Cooperação Brasil-Índia:

dinâmicas e perspectivas
Edgard Leite (org.)

Programa de Estudos Indianos

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
 Cooperação Brasil-Índia:
dinâmicas e perspectivas
Edgard Leite (org.)

Programa de Estudos Indianos

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

Editora Verve/2014
 Copyright © 2014 Edgard Leite (org.)

REVISÃO Patrícia Mota Freitas

CAPA E PROJETO GRÁFICO Carolina Camargo

FOTO DE CAPA Mitul Kajaria

PRODUÇÃO EDITORIAL Patrícia Barbedo

DADOS INTERNACIONAIS PARA CATALOGAÇÃO NA PUBLICAÇÃO (CIP)

C776  
                                                                         
                       Cooperação  Brasil-­Índia:  dinâmicas  e  perspectivas  /  Edgard  
Leite,  organizador.  –  Rio  de  Janeiro:  Verve,  2014.
104  p.  ;;  21  cm.
     
ISBN  978-­85-­66031-­80-­5
Programa  de  estudos  indianos,  Universidade  do  Estado  do    
Rio  de  Janeiro.

                                 1.  Relações  Internacionais.  I.  Leite,  Edgard  .  II.  Título.

                                                                                                                                                     
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SUMÁRIO

O Progra ma de Estudos Indianos 7

Prefácio 11

India-Brazil rel ationship 13

Ashok Tomar

India-Brazil in the 21st Century: Transformative

Convergences 16
Renato G. Flôres Jr.

Brazil-India Relations through the Lens of

Political Economy 36
Adriana Erthal Abdenur

Perspectives on Brazil-India Commerce 55

Leane Cornet Naidin

Prospects for academic interaction between Brazil

and India 72
Edgard Leite

Visões sobre a história de Goa: perspectivas e fontes sobre

as transformações culturais nos séculos XVI e XVIII 85
Patricia Souza de Faria
Programa de Estudos Indianos

MEMBROS DO CONSELHO ACADÊMICO

Dr. Amâncio Jorge Nunes de Oliveira

Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil

Dr. Amit Bhaya

COPPE- Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

Dra. Aparajita Gangopadhyay

University of Goa, Goa, India

Dra. Archna Negi

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Dra. Célia Tavares

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Dr. Cláudio Pinheiro

South-South Exchange Programme for Research on the History
of Development

Dr. Dattesh Parulekar

University of Goa, Goa, India

Dr. Dilip Loundo

Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brasil

7
Dr. Krishnendra Meena
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Dra. LEANE CORNET NAIDIN

Pontifícia Universidade Católica, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Dra. Lúcia Rabello de Castro

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Dra. Maria Regina Lima

Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Políticos, UERJ

Dra. Monica Hirst

Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina

Dra. Patrícia Souza de Faria

Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro

Dr. Rubens Turci

Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brasil

Dr. Sanjay Salunke

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad,
Maharastra, India

Embaixador Stelio Amarante

Assessor de Relações Internacionais da Prefeitura do Rio de Janeiro

Dr. Sital Dhillon

Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, United Kingdom

8
Dr. Varun Sahni
Jawarhal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

EQUIPE TÉCNICA

Secretário Executivo
Luiz Mário de Souza

Secretária de Projetos
Simone Souza

Estagiária
Carolina França Tristão Batista

REALIZACÃO

Programa de Estudos Indianos da

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

Embaixada da Índia no Brasil

Departamento de Cooperação Internacional da

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

9
Prefácio
Edgard Leite*

O Programa de Estudos Indianos da UERJ realizou, em 9 de

abril de 2014, o “I Workshop Cooperação Brasil-Índia: dinâmicas e
perspectivas”. Fruto do esforço conjunto de pesquisadores do Rio de
Janeiro, todos comprometidos com o empenho comum de promover
o desenvolvimento das relações entre Brasil e Índia. O workshop
contou com o decisivo e fundamental apoio da Embaixada da Índia
no Brasil, através do Embaixador Ashok Tomar.
O resultado desse momento especial está agora publicado,
em inglês.
Estiveram presentes ao workshop pensadores que examinaram
sob diferentes ângulos o atual momento das relações bilaterais. O
Embaixador Ashok Tomar fez um retrato atual da intensidade das
relações entre nossos dois países, ressaltando a importância crescente
que ambos adquirem um para o outro; o Dr. Renato Flores expôs a
profundidade dinâmica das interações entre as duas nações; a Dra.
Adriana Erthal Abdenur analisou Brasil e Índia sob uma perspectiva
histórica e política; a Dra. Leane Cornet Naidin realizou uma rigorosa
e substancial análise do quadro atual das relações comerciais entre
os dois países; e o autor deste prefácio discutiu a importância, para
o desenvolvimento do nosso país, de uma aproximação acadêmica
consistente entre Brasil e Índia.
Também participou do workshop o presidente da Câmara de
Comércio Índia-Brasil, o Sr. Leonardo Ananda Gomes, que fez
uma avaliação positiva sobre o presente e o futuro das relações
comerciais entre Brasil e Índia. Como debatedores, contribuindo
com reflexões importantes, estiveram presentes o Dr. Kai Kenkel, da

11
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, a Dra. Miriam
Saraiva, do Programa de Relações Internacionais da Universidade
do Rio de Janeiro, e a Dra. Márcia Moreira Leite, do Departamento
de Cooperação Internacional da Universidade do Estado do Rio
de Janeiro.
Como bônus, este livro traz também um artigo da Dra. Patrícia
Faria, da Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, e integrante
do Conselho Acadêmico do PEIND, sobre a história de Goa, tema que
reúne muito estudiosos do Rio de Janeiro, movidos, certamente, pela
existência de laços históricos maiores que unem, especificamente, o
nosso país àquele estado indiano.
Por fim, acreditamos que este é mais um momento no esforço
conjunto que pesquisadores brasileiros e indianos, de diferentes
origens e especializações, têm realizado, no sentido de unir Brasil e
Índia por laços cada vez mais fortes, na direção de um futuro comum
de desenvolvimento.

*Coordenador do Programa de Estudos Indianos

www.peind.org

12
India-Brazil relationship
Ashok Tomar*

India and Brazil currently enjoy a diversified relationship, covering

many themes and operating at multiple levels. Bilaterally, we see the
relationship growing exponentially at the political, commercial, cultural,
academic and intellectual levels. Our strategic partnership, established
eight years ago, also manifests itself at the plurilateral level in fora
such as IBSA, BRICS, BASIC, G-20, G-4, and in the larger multilateral
arenas such as the UN, WTO, UNESCO, WIPO, etc. The relationship
between Indian and Brazil is characterized by regular exchanges of
visits at the political level, including between Head of State/Head of
Government on both sides. The latest in this grand tradition was the
highly successful visit of H.E. Mr. Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of
India, to Brazil, from 14-16 July 2014, to attend the VI BRICS Summit
in Fortaleza. During this visit, he had a fruitful bilateral meeting in
Brasilia with H.E. President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil on 16 July 2014.
Both leaders confirmed their commitment to further strengthen and
deepen the bilateral relationship.
Brazil is one of the most important economic and commercial
partners of India in the entire LAC (Latin America and Caribbean)
region. Our cooperation is moving up the value chain in areas such as
Information Technology, Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences, Aviation
Industry, Food and Energy Security, and Science & Technology
research. India-Brazil bilateral trade has increased substantially in
the last two decades. India’s exports to Brazil, which were of US$6.30
billion in 2013, consist mainly of processed petroleum products,
pharmaceuticals, textiles, chemicals, machinery and equipment, auto
ancillaries, and fertilizers, etc. Brazil’s exports were of US$3.13 billion

13
in 2013 and consist of crude petroleum, chemicals, aircrafts, iron
ore, etc. It was heartening to see visits to Brazil by around 100 Indian
companies, sponsored by various export promotion councils during
2013. There have been two way investments between India and Brazil.
While Brazilian companies have invested in automobiles, IT, mining,
energy, biofuels, and footwear sectors in India, Indian companies have
invested in such sectors as IT, pharmaceutical, energy, agri-business,
mining, aluminium production recycling, fertilizer production, and
engineering/auto sectors, etc. Indian companies such as TCS, Wipro,
Infosys, Cadilla, Mahindra, L&T, Novelis, Renuka Sugars, United
Phosphorus, Polaris, Glenmark and others are present in Brazil. The
Brazilian companies present in India include Marco Polo (buses),
Vale (biggest mining company), Stefanini (IT), Gerdau (Steel). Total
estimated investments by Indian companies in Brazil have crossed
US$4 billion.
There is enormous Brazilian interest in India’s culture, religion,
performing arts and philosophy. The first forms of Indian Culture
to reach Brazil were spiritual, philosophical and religious in nature.
Folkloric identities and celebrations from India relate very much to
the exuberant and colourful nature of festivities such as the typical
dances and parades of north and northeast of Brazil. The first classical
art to come to Brazil was Bharatanatyam dance, with Odissi, Kathak
and Kuchipudi to follow later. Not only for their distinct character but
also due to the exoticism of costumes, ankle bells and head dresses,
impacting make-up and angular postures are immensely appealing to
Brazilian eyes. The telecasting of the Brazilian soap opera ‘Caminho
das Índias’ (Paths to India) made a great impact in enhancing the
consciousness of India in the Brazilian public mind. In classical music,
Brazil already has a share of those who have learnt Sitar, Tabla and
other instruments and not only play some of the original ragas and

14
rhythms but go beyond to create fusion music in conjunction with
Brazilian artists. There are numerous organizations teaching Yoga, all
over Brazil. Several spiritual gurus and organizations have chapters in
Brazil. India cinema is also popular among Brazilian people. Indian
Film weeks organized by Embassy and Consulate have always received
good responses. We have organized Indian film weeks in August-
September 2013 celebrating ‘Hundred years of Indian Cinema’ in
seven Brazilian cities.
I am happy to note that universities and academic institutions
in both countries are now increasingly engaging with each other and
taking an active interest in developing the academic discourse. There
is a greater exchange of visits between academicians and institutions
and seminars on subjects of mutual interest. Primary amongst such
institutions in Brazil is the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ),
which has started a programme on India Studies. This has been due
to the efforts of Prof. Edgard Leite from UERJ. I congratulate him
for his initiative. The latest in this programme on India Studies is
the workshop that Prof. Edgard Leite organized on India-Brazil
Cooperation: Dynamics and Perspectives. I attended and participated
in the workshop and was impressed with the high-level of contributions
that were made by academicians who spoke on various facets of
India-Brazil Cooperation viz. academic, political, commercial, and
economic. I hope the readers will find this publication, which is the
result of the contributions by the academicians, to be useful, and that
this will be a valuable addition to the study of India-Brazil relations.

*Ambassador of India to Brazil

15
India-Brazil in the 21st Century:
Transformative Convergences
Renato G. Flôres Jr.*

INTRODUCTION: CONVERGING DIFFERENCES BRAZIL AND INDIA.

Brazil and India are a peculiar pair, and have historical evolution
and trajectories that can hardly be distinguished from each other.
While the former can be described as a young nation, with little
more than half a century of history, marked by a crystallized, peculiar
and attractive culture – a mix of European, African and Indigenous
groups, the latter has an impressive and long past, which makes it one
of the oldest and most elaborate civilizations in the world.
It is, to say the least, intriguing, that despite so many
differences, people in these two countries share a vast number of
similarities in terms of behaviour and outlooks on everyday life,
and life in general.
I avoid making the absurd mistake of matching religions,
beliefs, philosophies. I rather attempt to identify converging features
expressed in the great ease at communicating, in the spontaneous joy
and loquacity, as well as in the way that happiness is manifested in great
popular festivities and events. While Brazil features the well-known
Carnival, the Cirio from Nazaré and so many other manifestations,
India is second to none, with its colorful, joyful, and equally
chaotic Holi, the festivities that celebrate Lord Ganesh’s birthday –
Ganesh Chaturthi – in Mumbai, and so many other extremely rich
manifestations, not to mention its almost always innate happiness.
The young and millenary civilizations are united by their
diversity in a number of aspects, mainly cultural ones.

16
 Besides, the striking contrast between extreme poverty and
overwhelming wealth, as well as the already mentioned joyful and
“good-natured” people living among poverty and adversity, the
painful and successful events involving the huge, complex and
developing democracies, the struggle against corruption that has
long infiltrated in red-tape and clientelistic systems and has been
radiating into several sectors of society are virtues and problems
where our interests converge.
We must get to know each other better.
Dialogue, which is the beginning of every and any other action,
and is easy to come up between us, must be extended, deepened,
propagated and reproduced and always be kept at the most intimate
and varied possible level, as it is where our strength lies. As such, it
must be the basis for our convergence.
I shall further deal in a more detailed manner with this single
and basic notion in the sections that follow. As in all dialogue,
there are fuzzy, less agreeable topics, and there are others on which
conversation runs smoothly. One goes faster from intention to
action than Arjun’s arrows.

SEVERAL ARGUMENTS FOR CONVERGENCE

There are a number of possibilities for dialogue. I shall list

three examples.
India has a sophisticated offset system, which is grounded on
a broad normative basis and is successfully operated in the defense
industry area, in its several international acquisitions. The India
system is, in truth, well-known and debated worldwide. Brazil has
given continuity to its initiatives in this same industry as part of a
coordinated and modern effort in the defense area. As such, Brazil

17
is interested in knowing Indian practices, given the unavoidable
tendency to increase our exports and imports in the sector.
At FGV we have been putting together a group intended to make
in-depth analyses of the topic, which has counted with the invaluable
help of Dr. Laxman Kumar Behera from the Institute for Defence Studies
and Analysis, in New Delhi, who has been with us at the India Chair1.
The Ministry of Defence in its turn has been working on the Brazilian
position on offset, which will be reflected upon legal documents under
discussion. The bringing together of these initiatives does not mean
the adoption of an Indian approach, which is a complex one, and, to a
certain extent, highly conditioned to the country’s institutional context.
Instead, it will be translated into a useful instrument for reflection,
comparison and help in the process of seeking a national solution.
In the agricultural area, in spite of the divergence between
distribution of properties and predominant means of production,
there is room for exchange of techniques and practices on both sides,
irrespective of the striking differences between India, where around
71 percent of the population depends on agricultural production,
and Brazil, where less than 20 percent depend on agriculture to live.
It must be stressed, however, that agribusiness in Brazil accounts for
22 percent of the country’s GDP. One could even defend – though
with some exaggeration – the existence of a certain complementarity
between both models of agricultural production.
From a more general perspective, the social democratic experiences
open up a vast space for dialogue. Both countries have bicameral systems,
though with distinct electoral modes. The number of federal States and

1. The India Chair is an Indian Embassy and FGV’s joint initiative, which already completed three
years of existence. Every year it receives an Indian professor or researcher, which makes it an
important instrument for dialogue and propagation of Indian knowledge. Dr. Kumar Behera was
the awarded professor for the second year, in the 2012-2013 period.

18
territories is roughly the same, and there are also similarities pertaining
to both the power imbalance among the components of the party system
and several characteristics of their constituent parts2. Notwithstanding
the idiosyncrasy involving a great deal of the themes on both sides, there
is a vast common ground that should be better known and analyzed.
I shall not deal with the broad and fundamental poverty issue
and the struggle against poverty, for a number of specialized and
authorized expositions have been made by more competent authors3.
I have mentioned, from the most specific to the most general,
three relevant examples of arenas for dialogue; there are a number of
others. However, one should go beyond the dialogue and at this point
it seems inevitable to discuss the economy.

IT’S ALWAYS THE ECONOMY I – THE COMMERCIAL ISSUE

Of the following two classical modes of economic exchanges

between nations, i.e., commerce and direct investment, my argument is
that, in India’s case, the latter offers greater possibilities. I shall explain.
There is a widespread belief among old and experienced Brazilian
commercial negotiators that involves our relation with India in Geneva’s
multilateral organism – originally the GATT, currently the WTO.
The belief goes that4 in every big negotiation we always start

2. It is hard to avoid making certain analogies between the Congress Party and
the PMDB, for example –despite the outcomes of recent elections -, but I would
rather leave such task for others, who may choose to deal with the theme in more
specialized texts.
3. Particularly by the SAE (Presidency of the Republic’s Office) Minister of the State
during the 2013 Brazil-India Bilateral Dialogue at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in
Brasilia; an annual meeting of the productive official partnership between both countries.
4. Here, with all due respect, I shall quote the gentle Honorable Ambassador Hardeep Singh
Puri, and remind his first steps in a multilateral organism, specifically the GATT, which were
also reminded by the Honorable Ambassador Ashok Tomar during an event at UERJ.

19
together and make up a formidable alliance feared by many developed
partner countries. Such thing happened, for instance, in the Uruguay
Round, when we, united, tackled North-American huge demands in
the service sector by creating an impasse that marked the end of the
first stage of the Round (there were two more, according to this view).
This solid union developed up to almost the end of the negotiations,
when India eventually took a diverging position from ours.
This “rule of thumb”, which carries the weight and flavor of
any empirical rule, does not derive from curse, stubbornness or
animosity between the two countries. As a matter of fact, it is quite
easy to understand.
Both countries hold similar views on how to make further progress
in commercial liberalization, as there are disparities pertaining to
the development levels and the immense conflicts of interest that
underlie any commercial policy. Thus, on the opening of important
negotiations, our alignment before the well-calculated moves by
members with bigger economic power comes almost automatically.
Such alliance gradually solidifies, as negotiations are complex and the
dismantling or reconstruction of offers and propositions is a delicately
woven fabric that calls for skilled hands. When the end comes close,
there are few or no big issues: it is time for details, for the trading of
sectors and products. It is precisely at this stage that our commercial
capacities involving our protection framework are distinct.
In a commercial war, we become aggressive and competitive in
agribusiness and shy in the service sector. India is practically the
opposite; in the manufacturing sector, we are competitors or have
opposing interests. Positions are misaligned.
Moreover, in agriculture and animal raising, for example, it is
striking that there is an identity in terms of the products for which we
occupy an outstanding position in the world market, as shown in Table

20
I, even though it was obtained in a distinct manner. Such an identity
has been the cause for many fears involving specific liberalization
measures in this area.

TABLE I. BRAZIL AND INDIA RELATIVE POSITIONS IN THE WORLD

PRODUCTION OF SEVERAL PRODUCTS IN AGRICULTURAL AND
ANIMAL RAISING SECTORS – 2010.
World Production World Position
Product
(in millions of tons) Brazil India
Sugarcane 1.711,1 1st 2nd
Orange 68,3 1st 3rd
Beans 22,9 2nd 1st
Tobbaco 7,0 2nd 3rd
Papaya 11,6 2nd 1st
Castor bean 1,8 3rd 1st
Cow’s milk 600,8 4th 2nd
Cotton, seeds 42,8 4th 2nd
Coconut 59,4 4th 3rd
Source: FAO

In 2011, in the world trade of goods, Brazil was the world’s

sixteenth biggest exporter and the fifteenth biggest importer. India
was, respectively, in the thirteenth and eighth positions. To put these
figures in perspective, as far as exports are concerned, Brazil ranks
between and above The United Arab Emirates and Australia5, and
below Switzerland and Thailand; all four of them are not very far from

5. In all the ranking, the countries are ordered from the most to the least important.

21
Brazilian performance. In exports, India is obviously surrounded by
the two countries that exceed Brazil, ranking below Mexico and Taipei.
In terms of imports, Australia and Turkey rank above us and below us
are Thailand and Switzerland; again, with a narrow margin. India is
below Hong Kong and Canada, but above Singapore and Mexico.
If we consider the service sector, our country is the eighteenth
biggest exporter and tenth biggest importer, which seems to point at
its greatest deficiency in this sector; India is the eighth biggest exporter
and seventh biggest importer.
Table II summarizes both countries’ commercial performance.
Brazil, despite its great potential, is not part of the international
commerce league, though it is an important middle player. The same
can be said about India, although it has a bigger presence in terms of
commercial flow of both goods and services.

TABLE II. PROFILE OF GOODS AND SERVICES COMMERCIAL FLOW FOR

BOTH COUNTRIES IN 2011 (FIGURES EXPRESSED IN BILLIONS OF US$)
Exports Imports
Goods Services Goods Services
Brazil 256 37 237 73
India 305 137 463 124
Source: WTO

Notwithstanding all this, our commercial exchanges (goods) have

been going through a period of growth and significant diversification,
more so on the Indian side.
India has been oscillating near the twentieth position as a
destination of our imports, but it already ranks among our ten biggest
suppliers. On the one hand, up to May 2013, India had sold us the
equivalent to US$ 3,2 billion in goods, overcoming traditional partners

22
such as Japan, Italy and France. On the other hand, our exports to
India amounted to meager US$ 1,2 billion.
Table III shows the ten main imports, from January to May 2013.
As can be seen, apart from the high-valued fossil fuels, other items
show low export volumes.

TABLE III. TEN BIGGEST BRAZILIAN IMPORTS FROM INDIA – JANUARY

TO MAY 2013
Products Value Percentage
Fueil oils (diesel, “fuel”, etc.) 1.945,2 60,8
Heterocyclic compounds, their salts
142,1 4,4
and sulphur compounds
Textile, synthetic or artificial threads 115,7 3,6
Medicine (human and veterinary) 75,0 2,3
Automobile and tractor vehicle parts 70,0 2,2
Insecticides, herbcides, anticides and the like 63,5 2,0
Nitrogen-function compounds 49,3 1,5
Organic and synthetic dye materials 36,4 1,1
Heaters’, dryers’ and others’ parts 27,3 0,9
Pumps, compressors, fans and their parts 25,3 0,8
TOTAL 3.202,0 100,0
Source: SECEX/MDIC

Although I welcome the growth seen in our trade of goods, I do

not envisage great ideas or impacting suggestions besides the traditional
(and often significant) measures to facilitate trade or an eventual
improvement in some specific sectors, like the defense industry.
The last option raises the issue of greater and high technological
goods, which are necessary to modernization and improvement of

23
our economic competitiveness. Up to now, as far as acquisition is
concerned, we have on many occasions succeeded in arbitrating
between the USA and the EU, and managed to obtain more profitable
conditions and arrangements. The space for maneuver for such
operations will be reduced if a unified platform results from a full
commercial agreement between the two powers. In this regard, our
dependence on those two economies will not only increase, but we
will also have to pay a higher price for their products as well.
It is necessary, however, to strengthen the links with other
partners. The opportunities, in the Indian case, are, to my view,
concentrated on the direct foreign investment sector, as we shall
discuss in the following section.

IT’S ALWAYS THE ECONOMY II – BROADENING THE ISSUE

India has shown to be more active than Brazil with respect to Direct
Foreign Investment. In keeping with the tendency in exports, as shown in
Table III, the country has an active presence in varied sectors in chemistry,
with significant developments in fertilizers and pharmaceuticals, and – as
far as services are concerned – information technology sectors. Mining
and energy are other promising sectors. A well-distributed network
of honorary consuls gives support to the growing diversification of
investments – already in the region of US$ 2,5 billion. Such network
counts on skilled professionals to respond to their investors’ needs.
The reverse process calls perhaps for a greater support by the
subcontinent authorities6. There has been a significant investment
in the automobile industry, but it is far from its actual potential. An

6. This situation might get better with Prime Minister Narendra Mori’s victory, who is
fairly open and pragmatic as far as foreign direct investment is concerned.

24
effort to reverse such situation will depend on Brazil’s good-will,
combined with a better understanding of the intricate Indian legal
system – though not in principle – , more complex than ours. We
still lack a more strategic view, a topic that will be dealt with in the
next section.
In the service sector, India is the world’s second greatest
exporter of computer and information technology services, ranking
very close to EU, which occupies the first position, and well above
the USA, which comes third. However, we are the world’s fourth
greatest importer in this area, after EU, the USA and Japan. As
there is good local qualification in this speciality, there is room for
greater Indian investments here, besides those which are currently
being made.
We would still have to tackle the technological transfer area. It
is unnecessary to remind that this concept is a (romantic) rhetorical
figure: no one transfers technology to nobody, at least – if we want more
candid souls – modern technology that counts. This truth that is hard
to accept does not preclude the possibility of building partnerships,
with mutual benefits, which may favor the exchange of know-how,
techniques and procedures. Though India has shown evidence of more
concrete progress, both countries still have significant deficiency in
transmitting to the productive sector their discoveries in the fields of
pure investigation and science.
In a field that is usually the outcome of several developments in
multiple instances, which often come unexpectedly from spontaneous
projects, a better positioning is necessary. I am not advocating a
centralization or greater range of activities. However, it seems convenient
to have a better balance of mutual needs, which is more adequate to
commercial politics. A serious positioning with respect to the mutual
needs involving the very high technology field would be of great help.

25
Again, the defense area, Information Technology as well as aspects
selected from chemistry could be targets for joint entrepreneurships7.
Some complementary measures could be an analysis of the
tariff and non-tariff barriers aimed at facilitating the entry of
high-technology products, the support for establishing strategic
alliances and a skilled prospection of both markets – considering
other Asian options, be it China, from where sophisticated
telecommunication and electronic products are beginning to come,
be it Japan, Thailand, Singapore and, for some sectors, Indonesia,
Malaysia and the Philippines – , in search of new partnerships and
direct investments.
Finally, it would be worth beginning an initiative with a view to
reaching a convergence of positions on international regulations. We
must have clear positions on the whole and varied scope of norms
that, directly or indirectly, rule or affect international commerce of
goods and services. This implies decisions based on which aspects we
want to “be aligned with foreign partners” – and, hence, with what
pattern – and with which, consciously or for various reasons, we want
to remain unaligned with.
It is a hard but crucial and fundamental task to face the new
reality of commercial wars. It anticipates alliances that can mitigate
growing and invasive measures taken by developed economies,
identify others with different strategic partners – like China and
Japan, and Asian blocks in general, or still within the scope of South
America – and clarifies what wisely and fundamentally we want to
keep as idiosyncratic.

7. It must be noted that, within the context of Brazil-India partnership, there already is a Joint
Committee in the Defense Area – so far, more focused on the exchange of concepts and information,
but taking the first steps to begin a cooperation in the equipment area –, as well as a Mixed Science and
Technology Commission, which has pharmaceuticals and nanotechnology among its priority areas.

26
 Within the context of agribusiness, despite the challenges posed
by the topic on both sides, it is high time we took the leadership
in this field. The effort must be comprehensive and must also
involve Telecommunications, institutes like the INPI and the IPI, as
well as technical organs like the ABNT, in Brazil, and their Indian
counterparts. The effort must also be implemented in a hierarchical
and well-coordinated manner, which is crucial to enable a single and
consistent voice abroad, in each one of the relevant debates.
Still with respect to agriculture and animal raising, there
is a double urgency on our side, due to the still untapped and
immense food, chemical and industrial capital in Brazilian fauna
and flora, as part of its huge regional diversity. In almost all areas,
from honey to beer, including cheese, herbs, flour, oils, Amazon
products can replace several classical culinary ingredients and
much more. There is an extremely coveted capital that is the target
of several studies by foreign specialists, which will all be eventually
plundered and barely used by us if not regulated according to
modern, international and intelligent criteria that can both protect
property rights and allow flexibility in their use and lucrative
exploitation8. Similar examples can be mentioned on the Indian
side, as the country has a vast wealth of spices and other products9.
A more attentive and pro-active position from both governments
would be welcome on several of these issues, which can be more sensitive
to sector demands. An interesting final example is the REACH, an

8. For more on the topic, see R. G. Flôres Jr. 2013. Les Tribulations d’une Puissance Gastronomique
Émergente. Mimeo. (Also published in a summarized version as Chroniques Gastronomiques,
Libération, Paris).
9. It is worth noting that in the context of BRICS, at the Senior Official Meeting on science,
technology and innovation that took place in September 2011, in Dalyan, China, an agreement
was reached to gradually strengthen the links and cooperation in ten strategic areas; food security
and sustainable agriculture was one of them, although the food asset issue was not exploited.

27
European Commission absurd Directive on chemical substances, an
issue that is so far controversial and hardly ever debated by emerging
nations. The REACH has resulted in an increase of 20 to 50 percent of
costs for Brazilian exports to the EU. Part of this additional costs have
been perpetuated in terms of controls, bureaucratic demands, license
renewals and fees paid to dispatch agents and other authorized (by the
REACH complex) officers in the Union countries. Besides, it makes it
impossible for several small companies in the sector to export to the
European Union.
This last topic is so relevant that it will be dealt with in more depth
in the section that follows.

STRATEGIC POSITIONING

Both diplomacies have common attributes – particularly in

the excellence and ability shown by their respective staff – and
complementary qualities.
The Indian side has managed to skillfully work out wisely
ambiguous positions, and was able to move around several world
power centers and relevant themes to global governance10. Brazilians
competently negotiate a constructive view in the international scene,
with much concern about mutual respect and absolute priority given to
dialogue and diplomatic solution, which some analysts consider to be
a modest position, given the country’s size and weight – according to
multiple criteria.
Unlike India, Brazil does not aspire to be a super power.
It is not the purpose of this paper to make a deep analysis of

10. Ganguly and Pardesi (2009) is a frequently cited reference on India’s external
policy and international positioning, from the independence in 1947 until 2007.

28
the reasons behind the aforementioned positions; both countries
work together for world peace and on how to implement it and
secure it – as in the issue involving Responsibility to Protect versus
Responsibility while Protecting. Both countries have respect for the
United Nations, coupled with a legitimate aspiration to reform the
organization, particularly with respect to the Security Council. As
non-aligned partners, they share an extensive agenda of common
problems and positions, though they might diverge at a more
detailed level11.
The importance these two countries have, which will
certainly grow, forces them to deepen certain common
international positions.
The first positioning refers to the norms issue, which has a growing
impact on globalized economy, mainly with concern to commercial
matters. Modern commercial war will be fought at this level and the
attempt that is currently being negotiated at setting up a Transatlantic
Alliance for Trade and Investment between the European Union and
the United States is nothing less than a powerful first step towards
establishing a common ground in terms of patterns and norms for the
advanced Western world.
As thoroughly explained in the previous section, we must work
together in this field and set up, without prejudice or proselytism, a
front to zeal both for our technical and market interests. Within this
perspective, ASEAN can be seen as a valuable ally12, as well as other
emerging or developing partners.
The second aspect is concerned with the revolution that will
occur in sea routes. Both Brazil and India are seriously interested

11. See the WTO emblematic case, which was previously dealt with in this paper.
12. Both countries are also strategic partners at the ASEAN, signatory of the Treaty of
Amity and Co-operation.

29
in the matter. The former, with its long Atlantic coast, and the latter,
which is conspicuously situated in the Indian Ocean, with the Arabian
Sea to the West and the Bengal Gulf to the East.
At some point in a not so distant future, the exact date does not
matter for the sake of the argument, there will be a radical restructuring
of the ocean governance, until recently secured as one of the Pax
Americana externalities. Along the Pacific-Indian continuum, China
and India will be the actors of the greatest architectures, as Brazil will
be for the South Atlantic.
Every commercial nation is interested in having safe access to
routes in “all the seven seas”. Preparations made by the Brazilian and
Indian navy according to a concept of safety and defense projection
for each one of the countries13 are already evident; moreover, it is
necessary to make a joint effort within instances of commercial
intelligence and energy routes, so as to program the needs and
adaptations that the new reality will bring. Neither of the two
countries has a projection in the Arctic, a locus where new routes
will be created for several new powers; a greater strengthening
of links as concerns this matter will respond to interests that are
basically convergent.
A last positioning occurs at a higher level and involves two
successful arguments made by both countries: IBAS (India, Brazil and
South Africa), which has just completed ten years of existence, and
the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The former
has been thoroughly discussed by other peers14. Therefore, in the next
section I will deal with considerations on the BRICS from a broader
strategic perspective.

13. As described in their respective white books of defence.

14. See, for example, numerous publications by FUNAG on this peculiar and interesting
association, which has been in existence for over ten years.

30
I N DIA A N D B R A Z I L I N R E G IONA L ORG A N I SM S A N D
INTEGRATION

In the light of previous considerations, it is inevitable that both

nations play a significant role within the context of a vast array of
actors – multilateral organisms, global governance institutions,
several international associations, main regional integration –
which make up the international scenario. In this context, it is
worth highlighting a most interesting experiment made by the
BRICS: revolutionary tactics for the strengthening of links and
rapprochement (and hopefully integration) among countries located
in distinct continents, many of which without common borders, and
all of them with almost opposing histories and trajectories of social
economic development.
It is necessary to stress that the current BRICS is not an
economic concept15. While the IBSA constitutes a more intimate
group, which allows several experimentations, the BRICS opens
up a platform for a much wider and absolutely global protagonism.
If it continues to wisely avoid both the excess of bureaucratization
– a risk always present – and an infantile confrontation North
versus South, or Developed versus Emerging, a positioning that
has not occurred so far, despite the attempts at polarization made
by some nations outside the group, the BRICS will be destined to
become an ever insurmountable actor within the global context.
On the one hand, the BRICS countries have enough weight
to make themselves listened to in organisms such as the
International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, in institutions

15. This topic is dealt with in depth by Flôres (2013). For more on the development of the group
until the beginning of 2012, see Fontenele Reis (2012).

31
and programs relating to global warming and many other
strategic world topics; on the other hand, it has enough mass
and momentum to open up spaces, introduce viewpoints and
enforce – in a positive manner – positions.
Such immense asset and potential raise a subtle issue.
Since 2009 at the Yekaterinburg meeting in Russia, the
group’s actions have been articulated by such annual meetings.
Work teams and several initiatives take place in each plenary
meeting, but the efforts converge into the annual summit when
the items in the previous agenda are reaffirmed, the progress
made and their respective developments are announced, and
new goals and guidelines are presented. I personally have
nothing against such system. However, the development through
which the agenda has been going slowly, but clearly, from an
extremely flexible scheme to one with a growing density and
complexity might demand a better elaboration and negotiation.
Drawing on Carneiro Leão’s (2012) successful analysis, it can
be said that the group’s little or almost no inclination towards in-
house negotiation that should end up implying significant individual
concessions in favor of a unified positioning seems to be considerably
less viable each time. This calls for – within the context of a bilateral
agenda – more space for inclusion of the themes involving the agenda
and BRICS’ developments.
The growing level of sophistication of the several possible
actions demands that bilateral stitches (I purposefully use this
colloquial term), in addition to BRICS forums and work teams, are
deepened, many times in an anticipated way or in a way that tests new
entrepreneurships. At other occasions, it is done so as to reach a better
fine tuning of the progress of certain ideas or projects, which will be
decided at the pentagonal forum.

32
 I am not naïve to say it does not occur at present, but the
point is that the emphasis and priority given to such systematic
and better structured stitches should increase. This would
avoid surprise and rather embarrassing situations at the
annual summits, in addition to improving the way in which
to launch and develop joint efforts by highlighting the group’s
coordination capacity.
For Brazil and India, given both their connection to IBAS
and the already established mechanisms for strategic dialogues,
it would be easy to include this item in the common agenda. It
would not be hard to extend it, each on its side, to the bilateral
with three other members, based on this pilot experience.
Within the context of a surprisingly dynamic world, other
possibilities will come up. As Brazil has a privileged good
relationship with the other four members, with which it has
no territorial or strategic disputes, the country can be of great
help as a mediator for issues that should be dealt with among
the BRICS, and – in this aspect – it can be an invaluable friend
for India.

CONCLUSION

In the MahāBhārat – an immense and wealthy treasure of

Indian culture – a dice match won through methods that are not
exactly recommendable, surprisingly and radically changes the
order of events. It is disconcerting – mainly from a Westerner’s
perspective – how the defeated group of “heroes” reacts, and ends
up conforming and living an apparently unfair and hard to accept
and understand destiny. All the history will be conditioned by
these developments.

33
 It is particularly interesting to point that for a very keen observer
of social facts like Max Weber, this epopee is at times deprived
of logic and sounds strangely amoral. As a matter of fact, despite
creative analyses of well-known passages in the text16, Weber (1921)
seems to encounter difficulties in grasping the spirit of the wonderful
piece of work by making a linear and moral analysis of the complex
behaviour of one of the brilliant characters in the narrative, the Great
Krishna/Vasudeva, a character who, according to him, “feels no
shame in suggesting behaviours that seriously violate the principles of
correction, faith and fidelity”!
Penetrating the Indian mind is not an easy task for someone
immersed in Western culture.
It can be a frustrating, irritating, and at times doomed to
failure, enterprise, for it demands an effort whose result becomes
impossible to understand, or, at least, too exotic. Hence, the huge
misunderstandings and regrettable disappointments.
As I advocated at the beginning of this text – and shall
stress – India demands at least that we know it minimally well,
so that we can grasp its impressive wealth and understand
its much more subtle and sophisticated than chaotic and
illogical behaviour.
Brazil also demands a due consideration of its spirit,
which is disarmed, though not sloppy; easy-going, though
not coward; informal, though not inattentive or blunt, joyful,
though not irresponsible.

16. It is worth highlighting an interesting sociological interpretation of the precious

dialogue between Arjun and Krishna, which is part of the Bhagavad Gītā, and another,
maybe less well-known, which relates to “Draupadī’s complaint, a strong woman character,
in the light of the conflict between ‘natural right’ and ‘eternal or divine right’. Bhagavad
Gītā interpretation is naturally disputed by more spiritualized interpreters of the text,
which, however, does not diminish the value of their perceptions.

34
 Together, both countries make up a simply spectacular
partnership, whose full realization, if unfulfilled, will mean an
enormous loss for this miserable world that desperately needs
creative, unusual and magic associations.

*Professor at Escola de Pós-graduação em Economia (EPGE),

Special Advisor of the President and Responsible for the Unidade
de Inteligência Internacional (NPII) of the President’s Office; FGV,
Rio de Janeiro. renato.flores@fgv.br

REFERENCES
- CARNEIRO LEÃO, V. (2012). BRICS: identidade e agenda econômica – Notas
de um observador diplomático, in O Brasil, os BRICS e a Agenda Internacional,
by several authors. Brasília: FUNAG.
- FLÔRES, R. G., Jr. (2013). International innovation and daring: the BRICS.
Global Dialogue Review, vol.1, n.1. New Delhi.
- FONTENELE REIS, M. E. (2012). BRICS: surgimento e evolução, in O Brasil,
os BRICS e a Agenda Internacional, several authors. Brasília: FUNAG.
- GANGULY, S. and PARDESI, M. S.. (2009). Explaining sixty years of India’s
foreign policy. India Review, vol. 8, n.1: 4-19.
- WEBWE, M. (1921). Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, Band II.
Tübingen: Mohr. (as established in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, Band I/20,
Tübingen, Mohr, directed by H. Schmidt-Glintzer).

35
Brazil-India Relations through the
Lens of Political Economy
Adriana Erthal Abdenur*

With the deep structural changes that have taken place within the
international system with the end of the Cold War, new opportunities
have emerged for developing countries located in distant parts of the
world to cooperate and coordinate positions. This change is due not
only to technological advances in communications and transport that
can help stakeholders to overcome great distances, but also because of
the relative flexibility of the post-US hegemonic era, as compared with
the Cold War, permits more fluid political alignments. In addition, the
partial decentering of the world economy has entailed the emergence
of new hubs of economic growth outside of the old metropolis. The
extent to which multipolarity has set in is still open to debate, but the
decentering process has opened up new pathways and possibilities for
South-South cooperation.
Links between Brazil and India have deepened against this
backdrop of deep structural change and growing uncertainty in the
international arena. How has the changing world economy enabled
and constrained ties between these two places, and to what extent
have Brazil and India used their expanding maneuver space in the
international arena to consolidate their ties? Adopting a political
economy perspective, I analyze Brazil-India relations across time,
from the colonial period through the post-Cold War era, so as to
understand the varying degree of agency which these entities have
enjoyed in relating to each other. While there was episodic interaction
and some direct cooperation between the two countries until the end
of the Cold War, these flows were restrained by underdevelopment as

36
well as by the low degree of autonomy of Brazil and India as political
entities. Brazil-India ties began to deepen and diversify significantly
only after the turn of the millennium, when the changing international
system allowed for new modes of trans-continental cooperation to
gear at lessening development dependency.
The aim of the paper is not to provide a comprehensive
account of Brazil-India relations — a task that would fall outside the
scope of this brief paper — but rather to paint in broad strokes some
of the key inflection points in Brazil and India’s capacity for direct
interaction. The remainder of the paper thus traces their interaction
historically, from colonial trade and contraband to current bilateral
relations as well as involvement in international organizations, both
established institutions such as the United Nations and Bretton Woods
Institutions and looser coalitions like IBSA, BASIC, and BRICS.

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION

The changing world system has linked different places across

time through changing relations of power, including the creation
of dependency of the periphery upon the core, often mediated by
a semi-periphery (Wallerstein 1976, Santos 2000). By adopting
a political economy perspective, relations between seemingly
unrelated events, processes, and places can be discerned (Harvey
1993). However, political economy studies have tended to focus
heavily on core-periphery relations, rather than on links between
nodes outside the core. Within this scheme, Brazil and India may
be viewed as having long occupied semi-peripheral positions
within the modern world system — first as colonies, and later as
large, regionally influential developing countries with reasonably
diversified economies. Although most literature within IPE has

37
focused on how peripheries and semi-peripheries relate to the core
— that is, North-South relations — the past decade has brought
about a significant surge in ties between these semi-peripheries.
The world system, far from static, has entailed changes both in
terms of the location of the core - as cycles of accumulaton wax
and wane - and with respect to the positions of peripheries and
semi-peripheries, as demonstrated by the rise of the Asian Tigers
(Amsden 2001). More recently, the economic growth experienced
by China, incuding its procurement abroad of natural resources,
has prompted new questions about the changing role of non-
core economies, as well as the deepening ties among developing
countries (Arrighi 2010, Mohan 2013). In turn, this restructuring
calls for a new historiography of South-South relations.
In the case of Brazil and India, it is necessary to understand why and
how these two states have significantly deepened their ties over the past
decade. This surge in cooperation can be explained through internal
factors, such as their respective foreign policies, but also with reference
to the changing configuration of the global economy. Contemporary
Brazil and India both aspire to open up new opportunities and increase
their influence abroad, both within and beyond their respective
vicinities. As the tenth economy by nominal GDP (and third largest
by purchasing power parity), the second most populous state and the
most populous democracy, India has considerable influence within
and outside its immediate vicinity. In addition, India has significant
hard power — including nuclear weapons — and soft power that is
enhanced by the widespread Indian diaspora. However, constraints
include inefficient production, persistent social tensions, and significant
regional contestation (Ganguly 2012).
On the one hand, like India, Brazil is a large, complex democracy
which, despite having limited hard power, possesses abundant natural

38
resources and has accumulated considerable soft power through its
extensive South-South development cooperation. In addition, Brazil
has the somewhat unusual credential of nearly 140 years of peace with
neighboring countries. On the other hand, it features some of the world’s
highest crime rates, including homicide, low levels of technological
innovation, and lagging education and other public services. Although
Brazil does not face rivalry from nuclear power neighbors, its regional
leadership is contested by Argentina, Venezuela, and Chile, among
others. Like India, it faces persistent poverty and sharp socioeconomic
inequalities despite recent advances along both these fronts.
Despite their considerable differences in historical trajectory,
socioeconomic development models, cultural makeup, and political
dynamics, both Brazil and India have each sought to forge more
independent foreign policies vis-à-vis the advanced economies of the
global core. Over the past decade, this search for greater autonomy has
included significant efforts to enhance their respective South-South
cooperation with other developing countries, namely through strategic
partnerships with other rising powers. Brazil and India have also faced
significant contestation by neighboring states, and thus generate tensions
when they claim to represent their respective regions. However, this
contestation has not prevented these countries from banding together
through loose groupings such as IBSA and the BRICS, both of which
lend greater weight to their calls for reform of the global governance
architecture. These similarities and points of interaction provide the
analytical basis for examining Brazil-India ties across time.

INTRA-COLONIAL TRADE BETWEEN GOA AND BAHIA

Links between the territories now known as Brazil and India date
back to the colonial era, when exchanges between these places were

39
mediated through, and limited by Portugal’s mercantilist logic. The
first known links began with the “great expeditions” undertaken by
explorers either hailing from Portugal or sponsored by the Portuguese
crown—voyages undertaken as part of the competitive urge to build
vast networks of overseas colonies from which to extract wealth for the
core and create exclusive markets. Even early on, the territories that
would become Brazil and India were interlinked in the Portuguese
imaginary of far-flung places. In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral, who
carried out the first significant explorations of the northeastern coast
of South America and claimed much of this territory for Portugal, was
assigned by King Manuel I to lead an expedition to India meant to
open up new spice trade routes by setting up an entrepot in Calicut.
The letter written by the scribe Pero Vaz de Caminha describing
the lands and people Cabral’s fleet encountered in South America
mentions Calicut (present-day Kozhikode)17:

For all that, the best fruit that could be gathered

hence would be, it would seem, the salvation of
these people. That should be the chief seed for Your
Majesty to scatter here. It would be enough reason,
even if this were only a stopping place on the voyage
to Calicut.

Departing from Brazil in 1500 with a fleet of thirteen ships, Cabral

crossed the South Atlantic and followed the route to India that Vasco
da Gama had opened up by circumnavigating the Cape of Good Hope
and sailed (Greenlee 1995). Cabral’s fleet, stocked with foodstuffs from
the South American coast, successfully traded for spices in Cochin, thus

17. Letter from Pero Vaz de Caminha to Dom Manuel I, 1 May 1500. Author’s translation.

40
carrying out the first recorded gesture of trade between Brazil and India.
Over the next three centuries, these far-flung territories were
tenuously linked through Portuguese colonial rule, with direct links
severely restricted by the mercantilist restrictions imposed upon
inter-colonial trade. Portugal established the Estado da Índia (State
of India), first based out of Cochin (present-day Kochi) and, after
1510, out of Goa, which became in essence the capital of Portugal’s
Asian domain. Portugal also had several trade outposts elsewhere in
India, including island enclaves in Daman and Diu, and it carried out
commercial exchanges between these nodes and colonies elsewhere,
as far as Brazil. All of these territories, as well as those in between,
were collectively referred to as “Indies,” although the crown drew a
distinction between Oriental and Occidental Indies.
Over the next centuries, Brazil became a stopover for the flow
of ships established by Portugal to maintain control of its distant
colonies. Through this commerce, products such as porcelain and
spices, textiles, gems, and crafts were brought from India to Brazil,
mostly entering through the port of Salvador. Several species
of plants, including mango, breadfruit, and bamboo, were also
transported from Asia via India, and some of these were successfully
introduced (Lapa 1982). In the opposite direction, Brazilian products
taken to India included tobacco, drief beef, and shipping ropes. As
Muhana (2003) notes, the limited historiography of inter-colonial
trade makes it difficult to ascertain the true extent of these flows,
since exchanges between Brazil and Goa were frequently carried out
as contraband.
Some individuals also traveled between these places,
particularly Goa and Bahia, which played somewhat equivalent
roles in the Portuguese mercantilist system as distant commercial
hubs and funneling points for the extraction of wealth (Pimentel

41
2013). In addition to the navigators and soldiers conducting intra-
colonial trade, a small number of Brazilian bureaucrats and private
entrepreneurs served in Portuguese India during the colonial
period. Vasco Fernandes Coutinho, for instance, the donatário
(owner and administrator) of the Espirito Santo captaincy in
Brazil, had previously served in India, and Duarte Coelho, the first
captain general of Pernambuco, had twice been sent by the Crown
to India. In 1700, Maria Úrsula d’Abreu e Lencastro, a woman from
a prominent Rio de Janeiro family, joined the Portuguese army in
disguise and was sent to fight in India under the false name Baltasar
do Couto Cardoso18.
In addition, on several occasions the Portuguese crown —
noting similar climates in Goa and Brazil — dispatched agricultural
experts to work on projects elsewhere in its colonies. In 1690, for
instance, two Goans traveled to Brazil to assist with the plantation
of cinnamon and pepper, both brought from India. In 1751, more
Goans voyaged to Brazil as part of the Naubande expedition, to help
with the planting of palm trees as part of an ultimately unsuccessful
project to produce palm liqueurs in Brazil. According to National
Library documents, two of the Goans died in Brazil, and the others
returned to India in 175319.
Despite these documented exchanges, the flow of goods, people,
and ideas between Brazil and India was restricted not only by great
geographic distances, but also by the lack of autonomy of those
territories within the colonial system. Even after Brazil was granted
independence, in 1822, its incipient foreign policy was tightly linked

18. Ministério da Fazenda (n.d.) “Relações Brasil-Índia” Brasília. Online: http://www.

receita.fazenda.gov.br/Memoria/administracao/curiosidades/RelacoesBrasilIndia.asp
19. Inventário dos Documentos Relativos ao Brasil Existentes no Arquivo de Marinha e Ultramar
de Lisboa, organizado por Eduardo de Castro e Almeida, 1:10, 12, 17 e 46.

42
to that of Europe and later the United States, leaving limited room for
interaction with colonies until the second half of the 20th century20.
On the whole, therefore, direct exchanges between Brazil and India
during this period were episodic, informal, and both mediated and
restricted by the European metropolis.

BRAZIL AND INDIA DURING THE COLD WAR

It was only with the sharpening competition between the

economic models promoted by the United States and the Soviet Union
that Brazil and India, as sovereign states yet operating within the
rigid configurations of the Cold War, began to interact more directly.
Diplomatic ties between the two countries were first established in
1948, shortly after India’s independence and the traumatic events of
the Partition. Although Brazil had been granted its own independence
peacefully more than a century earlier, the two countries found
themselves in similar positions in the post-War period. Economically,
both remained, in part due to the lingering effects of colonialism,
highly dependent on the advanced economies; Brazil had been an
exporter of primary commodities since it first became a colony, and
India had been transformed under British rule from a major exporter of
processed goods, primarily textiles, into an importer of manufactures
and exporter of primary materials. Politically, Brazil and India were
also relegated to secondary status in the war’s aftermath. Although
they had each supported Allied efforts in combat, both left out of the
core group of countries that shaped the era’s international system,

20. One notable exception was the importation of Indian zebu cattle to Brazil. Starting in 1898,
over 6,200 head of zebu cattle of Indian origin were imported by Minas Gerais cattleman
Teófilo de Godoy. Around 80% of Brazil’s present cattle stock descend from those zebu.
Source: Museu do Zebu, Parque Fernando Machado, Uberaba.

43
including the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions.
Roosevelt promised Brazil a permanent seat at the UN Security
Council, but the proposal was vetoed by the Soviet Union and the UK.
As for India, although in 1942 it was among the original members of
the United Nations as one of only four non-independent founders,21 it
too was denied a permanent seat.
Early Brazil-India relations were marked by differences over
the Indian independence movement, especially with respect to
Goa. After 1947, Portugal refused to give in to India’s request for it
to relinquish control of its Indian enclaves. Just as Brazil formally
supported Portugal’s continued control over the latter’s African
colonies, it opposed Indian claims over Portugal’s enclaves until 1961,
when it realized that the decline of Portugal would allow India to
assume control of Goa by force. After the Indian army overwhelmed
Portuguese resistance and assumed control of Goa and the other
Portuguese enclaves, Brazil criticized India for violating international
law (Stuenkel 2010). Brazil’s stance led to sharp disappointment by the
Indian government, which — as a strong supporter of independence
movements elsewhere in the developing world — had expected greater
solidarity from a fellow former colony (Furtado 2010).
The two countries’ positions with respect to the Cold War
camps had both overlaps and divergences. On the one hand, Brazil’s
democratic government attempted to pursue a more independent
path in its foreign policy in the early 1960s, but the course was
reversed after 1964, when a coup d’état installed a military regime that
lasted for twenty-one years. This meant that, although Brazil often
expressed solidarity with other developing countries (and, eventually,
newly independent states), it was not a full member of the Non-

21. The other non-sovereign founding members were Belarus, the Phillipines, and Ukraine.

44
Aligned Movement, sending only observers. The Indian government,
on the other hand pursued a Socialist orientation, with implications
both in the political arena and in the economic sphere. Although
officially India kept itself outside the East-West divide, it was among
the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement. In addition, the Indian
government enjoyed military and ideological support from the Soviet
Union. Moscow vetoed a UNSC resolution against India’s annexation
of Goa, and it provided military assistance seen by Indian policy elites
as particularly valuable given India’s border disputes with Pakistan
and China.
It was not until the 1970s that, under pressure caused by the oil
crisis, Brazil began to seriously consider South-South cooperation as a
serious complement or alternative to its ties to the North. As a result,
unlike India — a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement—
Brazil contributed to South-South coordination primarily through
the Group of 77 (G-77) and the struggle for a more just economic
system through UNCTAD (Machado 2004).
These multilateral platforms meant that Brazil and India — both of
which placed considerable importance on multilateralism, especially
via the United Nations — interacted on issues of global governance,
but that this interaction was also rather dispersed through the broad
coalitions. At times their positions on UN issues coincided, but
convergences were seldom a result of bilateral coordination.
There were also divergences in their development models that
sometimes led to differing positions with respect to the international
trade regime. On the one hand, from colonial times, Brazil’s economy
has always depended heavily on the export of commodities, and its
sharp inequalities in land tenure led to the formation of vast farms
geared towards export-oriented monoculture. As a result, Brazil
developed a keen interest in promoting free trade in agricultural

45
products. India’s agriculture, on the other hand, has been based
on millions of small farms that produce crops mostly for domestic
consumption, for which the Indian government has provided
subsidies. Thus, Brazil and India’s positions on trade have not always
coincided, especially on the issue of agricultural trade.
A visit by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1968 was well
received by Brazilians but did little to increase concrete exchanges
between the two countries. In addition to their diverging economic
models, there were considerable political differences. Economically,
India’s goal of attaining near-autarky meant that it had limited interest
in international trade and investment. In the meantime, Brazil’s right-
wing regime used import substitution to nurture industrialization,
and it avoided becoming too close to leftist governments. The closed
nature of their economies helps to explain why trade and investment
between the two countries was minimal during the Cold War, never
breaking the $200 million mark.
One area in which exchanges did occur was in science and
engineering, with a number of Indian specialists collaborating with
Brazilian counterparts on nuclear, space, and metallurgical research
projects in Brazil. However, as Tripathy (2012) notes, this cooperation
withered after India conducted its 1974 nuclear bomb test and Brazil
caved in to US pressure to stop collaborating with Indian specialists.
Nuclear weapons would continue to be a point of difference between the
two states. India continued to resist the UN’s non proliferation agenda
as discriminatory against developing countries. In contrast, although
Brazil and Argentina engaged in a brief and limited nuclear arms race,
their differences were eventually resolved peacefully, with both states
voluntarily giving up their respective nuclear weapons programs.
Even though their direct policy coordination was limited,
both Brazil and India became active members within certain

46
debates at the UN, working to redress the imbalances of the system
by drawing on active multilateralism. India was particularly active
in the struggle against colonialism and apartheid; it was the first
country to raise the issue of Apartheid at the United Nations. Like
Brazil, it also worked towards redressing unfairness in global trade
negotiations, although their strategies for redressing this imbalance
did not always converge, in part due to different economic interests.
Both Brazil and India played key roles in negotiating developing
country positions on GATT, for instance opposing the inclusion of
services within the agreement22. Within the security sphere, during
the negotiations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Brazil and
India opposed what they perceived as the regime’s discriminatory
stance towards developing countries. In general, however, the
overarching ideological consideration of the Cold War and the
continued dependence of the semi-periphery upon the core imposed
significant constraints on South-South cooperation, both in terms of
political alignments and with respect to economic exchanges.

BRAZIL AND INDIA IN THE POST-COLD WAR ERA

With the collapse of the end of the Cold War, both Brazil and
India found themselves at first on uncertain footing. Brazil had
experienced a burst economic growth during the late 1960s and early
1970s—the period known as the “Brazilian Miracle” years—but the
oil shock of 1973 helped fuel high indebtedness, soaring inflation,
and economic stagnation during the 1980s. The strengthened Bretton
Woods institutions, called in to prevent further crisis, imposed new
limits on Brazil’s autonomy. As a result, even as Brazil returned to

22. Guerreiro, Ramiro S (1985) “Depoimento” Rio de Janeiro: CPDOC, p 432.

47
democracy in the final decade of the Cold War, its policy elites were
primarily concerned with achieving macroeconomic stability and
meeting the requirements of structural adjustments, even as poverty
persisted and inequalities sharpened.
As for India, with the collapse of the Soviet Union it lost an
important source of ideological and defense support. Like Brazil,
India shifted gears economically, carrying out some reforms to
partially liberalize the economy in the 1990s. Both countries also
began to deepen ties to other important regional powers. In 1996,
Fernando Henrique Cardoso became the first Brazilian head-of-state
to visit India. In addition to this active presidential diplomacy, two
factors facilitated the deepening of ties between the two countries.
First, as part of the 1980s wave of globalization, major multinational
companies began relocating low and medium technology
manufacturing from relatively high-waged countries in the West
and the Asian Tigers to lower wage countries in Asia, including
India. Second, the dramatic growth of China’s economy, and the
increasing internationalization of its own companies elsewhere in
the developing world, showed that South-South cooperation could
be about more than ideological solidarity.
However, the search for new economic opportunities intersected
with political considerations, including occasional divergences.
After India’s May 1998 nuclear tests, Brazil aligned with a group
of non-nuclear states, both developing and advanced, to demand
an end to the nuclear activities carried out by India and Pakistan
(who had followed up by conducting tests of its own) and to call for
compliance with the objectives of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (Patti
2010). Despite such disagreements, after the turn of the millennium,
both Brazil and India began to pursue South-South cooperation
more consistently. This strategy entailed not only offering more

48
development cooperation to smaller countries within and beyond
their vicinities, but also strengthening relations with other large
developing countries, especially those that were vocal in calling for
reform of global governance.
When Workers Party candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was
inaugurated as Brazil’s president, in 2003, South-South cooperation
became even more salient within Brazilian foreign policy23.
India — along with China, Russia, and South Africa — was cited
within his inaugural speech among the new government’s priority
partnerships. Head of state visits in both directions followed, as
well as frequent high-level exchanges meant to reinforce bilateral
agreements signed in cooperation areas including oil and gas,
tourism, infrastructure, academic exchanges, and biotechnology
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013).
Relations between Brazil and India have also expanded
through their participation in loose coalitions created to coordinate
positions and strategies among rising powers. Some of these, such
as the G-20, bring together developing and advanced countries,
whereas others prioritize strengthening ties among rising powers.
Through the India Brazil South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA),
founded in 2006, the member states have cooperated in areas such
as science and technology, education, agriculture, health, and naval
defense. The IBSA Fund for Alleviation of Poverty and Hunger has
included funding for development projects in East Timor, Burundi,
Vietnam, and Guinea-Bissau, among others24. Despite nearly annual
meetings since 2006, in 2013 the initiative appeared to lose steam
with the cancellation of that year’s summit, although the three heads

23. Presidência (2003) Discurso de posse, 1o mandato. Brasília, 1 January 2003.

24. UNDP (n.d.) “IBSA Fund: Overview of Development Impact” Online: http://tcdc2.
undp.org/ibsa/

49
of state, plus those of Russia and China, did continue the cycle of
BRICS meetings.
The BRICS, originally launched as the BRIC initiative but later
expanded via the 2010 inclusion of South Africa, has magnified Brazil
and India’s demands for changes in global governance. However, due
to the presence of two authoritarian regimes, within the BRICS the
democratic identity of Brazil and India, along with that of South Africa,
tends to be dampened, as reflected in the grouping’s agenda — which,
despite having broadened over the years to include more areas of
potential coordination, leaves aside issues of internal democracy and
human rights. In addition, the grouping’s strong discourse of respect
for national sovereignty has led to greater alignment between Brazil
and India within international debates about military interventionism,
although there are differences in their stances: Brazil has openly
expressed distaste for NATO’s expanded mandate, while India — which
collaborates with the United States in anti-terrorism and anti-piracy
efforts and has enjoyed some US backing for its nuclear power status
— has maintained a more ambiguous relation with the US and NATO
on international security issues. In development-related debates, while
Brazil and India continue to butt heads on agricultural trade issues,
they have found increasingly common ground on issues of intellectual
property rights, especially as they pertain to the production of generic
medications for diseases representing public health risks.
Finally, despite China and Russia’s stated support for reform of the
UN Security Council, to which both Brazil and India continue to aspire,
the BRICS have been unable to find a common strategy for overhauling
the organization. As a result, Brazil and India have cooperated more
concretely on this issue outside of the BRICS. Namely, they have joined
forces with Germany and Japan through the G-4, a loose coalition
bringing together four states that aspire to a permanent seat at the UN

50
Security Council and that support each other’s positions, even as their
bids are contested by their respective regional rivals.
The flexibility of these coalitions has also permitted India and Brazil
to band together on specific topics through different permutations of
rising powers. For instance, since late 2008 the BASIC bloc (Brazil,
South Africa, India, and China) has attempted to coordinate positions
in climate change negotiations, at least in the sense of achieving a
lowest common denominator position. Pooling their leverage, the
four countries committed to act jointly at the Copenhagen climate
summit, including the possibility of collectively walking out of the
negotiations if their minimum requests went unmet.
These interactions and greater political dialogue have helped to
boost bilateral flows between Brazil and India. Bilateral trade reached
USD$10.62 billion in 2012. India’s top exports to Brazil are diesel
fuel, coal and other minerals, electrical equipment, cotton and yarns,
and medicines, while Brazil’s exports to India include minerals and
agricultural commodities, in addition to machine parts, airplanes,
and gemstones. Although India and Mercosur signed a framework
agreement in June 2003, with a preferential trade agreement entering
into force in June 2009, it has produced only modest results so far25,
and there are ongoing efforts to boost these flows, including through
potential triangulation via IBSA and the South African Customs
Union (SACU). A bilateral commission and chambers of commerce
also work to boost exchanges between the two countries, including
investments26. At the same time, the flow of goods and capital is

25. http://www.cni.org.br/portal/data/pages/FF808081314EB36201314F22625A7F72.htm
26. Brazilian companies have invested in automobiles, IT, mining, energy, biofuels, footwear
sectors in India, while Indian companies have invested in such sectors as IT, Pharmaceutical,
Energy, agri-business, mining, engineering/auto sectors. Indian firms investing in Brazil
include software firm Wipro Technologies, which has set up a business process outsourcing
centre in Curitiba to provide shared services to AmBev, the largest brewery in Latin America.

51
accompanied by a gradual increase in mutual cultural exposure and
intellectual exchanges, including through increased collaboration
among Brazilian and Indian academics, think tanks, NGOs,
universities. This interaction is limited due to the small size of Indian
diaspora communities in Brazil and vice versa, but the internet and
government policies such as scholarships for study abroad provide
more direct linkages between Brazilian and Indian populations.

CONCLUSION

The roles and positions occupied by Brazil and India within

the world economy have changed across time, and with systemic
transformations their agency — including in terms of relating to one
another as semi-peripheries located on opposite sides of the planet
— has also varied. During the colonial period, direct ties were
mediated by the global core, especially via the Portuguese network
of colonies and former colonies. During the Cold War, Brazil and
India, as two formally sovereign states, found more opportunities to
interact politically as well as economically, but these exchanges were
limited by their underdevelopment and by the East-West divide,
even as both countries sought a degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the
two camps. It was only with the end of the Cold War, and specifically
with the decline of US hegemony, that Brazil and India have found
greater space for, and interest in, direct cooperation. This deepening
interaction has taken place both through bilateral means and via
multilateral platforms, and it has diversified across the political,
economic, and cultural dimensions.
However, the degree of agency that these states possess in
pursuing South-South cooperation, including with each other, should
not be overstated. Their links face limitations not only because of their

52
persistent domestic challenges — compounded, over the past few
years, significantly slowdown in both economie s— but also by their
regional priorities and by the external resistance that both continue
to encounter in their efforts to become global players. In addition,
surging South-South cooperation between Brazil and India takes
place within a context of increasing competition among rising powers,
particularly with the dramatic rise of China, whose overtures in Latin
America —including Brazil — have expanded significantly over the
past decade. Overcoming these hurdles so as to enhance Brazil-India
cooperation will entail not only greater political willingness on both
sides, but also deeper knowledge of the constraints and opportunities
generated by the changing world economy.

*Instituto de Relações Internacionais, PUC-Rio / BRICS Policy Center

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Late-industrializing Economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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descolonização dos enclaves portugueses in 147 Masters Thesis in History of
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229-249 in Amaral Jr., Alberto & Sanchez, Michelle Ratton. Relações Sul-Sul:
países da Ásia e o Brasil. São Paulo: Aduaneiras.
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Brasília: FUNAG.
- SANTOS, Teotonio dos (2000). A Teoria da Dependência: Balanço e Perspectivas.
Ed Civilização Brasileira.
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The Indian Foreign Affairs Journal 5:3, 290-304.
- TRIPATHY, Amitava (2012). India-Brazil Strategic Engagement: Possibilities
for the Future in Indian Foreign Affairs Journal 7:2, 206-217.
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Agriculture and the Origins of the European Worl-Economy in the Sixteenth
Century. New York: Academic Press.

54
Perspectives on Brazil-India Commerce
Leane Cornet Naidin*27

The role played by developing countries as relevant actors in

the international trade scenario and in the globalized economic
agenda raises a series of issues on the trade relations among them,
as well as the role played by trade in these countries’ foreign
policies. This paper presents a panorama of Brazil and India’s
commercial relations and their positioning in the preferential
trade negotiations scenario. The Mercosul-India trade preference
agreement is the only commercial agreement in place among
BRICS countries and serves as a basis for a reflection upon the
possibilities of strengthening such cooperation.
There is currently a wide range of trade negotiations going on
in the world that reveals the different impacts of preferential trade
agreements on these countries’ international positioning. BRICS
plans to achieve greater leadership internationally raise issues on
the position reserved to trade liberalization agreements within
this project as well as their role in these countries’ international
positioning. In the current world market with greater fragmentation
of production in complex networks of global offers, the preferential
trade agenda demands a comprehensive reflection that goes beyond
tariff liberalization. As a matter of fact, there is a process in motion
that has been changing the agenda of trade policies.
The latest years have witnessed a quest for a geographical
restructuring of world trade. This context reveals the emergence

27. This working paper is based on research findings by BPC, in collaboration with
Thauan Santos, collaborator in this paper. See BPC-BRICS Policy Center, Policy
Brief, A Geografia dos Acordos Preferenciais de Comércio do BRICS, February 2013.
http://bricspolicycenter.org/homolog
55
of new trade negotiations and the speeding up of processes that
had already been initiated. This process reanimated the debate
over the thesis according to which trade relations follow the
“hub and spoke” pattern – with the USA and Western Europe in
the centre of the debate. With this perception in mind, BRICS
countries aim at changing this pattern. Such project allows
us to question the existence of trade agreements negotiation
“strategies” by these countries.
The first section of this article presents the world context of
negotiation involving preferential trade agreements; the second
describes Brazil’s and India’s initiatives in the trade agreement
arena; the third presents the main characteristics of the commercial
flow between these countries, as well as the scope of the ongoing
agreement between India and Mercosul. The fourth and final section
draws a conclusion and raises some issues involving the debate over
the perspectives on the strengthening of commercial cooperation
between these countries.

THE WORLD SCENARIO AND CURRENT DEBATE

The history of negotiation of preferential trade agreements by

the World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries reveals two
significant trends in international trade relations, which have long-
term implications for the multilateral trade system:

(i) The continuous growth of preferential trade

agreements. According to research carried out by the
WTO, in the last two decades, the number of negotiated
agreements has increased fourfold. In 2010 there were 300
ongoing agreements, including those that were notified

56
 and those which were not notified to the organization28.
This process tends to retrieve part of the agenda that had
been “lost” or put aside in the Doha stalled multilateral
negotiations29; and
(ii) The idea that the content of preferential agreements
is going through an ongoing deepening process, which
reflects important changes in world economy, as the
growing regionalization of trade relations by means of
global production chains and incorporation of “new
themes” into preferential trade agreements – as rules
for environment-related policies, bid terms, government
purchases, social clauses and investments, as well as the
deepening of service liberalization30. Thus, negotiation
of preferential agreements is motivated by a search
for gains that respond to the changes in international
productive structure31.

Thus, the current scenario of increased global fragmentation

of production accelerates the process of negotiation of new
regulatory landmarks, whose balance is negotiated between
commercial partners, so as to allow interdependence among
actors/companies of each nation, and to enable “new themes”

28. WTO – World Trade Organization. The WTO and preferential trade agreements: From
co-existence to coherence. In: World Trade Report 2011. Geneva, 2011, p. 3. Available in:
<http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/anrep_e/world_trade_report11_e.pdf>.
29. HADDAD, M.; HOEKMAN, B. Taking places: international integration after the
crisis. In: Canuto, O.; Giugale, M. (Ed.). The day after tomorrow: a handbook on the future
of economic policy in developing world. Washington: World Bank, 2010. p. 67-84.
30. SANCHEZ BADIN, M. R. A Regulação de “Novos Temas” em Acordos Preferenciais de Comércio
Celebrados por União Europeia, Estados Unidos, China e Índia: pontos relevantes para o Brasil.
Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada – IPEA, 2012a, p.8 (Text for Discussion, n. 1.773).
31. Ver: <http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/anrep_e/world_trade_report11_e.pdf>.

57
to be incorporated that have been taking on greater importance
in recent negotiations. These initiatives have already been
pointed out in WTO and OECD reports, which show how global
production chains have been accelerating and deepening the
scope of trade negotiations, as good governance pertinent areas
to commerce and investment are more relevant in this scenario
than mere tariff liberalization32.

BRAZIL AND INDIA IN THE GEOGRAPHY OF COMMERCIAL

AGREEMENTS

Among the BRICS countries, Brazil has only one ongoing

agreement, with India33. It is an agreement whose scope is limited to
the trade of goods, with a negotiation landmark in fixed preferences
and is, above all, characterized by the concession of preferences
by Brazil for products on which very low MFN tariffs apply.34
Besides, no explicit commitments have been made in relation to the
announced future stages of the integration. The same can be said
about the deepening of preferences or the broadening of the scope
of the agreement.
Bilateral agreements involving the Mercosul only choose as
partners other developing countries or less developed countries
from other continents, like Mexico, the Andean Community, Israel,

32. OECD-WTO. OECD-WTO Database on Trade in Value-Added: preliminary results.

OECD-WTO, Geneva, 2013.
33. THORSTENSEN, V; ELEOTÉRIO, B. Acordos Preferenciais de Comércio. In:  
THORSTENSEN, V; OLIVEIRA, I. T. M. Os BRICS na OMC: políticas comerciais
comparadas de Brasil, Rússia, Índia e África do Sul, IPEA, 2012, p.323-330.
34. CONFERDERAÇÃO NACIONAL DA INDÚSTRIA – CNI. As relações comerciais do
Brasil com a Índia e a África do Sul. Comércio Exterior em Perspectiva. Ano 14, nº.8/9,
maio/junho, 2005.

58
Turkey, Syria, SACU, Palestine and Egypt – the four latter are not in
place yet. They correspond to just a small share of Brazilian trade
and reveal the incorporation of agreements into a political agenda
focused on the deepening of South-South relations, with little
emphasis on a commercial agenda.
With respect to new themes, Brazil has reacted in all forums
to moves involving issues like services, investments, government
purchases and environment35, as well as the social clause36. Most
Brazilian negotiated agreements have within their scope only the
liberalization of trade of goods. Although there are agreements that
incorporate into their general landmark themes such as investments
(Israel), physical infrastructure (Mercosul-CAN) and services, there
is no evidence of an actual commitment related to liberalization of
service and investment flows, which are increasingly related with
the trade of goods in the world scenario. Moreover, there has been
no established schedule for the implementation of the announced
goals. In other words, there is a perceived important political aspect
in the regionalization of these agreements, which follows a South-
South trade partner diversification logic, without great strengthening
of commitments for liberalization of flow of goods, services or
investments, notwithstanding the ambitious target of the general
landmark of these agreements.
On the other hand, India’s perspective on trade agreements
negotiation is quite distinct. Though the majority of its
agreements are concentrated in the Asian continent, the country’s

35. KANAS, V.; NASSER, S.; LIMA, R. Meio ambiente. In: THORSTENSEN, V.; JANK, M. (Org.).
O Brasil e os grandes temas do comércio internacional. São Paulo: Aduaneiras, 2005. p. 241-271.
36. SANCHEZ BADIN, M. R. Compromissos assumidos por grandes e médias economias em acordos
preferenciais de comércio: o contraponto entre União Europeia e Estados Unidos e China e Índia.
Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada – IPEA, 2012b. (Text for Discussion, n. 1.700), p.105.

59
negotiated trade agreements reveal a broad variety in terms of
regional partners, distributed across Asia, Africa, Latin America
and Europe, with special emphasis to Asia and the Pacific Trade
Agreement, of which China is also a member country, in addition
to the Mercosul agreement and the one made with the Austral
Africa, Russia and China’s Customs Union37. Other agreements
under negotiation include countries like Australia, Canada,
Indonesia, New Zealand and the EU. There are talks for eventual
agreements with Israel and Russia 38.
A great deal of ongoing agreements corresponds to free-trade
and partial-scope agreements focused on the trade of goods (except
for Thailand, which includes services and investments). Thus,
despite the partners’ diverse nature, it is worth mentioning that
neither India nor Brazil have made any commitment with respect
to the “new themes”, mostly involving environmental themes, labor
issues and government purchases. However, India has made efforts
towards the liberalization of the service sector, in relation to which
the country has some comparative advantages in some segments. As
a matter of fact, market diversification is a goal that has been ratified
by the Indian government as one of the main response strategies
to 2009 crisis39. Mostly with regard to Asian countries, preferential
trade agreements signed by India have aimed at establishing
production chains among regional countries40, a tendency that
has been mapping the geography of commerce among them. Thus,

37. See http://www.aric.adb.org/fta.php?id=132&ssid=3&title=People’s%20Republic%20of%20

China-India%20Regional%20Trading%20Arrangement
38. See Ratton (2011).
39. GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. Government of India Ministry of Commerce and
Industry Department of Commerce. Gazette of India Extraordinary, 2009.
40. See Baumann & Ng (2012).

60
the country’s trade negotiation strategy seems to follow Asian
companies growth strategies, which become incorporated into long-
term strategic alliances and involve partners engaged in regional
production chains, of which most final goods are destined to the
rest of the world.

TRADE FLOWS AND THE MERCOSUL-INDIA AGREEMENT

Although they have presented growth since 2005-2007, in the

2011-2013 period Brazilian exports to India accounted for only 1,6%
of the country’s total export volume. The main destination countries
were the EU-27 (20,2% total), China (17,8%) and the USA (10,5%).
Such concentration pattern is similar as concerns the origin of our
foreign purchases, of which 21,3% originated in the 2011-2013
period from the UE-27, 15,1% from China, and 15,0% from the USA
(Tables 1 and 2).

TABLE 1. BRAZILIAN EXPORTS – DESTINATION COUNTRIES (%)

Countries 2005-2007 2008-2010 2011-2013
UE-27 23,7% 22,5% 20,2%
China 6,2% 12,3% 17,8%
United States of America 17,5% 11,4% 10,5%
Mercosul* 10,3% 11,0% 10,2%
Japan 2,8% 3,2% 3,4%
India 0,7% 1,5% 1,6%
Others 38,7% 38,1% 36,4%
Source: author’s own elaboration based on a TradeMap; * Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Ordering based on decreasing triennial average 2011-2013

61
TABLE 2. BRAZILIAN IMPORTS – ORIGINATING COUNTRIES (%)
Countries 2005-2007 2008-2010 2011-2013
UE-27 22,8% 21,5% 21,0%
China 9,1% 12,8% 15,1%
EUA 16,3% 15,2% 15,0%
Mercosul 9,7% 9,3% 8,4%
Korea, Republic of 3,1% 3,9% 4,2%
Nigeria 4,1% 3,6% 3,8%
India 1,7% 2,1% 2,5%
Others 33,2% 31,6% 30,0%
Source: author’s own elaboration based on TradeMap; * Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay
Ordering based on decreasing triennial average 2011-2013

It is worth noting that most part of our exports to India is

made up by fuels and lubricants, followed by minerals and certain
primary products. Our imports are also concentrated on fuels,
mineral and chemical products, followed by certain machinery
and textile products (Tables 3 and 4).

62
TABLE 3. BRAZILIAN EXPORTS – PRODUCTS EXPORTED TO INDIA (%)
Products 2005-2007 2008-2010 2011-2013
Mineral fuels, oils,
8,5% 26,9% 56,5%
distillation products, etc
Ores, slag and ash 16,1% 10,7% 9,7%
Sugars and sugar confectionery 8,5% 31,2% 8,9%
Animal, vegetable fats and oils,
16,3% 5,1% 6,5%
cleavage products, etc
Iron and steel 7,0% 6,6% 4,2%
Machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers, etc 8,4% 3,7% 2,3%
Aircraft, spacecraft, and parts thereof 7,9% 0,7% 1,9%
Source: author’s own elaboration based on TradeMap; * Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay,
Ordering based on decreasing triennial average 2011-2013

TABLE 4. BRAZILIAN IMPORTS – PRODUCTS IMPORTED FROM INDIA (%)

Products 2005-2007 2008-2010 2011-2012*
Mineral fuels, oils, distillation
52,2% 47,9% 55,7%
products, etc
Organic chemicals 9,0% 6,0% 5,4%
Machinery, nuclear reactors,
3,7% 6,0% 4,5%
boilers, etc
Miscellaneous chemical products 3,3% 3,2% 4,0%
Man made filaments 4,0% 5,1% 3,8%
Electrical, electronic equipment 2,7% 2,3% 2,6%
Vehicles other than railway, tramway 0,9% 2,7% 2,4%
Others 24,2% 26,9% 21,6%
Source: author’s own elaboration based on TradeMap; * No data for 2013
Ordering based on decreasing triennial average 2011-2012

63
 As refers to the trade flow from India to Brazil, there is also
a perceived focus on Europe and the United States’ destination
and originating markets, also with emphasis to the Arab
Emirates, stimulated by regional proximity (Tables 5 and 6).
Among the products exported by India to Brazil, as seen above,
there is a high concentration on oil derivatives and chemical
products (around 66% of the total – Table 4), in addition to
certain equipment and middle products for the textile and
clothing sectors.
In other words, the volume of trade between these countries
has little significance and diversification if we consider the
potential for growth, given the size of their economies.

TABLE 5. INDIAN EXPORTS – DESTINATION COUNTRIES (%)

Countries 2005-2007 2008-2010 2011-2012*
UE-27 21,8% 20,2% 17,5%
United Arab Emirates 9,3% 12,4% 12,4%
USA 15,1% 11,1% 11,9%
China 6,7% 6,5% 5,3%
Singapore 4,9% 4,3% 4,9%
Hong Kong 4,0% 4,0% 4,1%
Brazil 1,2% 1,5% 2,0%
Others 37,0% 39,9% 42,0%
Source: author’s own elaboration based on TradeMap; * No data for 2013
Ordering based on decreasing triennial average 2011-2012

64
TABLE 6. INDIAN IMPORTS – ORIGINATING COUNTRIES (%)
Countries 2005-2007 2008-2010 2011-2012*
EU-27 15,8% 13,4% 11,5%
China 9,4% 11,1% 11,5%
United Arab Emirates 4,5% 7,5% 7,7%
Saudi Arabia 5,4% 6,2% 6,4%
Switzerland 4,8% 4,9% 6,3%
USA 6,3% 6,4% 4,9%
Iraq 1,8% 2,4% 3,9%
Brazil 0,5% 0,8% 1,0%
Others 51,6% 47,3% 46,8%
Source: author’s own elaboration based on TradeMap; * No data for 2013
Ordering based on decreasing triennial average 2011-2012

As mentioned previously, the Mercosul-India agreement is

the only ongoing agreement negotiated by Brazil among the BRICS
countries. It reflects one of the recent trends in Brazilian commercial
policy, i.e., economic and political strengthening of dialogue among
developing countries, the so-called “South-South dialogue”. The
negotiated agreement constitutes an instrument for exchange of fixed
trade preferences, applied to a limited amount of products, without
any indication of strengthening of the negotiated trade liberalization.
Three preference levels were established, from 10%, 20% and 100%.
Although the agreement text mentions it is the first stage of a
developing project towards a free-commerce zone, in fact there is no
indication of commitment or goals in this respect.
Both countries maintain a trade policy with relatively high
import tariffs and the political economy explains the trend
favoring local production in both countries, which has not allowed

65
considerable improvements of any liberalization initiative. As
we have seen, neither one of the two countries is among their
respective main trade partners, a position reserved to developed
countries (USA and EU) and China. As the data in Tables 8 and 9
indicate, the commitment for liberalization by both countries has
been modest, with most part of the effort being concentrated on
less significant tariff reductions. It is noteworthy that India has
not consolidated the bulk of its import tariffs at the WTO, which
implies it is free to go back on the trade liberalization process – in
this aspect, the negotiation of a preferential agreement guarantees,
at least, the granted preferences.
As refers to India’s offer to the Mercosul, a complete preferential
liberalization (i.e., preference margins to Mercosul of 100%) was
granted to less than 5% of the negotiated products, and low preferences
were granted to around 90% of the total negotiated products, which
accounted for almost all export volume for Mercosul in 2002/2003
(period when the Agreement was negotiated). According to CNI
evaluation41, this reduced liberalization was implemented for
products whose current import tariffs were very high, as is the case
of crude soy oil, silk, pumps for liquids and medical and veterinary
instruments. It is worth highlighting that among the products to
which a complete liberalization was offered, there are electronic
products on which India already applies a zero tariff, as the country
has adhered to the WTO Information Technology Agreement – in
other words, no preferential concession was offered to the Mercosul
in trade practices. Obviously, such result seriously restricts the
agreement’s capacity to accelerate the Mercosul or Brazil’s exports to
the Indian market.

41. CONFEDERAÇÃO NACIONAL DA INDÚSTRIA – CNI, op. cit.

66
TABLE 8. INDIA’S OFFER

Preference Margin (%) Number of items Average tariff

10 93 90,94

20 336 37,04

100 21 3,13

Total 450 -
Source: author’s own elaboration based on MDIC; CNI (Comércio Exterior em
Perspectiva, 2005)

TABLE 9. BRAZIL’S OFFER (MERCOSUL)

Preference margin (%) Number of items CET* Average

10 394 5,27
20 45 7,50
100 13 0,00
Total 452 -
Source: author’s own elaboration based on MDIC; *Common External Tariff
(Comércio Exterior em Perspectiva, 2005)

The preferential access to export markets offered by the Mercosul

to India was not distinct: a mere liberalization of 100% in less than
3% of the negotiated products, the great majority of which had only
10% for products that, in Brazil’s case, would have a great potential for
intraindustrial trade growth with India: organic chemical products,
machinery and mechanical tools, as well as fuels and mineral oils.
It is also worth mentioning that the Agreement included
a safeguard clause, based on the WTO Safeguard Agreement,
which allows signatory countries to go back on the negotiated

67
liberalization process in the circumstances foreseen in the clause.
Among them, withdrawal is foreseen in cases of surge of imports,
which could mean the invalidation of the very essence of the
agreed liberalization.
The limited nature of the scope of the bilateral negotiation is
striking, if we consider the general pattern that applies to tariff policies
in both Brazil and India. As can be seen in Tables 10, 11 and 12 below,
in both countries the average trade protection levels are considerably
high. Given that in both Brazil and India the gap between the import
tariff levels applied and consolidated at the WTO is still considerably
high, it is expected that the negotiated preferences, though still
reduced, can offer some bilateral guarantee that the tariffs on
negotiated products will not be raised again, and that the preferences
obtained will be enough for maintaining preferential trade between
the countries. It is worth stressing that there seems to be a significant
intraindustrial trade potential between the Indian and the Brazilian
economies, particularly in the manufactured products sector, even
though, as previously mentioned, the trade protection policy thwarts
this potential.

TABLE 10. INDIA’S IMPORT TARIFFS

Agricultural Non-Agricultural
Indicator Years Total
products products

Aggregated average tariff 48,6 113,1 34,5

Applied MFN average tariff 2012 13,7 33,5 10,4
Weighted average tariff 2011 7,7 48,4 6,1
Imports (in US$ billion) 2011 476,5 17,7 458,8
Source: World Tariff Profiles (WTO, 2013)

68
TABLE 11. BRAZIL’S IMPORT TARIFFS

Agricultural Non-Agricultural
Indicator Years Total
products products

Aggregated average tariff 31,4 35,4 30,8

Applied MFN average
2012 13,5 10,1 14,1
tariff
Weighted average tariff 2011 10,2 12,0 10,1
Imports (in US$ billion) 2011 224,0 10,9 213,1
Source: World Tariff Profiles (WTO, 2013)

69
70
TABLE 12. BRAZIL’S AND INDIA’S MNF* IMPORT TARIFFS (2012)
             
Frequency
Tariff lines and import values (in %)
distribution

Duty-free 0 <= 5 5 <= 10 10 <= 15 15 <= 25 25 <= 50 50 <= 100 > 100

B I B I B I B I B I B I B I B I

Agricultural
7,8 5,3 6,5 3,3 57,2 2,5 13,8 4,6 13,3 4,4 1,3 68,9 0,1 8,7 0 2,2
products

Non-
agricultural 5,6 2,6 14,3 11,5 12,8 75,9 27,5 1,1 25,7 2,1 14,0 6,1 0 0,6 0 0,1
products

Source: World Tariff Profiles (WTO, 2013).MFN Tariffs are non-preferential tariffs applied to all commercial partners4. Final considerations
 As we know, as a coalition, the BRICS have sought to increasingly
make themselves listened to and have aimed to achieve a greater
representation at the multilateral forums. However, such common
goals mask deep divergences in the economic agenda, particularly,
the bilateral one. Brazil and India converge at the WTO level, for
example, as regards to positions that aim at preserving policy space
for the adoption of trade protection policies and subsidies to domestic
manufacture production. On the other hand, in the agricultural
sector, they have opposing interests, as India aims to protect its
domestic production as opposed to Brazil’s exporting interest. On the
other hand, in the service sector, India takes an offensive position with
respect to service trade liberalization, and faces Brazil’s reluctance,
which has greater interest in securing its commercial presence in the
region, unlike India, for which it is precisely its smallest interest.
However, defensive positions from an economic perspective often imply
missing an opportunity to strengthening bilateral trade relations, which really
result in effective gains that extrapolate general multilateral aspirations. The
strengthening of cooperation between Brazil and India necessarily involves
a debate of the possible ways in which to make a greater liberalization of
the trade between both countries. The crucial issue is knowing whether, as
an opposition to these obstacles, there emerge in both countries interests
and actors who consider more ambitious trade agreements and regulatory
framework convergence significant potential benefits from an economic
perspective. Agreements are negotiated if each country’s economic policy, in
a given historical moment, allows “domestic agreements” between defensive
and offensive interests for greater trade integration.

*Researcher and Coordinator at the Núcleo de Desenvolvimento, Comércio,

Finanças e Investimento do BPC- Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas-BRICS,
PUC, Instituto de Relações Internacionais, RJ.

71
Prospects for academic interaction
between Brazil and India
Edgard Leite*

The internationalization of higher education has been understood

as an academic action of crucial importance in an increasingly
integrated or globalized world, from an economic or cultural
perspective. According to Lutjen-Lub, it is defined as a “systematic
effort aimed at making higher education more responsive to the
requirements and challenges related to the globalization of societies,
economy and global markets” (Lujten-Lub: 34).
As Neal Holly puts it, “international departments are among the
fastest growing institutions in universities” (Holly: 109). There have
been strong pressures on international cooperation departments, and a
great deal of the academic efforts in Europe and in the United States is
intended to give continuity to similar demands in an efficient manner.
In Europe, an important landmark was the “Bologne Declaration”
in 1999, which established specific theoretical and methodological
parameters for the internationalization process of higher education
in the European Community. As a matter of fact, it is considered
to be of great strategic relevance (Lujten-Lub: 41). Such conceptual
presuppositions have enjoyed global development and acceptance.
Universities worldwide have been following this trend of increasing
internationalization, which responds, above all, to realities not
previously theorized, but rather spontaneous, which ultimately bridge
the gap between different countries, both near and distant, as well as
economic zones.
Such approximation has been the cause of problems that call for
a global theoretical approach, mainly in issues involving university

72
teaching, research and extension processes within an internationalized
society, as well as their role in the internationalization movement itself.
At least three great processes can be identified, which
directly affect universities: the first is the mobility associated to
the globalization process, involving both students and teachers.
The second refers to the growing collaboration in research and
education among higher education institutions. Finally, the third
is the strong tendency for the development of higher education in a
transnational scale, i.e., in which educational activities travel from
one country to the other. This last movement is equally related
to “education markets liberalization” initiatives foreseen by the
World Commerce Organization and the GATT (Lujten-Lub: 9).
Such problems must be faced by university managers in Brazil, an
emerging economy that has legitimate aspirations to play a more
influential role in the international scenario, and which is also
involved, in varying degrees, in this process, both from a national
and university perspective.
De Wit distinguishes between two basic strategies in this field,
which are to be developed by universities: organizational strategies,
i.e., those focused on issues involving “governance, operations,
support and human resources services”, which include “an active
involvement by university personnel and organizations and support
for international agreements and sabbatical projects” (Lutjen-Lub: 44)
(De Witt, 1995), as well as program strategies, such as those aimed at
interchange programs, joined development projects or international
events (Idem).
In Brazilian universities both strategies have been developed in
a more or less efficient manner. They seek, according to academic
peculiarities and demands, to eventually accomplish them both ad
hoc and systematically, or developing them from a marginal and, in

73
some circumstances, central perspective (Davies: 16) (Lutjen-Lub:
44). Anyway, there has been growing support to these activities by
CAPES and CNPQ in the last decades (Laus and Morosini, 2005: 159)
and distinct institutions have been developing policies in this field.

Internationalization actions must take into account OECD

recommendations in this respect (OECD: 221+), which translate
into four great crucial political goals: first, mutual, intercultural and
international understanding, that is, the establishment of a deep
association between cultures and the strengthening of links among
countries, both by means of activities focused on student mobilization
programs and other academic partners, as well as efficient policies for
specific assistance in the area. This shall give rise to the strengthening
of mutual relations and, mainly, the creation of mutual opportunities.
A second goal is the attraction of qualified workers who can
“become qualified immigrants in the recipient country” and “stimulate
competitiveness in the higher education system, both considered to be
crucial for the economic development in a knowledge economy (OECD:
223). Such perspective obviously takes into account the context of high
competitiveness in the world’s higher education, before which Brazil
faces great barriers to participate, due to a series of economic, cultural
and legal difficulties that thwart the necessary absorption of foreign
qualified workers. Such goal is of crucial importance when it comes to
North-South relations, with mutual advantages for both sides. If we take
into account the South-South relationship, however, we also deal with
work markets which we can think of in a similar way. Policies pertaining
to the import or export of qualified workers, which are part of policies
for international approximation conceived as strategically relevant, can
have a relevant meaning to both parties involved, in a way that opens up
new opportunities and perspectives for development.

74
 A third goal is to enable an increase of financial income generation
at universities. Obviously, in the Brazilian case, as the university system
participates in the internationalization process, most of which has a
public nature, the issue to be dealt with is similar to the prospects faced
by France or Scandinavian countries where there are impasses regarding
this topic (OECD: 229). It shall be observed that our student export
programs imply gains for many foreign institutions. It is clear that the
internationalization processes at any rate, even when not focused on
immediate gains, imply an increase of costs for recipient countries,
which somehow must be made up for. However, it can be defended
that since the State continues to give support to foreign students and
professors, it is given to understand that somehow they must generate
financial gains to society as a whole. This is obtained from a general
policy for improvement of qualification and knowledge applicability.
Thus, for us, the fourth goal is particularly relevant, “more relevant
in emerging economies” (OECD: 229), which is enabling a higher
capacity-building of local work force. This perspective undoubtedly
allows us to think in more objective terms of greater national demands
that can be met by means of internationalization policies. Unlike the
third objective, however, this fourth goal is better understood in terms
of long-term policies, which are given support at a national level and
involve different technical and professional perspectives that are
pertinent to the country’s development. It calls for long-term alliances
among countries and blocks, as well as consensus on joint integration
and development processes.

Why India? As Kemal Gürüz puts it, “India is currently the third
largest higher education system in the world, with many institutions
with impeccable credentials” (Gürüz: 218). And, though India is not a
priority destination for international students, with reception rates

75
kept stable throughout the last decades, this does not mean it will
not become one in the near future. This is due, in a large extent,
to the high quality of its workforce. We shall note that India has
an active and growing flow of students to foreign countries. It is,
in fact, a historic movement, which is crucial for Indian academic
identity and dates back to the 19th century. Between 1995 and 2004,
the number of Indian students in foreign universities increased from
3.190 to 123.559 per year (Gürüz: 217) and it keeps growing. India,
together with China, responds to one-fifth of international students
in the world.
If we take into account the fact that such flow occurs mainly, in
order of preference, to the United States (in which Indians make up
the largest contingent of foreign students (Gürütz: 173), Australia,
the United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand and Canada, we can
conclude that Indian university students’ professional qualification
level is in keeping up with the standards of their country of choice,
which occupy the top positions in the world university quality rank
(Gürüz: 217). Moreover, India counts on a highly developed technical
education sector (OECD (b): 44). From the perspective of scientific
production, India had in 2004 a total of 2.1% of the articles published
in the world (at that time, Brazil had 1,4% of all scientific articles
published in the world) (OECD (b): 41). Thus, one can find in India
high quality professional expertise of international level in a society
that faces social dynamics and strategic challenges similar to those
faced in our country (Leite, 2012).
In 2003, when a mixed Brazil-India committee met in New
Dehli, several issues related to education were discussed, especially
those referring to higher education and, from that moment on, in
several multilateral forums (IBAS, BRICS, BASIC, G-4 and G-20),
Brazil stressed the need of a “Strategic Brazil-India Partnership”. Such

76
positioning has given rise to a series of agreements and understandings
in the higher education and scientific cooperation areas. Thus, we
shall consider that university internationalization towards India,
among other destinations abroad where several academic interests
flow, is one of Brazilian society’s needs, and is justified both in terms
of academic interests and national strategic goals.

From a perspective of mutual and intercultural understanding,

there is already a resolution in terms of integration with both India
and other BRICS countries in a network of intellectual mobility that
favors the creation of joint opportunities. The creation of “intercultural
competences” is one of the underlying goals of internationalization
of higher education, and India in particular is, as Ranjini Manian
and Shobba Naidu well put it, a country shaped by plurality and
interculturality: “the average Indian can have many simultaneous
identities” and is equipped with competences to coexist with them
“not only in a peaceful but in a productive manner as well” (Deardoff:
239). For a society like the Brazilian one, which is relatively isolated
in linguistic terms, India presents a significant space for the growth of
a fundamental competence for a modern development of University,
i.e., intercultural competence. In this respect, it must be noted that
the main problem involving this specific movement towards the
internationalization process is the linguistic barrier.
It is common knowledge that “English has become a central
element of the global knowledge system” and, as such, it has
become the university lingua franca by excellence (OECD(b):
34). The mastering of English is a crucial aspect of the process of
internationalization of higher education. In this aspect, India has
evident competitive edges as compared to Brazil, since English is one
of its national languages. Such reality allows Indian students to have

77
access to the main universities and participate in the international
academic dialogue.
The problems that Brazil faces in the area are well-known. They
are rooted in the chronic and historical weakness of the Brazilian
system of education. We shall note that China, for instance, within
a period of few years from the 1980s, was capable to generalize the
use of English at universities and in several sectors involved with
internationalization (Maringe and Foskett: 239-243). The teaching
of English in Brazil is compulsory in the school system curriculum
but lacks, like other disciplines, a serious approach focused on a clear
goal related to the development of society. Moreover, the problem
in Brazil also lies in peculiarities pertaining to our international
interchange processes, which are marked by a historic tendency
to prioritize dialogue with Portugal. It is worth mentioning that
such problem also affects Portugal, whose permanent tendency in
formulating cooperation programs with other Portuguese-speaking
countries reduced the demand for programs in English language
and discouraged the need of professional inclination towards
English (Luijten-Lub: 123). For instance, the legislation involving
the Bologna protocol of 1999 was only promulgated in Portugal
in 2005 and 2006 (Luijten-Lub: 126). This in great part explains
our natural proximity to the State of Goa, in India, where we find
consistent cultural and historical links. And it explains why the
Brazilian government rightly excludes Portugal from the science
without borders program.
From a “mutual understanding” perspective, however, it is crucial
that internationalization activities in Brazil, mainly those directed
towards India, embrace a methodological perspective capable of
overcoming these difficulties, as well as creating consistent academic
demands towards English. The generalization of classes in English

78
with the help of specific tutorial methods is a precondition to the
success of our internationalization. The stimulus given to Hindi,
Urdu or Marathi study centers is important to improve the necessary
elements for the accomplishment of such goals.

In relation to our demands for qualified workforce, we shall

initially take into consideration the fact that fertility rates in Brazil
are below reposition level, that is, it reached for the first time in
the history of the country the 1,90% rate in 2010 (IBGE). This is a
generalized phenomenon in different social sectors and regions, and
has an influence over the future of the age pyramid in Brazil. If we take
into account the fact that the system of education presents significant
inefficiencies that place widely known barriers to the increase of
productivity and improvement of qualification in general, which in
turn are necessary movements to face the challenges posed by age
imbalances in the future, the import of qualified workforce can be one
of the goals of the internationalization processes.
The nature of the process of attraction of workforce via
internationalization of higher education, as conceived by the OECD,
has an evident South-North trend, and is modulated by great
economic inequalities that favor the North – which is an employer
by excellence. However, the South-South demands are real and,
in the Indian case, they can allow the internationalization system
to articulate in a consistent way a similar goal: the attraction of
workforce that can contribute to the increase of national wealth.
The greater obstacle posed by the language can be overcome in a
twofold manner, i.e., by the previously mentioned insistence on
the dissemination of English and through Portuguese teaching
policies, both here and in India, for foreigners and applicants to
study programs abroad. We must take into consideration Brazil’s

79
great potential economic importance and its future, and, although
Portuguese is a less relevant language in terms of number of speakers
than Hindi or Urdu, the possibilities for development in the country
can justify a similar investment.
The perception of such movement is in general necessary and
can be attested by the Normative Resolution N. 104 of 16th may
2013 of the National Immigration Council, which flexibilized the
existing procedures for the hiring of foreign professionals. However,
the perspective that the internationalization of the system of higher
education can open a path to internal demand creates an identity
between our goals and the goals set by central countries. It is
unnecessary to say, however, that the potential instability or eventual
stagnation of Latin-American economies, and of Brazilian in particular,
always served as a discouragement to external migratory flows, which
means that the internalization system, as a national strategic project of
expansion, must serve, above all, to permanently feed the productivity
of Brazilian economy and, thus, allow the necessary conditions to any
efficient import policy of qualified workforce.
Thus, OECD has reason to defend that the third goal, or, in other
words, internationalization as a means to raise funds for universities,
is less relevant for emerging countries that the fourth, i.e., qualification
of local workforce. We shall not forget to consider that the imprecise
profile of private universities transfers to the Brazilian State a crucial role
in the funding of the process. The improvement of the competences by
means of a process of academic exchanges is one of the driving forces
of the general improvement of the quality and the technical profile of
professionals. In the specific cases of Brazil and India, the cost-benefit
relationship of the strengthening of links with Indian universities,
especially the top ones, is superior to the strengthening of links with
the great universities of central countries. Even though they cannot

80
fully replace them in the role of great horizons of excellence played
by European and North-American universities, universities and other
Indian educational centers, notably the high technology ones, can
play an important role in the improvement of our professional level.
Brazilian Federal Government Scholarship Program Science
without Borders is an out-standing attempt at implementing a process
of internationalization of higher education with official support.
However, so far, it has presented bleak statistics with respect to India.
Since its launching in 2011, the Program has granted (December 2013)
a total of 22.646 scholarships in several categories. The United States
were the destination of 5.027 students, followed by Portugal, with
2.935, France, 2.692, Spain, 2.464, Canada, 2.245, The United Kingdom,
1.939 and Germany, 1.753 (Science without Borders, statistics and
indicators). India, however, received only five scholarships (only three
still going) at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, at Jawarhal
Nehru University and at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
Thus, the need to implement relations in this area is evident.

Internationalization is related, as Luitjen-Lub puts it, to “globalization

of societies, economy and labor markets”, but, also, to key demands for
the improvement of both professional skills and knowledge production
spaces. The strengthening of links between universities of different
countries also strengthens capacities and allows problematization of
topics and opening to innovative solutions. The great centers of knowledge
production located in the North hemisphere never ceased to acknowledge
the importance of cultural plurality as one of the necessary requirements
for knowledge production. Paige and Goode called the attention to the
fact that the capacities related to this experience include the development
of skills related to “learning, observation, evaluation, interpretation and
reporting”. These include attitudes such as respect (which derives from

81
the attitude of appreciating the value of other cultures), opening (that
comes from the breaking up of prejudices) and curiosity and discovery
(deriving from tolerance before ambiguity and uncertainty) (Paige and
Goode: 338). Such experiences play an important pedagogical role in
professional qualification and are valid both for the practical exercise of
the profession and the implicit creativity in university experience.
It is understandable that our western tradition naturally pushes
us to the learning in Portugal, Spain, other European countries
and the USA, for there are many historical and cultural bonds that
link us to these centers of the North Hemisphere. However, the
internationalization process must be characterized, as it really is
in central countries, not only in terms of reinforcing the unknown
but the experience in plurality as well. The making of an innovative
university policy must focus on the opening of the South-South links,
especially towards India, a country that is, at one time, an equal,
emerging, distinct, and great civilization, full of history and values,
and a country that counts on an advanced academic community,
which is fully integrated in the contemporary world, with whom we
can learn a lot and share our common goals of economic, material and
human development.

*Coordinator of the Indian Studies Program at Universidade

do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Associate Professor at Universidade do
Estado do Rio de Janeiro and Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio
de Janeiro. Member of the Academia Brasileira de Filosofia

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- LEITE, Edgard (2012).Brazil-India University Interchange in FRPC Journal,
New Delhi.
- LUIJTEN-LUB, Anneke (2007). Choices in Internationalization. Enschede:
CHEPS.
- MARINGE, Felix and FOSKETT, Nicke (2010). Globalization and
Internationalization in Higher Education: Theoretical, Strategic and
Management Perspectives. London: Continuum.
- OECD (2004). Internationalisation and Trade in Higher Education,
Opportunities and Challenges. OECD.

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- OECD (B) (2008). Higher Education to 2030, Volume 2:
Globalisation. OECD.
- PAIGE, Michael and GOODE, Matthew (2009). International
Education Professionals and the Development of Intercultural
Competence in DEARDORFF, Darla K. (ed.) The SAGE Handbook of
Intercultural Competence. Los Angeles: Sage.
- WIT, H. d. (ed.) (1995). Strategies for internationalisation of higher
education: a comparative study of Australia, Canada, Europe and the
United States of America. Amsterdam: European Association for
International Education.

84
Visões sobre a História de Goa: perspectivas
e fontes sobre as transformações culturais
nos séculos XVI e XVIII
Patricia Souza de Faria*

Este ensaio pretende discutir algumas visões sobre a História

de Goa, mais precisamente sobre os diferentes modos de conceber
os processos político-culturais que se desenvolveram nesta região
da Índia, no contexto da presença portuguesa (entre os séculos XVI
e XVIII). Inicialmente, abordam-se dois eixos interpretativos que
marcaram as reflexões sobre a história goesa (a perspectiva da “Goa
Dourada” e a noção de “Goa Índica”), seus pressupostos, a natureza de
fontes utilizadas e seus limites respectivos.
Após apresentar estas duas perspectivas historiográficas, analisam-
se narrativas coetâneas à colonização portuguesa que apresentaram
versões peculiares sobre a história de Goa e que sugerem os complexos
cruzamentos culturais que caracterizaram o passado goês, mas que
foram parcialmente escamoteados pelos dois eixos interpretativos
supracitados – por enfatizarem exclusivamente o legado cultural
português ou apenas os vínculos com as tradições indianas.
Acerca das narrativas coetâneas analisadas, são fontes literárias
redigidas na Índia, de modo que o primeiro conjunto de textos é formado
por textos hindus que circularam em Goa, nos séculos XVI e XVII,
que apresentam tradições em torno da ocupação das terras goesas.42

42. Cita-se o Sahyadrikhanda (do Skanda Purana), cujos textos foram compilados anteriormente
(entre 500 e 1500); além de versões goesas do Ramayana e do Mahabharata que circulavam e
foram copiadas por missionários católicos nos séculos XVI e XVII. MITRAGOTRI, V. R.. A
social-cultural history of Goa. Goa: Instituto Meneses Bragança, 1999, p. 21; GOMES, Olivinho
J.F. Old Konkani Language and Literature. Chandor: Konkani Sorospot Prakashan, 1999.

85
O segundo gênero narrativo consiste em um tratado elaborado por
um padre nascido em Goa e impresso no início do século XVIII, que
apresenta uma versão sobre a história da Índia, com considerações
sobre a migração de povos, o estatuto das castas, as genealogias políticas
e a ascensão e queda de impérios.43 Na escrita deste padre emerge uma
narrativa peculiar sobre a História de Goa, em que confluem tradições
culturais de origem indiana e as transmutações que estas memórias
sofreram44, em função do impacto da presença portuguesa e do
catolicismo na região.

GOA DOURADA E GOA ÍNDICA

As visões sobre a história de Goa são múltiplas, mas podemos

considerar especialmente duas posturas, uma das quais excessivamente
lusocêntrica e apoiada na construção da imagem da “Goa Dourada”,
ao passo que a outra destaca a insignificância (temporal e cultural) do
impacto da presença portuguesa na região, em decorrência da longa
história de Goa, inserida na milenar história da Índia.45
A perspectiva de Goa Dourada acentuou o peso da herança
cultural católica e portuguesa sobre as populações locais. Esta postura
esteve em consonância com a ideologia que sustentou a manutenção do
império português, de modo que Goa foi representada como a “Roma
do Oriente”, um enclave católico em meio a poderes hindus e islâmicos
estabelecidos no Índico. Nesse sentido, as fontes documentais exploradas

43. Trata-se da obra: PAES, Leonardo. Promptuário das diffinições Indicas deduzidas de vários
chronistas da Índia, graves authores, e das histórias gentílicas. Lisboa: Antonio Pedro Galram, 1713.
44. Sobre a mobilidade de categorias e sistemas cultuais: GREENBLATT, S. Cultural Mobility.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
45. HENN, Alexander. The becoming of Goa: space and culture in the emergence of a multicultural
lifeworld. Lustopie, 6, 2000, p.33-339; TRICHUR, Raghuraman. Politics of Goan Historiography.
Lusotopie, 6, 2000, p. 637-646.

86
eram principalmente as de origem portuguesa, interpretadas de modo
triunfalista, com o intuito de demonstrar o avanço da cristandade
e o consequente desmantelamento de crenças e práticas culturais
preexistentes que não fossem católicas. Esta perspectiva transformou
Goa em uma entidade político-cultural “duplamente exótica”, por
afastá-la do restante da Índia e não integrá-la à tradição europeia.46
Em contraste, pesquisadores desenvolveram uma perspectiva que
foi designada como “Goa Índica”, por inserir Goa na história de regiões
vizinhas da Índia .47 Nesse sentido, narra-se a história de Goa a partir de
sua inserção em uma cronologia mais ampla, composta pelos processos
históricos tradicionalmente associados à história indiana (como as eras
pré-ariana, Maurya, Chalukya, Kadamba, a influência do império de
Vijayanagar). 48 A fim de desvelar os vínculos entre Goa e o passado
indiano, autores recorreram à arqueologia, à análise de inscrições (em
pedra, em cobre), aos textos hindus e a estudos linguísticos. 49 Portanto,
valorizam o uso de fontes indianas, em detrimento das fontes europeias.
Uma das possíveis consequências dessa perspectiva consiste em
minimizar as reverberações da colonização portuguesa sobre a história
de Goa.
O cotejo das duas perspectivas levou Trichur a considerar que o
estudo da História de Goa exige um aprofundamento das ferramentas
teóricas e metodológicas usadas, a fim de escaparmos de visões
redutoras. O autor argumenta que não basta substituir uma escrita
da história lusocêntrica – baseada exclusivamente em documentação

46. SUBRAHMANYAM, S. O romântico, o oriental e o exótico: notas sobre os portugueses em

Goa. In: PEREZ, Rosa (org.). Histórias de Goa. Lisboa: MNE, 1997, p.29-43.
47. HENN, op.cit.,p. 337.
48. KAMAT, Nandakumar. Cultural relations of Goa with Gujarat. In: SOUZA, T.. Essays in
Goan History. New Delhi: Concept Publishing, 2002 (2ª ed), p. 1-16.
49. MORAES, Georges. Kadamba Kula. Bombay: B.X. Furtado and Sons, 1931, p. XVII-XXIII;
MITRAGOTRI, op.cit., p. 16-19.

87
de origem europeia – por uma orientação que adote apenas fontes
indianas, como se estas últimas representassem o único repositório
de autenticidade, por meio das quais seria possível ter acesso à
“verdadeira história” de Goa.50 Analogamente, são fundamentais as
considerações de Subrahmanyam, autor que rejeita peremptoriamente
as perspectivas historiográficas eurocêntricas, mas recusa uma
postura passiva e ingênua diante de fontes documentais de qualquer
natureza, inclusive as de origem asiática, por ser esta uma exigência
metodológica imposta ao historiador da Ásia Moderna.51
A despeito das duas posições polarizadas (de adeptos da “Goa
Dourada” e da “Goa Índica”), posturas intermediárias foram adotadas
por católicos goeses que consideram a relevância do passado hindu de
Goa (como Gerson da Cunha) ou por estudiosos hindus, que trouxeram
contributos para os estudos sobre a presença portuguesa ou sobre o
impacto do catolicismo na região (como Pissurlencar e Priolkar).52
Nas últimas décadas, em Goa, desenvolveu-se a intensa preocupação
com a história goesa anterior e posterior à presença portuguesa, em
busca da recuperação de sua “indianidade” e da promoção da língua
nativa, o concani.53 Outrossim, a partir da década de 1990, estudiosos
da Índia e da Europa têm analisado fontes diversificadas (de origens
portuguesa e indiana). Mas, de acordo com Sardo, ainda se deparam
com os desafios de enfrentar ora posturas saudosistas – que reforçam
a proximidade entre Goa e Portugal, por meio da lusitanização da
sociedade goesa – ora por tendências anticoloniais, que ocultam os
cruzamentos culturais produzidos durante a colonização, a fim de

50. TRICHUR, op.cit., p.643),

51. SUBRAHAMANYAM, Sanjay. Perspectivas indianas sobre a presença portuguesa na
Ásia, 1500-1700. In: Histórias Conectadas no séculos XVI e XVII. Lisboa: ICS, p.33-64.
52. HENN, op.cit., 2000.
53. SARDO, Susana. Guerras de Jasmim e mogarim. Lisboa: Leya, 2011, p. 283-284.

88
reduzir a importância de tais cruzamentos ao reativar (e reinventar)
outros que permitam reintegrar a história de Goa na história da Índia.54

AS ORIGENS MÍTICAS DE GOA EM FONTES LITERÁRIAS NATIVAS

A partir das questões anunciadas (sobre a seleção de fontes para

a interpretação da História de Goa e das perspectivas que sustentam
esta interpretação), pretende-se demonstrar como fontes literárias
produzidas na Índia que circularam em Goa rementem a visões
peculiares sobre o passado local. Tais fontes, apesar de terem sido
produzidas na Índia (e, em alguns casos, em Goa), não deixaram
evidentemente de fabricar uma visão sobre a história local altamente
comprometida com determinado grupo, com seus imaginários
políticos e sociais. Nesse sentido, recuperamos as considerações
de Trichur e Subrahmanyam sobre os cuidados metodológicos
direcionados à análise de qualquer fonte documental, independente
de sua procedência (tanto as produzidas por agentes portugueses
comprometidos com a manutenção do império quanto por populações
indianas, com suas expectativas de reconhecimento social).
A primeira das fontes literárias a ser tratada consiste em versões
goesas de tradições hindus, dotadas de forte inspiração bramânica.
Podemos considerar que várias versões antigas sobre as origens das
sociedades indianas, suas crenças e ritos experimentaram um grau
significativo de circulação na “Goa Portuguesa” do século XVI, pois
foram alvo de constate atividade persecutória movida por autoridades

54. SARDO, op.cit., p. 283-284. Sobre a recente sobre produção sobre Goa: LOPES, M. Goa
Setecentista. Lisboa: CEPCEP/UCP, 1999; MENDONÇA, Delio de. Conversions and citizenry.
New Delhi: Concep Pub., 2002; SOUZA, T. Goa Medieval. Lisboa: Editorial Estampa, 1994;
TAVARES, Célia. Jesuítas e inquisidores em Goa. Lisboa: Roma Editora, 2004; XAVIER, Ângela.
A invenção de Goa. Lisboa: ICS, 2008.

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civis e eclesiásticas portuguesas – 55 além de terem sido recolhidas e
lidas por missionários, com o apoio de intérpretes nativos.56
O segundo gênero literário a ser abordado consiste em um tratado
redigido, no início do século XVIII, por um padre nascido em Goa,
que refuta a versão bramânica sobre o passado de Goa (e da Índia,
de forma mais geral). Confronta-se, portanto, com as versões goesas
das tradições bramanocêntricas supracitadas, mas o contato que este
padre teve com tais versões nativas ocorreu por mediação de grupos
cristianizados de Goa. Este padre postulou uma leitura alternativa do
passado goês inspirada em tradições cristãs, em que é atribuída uma
posição dignificante a sua própria linhagem nativa: a de famílias que
se identificavam como kshatryas cristãos (ou chardós de Goa).
O primeiro conjunto de fontes literárias a ser discutido consiste
em versões locais de textos épicos hindus – como o Ramayana e o
Mahabharata – redigidas em prosa, na língua concani. Há a indicação de
que algumas das versões 57 foram encontradas no Seminário de Rachol
(em Salsete). Os textos foram redigidos em caracteres romanos, com
sinais diacríticos e adotam um sistema de transliteração que corresponde
ao usado em vocabulários em concani, feitos por missionários nos
séculos XVI e XVII. Tais textos sugerem os cruzamentos culturais
que se processaram no bojo da colonização portuguesa, pois, segundo
Pissurlencar, o concani era usado oralmente e só passou ao registro
escrito em função da atividade missionária na região.58 Enquanto

55. WICKI, J. Documenta Indica. Roma: MHSI, 1948 v.1, doc.50, p.328-329; RUBIÉS, J. Travel and
Ethnology in the Renaissance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000; PISSURLENCAR, P.
A propósito dos primeiros livros maratas. Boletim do Instituto Vasco da Gama, 1956, 73, p. 55-79.
56. FARIA, Patricia S. de. A conquista das almas do Oriente. Rio de Janeiro: 7 Letras, 2013.
57. Arquivo Distrital de Braga, códices 771 e 772.
58. “[...] não existe qualquer vestígio da existência de literatura concani anterior à conquista
de Goa pelos portugueses”, cf. PISSURLENCAR, Panduronga. Goa pré-portuguesa através
dos escritores lusitanos dos séculos XVI e XVII. Bastorá: Tipografia Rangel, 1962, 52.

90
Saradeesaya considera que não é possível afirmar se a versão original das
histórias supracitadas baseadas nos épicos hindus eram originalmente
escrita ou oral.59
Uma das versões (Códice 771) possui trinta e três histórias extraídas
especialmente do Mahabharata, enquanto o outra (Códice 772) reúne
dezesseis que se baseiam no Ramayana, com exceção de duas (inspiradas
no Mahabharata).60 Estas versões goesas revelam aspectos do cotidiano
local, como as convenções sociais, o tipo de equipamento usado em
guerras, um vocabulário próprio para designar a flora e a fauna de
Goa.61 Nesse sentido, tais versões goesas tornam-se fontes significativas
pois possuem um tipo de narrativa sobre a cultura e os povos locais, que
difere e complementa as fontes portuguesas (cartas, crônicas, relatórios)
e as europeias de um modo geral.
Tais textos apresentam uma versão de inspiração bramânica
sobre a origem de Goa e das famílias locais. Por exemplo, a história
do estabelecimento das aldeias foi narrada com base no mito de
Parashurama, sexto avatar de Visnhu, que no épico Mahabharata foi
expulso das terras de Narmadâ por membros da casta kshatrya, que
assassinaram o seu pai. Parashurama pretendeu vingar a morte de seu
progenitor e teria instituído uma nova ordem social, caracterizada pela
primazia da casta brâmane. Esta narrativa mítica adquiriu versões no
sul da Índia e, na vertente goesa, foi registrada no manuscrito Sahayadri
Khanda (parte do Skanda Purana).62
De acordo com a tradição, Parashurama lançou sete setas a
partir das montanhas Sayadri, que o permitiram conquistar a região

59. SARADESĀYA, Manohararāya. A history of Konkani literature: from 1500 to 1992. New
Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2000, p. 30
60. GOMES, op.cit., p.50-51; SARADESĀYA, op.cit.
61. GOMES, op.cit.
62. MITRAGOTRI, op.cit..

91
litorânea da Índia, inclusive a região de Goa. O centro da região
conquistada era a aldeia goesa de Benaulim, que etimologicamente
significa “aldeia da seta”. Na narrativa, Parashurama instalou
noventa e seis famílias em Goa, trinta das quais ocuparam a região
goesa de Tiswadi (etimologicamente significa trinta aldeias) e as
demais em Salsete (que significa sessenta e seis aldeias). O mito
propicia uma explicação para a divisão das aldeias goesas, atribui a
cada uma delas uma divindade protetora e associa a fundação das
aldeias à vontade divina.63
Estas narrativas também sugerem a dinâmica construção de
identidades na região de Goa, bem como as hierarquias e as disputas
por prestígio e vantagens econômicas entre diferentes grupos sociais.
Com efeito, no Sahayadri Khanda e no Konkannakhyana, os brâmanes
foram apresentados como os primeiros possuidores de terras em Goa,
por terem se estabelecido na região pelo próprio Parashurama.64
A fim de complementar a análise das informações sobre a
difusão do mito bramânico a respeito da instituição da vida social
em Goa, apresenta-se uma versão similar contida em outra fonte, o
manuscrito setecentista intitulado Notícia Sumária do gentilismo65
– um compêndio sobre “mitologia hindu”, dotado de texto e de
ilustrações. A Notícia Sumária também apresenta uma versão obre o
mito de Parashurama, que menciona o episódio de assassinato de seus
familiares e a sua migração para a região do Concão:

desceu Parisramo [Parashurama] de Indostão para

Concão [...] Parisramo foi para o Monte Cáucaso em

63. GOMES, op.cit., p.50-51; XAVIER, Ângela A invenção de Goa. 2003. Tese (doutorado em
História). IUE, Florença, 2003.; MITRAGOTRI, op. cit., p. 21.
64. PISSURLENCAR, Goa pré-portuguesa ..., op.cit., p. 35.
65. Atribui-se a Ananta Camotim Vaga (1752-1793). PEREZ, op.cit., p.71.

92
 Bengala [...], antiga existência dos brâmanes, e se intitulam
Parisramo Stapit, vem a dizer conservador pelo dito
Parisramo; e os conduziu de lá, entrou a povoar estas terras
de Concão, dando-lhe preceitos e documentos para viver.66

A narrativa da Notícia Sumária [Figura 1] trata da migração

de Parashurama para o Concão, bem como sanciona a entrada
dos brâmanes na região, já que o avatar de Visnhu ter-lhe-ia dado
“preceitos e documentos” para viver naquela localidade.
Logo, as narrativas citadas (versões goesas dos textos hindus e a Notícia
Sumária) constroem a ideia de primazia da casta brâmane. Contudo, a
repetição de versões míticas sobre o povoamento do Concão sugere que
os brâmanes lutaram pela afirmação de seu poder naquele espaço, ou
seja, precisavam reiterá-lo, pois sua hegemonia não era consensual – nem
entre as outras castas, nem entre os próprios grupos que se definiam como
brâmanes. Por exemplo, o Konkannakhyana67 afirma que os brâmanes
Sastticares eram autóctones, enquanto os brâmanes Sinais ter-se-iam
estabelecido em Goa apenas posteriormente. Assim, o argumento da
maior antiguidade em Goa era mobilizado contra os concorrentes.
O Sahyādri Khanda explica que existiam os cinco grupos de
brâmanes do norte (Sarasvat, Kanyakubja, Maithila, Gauda, Utkala) e
os cinco do sul (Gurjara, Maharashtra, Andhra, Karnataka, Dravida).68
A diversidade de grupos sociais e as disputas entre eles estimulou a
produção de versões sobre o passado local.

66. Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, C.I.2.8, Notícia Sumária do Gentilismo, capítulos 49 a 51.
67. Poema redigido em 1721, a partir de tradições dos brâmanes Sarasvat de Goa.
PISSURLENCAR, Goa pré-portuguesa ..., op.cit., p.29.
68. O’HANLON; MINKOWSKI. What makes people who they are? Pandit networks and
the problem of livelihoods in early modern Western India. Indian Economic Social History
Review, 45, 3, 2008, p. 381 – 416.

93
 Em Goa, formou-se uma “elite” letrada e cristianizada, formada
por padres nativos da casta brâmane e da chardó,69 que redigiram
textos em português, no bojo das contendas entre as castas. Tais
textos demonstram como tradições locais mesclaram-se com as visões
forjadas por cronistas portugueses e missionários, ao construir uma
versão goesa católica da história da Índia e dos grupos sociais de Goa.70

FIGURA 1. PARASHURAMA

Fonte: Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, C.I.2.8, Notícia Sumária do Gentilismo

Histórias da Índia na escrita de padres nascidos em Goa.

69. Consultar as importantes obras de: XAVIER, Ângela. A invenção de Goa. Lisboa: ICS, 2008 e ‘O
lustre de seu sangue’: bramanismo e tópicas de distinção no contexto português. Tempo, 15, 2011.
70. FRIAS, A. J. Aureola dos indios & nobiliarchia bracmana [1702]. Bombaim: P.A. Fialho,
1892; Biblioteca da Ajuda de Lisboa (BAL), Códice 49-II-9. David contra o Golias do
Bramanismo, de João da Cunha Jaques; PAES, op.cit.; Espelho de brâmanes (Mateus de
Castro); Tratado apologetico contra varias calumnias impostas pela malevolencia contra a
sua Nação Bracmana (Francisco do Rego) e Biographia Goana (Lucas de Lima).

94
 A leitura das obras redigidas por padres goeses demonstra a
dinâmica da vida goesa, em que o estatuto social desfrutado pelos
grupos – mesmo dos brâmanes – era passível de necessidade de
reafirmação. Profusos foram os textos elaborados por padres brâmanes
em busca do elogio de sua casta, como o Frias, que redigiu uma obra
com o intuito de exaltar os brâmanes.
Esta versão foi desqualificada pelo padre da casta chardó João da
Cunha Jaques, que considerou os brâmanes de baixa origem social,
associados a linhagens de pescadores, destituídos de um passado
caracterizado pela hegemonia política.71 Jaques postulou que os
chardós razaputros teriam sido os primeiros soberanos da Índia e por
isso eram herdeiros políticos do império mogol. Outrossim, Jaques
refuta a ideia da antiguidade dos brâmanes em Goa.72
Diferente do gênero epidíctico escolhido por Frias ou da escrita
polêmica de Jaques,73 o Promptuário das Definições Índicas, do padre
Leonardo Paes, enfatiza a dimensão da narrativa política, dos combates
na Índia, aos moldes dos Comentários, de Afonso de Albuquerque,
das Décadas da Ásia e da Ásia Portuguesa, de Manuel de Faria e Sousa.
O título da obra indica o objetivo da escrita, pois prontuário
significava: “Livro onde se acha promptamente a doutrina, que
delle queremos saber, prompta e aparelhada.”74 O autor justificou
sua escrita ao mencionar a prática de autores redigirem livros

71. FARIA, Patricia Souza de. Guerreros y sacerdotes: las castas en la escritura del clero nativo
de la India portuguesa (siglo XVIII). In: DE LA VEGA ; LAVOLPE. Diversidades. Asia Y Africa
en perspectiva desde América del Sur. Buenos Aires: Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. Universidade
Nacional de Lomas de Zamora, 2013.
72. BAL, Cód. 49-II-9, fl.5, “os Brâmanes não existiram nestas terras primeiros que os
charados, pois [...] são adventícios que vieram muito depois, do Monte Cáucaso, e praias de
Bengala sua primeira habitação”.
73. XAVIER, A. B. David contra Golias na Goa seiscentista e setecentista. Ler História, no. 49,
p. 107-114, 2005.
74. SILVA, A. M e. Diccionario da língua portugueza. Lisboa: Lacerdiana, 1789.

95
sobre a sua própria nobreza, como faziam os brâmanes, mas sem
provas. Por esta razão, Leonardo Paes teria redigido o Promptuário,
embasado em “graves autores”, para tratar da “Índia, & Reis antigos
dela, & dos que de presente reinam, & da gente que nela existe”.
O autor esperava que o livro se tornasse “um breve prontuário de
notícias aos meus naturais”.75
Leonardo Paes era chardó, nasceu na aldeia goesa de Gandaulim,
em 1662, foi vigário da Igreja de São Tomé de Goa e morreu em
1715.76 Apresentou-se como membro de uma família da realeza local,
descendente dos reis de Sirgapor (ou Sanguiçar), região governada por
antiquíssimos reis, “chamados Rajos do Oriente”, que eram senhores
também das terras de Pervaloy.
Paes tentou demonstrar – como Jaques – que os brâmanes não
desfrutavam de antiguidade na Índia, pois “esta nação é estrangeira”.77
Alega que, quando Alexandre (o Grande) partiu para o Oriente, os
brâmanes ainda viviam no Monte Cáucaso e não teriam recebido
autorização do conquistador para iniciar a migração. Portanto, Paes
tentou refutar as versões – como as tradições difundidas no Sahyadri
Khanda – em que os brâmanes teriam ocupado de forma precoce as
regiões do sul da Índia. Alega que as memórias não registraram a
migração deles para a Índia, por serem pessoas sem notoriedade, que
“entraram na Índia pobres, mendigando”.78
O padre tentou convencer o leitor de que as linhagens régias
da Índia estavam associadas aos “Régios Qhetris, chamados
vulgarmente Charodos”, aos “rajuputros”. As designações que usou
vinculam a sua casta ao exercício da dominação político-militar.

75. PAES, op.cit., Prólogo ao leitor.

76. BARSOSA, Diogo Machado. Bibliotheca lusitana .... Lisboa: Ignácio Rodrigues, 1752, t. III, p. 8.
77. PAES, op.cit, p.178.
78. BAL, Cod. 49-II-9, 207.

96
Com efeito, o termo quetri remete ao sânscrito kshatrya – ao nome
desta casta militar – que tomou a forma de khatri ou khetri (em
concani) e quetri ou qhatri (em português). Rajaputro significa “filho
do rei, príncipe”, expressão aplicada à casta militar do Guzarate,79 a
qual se presume descender dos kshatryas. Bluteau definiu rajaputro
como “uma casta, que na Índia se inclina à guerra. Todos os Reis
gentios dela são desta casta, mas ainda assim os Bragmanes a têm
por inferior”. 80
Tentou provar que o estabelecimento dos chardós no poder
coincidiu com a origem da própria história da Índia. Com este
intuito, produz uma narrativa baseada na visão de teólogos cristãos,
ao integrar a história da Índia à história do mundo, ao inseri-la na
grande narrativa da história da humanidade, unificada e carregada
de sentido, em função da Criação e da Redenção.81
A narrativa de Paes aborda a história da Índia, mas tenta conduzir
o leitor à mensagem evangélica, pois conclui sua obra com tratados
sobre a passagem de São Tomé e de São Francisco Xavier pela Índia.
Difunde a lenda da pregação do apóstolo São Tomé na Índia como
parte dos planos da Providência Divina para a humanidade, já que
Cristo teria ordenado a seus discípulos que se espalhassem pelo
mundo para pregar o Evangelho.82 No último tratado, a chegada
de Francisco Xavier junto com os “invictíssimos portugueses”83 foi
apresentada como cumprimento de uma profecia e do plano de Deus
para a humanidade. Conclui o livro com o anúncio dos milagres de

79. DALGADO, S. Glossário Luso-Asiático. Coimbra: Academia das Sciências, 1919-1921, v.2
80. Vocabulario Portuguez & latino... Coimbra: Collegio das Artes da Companhia de Jesus, v.9, 1728, p.169).
81. Sobre a concepção de “história” desenvolvida a partir da tradição cristã: LE GOFF, J. História
e Memória. Campinas: Ed. Unicamp, 1990.
82. PAES, op.cit., p.230.
83. Idem, ibidem, p.257.

97
Xavier e diz que “com o resumo de suas heroicas ações” finaliza as
“notícias da Índia”.84
No primeiro tratado do Promptuário, Paes aborda a origem da
Índia, inspirado na narrativa bíblica da criação do Paraíso terreal
e na identificação dos rios deste espaço edênico com o Ganges e o
Indo. Atrela a origem da Índia à trajetória dos reis rajputs quetris, em
especial ao papel de fundador de toda a linhagem: o “Raja Putruqhetry,
chamado Indo, filho de Gogo, neto de Sabá, terceiro neto de Noé”.85
Logo, inspirado na tradição dos Pais da Igreja, Paes remete a tais
genealogias bíblicas e as combina com o seu passado regional.86
No segundo tratado, sobre os reis da Índia, adota a tradicional
explicação pós-diluviana, 87 pois alega que o primeiro “imperador”
da Índia foi Indo, filho de Gogo. Explicou que o imperadores
posteriores, como Pondo e Satespor Raza, estenderam o poder até
a região de Goa.
No tocante à narrativa da história política da Índia, Paes
propõe uma explicação para o declínio da “Monarquia Indiana”
após a morte de Rama Raza, em 1566, quando teria acabado o
período em que um senhor governou “absoluto, & universal”
toda a Índia. A partir de então, os vassalos e naiques do soberano
rebelaram-se. Paes associou o declínio dos Razaputros quetris à
expansão dos mongóis como usurpadores do poder. Contudo, na
retórica de Paes, os quetris ainda permaneceram os responsáveis
por reconhecer a autoridade política na Índia, pois alegou que eles
eram os únicos que legitimavam os sucessores ao trono, mesmo
durante a hegemonia mogol.

84. Idem, ibidem, p.272.

85. Idem, ibidem, p. 5-6.
86. POLIAKOV, L. O mito ariano. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1974, p. XXII.
87. PAES, op.cit., p. 60-61.

98
 A narrativa de Paes representa uma percepção local das alterações
políticas na Índia, a partir do final do século XVII. No contexto em
que o padre escreveu, o Concão havia se tornado palco da ação de
mogóis, maratas, portugueses e dessais (chefes ou administradores de
aldeias do Concão), com suas respectivas ambições políticas. O líder
marata Sambhaji sucedeu ao seu pai (Shivaji) e, em 1683, invadiu Goa,
que só não foi anexada em função da aliança dos dessais do Concão
com os portugueses.88
É interessante verificar como Paes registrou o impacto destas
mudanças sobre os goeses, ao mencionar a dificuldade de as provisões
chegarem do Concão, na época das conquistas empreendidas por
Shivaji. Naquela época, Xiapa Naique, residente no Canará

ajuntou grandioso tesouro [...] & é senhor de todos

os reinos desde o rio Mirceu até Canchorata, e destas
terras vem a Goa muito arroz a troco de muito ouro,
que à dita cidade vem de várias partes para sustento de
tanta multidão de gente, depois que cessou o que vinha
de Concão por causa da destruição que nele fez o Sivagy
Rage de nação Razeputru89

Durante a expansão do poder do marata Sambhaji, partiram

milhares de cristãos oriundos de Goa e arredores para as terras
do Canará: “nas ditas terras de presente existe o número de trinta
mil cristãos, pouco mais ou menos, cuja maior parte é dos que
passaram para lá de Salsete, Bardez, & Goa nas carestias passadas

88. KULKARNI, A.R. Portuguese in the Deccan Politics: a study of new marathi documents from Lisbon.
In: SOUZA, Teotônio. (org.). Indo-Portuguese history. New Delhi: New Concept, 1985, p. 114-115.
89. PAES, op.cit., p. 85-86.

99
das guerras de Sambagy acima nomeado”.90 De fato, as ações de
Sambhaji no Concão levaram famílias ao isolamento, por meio
do incêndio de suas aldeias, além de impedir que suprimentos
chegassem à Goa.91
Além de apresentar uma perspectiva dos acontecimentos
políticos que impactaram a história de Goa, Paes estabeleceu os
nexos entre a história goesa e a da Índia, assim como construiu uma
narrativa mítica em torno das supostas origens cristãs de Goa. Com
este fim, reproduz as versões de missionários e de cronistas sobre
a suposta descoberta de um crucifixo muito antigo na aldeia goesa
de Gaudalim, como prova da presença ancestral do cristianismo
na região. Ademais, afirmou que o imperador Sagamo Razaputro
Quetri sofreu o martírio e foi sepultado com São Tomé. Naquela
época, a região de Goa era governada por Mantrazar, soberano
que também teria se tornado cristão e doado terras para este culto.
Assim, construiu uma narrativa em torno da soberania dos chardós
e de seu suposto apoio à difusão do cristianismo.
Em linhas gerais, Paes constrói uma ficção sobre a história
política da Índia, ao mencionar a existência de “imperadores”
razaputros quetris que teriam exercido o “poder absoluto” sobre todo
o subcontinente. Integrou a história da Índia à história mundial, ao
relacionar a história local à expansão de líderes como Alexandre e
à disseminação do cristianismo em escala planetária (graças a São
Tomé, aos portugueses e jesuítas). Estabeleceu conexões entre a
história local (de Goa), a da Índia (sua gênese mítica e as concretas
condições históricas, grassadas por profundas alterações políticas

90. Idem, ibidem, p.86.

91. KULKARNI, op.cit., p.119; GORDON, Stewart. The Marathas (1600-1818). New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2006, p.94.

100
ligadas aos mogóis e maratas) e a da humanidade (inscrita no bojo da
história da Criação e da Redenção).
Apesar de suas matrizes centrais não serem de origem indiana, o
padre deixou-se impactar pelas experiências históricas concretas que
assolavam a vida dos habitantes de Goa, além de considerar a dinâmica
das transformações políticas e das migrações de elites guerreiras que
ocorriam no norte, no Decão e no sul da Índia, no início do século
XVIII. Ademais, o padre precisou se posicionar diante de versões
bramânicas sobre a instituição da ordem política e social na Índia e
em Goa, em particular.
Paes sistematizou uma versão própria, peculiar, chardó e católica
da história da Índia, vista a partir da perspectiva de um padre nascido
em uma aldeia goesa. Trata-se de uma versão própria, mas que não
corresponde a uma “criação individual” do padre chardó, por ser
o resultado de complexos cruzamentos culturais que marcaram a
história de Goa.
Com efeito, o Promptuário reproduz muitas ideias formuladas
previamente, difundidas nos círculos de padres goeses. Denota,
igualmente, como as versões goesas dos textos hindus chegaram
aos padres de Goa, com os seus sentidos originais plenamente
transmutados, cristianizados. Ainda neste aspecto não podemos
considerar que a mudança de sentido consista em uma “criação
individual” do padre Paes, pois se inspirou em narrativas luso-cristãs
elaboradas, desde o século XVI, por cronistas e missionários.
Após apresentar as narrativas coetâneas sobre a história Goa
(as versões goesas de textos hindus e o tratado de Leonardo Paes),
podemos afirmar que revelam o comprometimento com determinada
expectativa de poder e de reconhecimento social. Estes fatores
modelaram as narrativas sobre as origens e os desenvolvimentos
históricos da sociedade goesa.

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 Cabe, portanto, recuperar as considerações apresentadas no
início deste artigo, sobre as limitações das posturas excessivamente
lusocêntricas ou anticoloniais, pois consideramos que o grande
desafio metodológico não consiste em selecionar a procedência da
fonte (indiana ou europeia), como garantia de credibilidade e de
reconstituição “fidedigna” do passado das sociedades coloniais. Neste
ensaio buscou-se atentar para: o contexto de produção das narrativas
coetâneas sobre o passado de Goa, a relação de tais fontes literárias
com textos que as precederam e as expectativas dos agentes envolvidos
na elaboração de tais registros.
Conclui-se que tais versões sobre a história de Goa sugerem a
complexidade dos cruzamentos culturais desenvolvidos durante a
colonização portuguesa, que são melhor percebidos se escaparmos
de visões dicotômicas, que compartimentem as diferentes heranças
culturais (luso-cristãs e hindus). Naquele contexto, sistemas culturais
como as ricas tradições hindus foram apropriados (e manipulados)
por diferentes sub-grupos de brâmanes “hindus” de Goa. Por suas vez,
a versão goesa destes sistemas culturais foi reformulada por cronistas
portugueses e missionários, além de serem ressignificados 92 por
brâmanes cristãos e chardós, o que propiciou a elaboração de distintas
versões sobre a história de Goa e dos impérios da Índia.

*Doutora em História (UFF), Professora da UFRRJ

Agradeço o auxílio à pesquisa fornecido pelo CNPq e pela FAPERJ.

92. GREENBLATT, op.cit.

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