, and by the fortiesBombay's dance bands are full of Goans reading the dots.The music directors know their . The Goans know the page.The star gets the close-up. The poet gets the words. The composer gets the poster.Somebody still has to write down what the violins do.
Hook
— the name on the poster. — the poet's.The bit before the verse, the bit in between, the bridge?. Assistant. A boy from Goa who could read the dots.
Interlude
(This bit! This bit!)
Verse 2
Uncredited on the podium Chris Perry, Goan bandleader, trumpeter and saxophonist, is reported to have conducted the orchestra on Kabhi Kabhie and Trishul without his name on either. AI illustration, in the manner of hand-painted 1960s Bombay film poster
That bit? Somebody from a village wrote it.Antonio Xavier Vaz from Aldona blows trumpet at the Taj, and they call him ,the Louis Armstrong of India. He swings for , and Hindi songs start to bounce., Reis Magos: twenty-four years beside .Job title? Assistant. out of Margão switches from trumpet to sax in the middle of a song,conducts the orchestra on , conducts it on ,and his name's not on either.Then he goes home and fights to make records in . .
Hook
संगीत — the name on the poster.गीत — the poet's.The bit before the verse, the bit in between, the bridge?सहायक. Assistant. A boy from Goa who could read the dots.
Verse 3
My name is Anthony Gonsalves Anthony Gonsalves of Majorda taught violin to Pyarelal, whose 1977 song "My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves", from Amar Akbar Anthony, carries his teacher's name. AI illustration, in the manner of hand-painted 1960s Bombay film poster
, Majorda. His father leads the choir at Mãe de Deus.He teaches violin in Bombay, and one of his students is .Fifty-eight, , a Goan conducts a symphony orchestra,and the soloist is .Mangeshkar. It means "of Mangesh", in the night.Both Goas, one stage.Seventy-seven, Pyarelal names a song after his violin teacher,Amitabh climbs out of , and the whole country sings a Goan's namewithout knowing he's a real man.
Hook
संगीत — the name on the poster.गीत — the poet's.The bit before the verse, the bit in between, the bridge?Anthony. Sebastian. Chic. Chris.
Outro
Sebastian D'Souza, Reis Magos.Chic Chocolate, Aldona.Chris Perry, Margão.Anthony Gonsalves, Majorda.And the rest of the string section.. Dev borem korum.
From the 1930s, bands from America and Europe played Bombay's hotels and ballrooms, and Goan musicians filled their sections, then led their own. When the ballrooms declined after independence and prohibition, many of those musicians moved into the film studios, which is how swing got into Hindi film songs.
Naresh Fernandes, Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay's Jazz Age (Roli Books, 2012).
Gregory D. Booth, Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai's Film Studios (Oxford University Press, 2008).
igorz
igorz
Konkani (Romi script)
church (from Portuguese igreja)
राग
rāg
Hindi
raga: a melodic framework in Indian classical music
संगीत
saṅgīt
Hindi
"music": on a film poster, the music director's credit
गीत
gīt
Hindi
"song": the lyricist's credit
सहायक
sahāyak
Hindi
"assistant"
कोंकणी
kōṅkaṇī
Konkani (Devanagari)
Konkani, the language of Goa. Konknni is its spelling in Romi, the Roman script used by Goan Catholics
देव बरें करूं
dev borem korum
Konkani (Devanagari)
"thank you" (literally, "may God do you good")
Document
every parish gets a school
Parish schools in Portuguese Goa taught reading, writing, arithmetic and church music. The song follows a commonly repeated account that dates a royal order for them to 1546; that date is unverified.
Antonio Xavier Vaz (1916–1967) of Aldona, trumpeter and bandleader, called "the Louis Armstrong of India". He played at the Taj Mahal Hotel and worked with C. Ramchandra.
The Mangueshi temple, moved inland from Cortalim in the sixteenth century, out of Portuguese territory. Lata Mangeshkar's father, Deenanath, born in Mangueshi, took the name Mangeshkar.
"My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves", from Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), music by Laxmikant–Pyarelal, sung by Kishore Kumar, with Amitabh Bachchan climbing out of a huge egg.
Goa, December 1961: a clerk in Kampala changes nationality in his sleep
3:22
On 18 December 1961 Indian forces began the main offensive into Portuguese Goa. The Governor-General surrendered on 19 December, and 451 years of Portuguese rule ended. Three months after that, an order from the Government of India deemed every person born in Goa before 20 December 1961, with their children and grandchildren, to have become Indian on that date. The test was birth and descent, not where you lived. So it reached a Goan clerk in Kampala, about 3,000 miles away, exactly as it reached a farmer in Bardez. Portugal said nothing had changed. The hook is the Order itself, read like a notice. The song ends on the stamp.
A clerk in Kampala The song's Goan clerk in Kampala is composite, living about 3,000 miles in a straight line from Goa. AI illustration, in the manner of mid-century postage-stamp line engraving (intaglio, recess-printed), vignette only
Verse 1
Goa, December 1961 On 17 December 1961 India's army moved into Portuguese Goa, and about 36 hours later the Governor-General surrendered, ending 451 years of Portuguese rule. AI illustration, in the manner of mid-century postage-stamp line engraving (intaglio, recess-printed), vignette only
Kampala. December, sixty-one. The short rains are ending.A in , clerk, post and telegraph.Evening. Slippers. The shortwave on the sideboard.Seventeenth: . Forty-five thousand troops against three and a half thousand Portuguese.Lisbon tells to fight to the death.Thirty-six hours. Nineteenth, half past eight at night, he signs anyway., over. Lisbon throws him out of the army for it.. Goem. The village on his passport is India now, an ocean away,and he's sitting in his slippers.
Hook
Every person who, or either of whose parents, or any of whose grandparents,was born before the twentieth day of December, nineteen sixty-one,in the territories now comprised in the union territory of Goa, Daman and Diu, to have become a citizen of India on that day.
Verse 2
The same sentence The Order's test was birth and descent, not where you lived, so it reached a clerk in Kampala exactly as it reached a farmer in Bardez. AI illustration, in the manner of mid-century postage-stamp line engraving (intaglio, recess-printed), vignette only
The Order's made on the twenty-eighth of March. It says he changed on the twentieth of December.Three months before it existed, it had already happened to him.Birth and descent. Not where you live.A farmer in Bardez and a clerk in Kampala, the same sentence.He can say no. In writing. To . Within one month.An office he's never seen, in a town he's never been to, on the far side of the ocean.And Lisbon? . He's . He always was.Two countries claim him, and neither will admit the other one is there.
Hook
Every person who, or either of whose parents, or any of whose grandparents,was born before the twentieth day of December, nineteen sixty-one,in the territories now comprised in the union territory of Goa, Daman and Diu,shall be deemed to have become a citizen of India on that day.
Verse 3
Uganda, October 1962 Uganda became independent on 9 October 1962; residents who wanted Ugandan citizenship had two years to register and couldn't keep another nationality. AI illustration, in the manner of mid-century postage-stamp line engraving (intaglio, recess-printed), vignette only
Ninth of October, sixty-two. . Another one.Want to be Ugandan? Two years to register, and give up everything else. No dual nationality.Twenty-five thousand people apply. By the deadline, about half have been looked at.So on the sideboard, next to the shortwave: a Portuguese passport,an Indian citizenship he never asked for, and a Ugandan form, pending.Three countries in ten months. Nobody asked him once.
Hook
Every person who, or either of whose parents, or any of whose grandparents,was born before the twentieth day of December, nineteen sixty-one,shall be deemed to have become a citizen of India on that day.He slept through it.
Outro
The right to say no Anyone who didn't want Indian citizenship had to say so in a written declaration to the Administrator in Panjim, within one month of the Order's publication. AI illustration, in the manner of mid-century postage-stamp line engraving (intaglio, recess-printed), vignette only
The letter to Panjim is still in the drawer when the month runs out.Ten years later, .
Goans had campaigned against Portuguese rule long before India's army arrived. Tristão de Bragança Cunha, often called the father of Goan nationalism, was arrested in 1946 and deported to Portugal. In 1955 unarmed satyagrahis crossing into Goa from India were fired on by Portuguese police.
Pio Gama Pinto (1927–1965), born in Nairobi to Goan parents, campaigned against colonial rule in Goa and then in Kenya. The British detained him during the Emergency, from 1954 to 1959. After Kenya's independence he became a member of parliament, and he was assassinated outside his home in Nairobi on 24 February 1965.
On 16 January 1967 Goans voted in an opinion poll on whether to merge with the neighbouring state of Maharashtra. They chose to stay separate. In 1987 Goa became a state, and Konkani, the language the 1684 order had tried to end (FERNANDES), became its official language.
Operation Vijay, December 1961. Preliminary moves began on 17 December, the main offensive on 18 December, and the surrender followed on 19 December. India had pressed Portugal to leave since independence; Portugal refused.
Manuel António Vassalo e Silva, last Governor-General of Portuguese India. Salazar ordered him to fight to the last man. He surrendered, was court-martialled and expelled from the army, and was reinstated after the 1974 revolution.
Paragraph 2 of the Goa, Daman and Diu (Citizenship) Order, 1962 (S.O. 959). The hook quotes it; its provisos, including the right to decline, aren't sung.
A person who didn't want Indian citizenship had to say so in a written declaration to the Administrator of Goa, Daman and Diu, within one month of the Order's publication.
The 1972 expulsion from Uganda, as a list of what fits in 220 kilos
3:20
On 4 August 1972 Idi Amin announced that Uganda's Asians had ninety days to leave. He said the order came to him in a dream. Each person could take a small sum of money and 220 kilos. Around 27,000 to 29,000 came to Britain before the November deadline, the first 193 of them landing at Stansted on 18 September. Their shops and farms were handed out. The narrator is a composite Goan daughter. Her song is a list: everything the family owns, weighed on the bathroom scale, and then everything taken from them at the roadblocks on the way to the airport. The hook is line 10 of the prologue.
Two hundred and twenty kilos Each person expelled could take a small sum of money and 220 kilos; the song's family, and every weight it sings, are composite and illustrative. AI illustration, in the manner of Ugandan barkcloth (lubugo) printed with 1970s airline travel-poster shapes
The suitcase
Two hundred and twenty kilos. Start.
Tap what you would take. Everything has to fit in 220 kg.
0 of 220 kg
An illustrative household. Weights from the song where it gives them. The 220 kg allowance is as usually given.
An illustrative household. Weights from the song where it gives them. The 220 kg allowance is as usually given.
Item
Weight
Pai's Singer, the hand-crank
14 kg
The wedding sari
1 kg
The rosary, the missal, the crucifix off the wall
3 kg
Photos in a biscuit tin
2 kg
The accordion
9 kg
The pressure cooker
4 kg
The radio
5 kg
The dining table and six chairs
60 kg
The fridge
55 kg
The beds and the bedding
70 kg
Clothes for the family
40 kg
Books and school books
25 kg
Pots, pans and the good plates
20 kg
The bicycle
15 kg
The watch, the ring
0.1 kg
The gold, sewn into Mãi's hem
0.5 kg
Allowance
220 kg
Verse 1
The Goan Institutes Goan Institutes were founded in Entebbe, Kampala and Nairobi, and for decades they excluded tailors, cooks and stewards; the tailors founded their own society. AI illustration, in the manner of Ugandan barkcloth (lubugo) printed with 1970s airline travel-poster shapes
Fourth of August, seventy-two. The radio: .Ninety days. , the list gets longer: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh.So the suitcase is on the bathroom scale, and the whole house is on the kitchen floor.. Start.'s Singer, the hand-crank: fourteen.He sewed the dresses for dances, and the Institute didn't take tailors.The wedding sari: one. The rosary, the missal, the crucifix off the wall: three.Photos in a biscuit tin: two. The accordion: nine.The pressure cooker, because says so: four.Joseph carries it all to the hall. Forty-one years old, and Mãi still calls him the houseboy.
Hook
Ninety days. A hundred and twenty dollars.A Portuguese name on the side of a suitcase.Who was holding the pen?
Verse 2
The road to Entebbe On the way to Entebbe, Uganda's international airport on Lake Victoria, the song's family loses what it carries, piece by piece, at the roadblocks. AI illustration, in the manner of Ugandan barkcloth (lubugo) printed with 1970s airline travel-poster shapes
On the radio they call it . Lots of fat. shops and farms and firms, handed out.Joseph carries the cases to the car and says ,and I realise I never asked his surname.. First roadblock, the takes the watch.Second roadblock, the ring.Third roadblock, the gold Mãi sewed into her hem.Fourth roadblock, the hundred and twenty dollars.By the airport, the list is one suitcase and the name on the side.
Hook
Ninety days. A hundred and twenty dollars.A Portuguese name on the side of a suitcase.Who was holding the pen?
Verse 3
Stansted, 18 September 1972 The first flight of expellees landed at Stansted on 18 September 1972 with 193 people aboard, as widely reported; around 27,000 to 29,000 came to Britain before the deadline. AI illustration, in the manner of Ugandan barkcloth (lubugo) printed with 1970s airline travel-poster shapesA blanket each Sixteen temporary resettlement centres, many of them on disused military bases, were opened in Britain for the arrivals from Uganda. AI illustration, in the manner of Ugandan barkcloth (lubugo) printed with 1970s airline travel-poster shapes
Eighteenth of September. . Rain on the runway.A hundred and ninety three of us off the first plane. so they wouldn't have to take us.They take us anyway: , a blanket each. in the Ugandan papers. Don't come here.Mãi counts the twice.A man with a clipboard asks us where we're from.In Kampala, we were the ones with the clipboards.
Hook
Ninety days. A hundred and twenty dollars.A Portuguese name, spelt wrong on an English form.Who was holding the pen?
Before the expulsion there were somewhere between 55,000 and 80,000 Asians in Uganda. Most with British passports went to Britain. Thousands went to Canada, India, Pakistan, Kenya and elsewhere, and some thousands left stateless were taken in by UN camps in Europe. Add up the destination figures and they fall well short of the total.
Conversion in Goa didn't end caste. Goan Catholic communities kept caste distinctions for centuries, in marriage, in church confraternities and in clubs, and they travelled with Goans to East Africa. Historians of the Goan diaspora connect the Institutes' exclusion of tailors, cooks and stewards to both caste and class.
On 9 August the order was extended to citizens of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Ugandan citizens of Asian descent were first included, then exempted, and many were then stripped of citizenship when their papers were checked.
Goan Institutes were founded in Entebbe (1905), Kampala (1907) and Nairobi (1909). For decades they excluded tailors, cooks and stewards, and the tailors founded their own society.
The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 took away the automatic right of many British passport holders in East Africa to enter Britain. Admitting them in 1972 was a political decision. Track 23.
