Reconstructing Konkani Migration: Literary Memory, Historical Evidence and the Politics of the Past

Abstract This paper critically examines the recurrent migration narrative of Konkani communities from Goa to the Kanara coast through a comparative reading of seven Konkani or Konkani people-related novels: Uday Bhembre’s Vhoddlem Ghor ; V. J. P. Saldanha’s Saiba Bhogos and Devache Kurpen ; Mahabaleshwar Sail’s Yugasamvar ; Kasturi Mohan Pai’s For the Love of Mandovi and Mahaprasthan ; and the Kannada novel Swapnasaraswata . Though differing in language and literary context, these works largely reproduce a popular oral narrative structured around colonization, conversion, destruction and consequent migration. The paper argues that this literary memory is historically selective, foregrounding Goud Saraswat Brahmins (GSBs) and the Catholic elite— Bamons and Chardos —while marginalizing other Konkani-speaking communities that also migrated from Goa. The study employs the Historical-Critical Method, juxtaposing textual readings of the novels with archival evidence and historiographical scholarship. It places these narratives alongside Anant Kakba Priolkar’s The Goa Inquisition: The Terrible Tribunal for the East (1961), written against the political background of the movement for Goa’s merger with Maharashtra, and later modern scholarship by Alan Machado Prabhu, Dale Luis Menezes, Panduranga Pissurlencar, Angela Barreto and others, which reveals the complexity of Konkani migration to coastal Karnataka. Archival evidence further challenges the novels’ linear narrative of displacement by examining the role of local elites and their collaboration with Portuguese structures. The paper questions whether migration can be explained simply through persecution and flight and argues that the term “historical novel” becomes problematic when literary memory is treated as historical fact, rather than as a selective reconstruction of the past.