Paper short abstract:

Using text and ethnography data I explore subaltern resistance to the cultural dominance of the elite castes in colonial and post colonial Goa.

Paper long abstract:

Spectacular outbreaks against the colonial state receive scholarly attention when they originate from upper castes demonstrating yet again the elitist historiography of post colonial Goa. Fixing dominance exclusively on the colonial state narrows the agency of resistance to the elite. This leads to an emphasis on formal properties of macro level colonial power ignoring its local and micro context in which the upper castes are deeply implicated. The upper caste romanticise resistance against the Portuguese to the extent that resistance becomes the privileged marker of this elite in post colonial Goa. These elite reconstruct themselves as a primordial nationalistic being who's every act signals resistance against the colonial state and thus deny resistance and agency to the subaltern.

Caste honours of 'subaltern elites' are masked as liberal and secular virtues. Resistance qualifies only when it is against the Portuguese and in doing so the elite has succeeded in misrecognising their social dominance.

In the second part of the paper using Foucault's proposition that 'where there is power, there is resistance' I illustrate the use of resistance as a diagnostic of power. Analyzing the caste based movements among the subaltern, I emphasises how their selective use of tradition are indicative of forms of resistance to the dominant elite.