[2] José Pereira was born on 22 January 1931 in Bombay to a Goan family who hailed from Curtorim.
[3] He received his PhD in Ancient History and Culture from St Xavier's College in 1949.
In 1959, he traveled to Portugal as a guest lecturer at the Insituto Superior de Estudoes Ultramarinos in Lisbon.
A year later, he departed Lisbon following his public statement that “Goa has a cultural identity of its own and can never be a showcase of the greatness of the Portuguese.
Pereira countered with quotations from Sanskrit scriptures that justified the piece.