Porjecho Adar

Porjecho Adar was a bilingual newspaper in Konkani (Roman script) and Portuguese, published in Nova-Goa (Pangim) on January 1, 1930, from where it moved to Mapuça, on 12 August 1948. It was the second newspaper published in Goa in its native language, the first being Amche Goem launched in 1929, and became one of the longest running as it continued at least until the 7 December 1961 (collection of the Portuguese National Library). Owned and written by the lawyer José Baptista Caetano Vaz, it was probably the first newspaper published in Goa by an intellectual of the Catholic community who did not belong to the dominant Catholic castes. In fact, it assumed that it was the voices from below that it sought to introduce to the Goan public sphere.

While the Portuguese section particularly aimed at dialogue with the representatives of the Colonial State, the Konkani section, even in the form adopted to write the language and in its opposition to the linguist puritanism of the upper castes, worked to assert the socio-cultural identity of the unprivileged castes, mostly artisans, servants and agricultural labourers. Namely by counselling the poor on how to fight poverty as a fatality and by demanding a fairer society against the existing caste hierarchies. From its opening editorial it seemed to target not only the caste divide, but also the religious divide. With a potential public largely based on Bombay, where the core of poorer Goan migrants lived, it payed particular attention to this community. While it didn't voice an opposition to the Portuguese colonial domination, it followed with empathy, at least in its first years, the neighbouring nationalist movement against British rule. It is a periodical whose evolution along its three decades of life awaits scholarly attention.

Founded and edited by José Baptista Caetano Vás, under direction of Loreto de Sousa