A rather perceptive article on this subject….
“The age of imperialism may have ended decades ago, with the withdrawal of European forces from Asian and African countries and the granting of independence. No sooner had that occurred, however, than the tourists descended like a plague of locusts, all in search of an “authentic” experience: many ripping up and insulting the host cultures in the name of that bogus authenticity.“
“There are thousands of English teenagers exactly like Scarlett Keeling and not much about her life is unusual, apart from its grisly end. I dare say she was nice-natured and well-mannered; she drank and took drugs recklessly, as many teenagers do; she probably had the air of a streetwise girl, able to cope with situations, and only on reading her diary does it become apparent that she was virtually illiterate, extremely ignorant and as naïve as 15-year-olds have always been. We all know teenagers exactly like that.
I very much doubt, however, whether Indians do. Even now, a family resembling Ms MacKeown’s is impossible to envisage in an Indian context; no Indian mother, no Indian child would ever behave as either of them seem to have. What on earth persuaded them, and the two million Europeans who go to Goa every year to dance and drink and, often, take drugs, that this largely Roman Catholic enclave of India is the right place to indulge in their reckless hedonism?“
“Goa is an extreme case, but every society which has been brutally colonised by European holidaymakers has had to bite the bullet and overlook what must seem like direct insults. “
“When Indians see or read about Europeans living for six months in Goa exactly as they live in Camden Town or some field in Devon, but with many fewer clothes on, they think two things. First, they cannot see where the moral boundaries are here at all; secondly, they feel humiliated and embarrassed and a little bit angry that it is happening where they live, rather than in a field in Devon.“
