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Modern Asian Studies 30, 2 (I996), pp. 387-42I. Printed in Great Britain

Flight of the Deities: Hindu Resistance in Portuguese Goa

PAUL AXELROD AND MICHELLE A. FUERCH

Ripon College, Wisconsin

Introduction

As the capital of the Estado da India, the Portuguese colonial empire in Asia and East Africa, Goa was subjected to a blizzard of policies designed at once to transform and fossilize life there.' Desiring to preserve much of the precolonial village economic structure, yet deter- mined to force their Goan subjects to total conversion to Catholicism, the Portuguese created policies that had a dramatic impact on Goan culture and identity. The focus of this article will be on the Hindu resistance to the policies that were applied by the colonial regime and its role in the shaping of the regional culture: in the face of over- whelming physical force, direct defiance revealed itself primarily in the religious life of Hindu Goa as archival records of the Portuguese rule and temple histories demonstrate. Even forms of religious syn- cretism that are pervasive in Catholic Goa and might initially be perceived as indications of the success of Portuguese repressive and discriminatory policies represent a subtle pattern of 'everyday resist- ance' and are not simply the blending of Portuguese Catholic and Hindu cultures.

Because the battle for hegemony focused on religious symbols, the resistance did not resemble the sort of class struggle or violent resist-

The authors are grateful for the financial support they received for research in Goa. The American Institute of Indian Studies funded Michelle Fuerch's research in the Historical Archives of Goa, and the Fulbright Foundation supported Paul Axelrod's ethnographic fieldwork. P. P. Shirodkar, Director of the Historical Archives of Goa, and Pia Rodrigues and Lourdes da Costa of the Central Library of Panjim provided invaluable guidance in locating archival and published sources. 1 Goa, a former Portuguese colony and now an Indian state, is a small geograph- ical entity with an area of 3,701 square kilometers on the western coast of India between the border of Maharashtra and Karnataka and was under Portuguese con- trol from I510 until I96I. With the ports of Daman and Diu, it was treated as a separate administrative unit by both Portugal and India until it became a separate state in the Indian Union in I987. oo26-749X/96/$7.50+o . Io ? 1996 Cambridge University Press

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PAUL AXELROD AND MICHELLE A. FUERCH

ance of the oppressed identified elsewhere in colonial systems by the Subaltern Studies series edited by Ranajit Guha and the peasant insur- rections as described by James C. Scott.2 Though there was sporadic violent resistance to the Portuguese conversion policies,3 the con- testing of power in colonial Goa was not directly over access to basic resources, especially for the landholding groups in Goa: for the dom- inant castes, the Gaud Saraswat Brahmans (hereafter GSB) and the Marathas (called Chardos among Catholics in Goa), material well- being and traditional high status could be had for conversion. High caste Hindus who fled Portuguese control often gave up access to their hereditary rights to basic resources in order to escape the orbit of Portuguese control. Those who stayed in Goa contested Portuguese rule in many aspects of their daily life.4

Hindu resistance to Portuguese hegemony in the sixteenth and sev- enteenth centuries thus represents a bold, and in many ways unique, challenge to colonial state authority in the battle for control of'master symbols.' It was successful in that it created a diaspora culture whose most visible symbols, the temples just outside the area of Portuguese control, still draw thousands to the numerous festivals. In a multitude of ways these festivals, many remarkably explicit, celebrate the vibrancy of the Hindu religion in the face of Portuguese attempts to stamp it out. Hindu resistance in Goa was different from the well- known nonviolent examples of protest. In the cases of Zionism in Africa, which transformed signs of Protestant orthodoxy into an ideo-

2 See Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies (Delhi: Oxford University Press, I982- 1989), a six volume series, and James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976). 3 In 1564 the villagers of Cortalim reportedly killed Christians who passed through their village after hearing that a priest, Father Pedro ColaSo, tried to convert a dying Brahman. SeeJ. Wicki (ed.), Documenta Indica i540-i549, vol. VI (Rome: Apud Monumenta Historica Soc. Iesu, 1948), p. 617. On 15 July 1583, three priests were killed with knives and axes by angry villagers when they arrived to celebrate the erection of a cross commemorating the supposed Christianization of the villages of Assolna, Velim, and Cuncolim: as punishment the villages were confiscated and turned over to the Jesuit order which eventually controlled a number of villages in the southern-most administrative district of Salsette. See Victor Fernandes, 'The Blessed Martyrs of Cuncolim,' The Goan World (November I936), pp. 37-9, and Carmo Azevedo, 'The Revolt of Cuncolim,' Goa Today (December 1966), pp. I8-I9. Also, toward the end of the eighteenth century, native missionaries of Goa revolted against domination by European missionaries. See Gazetteer of the Union Territory Goa, Daman and Diu: District Gazetteer, Part I, Goa, ed. V. T. Gune (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1979), p. I87.

4 C.J. Borges, 'Foreign Jesuits and Native Resistance in Goa I542-1759,' in Essays in Goan History, ed. T. R. de Souza (New Delhi: Concept, 1989), pp. 69-80.

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HINDU RESISTANCE IN PORTUGUESE GOA

logy of resistance,5 and the informal discourses of peasants in Malay- sia, which have been shown to negate hegemony,6 the appropriation of the symbols of resistance did not directly defy or confront those in charge. Goan Hindus, in contrast, sacrificed their livelihoods and, in some cases, their lives while challenging the rules and defying the decrees of the colonial authorities.

The evidence for the resistance to Portuguese rule can be found in both the palpable, direct defiance of colonial policies under threat of punishment and in the more subtle ways that losers, fearing punish- ment, are forced to make their arguments. Because some Hindu deit- ies were transported by migrating groups7 and were simply relocated to avoid persecution in lieu of resisting it under Muslim rule,8 the direct connection between the transport of the deities and the resist- ance to Portuguese policies in Goa needs to be demonstrated. Were Hindus merely fleeing the jurisdiction of a draconian repressive regime or actively resisting their policies? Portuguese documents and Hindu temple histories, from opposing positions, are remarkably explicit about the connection between the relocation and activities of the temples and their role in instigating the populations under Portuguese control to defy the rules and thus provide the foundation for making this connection. More subtle indications of resistance can be found in the rituals and festivals which delineate a common ground of Goan culture that celebrates sodalities and practices that were explicitly prohibited by the Portuguese.

5 Jean Comaroff, Body of Power Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 189-91. 6 James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak (New Haven: Yale University Press, I985), pp. 28-47.

7 Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I989), p. 39.

8 The reaction to Muslim conversion policies was varied and more complex than the Goan response. S. M. Ikram, Muslim Civilization in India (New York: Columbia University Press: I964), p. 232 and Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press: I964), p. 199 suggest a connection between intensified Muslim conversion and various forms of Hindu resistance. How- ever, in some instances, it appears that destruction of the temples by Muslim rulers led to complete cessation of activities associated with it. See S. M. Bhardwaj, Hindu Places of Pilgrimage in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, I973), p. 77. The pattern of Muslim proselytization ranged from peaceful persuasion of missionaries to forcible conversion by fanatical rulers and the results differed depending on the policies of the rulers and the practices of the indigenous populations. Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, provides examples of the varied reactions to Islamicization in her book on South India.

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The following discussion of Goan Hindu defiance of colonial authority provides a dramatic and vividly documented early example which negates prevailing stereotypes, rooted in Orientalist thinking, about the acceptance of subordination and domination in India.9 It also provides answers to questions about the formation of the con- sciousness of opposition to colonial power and shows that the process of cultural change and the construction of cultural forms has to be understood as part of the long-term process of protracted opposition to colonial domination. In actively protecting and controlling the key religious symbols, most visibly by transporting their deities into the neighboring Hindu and Muslim states, the Hindus directly contested the Portuguese control of their culture. That this culture of resistance emerged throughout Goa, continuing through the brutal years of the conversion and Inquisition, suggests that defiance was part of a broader regional cultural process that endured in the face of a sus- tained conversion effort by the colonial rulers. By combining the results of ethnographic and archival research, the authors will present the background and content of that resistance and delineate the local and regional processes by which a new culture emerged.

Contesting the Portuguese colonial system in this particular fashion was partly due to the peculiar characteristics of sixteenth-century mercantile trade. In most nineteenth-century colonial or twentieth- century neocolonial scenarios, peasantization and proletarianization of native peoples were the dominant features of social change. The symbolic domain in those cases, even in the face of missionary activ- ity, was often independent of those forces. But Portuguese mercantile activities were essentially devoted to the extraction of commodities and control of the movement of goods from Asia to Europe rather than outright control of production. The Estado da India was a state based on a network of trade routes rather than territorial integrity,'? and, as its military and political center, Goa gained its economic hegemony from the control of maritime connections rather than from rule over the land. Even by I630, forty or fifty years after the decline of the Portuguese seaborne empire began, 47 per cent of the revenue in Portuguese India was derived from taxing seaborne commerce

9 Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash, 'Introduction: The Entanglement of Power and Resistance,' in Contesting Power, eds Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash (Berkeley: University of California Press, I991), pp. 1-22. 10 M. N. Pearson, The New Cambridge History of India: The Portuguese in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 36.

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while 31 per cent came from agriculture and other land-based taxes.1 There were only a few export crops grown in Goa itself in the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries. The precolonial village structures were essentially preserved by Portuguese policies in that tax struc- tures, village productive systems, and economic relations were not much changed.'2 Though many private fortunes were made in Goa by Hindu traders'3 (in spite of bans on their religious activities and participation in the economy) and by the Portuguese, there was no great transformation in the modes of production as in colonial Africa and Asia. The mercantile system produced very different relations between the colonizers and colonized than seen in later examples of colonization.

The Goan experience was also unique because the economies of the mercantile system were based primarily on extraction and not on territorial control: Portuguese conversion policies, though regional in effort, were rigorously enforced only in the small area under their direct control. In some cases, the deities had to be moved only a few miles to escape Portuguese policies and this proximity facilitated cultural contacts between the new temples and the Goan Catholic villages.

Several well-known and oft-told lessons about Hinduism are evid- ent in Goa. Like those Muslim rulers in India who pursued policies of forced conversions, the Portuguese mistakenly believed that they could eliminate Hinduism by destroying the temples, implementing draconian conversion policies, and systematically discriminating against Hindus. But more than 450 years after the Portuguese

" See Anthony Disney, 'The Portuguese Empire in India,' in Indo-Portuguese His- tory, ed. J. Correia-Afonso (Bombay: Oxford University Press, I981), p. I60 and M. N. Pearson, 'Goa's Overseas Trade,' in Goa through the Ages: An Economic History II, ed. Teotonio R. de Souza (New Delhi: Concept, 1990), p. I50 which estimate that in the early I63os only two per cent of Goa and Goa Islands came from land revenue (though for Bardez and Salsette the statistics are 50 per cent and 74 per cent respectively). See Antonio Bocarro, 'Livro das Plantas de Todas as Fortalezas, Cid- ades e Povoacoes do Estado da India Oriental,' in ArquivoPortuguez Oriental IV Parte II, ed. A. B. de Braganca Pereira (Bastora: Tipografia Rangel, 1938). The low percentage for Goa reflects its status as the chief port of the Estado da India and the point from which the seas of western India were patrolled. 12 Teotonio R. de Souza, 'Rural Economy and Life,' in Goa through the Ages: An Economic History, ed. T. R. de Souza, II, p. 96.

13 M. N. Pearson, 'Wealth and Power: Indian Groups in the Portuguese Indian Economy,' South Asia 3 (I973), pp. 36-44; T. R. de Souza, 'Glimpses of Hindu Dominance of Goan Economy in the i7th Century,' Indica XII (March 1975), pp. 27-35.

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attempted to remove every vestige of Hinduism from Goa, it remains, transformed but in remarkably vibrant form. The ritual and mythical connections between Hindus and Catholics indicate more than Hindu survivals or syncretic traits: the growth and development of Hinduism under the Portuguese mark the development of a complex variant of South Asian culture. Though Goan Hindu culture under the Portug- uese was fragmented and dispersed, the reconstructed Goan version provides an extraordinary opportunity for combining ethnographic analyses of contemporary religious practices with archival evidence in an ethnohistorical analysis of cultural resistance and reformulation.

Festivals of Resistance

The Konkanakhyana, an eighteenth century Marathi language chron- icle of the Saraswat Brahmans in Goa, celebrates the escape of the deities from the areas of Portuguese control. It tells of the 'calamitous happenings in Goa's most important villages' at the hands of the 'filthy Europeans' and the ensuing relocation of the gods from their sacred places, and boasts that these acts 'secured the honor' of these gods and 'confused and spoiled the efforts of the defiled foreigners.'14 Since Portuguese policies sought conversion to Christianity of all the inhabitants under their control and the elimination of Hindu practices altogether, these temples, by attracting both Hindus and newly con- verted Catholics from the area of Portuguese rule, were a continual source of frustration for Portuguese officials. They were the venues for apostasy and reconversions to Hinduism as well as a safe haven for orphans who were much sought after by the Portuguese for rearing in the Catholic faith, and they supplied Hindu priests for ceremonies within the areas of Portuguese jurisdiction.15 Remarkably, ties between the temples and the villages of origin were kept intact and it is this once illegal connection that is marked in a number of temple rituals. Moreover, for Hindus who fled the Portuguese and were scat- tered throughout Western India, these temples became the symbols of their ties to villages under Portuguese jurisdiction in the old con- quest areas of Goa.

14 Konkhanakhanaya (Belgaum: Belgaum Samachar, 1909 [original 172 ]), p. 19. 13 Numerous Portuguese documents which will be discussed and transcribed in the section below entitled 'Goa Under the Portuguese' indicate that the temples served these functions in resisting Portuguese policies.

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The annual cycle of celebrations at these temples provides rich ethnographic evidence for the structure of resistance: they literally and dramatically portray the Hindu defiance of the Portuguese con- version policies and the Inquisition.16 Connections between Hindu and Catholic festivals also demonstrate the complex relationships between the resistant Hindu culture of the Goan hinterland and the native Goan Catholic culture that developed in Portuguese-controlled territory. The ritual and mythical links between Hindu and Catholic festivals and celebrations might on the surface be interpreted as syn- cretism, but they are, in fact, more complex representations of struggles to maintain a distinct identity for Goans in the face of the divisive Portuguese policies which sought to drive a wedge between Hindus and Catholics by outlawing any vestige of Hindu worship in Goan religious life.

The annual return of the goddess Bhagvati to the Tiswadi district village of Chimbel provides an instructive example of the tenacity of the culture of resistance. In the Hindu month of Chaitra (which comes at the end of April or beginning of May), the procession of the deity of Bhagvati leaves her temple in the novas conquistas'7 village of Marcel, Goa by truck and bus on a ten kilometer journey to the village of Raibandar, where it is transferred to a palenquin for the remaining three kilometer journey to the village of Chimbel. Until recently, the deity was carried the entire distance on foot. The deity is brought to a temporary shelter, not far from the church built on the site inhabited by the goddess more than 400 years ago. There it is placed on a pedestal. The deity came to Marcel in i673 from the village of Mahem, where it had originally been secretly taken from Chimbel in the mid-sixteenth century at the time of the Christianiz- ation of Goa during the first century of Portuguese rule.

16 The policy of conversion was begun soon after the arrival of the Portuguese in Goa in 151 o, and gradually intensified throughout the sixteenth century. The Inquisi- tion was a formal tribunal devoted to identifying heretics among the converts to Catholicism and was formally launched in 156I and lasted until 1761, when it was effectively ended by the Marquis de Pombal, who abolished the exclusive rights of Christians.

17 The novas conquistas refer to the talukas (districts) of Pernem, Bicholim, Sanque- lim, Satari, Quepem, Sanguem, and Canacona which were acquired by the Portug- uese through conquest and treaty between 174i and 1788 at the time the Inquisition was ending. See Gazetteer of the Union Territory Goa, Daman and Diu, p. I86. The velhas conquistas refer to the old conquests: the talukas (districts) of Bardez, Tiswadi (also known as Goa Island and Ilhas), and Salsette which were acquired in the first half of the sixteenth century by the Portuguese. Tiswadi, an island bounded by the Mandovi and Zuari Rivers, was acquired by conquest in I5IO, and Bardez and Salsette by teaty in 1543. See ibid., pp. 144-53.

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During the fifteen-day stay at Chimbel, the deity is worshipped through ceremonies at the pedestal and visits to homes in the various wards of the village where devotees, both Christian and Hindu, come to worship her. She is worshipped as the gramdeva, the village goddess of Chimbel, and as the kuladeva, the clan goddess of the mahajans, the descendants of the temple's Gaud Saraswat Brahman founders.

Connections between Chimbel and Marcel are more extensive than the annual visit. Catholics frequently visit the deity while seeking help for health or other problems or starting new ventures. On a visit by the authors in early June I990 the temple was jammed with Cath- olic worshippers who kept the two temple priests busy throughout the day performing ceremonies on behalf of farmers who were plant- ing rice. Catholics justified their worship by saying they came to pay their respects to their god: Bhagwati is seen as the village goddess of Chimbel for both Hindus and Catholics.

Such ritual connections between Hindu deities secretly installed in temples outside of the region of Portuguese control and their village of origin permeate life all over Goa. The villages of Fatorpa and Cunculim in the adjoining talukas (districts) of Quepem (which is part of the novas conquistas) and Salsette (in the velhas conquistas) also celebrate an annual festival in which the historical connections are ritually reenacted. The goddess Shantadurga is brought by procession from Fatorpa to Cunculim. She had been taken by Hindus from Cun- culim in the 157os at the time of the destruction of the temple by the Portuguese.'8 Catholics from Cunculim and other parts of Goa wor- ship Shantadurga at Fatorpa, especially at the time of new or import- ant undertakings. Temple priests happily serve Christians because they recognize Christians as converted Hindus.

At the village of Nerul in Bardez (the most northern of the three districts of the old conquests), the goddess Shantadurga was brought back permanently in 19I0, after a three-and-a-half century 'visit' to the village of Mandrem in the neighboring taluka of Pernem (in the novas conquistas). In Siolim, Candolim and Anjuna, all Bardez villages, deities have also been formally returned to new temples in their ori- ginal villages after being moved during Portuguese persecution in the mid-sixteenth century.

These Hindu deities are only a few of the many that were trans- ported into the neighboring Hindu and Muslim states in the face of

18 R. S. Newman, 'The Umbrellas of Cuncolim: A Study of Goan Identity', Eighth International Symposium on Asian Studies (Hong Kong: Asian Research Service, I986), p. I07.

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the destruction of Hindu temples by the Portuguese during the middle part of the sixteenth century. Detached from their village of origin, these temples became even grander and more powerful symbols of village allegiance than they would have in the absence Portuguese persecution. The temples of the 'escaped' deities are generally much better endowed and they literally dwarf in scope and size the temples of the villages in which they were relocated. The attachment, after 450 years of separation between deity and its village of origin, suggests that the importance in Hindu thought of the substantive link between place and person, described so brilliantly by Daniel,19 applies to the relationship between deity and place as well.

The veritable semicircle of Hindu temples of the transported deities around the old conquests of Goa, amazingly enough, was not the product of any particular centralized political control or coordinated plan of defiance. Though many of the temples operate under the aegis of one of several Saraswat gurus of various philosophical orientations, there was no organized conspiracy or master plan that led to the Hindu resistance. On the other hand, the mass exit of deities from virtually every village in Goa in the sixteenth century to territory outside the orbit of Portuguese control was more than a spontaneous panicked reaction to religious persecution: rather it is testimony to a process of Hindu thinking which connects persons in complex, sub- stantive ways to their deities, and, in turn, persons and deities to the soil. But unlike the routine transport of deities that are part of Hindu life elsewhere, in this case when person and deity were disarticulated from one another, the ideas about linkage strengthened because of the symbolism attached to the defiance of Portuguese policies. That these connections could be said to have grown during the 450 year period of this disarticulation is testimony to the fundamental nature of this thought process.

A more subtle testimony of resistance to Portuguese control can be found in domains of Goan ritual life involving both Hindus and Cath- olics within the old conquest territories. Every year on January I, the jagar festival, a dance-drama accompanied by a narrative, is celeb- rated in the old conquest village of Siolim in Bardez district. Pre- sented jointly by Hindus and Christians, it symbolically celebrates village harmony between the two communities. There are a number of versions of the festival's origins, but it is commonly held that the

19 E. V. Daniel, Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way (Berkeley: University of California Press, I984).

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festival celebrates the good work of a 'king' called jagar who is not represented by a statue, but rather by a raised platform covered with an arch on top of which there is a cross. On the platform are a pair of coconuts. Christians worship at this shrine by placing lighted candles on the platform, and Hindus by lighting oil wicks. Every household sends an offering of rice. The ceremony begins with the converging of processions from each of the two wards of the city. It is believed that one of the wards was founded by Hindu returnees from Shirode, a new conquest village to which they had fled from Portuguese rule. Though both wards are currently composed of Hindus and Christians, the merging of the two processions denotes the safe and hospitable return to Siolim of Hindus who had fled to the village of Shirode during the period of Portuguese persecution. Indeed, the staging of the jagar itself represents a breaking of Portug- uese regulations: such dance-dramas were regular events in Goa until they were outlawed. The Siolim jagar was revived in 1865.

Catholics in Siolim are acutely aware of their Hindu roots: as in many Goan villages they can identify their Hindu clan (vangad) on the basis of their Christian surname. Certain functions and roles in the ceremony are the hereditary rights of designated Hindu and Christian families. The incorporation of Hindu roles in the ceremony is a direct attempt to accommodate the Hindu returnees and foster village solidarity. Two of the major characters are unambiguously members of the Hindu mali (gardener) and mahar (untouchable) castes. The clear message of the ceremony is that membership in the village community overrides caste and religious divisions. The argument for shared identity of Hindus and Catholics within the context of a single ceremony contradicts Portuguese attempts to deny Hindu activities in Goa and contacts between converted Christians and Hindus during the first two hundred years of their colonial rule.

The annual Feast of Nossa Senhora dos Milagres (Our Lady of Miracles) at the St Jerome church in the town of Mapusa is held sixteen days after Easter and provides another example of the merging of Hindu and Catholic identities. Christians say the festival is held to make amends to Hindus for the stealing of a sacred vessel from the original Hindu temple on which the church was built by a Portuguese soldier.20 The Our Lady of Miracles festival usually occurs within a few days of the Hindu festival of Lairaya, which is held at the end of

20 Aleixo Jer6nimo do Rosario Braganqa. A Igreja de Mapupa (Bastora: Tipografia Rangel, I926). p. 13.

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April or beginning of May according to the Hindu calendar. The two are described as 'sister' celebrations, though popular belief holds that if the two festivals occur on the same day, it is a bad omen and disaster would strike either the church at Mapusa or the firewalkers, whose activities are the culmination of the Lairaya festivities.21 Thou- sands of Catholic and Hindu devotees from different parts of Goa celebrate both festivals together: reportedly there are more Hindus in attendance than at any Church feast in Goa.22

The festivals at Mapusa and Siolim might, at first blush, be seen simply as a merging of Hindu and Catholic celebrations, a syncretic blending of two religious customs within the same region. But they are more celebrations of the collective memory of the unity of Goan identity in the face of oppression and are instructive about the pro- cesses of defying Portuguese rule. As in any ritual celebration the agendas of both are laden with meaning, but clearly a key aspect of both is an atonement for the destructive practices of the Portuguese and recognition of the Goan Hindu roots. Given the intensity of the Portuguese effort to attain complete ideological domination in Goa, these symbolic statements about insult to the pre-Portuguese identity of all Goans are testimony to the process by which beliefs imposed from above are redefined by the powerless. In Siolim it is the honoring of Hindu returnees and the practice of the jagar rituals specifically banned by the Portuguese.23

Explicit Catholic recognition of the desecration of the original temple's sacred object as the justification for the festival and the general appropriation of Our Lady of Miracles by Hindu myth and the incorporation of that myth by Christian worshippers is testimony to the relative strength of Hinduism, in Goan popular culture at least, in the battle for control of the master symbols.

The lessons of this sampling of festival occasions are also significant because they show some of the dramatic ways that contemporary Goan culture is constructed on the foundation of its South Asian

21 In fact, Our Lady of Miracles and Lairaya are regarded as two of seven sisters, who, according to local tradition, resided at the village of Mahem with their brother Khetoba. Khetoba went to bring the fire from the shrine of a nearby village, but failed to return. The sisters, in anger, left Mahem and dispersed to nearby villages. The seven village festivals of these sisters have complex ritual and mythical connec- tions: customarily visits or flowers from the other sisters are sent at the time of the temple festival. 22 Luis Furtado, 'Mapusa's Lady of Miracles,' Goa Today (I985), p. 38. 23 D. D. Khedekar, 'Rhythm and Revelry: The Folk Performers,' in S. V. Doshi (ed.), Goa Cultural Patterns (Bombay: Marg, I983), p. 139.

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heritage. To be sure, the contemporary Goan culture is not simply a felicitous amalgam of Hindu and Christian traditions. There are stark differences between the mode of dress, dialect, and preferences for education which divide Goans on many issues. Contemporary Goan politics are extremely complex and align Hindus and Catholics as ethnic groups in opposition to one another on numerous issues. Many elite Catholics are Lusophiles and still employ the discourse of Portu- guese dominance and contempt for Hinduism.24 But contemporary religious festivals also provide a window into the past and illustrate the way that Hinduism has embodied the collective memory of the contesting of Portuguese power. Moreover, they illustrate the role of symbols in retaining the regional identity. The processes of reconcili- ation of Hindu and Catholic thinking, at least on the symbolic level, are also evident.

The significance of these contemporary processes is better under- stood through archival evidence which provides vivid and sustained evidence of the dramatic and everyday contesting of Portuguese con- trol from the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries. This archi- val evidence will be presented in some detail below, but some discus- sion of Goan historiography and the place of our research in that tradition is necessary for fully understanding its significance.

Goan History

Scholarship on Portuguese India has a number of genres, ranging from Lusocentric (though not always Lusophile) antiquarian studies focusing on the heyday of Portuguese rule in the sixteenth century to nationalist tracts celebrating the freedom struggle.25 There is also a

24 To frame Goan ethnic politics as simply Hindu versus Catholic masks a number of complexities: regional identity is an important political issue in Goa, and for many lower class and caste groups the boundary between Catholicism and Hinduism is blurred. See Robert S. Newman, 'Vision at Velim: The Political and Cultural Mean- ings of Miracle in Goa,' The iith European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies (Amsterdam: i990), p. 15. For instance, Catholics and Hindus speak and support the Konkani language in spite of the dialectical differences between Catholic and Hindu speech. Konkani is the mother tongue and the regional language of people in Goa (though currently most Hindus support Marathi and Catholics support English as the medium of instruction in schools). Goans are unified in their resistance to economic dominance by 'Indians' (a name reserved primarily for Indians from other states) and united in their efforts to keep economic opportunities in the booming tourism industry for themselves.

25 G. D. Winius, The Black Legend of Portuguese India (New Delhi: Concept, I985); C. R. Boxer, Portuguese India in the Mid-Seventeenth Century (Delhi: Oxford University

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distinct nineteenth and early-twentieth century Orientalist tradition which is both reflective of the European intellectual currents and Goa's unique convergence of western Indian coastal culture, Roman Catholic past and mercantile history.26

Most works on early Goa focused on the Portuguese in Goa rather than Goa under the Portuguese, though there were some notable exceptions.27 Much of the work on contemporary Goan culture is ethnological, and celebrates its distinctiveness on the basis of its Por- tuguese-Catholic flavor or the heritage of the Hindu past.28 Though antiquarian and ethnological approaches provide rich descriptions and an incredible wealth of detail about Goan society, their primary bias for evaluating sources is the potential for revealing new details

Press, 980); Francisco Xavier Gomes Catao, Aldeia de Assagdo (Goa) Subsidios para a Sua Historia (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Historicos Ultramarinos, 1978); J. Correia Afonso, Indo-Portuguese History Sources and Problems (Bombay: Oxford University Press, I98I); Anthony D'Costa S.J., The Christianisation of the Goa Islands (Bombay: India Printing Works, I965); G. Mitterwallner, 'The Hindu Past: Sculpture and Architec- ture,' in Goa Cultural Patterns, ed. S. V. Doshi (Bombay: Marg, 1983), pp. 2 -60; P. S. S. Pissurlencar, 'Colaboradores Hindus de Afonso de Albuquerque,' Boletim do Instituto Vasco da Gama 73 (1941): 55-79; P. P. Shirodkar, Social Life in Goa of the Past (Unpublished paper, n.d.).

26 A. Lopes Mendes, A India Portugueza, 2 vols [New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, I989 (original i886)]; M. J. de Saldanha, Histdria de Goa Politica e Arqueol6g- ica, 2 vols [New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, i990 (original 1925)]; J. H. da Cunha Rivara, Primeiro Brado a Favor das Communidades das Aldeias do Estado da India (Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, i870); J. Gerson da Cunha (ed.), The Sahyadri- Khanda of the Skanda Purana: A Mythological, Historical, and Geographical Account of Western India (Bombay: Thacker, Vining and Company, I877); Braganca Pereira, 0 Sistema das Castas (Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, 1920); J. P. L. Dos Santos Pereira, Chatrias (Orlim: i899); and F. Xavier Nery, Defensa dos Direitos das Gao-carias (Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, i856).

27 T. R. de Souza, Medieval Goa (New Delhi: Concept, 1979); P. S. S. Pissurlencar (ed.), Shri Shantadurga Chitushatabda Mahotsava Granth [Marathi, Shri Shantadurga, Fourth Centenary Celebration Volume] (Bombay: Shri Shantadurga Seva Samiti, I966); P. S. S. Pissurlencar, 'A Proposito dos Primeiros Livros Maratas Impressos em Goa,' Boletim do Instituto Vasco da Gama 49 (1956), pp. 22-42; A. K. Priolkar, The Goa Inquisition (Bombay: i96i); H. Gomes Catao, Freguesia de Orlim (1968); M. N. Pearson, Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat: The Response to the Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, I976); M. N. Pearson, The New Cambridge History of India: The Portuguese in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

28 Some examples are: Rui Gomes Pereira, Goa Gaunkari: The Old Village Associations (Panaji, Goa: A. Gomes Pereira, I98I); his Hindu Temples and Deities (Panaji, Goa: Printwell Press, 1978); V. N. S. Dhume, Shri Shantadurga Devasthan [Marathi] (Kavle, Goa: Shri Shantadurga Sansthan, 1975); 0. Gomes, Village Goa (New Delhi: S. Chand, I987); N. K. Wagle, 'The History and Social Organization of the Gauda Saraswata Brahmanas of the West Coast of India,' Journal of Indian History XLVIII, Part I (I970): 7-25.

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on the importance, uniqueness, and/or greatness of Goan society and culture.

Our work on Goa departs from traditional academic concerns in its reliance on the ethnohistorical tradition in anthropology. We wish to place the Goan past in an interpretive and comparative perspective for an audience of anthropologists and historians concerned with Asia, colonialism, and the process of social change. Our concern is the predicament of native Goans under Portuguese rule as they faced a brutal assault on their cultural system by the religious conversion policies and the ensuing Inquisition, and the transformation of their social system under the influence of Goa's central position in maritime trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Ethnohistorical techniques have been applied explicitly, con- sciously and successfully to the study of India's past.29 British India, in particular, has presented unusual opportunities for uniting anthro- pological and historical approaches, and provides a useful comparison with Goa. Because British colonial policies were designed to adapt indigenous agrarian systems to their goals, studies of the village past in British India have been a class apart from those of America, Africa, and Southeast Asia where massive rural dislocations and new eco- nomies were effected by the colonial powers. The peculiarities of the British colonial policies, the grand scale of cultural variation on the Indian subcontinent before the colonial period, and the relatively 'weak' disruption of village life have thus greatly facilitated the com- bination of the concerns of anthropology and history in a single enterprise.

Goa's colonial experience under the Portuguese was quite different. Though the Padroado, the state-backed church system, and the milit- ary and commercial interests of the Estado da India were clearly bent on dominating and transforming Goan religious life, they paradoxi- cally did not bring about the massive rural structural and economic dislocations seen in the New World and Africa: their focus, so far as native Goans were concerned, was mainly on conversion.

The detailed records kept by the Portuguese of their activities permit the uniting of anthropology and history under somewhat dif-

29 Some exemplary works include Arjun Appadurai, Worship and Conflict under Colo- nial Rule: A South Indian Case (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Nich- olas B. Dirks, The Hollow Crown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I987); David Ludden, Peasant History in South India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Tom G. Kessinger, Vilyatpur i848-i968: Social and Economic Change in an Indian Village (Berkeley: University of California Press, I974).

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ferent forms than have been established for British India. There is no comparable record of colonial activities in the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries elsewhere in India. Many Portuguese documents have been published,30 and the Historical Archives of Goa (hereafter HAG) houses a substantial collection of Portuguese records, including detailed records for particular villages for the sixteenth century.31 The richness of the archival materials and the uniqueness of the colonial experience present an extraordinary opportunity and challenge for the ethnohistorical study of resistance to colonial power in its earliest period.

By incorporating temple histories and ethnographic accounts into our study, we intend to put these official accounts into context. Even the official voices speak from many perspectives reflecting the varied agenda of self-promotion, the Inquisition, and ethnocentricism in their accounts of indigenous peoples. So far as Hindu resistance is concerned, however, the official record provides only one dimension. The ethnohistorical approach used here attempts to integrate the various accounts in order to derive a more comprehensive interpretation.

The Origins and Nature of Goa's Regional Culture

Standard histories of Goa immediately preceding the arrival of the Portuguese are based primarily on stone inscriptions and chronicle Goa's importance as an outlet to the sea for a series of inland empires.32 Goa is described as a semi-autonomous feudatory state during Kadamba rule which lasted from AD 1000 to I300. When Goa was incorporated into the Vijayanagar empire from the mid- fourteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries, the region was largely under the control of competing feudatory chiefs.33 The Bahmani empire seized

30 For example, J. H. da Cunha Rivara, (ed.), Archivo Portuguez-Oriental 9 vols (Nova Goa: N. A. Imprensa Nacional, 1857-76); J. Wicki (ed.), Documenta Indica 12 vols (Rome: Monumenta Historica Soc. Iesu, 1940-1972); A. da Silva Rego, (ed.), Documentafao para as Missoes do Padroado Portugues do Oriente: India. 12 vols (Lisboa: Agencia Geral das Colonias, I947-58). (Hereafter Padroado.)

31 C. R. Boxer, 'A Glimpse of the Goa Archives,' Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XIV (1952), pp. 299-324; P. S. S. Pissurlencar, Roteiro dos Arquivos da India Portuguesa [A Guide to the Goa Archives] (Bastora: Tipografia Rangel, I955). 32 Gazetteer of the Union Territory Goa, Daman and Diu: District Gazetteer, Part I, Goa, pp. 91-120; G. M. Moraes, The Kadamba Kula, A History of Ancient and Mediaeval Karnataka (Bombay: B. X. Furtado & Sons, 1931), p. 17. 33 Moraes, The Kadamba Kula, pp. i67, g90.

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control of the region in I490; after partition of the Deccan by Bahmani nobles, Yusuf Adil Khan of Bijapur, a Bahmani noble, ruled Goa from 1500 until 1510 when Albuquerque seized control for the Portuguese.

In addition to standard histories, a separate, distinctly Goan, Hindu account exists which is not framed as an account of external domination. In striking contrast with the rest of precolonial South India, where land rights were largely an aspect of royal privilege,34 few of the land rights in Goa are traced explicitly to kings. In Goa, both before and after the arrival of the Portuguese, land was largely in the hands of the two dominant castes, the Gaud Saraswat Brahmans (GSB) and Marathas (a Kshatriya rank caste which is the dominant caste in many villages in the neighboring state of Maharashtra). The GSB, in particular, controlled many of the important villages and most of the major temples; yet they are notably absent from accounts of Goa under Kadamba, Vijayanagar, and Adil Khan rule.35

Hindu defiance of Portuguese power and the diaspora associated with it have to be seen in the context of the development of the regional cultural system that operated independently of any particu- lar state control. The Sahyadri Khanda of the Skhanda Purana, which describes the settlement of Goa by the GSB, provides a fascinating glimpse of how the region came under the control of a single caste.36 Goa is portrayed not as an outpost of an empire, but as a region civilized by the GSB. They are described by the Sahyadri Khanda as the Saraswat branch of the Panch Gauda Brahmans of North India.37

The Sahyadri Khanda of the Skhanda Purana, an apparently recently ordered version of disparate earlier textual materials, provides a fairly detailed textual account of the settlement of Goa, compiled by the Catholic, Portuguese educated Goan scholar Gerson da Cunha. His Sanskrit edition was compiled in 1877 from fourteen manuscripts. That edition and a 1972 Marathi translation by V. D. Gaitonde are

34 Dirks, The Hollow Crown, p. 126. 35 A notable exception is Manji Shenvi, a GSB who is reported to have been the

administrator in Goa on behalf of Vijayanagar empires. See Gazetteer of the Union Territory Goa, Daman and Diu, p. I29.

36 J. Gerson da Cunha, Shri Sahyadri Khanda Skhanda Purana [Marathi, tr. from Sanskrit] V. D. Gaitonde (Bombay: Katyayni Publications, 1972); Shri Sahyadri Khanda Skhanda Purana [Sanskrit] (Bombay: Thacker, Vining and Company, i877). 37 F. Conlon, A Caste in a Changing World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 15-I6; J. V. Saldanha, Origin and Growth of Konkani or Goan Communities and Language (Bombay: Anglo-Lusitano Press, I938), pp. 22-32.

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the only published versions.38 The integrity of the text is suspect: the styles of the narrative of two sections on Goa are different.39 More- over, the dating of the Sahyadri Khanda is difficult because there are few historical references.40

The Sahyadri Khanda describes the GSB migration from the river Saraswat, which flows through modern Kashmir and Punjab, to Goa.41 The section which refers to Goa provides a remarkably accur- ate geographical, social, and spiritual map from which even modern Goa can be understood. There is explicit mention of a number of villages, many of which are still important today, and Goan deities, for whom major temples such as Shantadurga, Mangesh and Sapteko- teshwar still exist. GSB gotras (clans) and kulas (lineages), which still guide marriages and worship, are also cited by name. The text is clearly a significant Goan social charter.

Ancient Gomantak, as Goa was known, is described in the Sahyadri Khanda as a beautiful, verdant land reclaimed from the sea by Para- shurama, the sixth avatar of Vishnu, with a single throw of his power- ful axe. Parashurama is the hero of several story complexes, one of which is particularly salient for the Saraswats. He is known as an exterminator of Kshatriyas, provider of land, benefactor to and puri- fier of unfortunate Brahmans.42 His exploits symbolically match the struggles of the GSB, who have been engaged in a centuries' long argument for Brahman status, and have been in competition with the Kshatriya landholders (known as Chardos in the Goan Catholic community) for dominance in Goan politics.

According to the Sahyadri Khanda, ten gotras (clans) with 66 kulas (lineages) were established by Parasurama in villages that compose the modern-day districts of Salsette and Tiswadi.43 The three clans

38 Gerson da Cunha, Shri Sahyadri Khanda Skhanda Purana [Marathi]; his Shri Sahya- dri Khanda Skhanda Purana [Sanskrit]. 39 S. H. Levitt, The Patityagramanirnaya: A Puranic History of Degraded Brahman Vil- lages (Ann Arbor: Xerox University Microfilms, I973), pp. i-io.

40 Ibid. p. 104. 41 Saldanha, Origin and Growth of Konkani or Goan Communities and Language, p. 24; K. Guru Dutt, Chitrapur Saraswat Retrospect (Bangalore: B. D. Power Press, I955); S.S. Talmaki, Saraswat Families, II (Bombay: 1939), p. 5; and Gerson da Cunha, Shri Sahyadri Khanda Skhanda Purana [Marathi], pp. I20-4.

42 Levitt, The Patityagramanirnaya, p. 103. 43 Districts are known as talukas in the Indian languages and concelhos in Portug- uese. The old conquests were comprised of three districts: Salsette, the Portuguese pronunciation of Shahashasti refers to the sixty six villages in the area; Tiswadi, which refers to the thirty historical villages there; and Bardez, the Portuguese pro- nunciation of baredesh which refers to the twelve areas there.

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which were established in the villages of Kusasthala and Kelosi (now known as Cortalim and Quellosim) are described in the text as par- ticularly virtuous and attractive44 and worthy of respect by kings, due to their efficiency and good conduct.45 Indeed, in the sixteenth cen- tury, these villages were regarded as the exemplars of Goan culture,46 and their pre-Portuguese village deities, Mangesh and Shantadurga, are now housed in Goa's most famous and important new conquest temples.47 Other villages described in the text are easily recognizable as key contemporary villages and towns: Margao, Lotli and Verna are prominent and relatively prosperous settlements (Margao is the district's principal town) in Salsette whose current Christian gaun- cares48 are recognized as Brahmans and trace their descent to the original Brahman settlers.

Kosambi and de Souza argue that the Brahmans usurped the rich estuary land, pushing lower caste Kshatriyas into the less productive coastal and hilly areas.49 Indeed Brahmans predominated in the gen- eral assembly of village communities, composed of the desais (hereditary important elders in the villages), at the time of the arrival of the Portuguese.50 Tax records also indicate the superior productiv- ity of village communities with Brahman gauncares, perhaps a clue that they were indeed invited by a local king to settle in the area, as the Sahyadri Khanda suggests.51 Certainly the villages and lineages with

44 Gerson da Cunha, Shri Sahyadri Khanda Skhanda Purana [Marathi], p. 131. 45 Wagle,'The History and Social Organization of the Gauda Saraswata

Brahmanas of the West Coast of India,' p. 9. 46 Conlon, A Caste in a Changing World, p. 15. 47 V. N. S. Dhume, Shri Mangesh Sansthan (Mardol, Goa: Shri Mangesh Sansthan

Committee, 1974); his Shri Shantadurga Devasthan; and P. S. S. Pissurlencar (ed.) Shri Shantadurga Chitushatabda Mahotsav Granth (Bombay: Shri Shantadurga Seva Samiti, 1966).

48 The gauncares are the hereditary shareholders of the village community. Since the term is transcribed from Konkani, there are a variety of spellings; it is also transcribed as gancars, gauncarias, and gaoncars.

49 D. D. Kosambi, Myth and Reality (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, I962), p. I69. 50 de Souza, Medieval Goa, pp. 56-8; F. N. Xavier, Bosquejo Historico das Communid- ades, II (Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, I852), pp. 24-5.

51 de Souza, Medieval Goa, p. 58; and Kosambi, Myth and Reality, p. t69. According to data reported in J. J. Cicilia Kol, 'A General Statistical and Historical Report on Portuguese India Extracted in I850 from Official Documents,' in J. W. Auld (ed.), Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government, No. X, New Series (Bombay: Bombay Education Society's Press, i855), pp. 315-I8. Brahman village communities paid an average annual tax of 3,142 xerafins in I850; while the non-Brahman village commu- nities paid an average of 1,343 xerafins. This further affirms the belief that the Brahmans generally held the more productive village lands, though some Chardo controlled villages are quite prosperous as well.

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the greatest wealth, land, and renown in Goa are the Salsette Brahman villages.

Saraswat control of key villages and deities later became the foundation on which the Hindu diaspora and resistance was built. However, Goan village structure also provided a basis for the resist- ance. At the time of the arrival of the Portuguese, Goan villages represented complex wholes in which the ritual, social and economic life was integrally bound in a seamless web. The villages, based on communal ownership, are known as communidades in Portuguese and gaunvponn in Konkani. Virtually all of the villages in the old conquests and a few in the new conquests are communidades, and are therefore owned by shareholders who divide the profits and losses of income from the land. Until land reform in the I970s, the communidades con- trolled most of the paddy land and significant proportions of cashew groves, the two most important agricultural assets in the old con- quests. (Goa's other important crops, coconuts and areca nuts, have been largely in private hands.52)

Layers of administrative reforms and regulations imposed by the Portuguese rulers modified the original structure, but most communid- ades were, and indeed still are, controlled by joneiros (shareholders) who are descendants of the original gauncares, most of whom were either Saraswats or Marathas at the time of conquest.53 The gauncares, who were members of patrilineages known as vangad, held the land in common and were served by temple priests (usually Marathi- speaking Karade or Chitpavan Brahmans who in many cases have been replaced by GSB priests over the last 60 years) and other hered- itary servants who had traditionally determined obligations and received payments in kind or had access to special categories of land provided by the communidade.54 The vangad divisions were only found among the gauncares and were ranked according to their original con-

52 Jose C. Almeida, Aspects of the Agricultural Activity in Goa, Daman and Diu (Panaji: Government Printing Press, I967), p. 17. 53 Sebastiao Rodolfo Dalgado, Glossdrio Luso-Asidtico [New Delhi: Asian Education Services, i988 (original I918)], p. 495. 54 Afonso Mexia, 'Foral de Usos e Costumes dos Gancares e Lavradores desta Ilha de Goa e Outras Aneixas a Ella,' Archivo Portuguez-Oriental, V, ed. J. H. R. da Cunha Rivara (Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, 1875), p. I24; this is the published version of a document found in several places in the Historical Archives of Goa (hereafter HAG) including MS 8791, Livros Vermelhos, fls. 147 if., and Monqoes de Reino, No. 76, 1526, fls. 48 ff. For an English translation see B. H. Baden Powell, 'The Villages of Goa in the Early Sixteenth Century,' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society (1900), pp. 26I-91. See also V. Goenkar, 'The Origin of the Goa Communid- ades,' Navhind Times (May 3, 1970), p. 2.

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tributions to the development of the village at the time of settlement.55 There is a good deal of mystification about the origin, nature and

development of the communidades. They are not found elsewhere on the Konkan coast, though similar systems can be found in a number of locations in South India, usually in association with wet rice agri- culture.56 The almost perfect fit between the Gomantak of the Sahyadri Khanda, the geographic distribution of the communidades, and the Por- tuguese old conquest territories points to the conflation between eco- logical, textual, and historical factors in the development of a distinct- ive Goan region and culture.

The cooperative coparcenary enterprises of the communidades are virtually coincident with the boundaries of the old conquests and a natural ecosystem that falls within that boundary. With some excep- tions, the new conquest territories are more hilly and dry than the largely flat, low-lying coastal plain of the old conquests. Almeida argues that the communal organization is well adapted to reclaiming and protecting by constructing walls, canals and sluices for the saline, marshy, fertile khazan fields which constitute most of the paddy land in old conquest Goa.57 In fact, cooperative productive techniques were practiced by the tenants on these khazan lands until recently: a group of 70 or 80 tenants, called buoco, would divide the produce among them after the payment of rent.58 The old conquest territories of Goa thus represented an ecological zone with its own system of production and distribution, textual account, social structure, and deities. Perhaps due to the limited productive potential and its coveted coastal location, Goa never became an independent state: even during the rule of the Goa Kadambas (A.D. IOOO-1300) and certainly during all other historical periods, Goa was a feudatory to larger empires. Goa's value came more from its strategic location than from a thriving economy: in i96I, the last year of Portuguese

55 J. A. Rubinoff, 'Vangad: the Context of Lineage,' in City and Countryside and Society in Maharashtra, eds M. Israel, D. W. Attwood, and N. K. Wagle (Toronto: University of Toronto Centre for South Asian Studies, I988), p. I96; and de Souza, Medieval Goa, p. 62.

56 Ludden, Peasant History in South India, pp. 85-6. Joint control of land is found in both North and South India, according to Rubinoff, 'Vangad: the Context of Lineage,' p. i95. However, Altekar argues that joint-tenancy in North India is not true communal ownership, but rather, is simply land-revenue obligations held by the multiple heirs for the purpose of land revenue. See A. S. Altekar, A History of Village Communities in Western India (Bombay: Oxford University Press, I927).

57 Almeida, Aspects of the Agricultural Activity in Goa, Daman and Diu, p. 55. 38 P. S. Lokanathan, Techno-economic Survey of Goa, Daman and Diu (New Delhi:

National Council of Applied Economic Research, 1964), p. 39.

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rule, Goa, with an estimated 30 per cent of its indigenous population living outside the territory was able to meet only two-thirds of its rice requirements, and several documents of the seventeenth century report that Goa was importing rice from Kanara even then.59

It is commonly held by many Goans that the hereditary gauncares were the original clearers of the land. The Foral de Usos e Costumes ('Charter of Local Uses and Customs'), compiled in 1526 by the chief Portuguese revenue superintendent Afonso Mexia with the help of local Brahmans, contains the rules of village life on the island of Goa. According to this charter the gauncares were descended from four men who first cultivated what was wasteland.60 For developing this land, they were accorded the status of gauncar and were entitled to adminis- ter the land and collect rent and taxes.6'

The communidades were agricultural cooperatives which attended to the infrastructural requirements of the village; they served as the keepers of granaries, builders of roads and dikes, trustees of the lands, and supervisors of the artisans and laborers who served the village. Though the somewhat sentimental literature on village communities in Goa rarely portrays them as other than romanticized, self- governing, egalitarian republics,62 they were essentially run by the dominant caste landholders and can be compared with dominant castes elsewhere in India.63

39 Ibid., p. I3; Pearson, 'Wealth and Power: Indian Groups in the Portuguese Indian Economy,' p. 38.

60 Mexia, 'Foral de Usos e Costumes,' p. I 9. 61 See. Baden-Powell, 'The Villages of Goa in the Early Sixteenth Century,' p. 172. Though the textual and historical evidence suggests high caste primacy in Goan land-tenure arrangements in the pre-Portuguese period, the ethnographic reality is somewhat more complex. The dominant castes in Goa (the Saraswats and Chardos) controlled villages as gauncares in the productive bottomlands of the old conquests. But they were hardly the majority of the Goan population in the largely Catholic (89 per cent) village of Chandor, for instance; of the 4,647 Christian residents, 16 per cent are either Brahmans or Chardos. See Gomes, A Village in Goa, p. 88. Most of the residents of the villages everywhere in Goa are, in fact, landless laborers or hereditary servants, either Kunbi, Gaudda or Sudir (derived from Sudra), who are dominated by those from the Christian Brahman and Chardo castes (in the old conquests) or Hindus from the Saraswat or Maratha castes in the far more sparsely populated new conquests. Most Goans are members of the Kunbi or Gaudda commu- nities. The Kunbis are generally settled south of the Zuari River in the Districts of Salsette, Canacona, and Quepem and thought to be of Dravidian origin. The Gauddas are located primarily in the villages north of the Zuari and regarded as Aryans: only a few villages and temples in Goa are controlled by these two groups.

62 F. Xavier Nery, Defensa dos Direitos das Gaucarias (Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, 1856); J. H. da Cunha Rivara, Primeiro Brado a Favor das Communidades das Aldeias do Estado da India (Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, 1840). 63 Gomes Pereira, Goa Gaunkari, p. 31.

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While the Foral notes that some lands are reserved for the servants of the temple, little mention is made of the pivotal role of the Hindu temple and the connection between it and the communidade.64 A number of other documents show that the communidade was merely the productive component of a more complex system in which the village temple played a key role. For gauncares were also the mahajans (Konkani) or mazania (Portuguese) of the temple, and the produce of the best lands of the communidade was devoted to the maintenance of the temple.65 As mahajans, the gauncares set aside land for maintenance of the temple and its servants. They put forth the funds for the con- struction of the temples, bore the cost of maintaining the deity, and provided customary privileges and land for the hereditary servants of the temple.

Typically, the temples were served by priests, carpenters, washer- men, ironsmiths, potters, barbers, dancers (kalavantas and bavinas), musicians, mahars (former untouchables), who were granted rights to cultivable lands (known as namoxin) in exchange for their services to the temple. These arrangements were described in great detail in Portuguese documents and still honored and upheld in numerous porteria (statutes) passed during the last I25 years, the result of formal efforts by the Portuguese administrators to legalize traditional arrangements.66

Though the productive and religious elements of village life were part and parcel of a single system, the separate organizations of the gauncares and the mahajans, of communidade and devasthan (temple), facil- itated the disarticulation of the infrastructural from the spiritual and hence the possibilities of the temples to operate independently of their productive base. Disarticulated from the system of land and village community in which they developed, they continued to thrive as part of the social system, acquiring new means of financial support and symbolic significance.

This Goan regional culture at the time of the arrival of the Portug- uese was anchored in a productive, social and ideological system that was deeply interconnected. The arrival of the Portuguese was an

64 Mexia, 'Foral de Usos e Costumes', p. 124. 65 J. H. da Cunha Rivara, (ed.), Archivo Portuguez-Oriental, V, Parte 2a (Nova Goa: NA Imprensa Nacional, 1875), pp. 543, 839. 66 Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and continuing today, regular entries in the Boletim Official (or as it is currently known, Official Bulletin) have detailed finances, income, festivals, rituals and their fees, associated deities, duties and pay- ments of the servants of most of the temples in remarkable detail. In some cases, lists of the mahajans are included.

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extraordinary invasive shock to this system, but we have ample evid- ence that Hindu Goa was able to resist the intense campaign of the Portuguese to transform the ideological and to a lesser degree the social system while leaving the productive system largely intact.

Goa under the Portuguese

While no informed scholar goes so far as to portray it in such an extreme way, it is easy to get the impression from much of the extant literature that the arrival of the Portuguese in India was a colossal cultural juggernaut which stamped out a native cultural system and supplanted it with an Asian enclave of Western civilization. Accounts by some Catholics about the Christianization of Goa, apologists for Portuguese rule, Hindu opponents of Portuguese rule, monographs on Goan culture and society, and modern day impressions of casual visitors to Goa and many educated Indians often portray Goa as a Christianized, Lusified corner of India.67 Indeed, on reading the goals of those connected with the Padroado and correspondence by many church and state luminaries in the Estado da India during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the impression is received that the Portug- uese were achieving great success in transforming Goa into a satellite of metropolitan Portugal. Document upon document chronicles mass conversions, the destruction of all the temples in Goa, and the swift success in Christianizing virtually every village in Goa.68

The book has yet to be written assessing the varying reports on the levels of brutality and the willingness of Goans to convert to Christianity. It is highly unlikely that an entirely accurate account can ever be created because of the varied evidence. D'Costa, in a book which is largely an apology for the conversion policies, notes the same kinds of contradictions in the archival record that we find.69 Local traditions, he reports, tell of violence, resistance and the flight

67 Mario Cabral and Jean-Louis Nou e Sa, Goa (New Delhi: Lustre Press, I986); T. Albuquerque, Anjuna: A Profile of a Village in Goa (New Delhi: Promilla, I988); and her Santa Cruz Calapor: Profile of a Village in Goa (Panjim, Goa: Fernandes Publica- tion, i989).

68 For example, D'Costa, in The Christianisation of the Goa Islands cites numerous documents detailing the goodwill and great success of the conversion policies; in The Goa Inquisition, Priolkar details the evidence for the horror of the brutal conversion policies and the use of threats, enslavement, execution, and extortion in order to effect conversions.

69 D'Costa, The Christianisation of the Goa Islands, pp. 4-5.

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of Hindus from Goa, while the Jesuit annual accounts and a number of other official documents report warm receptions and mass conver- sions. Most documents and accounts concur that temples were destroyed and churches were erected in their place, though the levels of violence and brutality that accompanied them are difficult to deter- mine and varied from village to village. There are also consistent reports of large numbers of Hindus fleeing the conversion, though the accounts vary on the proportion of the population who left. The matter is complicated by the periodic return of some Hindus and half-hearted conversions of others.

Contemporary Goa can also provide a misleading view of the nature and success of the conversion policies. Visually, Goa stands in stark contrast to neighboring Hindu India. Every village in the old conquests is dominated by a huge church, many of which date to the period of active Christianization in the mid-sixteenth century and are centrally located on the sites of the village temple. In the mid-nineteenth century, the date of the earliest published census, Catholics were the clear majority of the population in the old con- quests, comprising 77 per cent in Ilhas, 95 per cent in Salsette and 83 per cent in Bardez.70 Most Catholics have adopted Portuguese Christian names, and have worn European dress since the early days of conversion.71 Today, many Catholic homes in villages in the old conquests resemble Mediterranean bungalows, and parts of Panjim, the modern capital of Goa, with its flower-laden verandas and brightly painted balconies projecting over small narrow lanes, could be mistaken for Lisbon neighborhoods. There is no shortage of criteria by which it would be easy to conclude that in Goa the Portuguese were able to clone an extension of Lusitanian culture in Asia, and that is the common impression held by many scholars and residents of India.

However, other documents in the late sixteenth and early seven- teenth century tell a story of frustration and recidivism on the conver- sion front. Portuguese administrative, military, and religious officials spoke often of the difficulties they faced in carrying out their policies, and numerous references to the intransigence of Hindus can be found from the mid-sixteenth century through the end of the seventeenth century. In the midst of great claims of success in converting entire

70 'Nacao Historica de Goa, Recenseamento 1844,' 0 Cabinete Litterdrio de Fontainhas (Nova Goa: I846), p. 244.

71 J. N. da Fonseca, An Historical and Archaeological Sketch of the City of Goa [New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, I986 (original 1878)], pp. 113-15.

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villages and destroying virtually all of the Hindu temples in Ilhas, Salsette, and Bardez,72 is a persistent commentary on their inability to carry out those policies within the area of Portuguese control. More consistently, comments reveal their inability to control the Hindu activities in the areas outside of Portuguese jurisdiction, in which Goan Hindus and Catholics participated. There is ample archival evidence of the frustration of the Portuguese officials in carrying out their conversion policies.

For example, the Portuguese pledged to destroy Hindu temples and, in doing so, limit or stop the practice of Hinduism. Their lack of success shows in the following documents:

TIn the mid-sixteenth century, the viceroy Dom Joao de Castro receives a letter from the king stating that the king has received news that there are still public and private temples on the Island of Goa. He orders the viceroy to prohibit all public and secret temples as soon as the king's letter is received.73 ?King Dom Sebastiao signs a letter on 25 March I559 informing the viceroy that it has come to his attention that: on Goa and annexed lands there are many offenses committed by the infidels and Gentiles there who adore and publicly celebrate idols and temples and use diabolical rituals and, worst, in the presence of Christians besides.

He thus passes a law that 'henceforward there be no more temples nor idols in any house nor anywhere in my realm.'74

72 HAG, Monc6es 93B, Viceroy's decree that there will be no new temples and those that exist cannot be repaired, 20 December 1566, fl. 380r; a law forbidding idols in any home, 26 March I559, fl. 393r; HAG, Provis6es a Favor da Cristandade 1513-1840, MS. 9529, 1559, fl. 34r; Viceroy Dom Antao writes that no temples can be built and no repairs can be carried out, 1566, fl. 9or; Anyone impeding conversion will be condemned to the galleys, 24 February 1570, fl. 8ir, and a previous attempt to condemn to the king's galleys those who impede conversion in a letter dated 17 February I56o in Silva Rego's Padroado, Vol. VIII, pp. 8-o0; Instructions to priests cautioning them to learn enough about Hindu religious activities to prevent them, MS. 9529, I581, fl. 36v; Diogo de Couto, Decada, VIII (Lisboa: A Custa de Joam da Costa, e Diogo Soarez, 1673), p. 17; Francisco de Souza (ed.), Oriente Conquistada a Jesus Christo pelos Padres da Companhia de Jesus da Provincia de Goa, II (Bombay: Na Typ. 'Examiner,' i886), p. 323; da Cunha Rivara, Primeiro Brado a Favor das Communid- ades das Aldeias do Estado da India, pp. 78-82; Wicki (ed.), Documenta Indica 54o-I549, I, pp. 756-6i. 73 HAG, Moncoes 93B, fls. 358v-359r, n.d. Dom Joao de Castro was the viceroy from 1545-1548. All translations are the authors' and have been modified to reflect modern syntax and punctuation. 74 HAG, Monqoes 93B, fl. 34Iv. For an example of the Brahmans secretly practic- ing their Gentile festivals and ceremonies in the darkness of the night, see Silva Rego, Padroado, vol. VII, p. 331.

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?A few years later, on 29 March 1566 the king writes that no new temples can be built and that those existing ones cannot be repaired without the king's special licence under penalty of being rased.75 In spite of the destruction of many Hindu temples, royal corres-

pondence (the so-called 'Monsoon letters') to the viceroys and gov- ernors of the Estado da India throughout the sixteenth century deal with the topic of Hindu temples in Christian lands:

?The king writes on 28 March I 580 that there are to be 'no temples, no idols, no festivals allowed:' this was supposed to be done in 1568, but he knows that 'many Hindus keep reverting to their rituals particularly in Salsette and Bardez which is detrimental to the conversion process.'76 Not only do the Portuguese find it impossible to rid the realm of

the visible symbols of Hinduism, the temples and idols, but also of the practice of Hinduism itself:

?A letter from the viceroy written in I580 reports that: Hindus set a bad example for new converts by worshipping idols and causing them to return to their old ways and rituals. The Hindus perse- vere in their idolatry and abominable errors. Anyone who impedes the work of conversion should be seriously punished. They cannot be allowed to have idols nor carry out festivals in their honor.77

?The same decree is issued in i633!78 ?In 157i and again in 158I the king passes decrees forbidding temples and Hindu ceremonies.79 ?On 25 February 158i, the king states that he bans, as his prede- cessors did, Gentile (Hindu) temples, ceremonies, rituals and festivals.80 Many important government posts were held by Hindus even

though this was not royally sanctioned. Repeated attempts to disallow 71 HAG, Monc6es 93B, fl. 366r. This repeats King Dom Sebastiao's 1559 prohibi-

tion of all Gentile ceremonies, rites, rituals, idols and temples. See Silva Rego, Pad- roado, vol. VII, pp. 284-286, and for the 1560 attempt, see Padroado, vol. VIII, pp. 58-9.

76 HAG, Monq6es 93B, fl. 342r. 77 HAG, MS. 9529, Provis6es a Favor da Cristandade 1513-I840, fls. 6ov-6iv.

For a complete list of the laws against infidel activity as passed by the viceroy in 1567 at the request of the Holy Provincial Council of Goa, see Silva Rego, Padroado, vol. X, pp. 405-13.

78 HAG, MS. 9529, ProvisSes a Favor da Cristandade 1513-1840, fls. 6ov-6iv, 17 August I633.

79 HAG, MS. 9529, Provis6es a Favor da Cristandade 1513-1840, fls. 30v, 3Ir (I57I), fl. 36v (I58I).

80 HAG, Moncoes 93B, fl. 342v. For a similar document dealing with prohibitions see Padroado, Vol. VII, pp. 284-286.

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this practice attest to the perseverance of Hindus in these offices, against the king's orders.

lIn 1582 Hindus are once again forbidden from holding public office, noting that Hindus had not met their obligation to convert to Christianity.81 The king had learned that Brahmans and Gentiles were rendeiros and contratadores (renters or tenants and contractors) of his lands. That is forbidden since it is against canon law. King Sebastiao previously passed a law on 23 March 1559 saying that none of his officers or royal servants could be Brahmans, Gentiles or other infidel.82 ?And later, on 12 January 159I, the king passes an alvara (decree) because he has been informed that his dezembargadores (chief magis- trates and privy councilors) and other lettered men serving him in India have generally been Gentile Brahmans, and this must stop.83 Official thinking was to encourage conversion by reserving import-

ant posts only for Christians. Enticements to convert came in many other shapes as well:

?In 1583 the king writes that it has come to his attention that many Hindus leave their wealth without heirs. At the request of the Hindus, he allows their widows or other relatives to inherit that wealth provided they convert to Christianity.84 Native reactions to conversion policies frequently were in the form

of escape to what is referred to in the documents as 'terra firme' or 'a outra banda' or the 'land of the Moors' (the territories beyond the orbit of Portuguese control).

?In September of I595 a lengthy missive by the Pai dos Cristaos or Father of the Christians (the appointed official in charge of all catechumens) instructs the priests to learn the days of the Hindu festivals so as to stop them and punish the participants. Similarly he admonishes his priests to anticipate pilgrimages and marriage ceremonies so as to intervene. All orphans must be located because the infidels are taking them to the terra firme.85 ?IThe viceroy Ayres Saldanha proclaims on 23 March I604 an alvard (decree) that it is forbidden to carry any and all youths,

81 HAG, MS. 9529, fl. 49v. 82 HAG, Monq6es 93B, fl. 339r. 83 HAG, Mono6es 93B, fls. 37or-37ov. Not a new decree as King Dom Joao had attempted the same in a letter dated 25 June 1557, in Silva Rego, Padroado, vol. VII. pp. 215-218, and again two years later in 1559, a repeat of the same order in Silva Rego, Paroado, vol. VII, pp. 264-9.

84 HAG, MS. 9529, fl. 59v. 85 HAG, MS. 9529, fls. 3r-3v, 4r-4v, 5r-5v.

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whether Christian or Gentile orphans, to 'the other side.' It is happening too frequently.86 ?In i609 the king complains that too many new converts are fleeing to the land of the 'Moors.' Ten years later on 15 February 1619 LorenCo de Tavora receives a letter from the king complaining about too many going to the 'outra banda.'87 ?A petition of 17 August I633 notes that newly converted Christi- ans are enticed by the Hindus to leave the faith and join them on the 'other side:' too many temples are maintained there. Many have left their lands and wealth behind while fleeing to the other side.88 The viceroy Dom Miguel de Noronha writes on I I January 1633 complaining about those who impede conversion or those who pervert a large number of those already converted or who hide orphans and take them over to terra firme and build temples there.89 The Portuguese seemed to be unsure about what to do about con-

tacts with Hindus on the other side. A solution to the problem of Hindu wedding ceremonies occurring in the realm was to order them to take place 'on the other side.' This, however, created other problems:

?A letter written in the late eighteenth century discusses a law passed in response to Hindu complaints about being robbed on their way to the land of the Moors (where they had to go by law to marry). Thus, to avoid highway robbery, the law allowed them to have their wedding ceremonies at home behind closed doors. However, they were not allowed to have their priests or other temple officials in attendance so that no sacrifices or rituals would be performed. The Hindus wrote to complain that their wedding ceremonies were thus invalid without priests in attendance to per- form the proper ceremonies, and that their women were defiled and their children considered illegitimate.90 ?More than a century before, King Philip had written on 05 March I624 to the viceroy in Goa to reinforce the decrees and provisions

86 HAG, Mon;6es 93B, 39or. 87 HAG, MonC6es 93B, fl. 353r. Regarding earlier comments (1566) about the Brahmans taking their idols to the land of the Moors, see Silva Rego, Padroado, vol. X, pp. 104, 300.

88 HAG, MS. 9539, fls. 6ov-6iv. Reports in I559 of Gentiles who abandon their fazendas and go to terra firme in Silva Rego, Padroado, vol. VII, pp. 340-1.

89 HAG, MonCoes 93B, fls. 355r-356r. 90 HAG, MonCoes 93B, Letter signed by Domingos da Silva in Goa on 29 August 1790, fl. 384r.

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as passed by Jer6nimo de Azevedo in May of 1613 and later by Fernao de Albuquerque in January of I620 and again in May of 1621 that Hindu weddings not be allowed to take place. But they were still taking place in private homes in spite of these provisions and the Hindus continued going to the lands of the Moors 'where they freely practice their superstitious ways.' King Philip, with a copy sent to the Archbishop and to the Inquisitors, approved and confirmed the said prior provisions on og May I625.91 The ongoing dilemma of Hindu wedding ceremonies is amply docu-

mented as it appears in the numerous laws passed throughout the seventeenth century alone. The repeated measures taken trying to restrict and/or forbid them seem to have been largely ineffectual. At one point Hindus were allowed to hold their ceremonies only on boats offshore in the dark!92

Many manuscripts in the archives deal with the issue of converting masses of individuals, principally uninstructed in the faith, and its concomitant problems:

?King Dom Joao writes to the viceroy in response to his letter of o1 November I712 regarding another letter sent by the Father of the Christians dealing with decrees and provisions in favor of the propagation of the faith and conversion of the Gentiles. Conversions must be official and not brutal. It is a principal obligation of the kings of Portugal to treat the Gentiles, our vassals, with great care; there have been too many abuses; I thought I told you that certain privil- eges were to have been taken away from the Gentiles; in no way can vassal Gentiles attend frequently and publicly the festivals of their temples on terra firme, and they must stop making public offerings to their idols. You may not permit this under severe punishment and officials are pro- hibited from working on such works.... Clear this up immediately. My laws must be followed.93

?At the beginning of the seventeenth century King Philip wrote to the viceroy to thank him for his efforts to convert all inhabitants of Salsette in true conversion and not just in appearance,94 but in the king's letter of 22 September 171 I, he complained to the viceroy that there is not enough zeal in conversion efforts these days.95

91 HAG, Moncoes 93B, fls. 372v-373r. 92 HAG, Mon6ies 93B, fls. 382v-383r. 93 HAG, MonC6es 93B, Letter dated 15 March 1714 from King Dom Joao to the

viceroy, fls. 398r-398v. 94 HAG, Monc6es 93B, fl. 396v. 93 HAG, Monq6es 93B, fl. 399r.

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A 1633 law by Count Linhares regarding the Hindus of Salsette, who had fled to avoid converting, shows the intractability of these problems well into the seventeenth century:

Many Gentiles impede other Gentiles from converting and thwart a great number of those already converted, and they hide orphans and pass them over to terra firme, building many temples there with materials from our lands, performing Gentile ceremonies in them, frequently sacrificing roosters and other animals for which they bring master sorcerers and gurus from the terra firme who go to the Christians' houses, intimidating them and persuading them that the pains and illnesses they have are punishments from their gods for not adoring them; [the gurus] promise them health and long life if they send offerings [to the idols], bringing from said temples accounts and other things like relics which they distrib- ute amongst the weakest in faith, trying to get them to swear to the idols at the hour of their death; it is equally notorious that such Gentiles have idols in their homes for whom they perform various ceremonies and they perform the same diabolical ceremonies amongst themselves and not pub- licly with great shouts and cries and pilgrimages to the temples of the terra firme ... all of which besides causing a great scandal and ruin to the New Christians is against royal provisions Your Majesty has passed in favor of Christianity; said Gentiles use great deceit and usury ... In the service of Your Majesty [I order] the total expulsion of said Gentiles from the lands of Salsette ... I hereby order that no Gentile from this day henceforward can live nor own homes in the lands of Salsette, with the loss of all privileges of their gancarias, nor can they own shares in the land nor have a voice, under penalty of death and loss of all their possessions ... There will be a total separation of the Gentiles from the Christians during the two months in which the Gentiles have to sell their belongings and move out of Salsette.96

These documents, and scores of others like them, show that reports of great success and conversions of entire villages notwithstanding, enormous difficulties remained for those involved in converting Hindus to Christianity and enforcing the provisions of the various associated policies. The Portuguese seemed to be preoccupied by sev- eral issues: their inability to remove Hinduism from Goa; the con- tinuation of the Hindu ceremonies and the degree of participation by Christian converts; the movement of Hindus in and out of the areas of Portuguese control; their frustration with the centers of Hindu activities in the 'terra firma,' those areas under thejurisdiction of native rulers in territories bordering Goa; and the Christianizing of widows and orphans. There is an obvious contradiction between the claims

96 HAG, MS. 9529, Law declared by Viceroy Count Linhares against the Hindus of Salsette who fled the lands for refusing to become Christians, r I January 1663, fls. 61v-63v.

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of conformity to the early royal decrees demanding complete Christi- anization of Goa in the mid-sixteenth century and the continued per- sistence of Hinduism in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Recent commentaries on the history of the temples affirm the Portu- guese frustration, though from a Hindu perspective. Most of the important temples have published their own histories, written mostly in Marathi.97 They are remarkably uniform in presentation: tradi- tional accounts of the temple's place in its pre-Portuguese village in old conquest Goa are followed by lengthy accounts of the brutal period of Portuguese oppression and the secret removal and rein- stallation of the deity outside the area of Portuguese control. Though occasional documents from the archives are cited in support of these claims, it is clear that these accounts are part of the collective memory of the temple's mahajans. Some edited excerpts from Shri Ramnath Devasthan's own version capture the flavor and format of these histories. In 1566 the Temple of Shantadurga of Keloshi was set on fire. During that year conversion movement in Salsette reached its climax. All of a sudden the Fort Officer of Raitur, Diogo Rodrigues ordered the residents of Lotli to be present at the Fort. However, the order was not obeyed for fear of conver- sion. Annoyed at this, he destroyed the front portion of the main temple of Ramnath Devasthan. The residents of Lotli, angered by such an action, filed a court case against Rodrigues and his mates ... Dissatisfied by the decision of the judge to preserve the temple, the viceroy issued special permission to Rodrigues to demolish all of the temples of Salsette. Accordingly in 1567, Rodrigues demolished all of the remaining temples of Salsette. In the year 1566, due to fear of conversion, many residents of Lotli fled to places like Antruz Mahal, Kankon, Karwar, Mangalore, Cochin etc. A group of 250 persons marching towards the South were attacked by tigers. Twenty people were lost. A hunter asked them why they were risking their lives by going through the forest and subjecting themselves to risk. Why were they not returning to Goa where they could have land, jobs and everything else? They replied that nothing was more dear to them than their religion and that they would never leave their dearest and the best Hindu religion. It did not matter if they had to die for this.

97 In addition to the works cited above by Dhume and Pissurlencar on the Man- gesh and Shantadurga temples, some other examples of temple histories include, S. S. Sunthankar, Ase Ahe Shri Damodar (Belgaum: Jijisa Prakashan, I974); B. D. Satos- kar, Shri Devkikrishna Ravalnath Devasthan (Mashel, Goa: Shri Devkikrishna Ravanath Devasthan, 1982); Shri Nagesh Devasthan, Its Past and Present (Bombay: Wagle P. S. & P. Put. LTD, 1974); Souvenir Issued in the Mother's Service [In English and Marathi] (Bombay: Shree Shantadurga Seva Samati, 1966); Shri Sansthan Gokarn Partagali Math Pancha-Shatabdhi Mahotsav (Partagali Goa: 1977); Shri Ramnath Devsthan (Ramnathim-Ponda, Goa: Shri Ramnath Devasthan, n.d.).

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In view of the atrocities committed by the Christian missionaries, the residents of Lotli became desperate and felt that they could not enjoy any stability and hence they shifted their revered deities to other places. Their intention was to take these deities to a place where they would be free from the influence of the Portuguese government and their fanatical priests. They selected the village Bandivdem (the modern day village of Bandora). They transported the idols by bullock cart. They acquired a vast plot of land on permanent lease from the Bandora village association for the purpose of the erection of the temple. The deities were brought to a safe place but the problem was how to manage the daily affairs. The entire wealth of the temple at Lotli was lost. Under such adverse circumstances they learned to do business in the surrounding areas of Salsette and were meeting the expense by contributions collected among themselves. They engaged in busi- ness by day and came back to Antruz Mahal [a territory in the new conquest district of Ponda, then part of the Bijapur kingdom] at night.

The Lotlikars thought it to be their responsibility to revive the old glory of the temple, and they purchased some lands and finalized plans to build independent temples for the deities.98

Other versions of these temple histories are similarly explicit about individuals and dates of events that took place more than 350 years ago. Some use Portuguese records to support their claims; others, even in the absence of records, are just as precise in their accounts of the relocation of the temple. Though the Portuguese records and temple histories present these events in quite different terms, as would be expected, there is certainly enough evidence to confirm the significance of the return of the deities to their homes in the old conquests.

The diaspora and reconstruction of the temples in areas north and east of Goa, held by Adil Shah, and those west and south of Goa held by the Sonda kings, are thus confirmed by Portuguese records, temple histories, and Hindu rituals. The rather vivid collective memory of the traumatic events is not surprising. The survival and and the celebration of the Hindu resistance through movement of the deities and reestablishment of the temples outside of the area of Portuguese control are the best evidence. The persistence of the temples in the face of Portuguese oppression is a well-known tale to most devotees of the temple, and current accounts and reenactments of their historic connections to their ancestral villages conform to the documentary evidence.

To understand the opportunity for fleeing the Portuguese, some- thing of the political order in the region adjacent to Goa is helpful.

98 Shri Ramnath Devsthan, pp. 9-I6.

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Goa and the region around it were in political flux just prior to and for more than a century after the arrival of the Portuguese. The Portu- guese arrived in the wake of the decline of the Vijayanagar empire in the region and with the rise of the Adilshah rulers of Bijapur who secured the region during the last decade of the fifteenth century. It was from them that Goa was seized by the Portuguese. But during much of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the region around Goa was largely under the control of Hindu chiefs who were feudatories to the Bijapur rulers. To the south, the Suddha Nayaks of Sonda paid tribute initially to both the Bijapur and Vijayanagar rulers, but with the decline of both empires in the mid-seventeenth century, the Sonda rulers assumed the title of raja (king) in I674.99 They controlled territory currently in the new conquest districts of Ponda, Quepem, and Canacona into which many of the deities were carried. Other hereditary chiefs, many of them with the titles desai and sardessai, ruled administrative districts to the east and north of Goa and achieved various degrees of independence as the Bijapur empire declined in the early seventeenth century. The Sawants of Wadi emerged as the main power in the areas of the modern districts of Pernem, Bicholim, Sattari, and Sanquelim in the new conquest territories to the north and west of Goa.'0? But most of the relocation took place because of the power vacuum created by declining influ- ence of the Islamic Bijapur and Hindu Vijayanagar empires in the area.

The Portuguese documents often described the Hindus as fleeing to the land of the 'Moors,' a reference to the area under the nominal control of the Bijapur empire, but it was largely due to the local powers of the Hindu chiefs that the Hindus from Goa received hospit- able reception. Many of the important deities from the temples of Salsette were carried to what is today Ponda district, to the villages of Mardol, Bandora, Priol and Kavle, and they attribute their relocation there to the hospitality of the Sonda kings and not the Bijapur rulers.

Though the documentary evidence provides a murky picture of the events in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the ethnographic evidence and Marathi histories corroborate the trail of evidence in

99 Madhav Anant Desai, Chittakula-Karwar: A History (Bombay: Author, 1969), p. 32. 100 S. K. Mhamai, Sawants of Wadi, Coastal Politics in i8th and Igth Centuries (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 1984), pp. 3-5.

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the documents which make the case for a sustained Hindu resistance during that period.

The Lessons of Hindu Resistance

This study of Hindu resistance to Portuguese rule adds to the emer- ging literature on the contestation of power by subordinate peoples, but the pattern of conflict differs from other protests against colonial rule. While the struggle of the Hindus against Portuguese conversion policies certainly contained elements of 'avoidance protest' and 'everyday resistance,' they were far more confrontational.'?0 There was open defiance of Portuguese policies both within their area of control and across the borders. On the other hand, though there were sporadic violence and dramatic moments in the Hindu struggle against the Portuguese policies, the confrontation between Hindus and the Portuguese was sustained for several centuries and the battle over control of symbols became a way of life, a cultural process, rather than an armed struggle. The process of resistance, in this case, lasted for virtually the entire 450 year period of Portuguese rule, and lives today in the ritual structure and collective memory of Goa. In this instance, it is not simply a question of discovering that a subordinate group has a history too, as has been the case for other studies of resistance in South Asia, but of recognizing that, in Goa at least, the history of its indigenous peoples cannot be considered apart from the resistance to colonial rule.

Our study raises other subtleties and complexities deserving of attention. Introducing Hindu resistance into the account of Goa's past opens the door to new questions about the construction of Goan history, yielding an even more complicated picture of contesting power. The resistance described here has largely been that of the dominant caste of Goa, the GSB. While on the one hand, they were subordinated and disenfranchised by Portuguese colonial policies, they, in turn, had dominated the landless castes, the Kunbi and Gaudda communities, who are all but invisible in the literature on Goa: the original inhabitants of Goa, they are typically derided as

'01 Michael Adas, 'From Avoidance to Confrontation: Peasant Protest in Precolo- nial and Colonial Southeast Asia,' Comparative Studies in Society and History XXIII (198I): 217; Scott, Weapons of the Weak, pp. 22-47.

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HINDU RESISTANCE IN PORTUGUESE GOA

backward and uncouth and their distinctive 'folk' behavior is parod- ied in Konkani songs and kells (theater performances).102

Similarly, the less confrontational everyday practices of Goan Cath- olics have been alluded to here, but deserve a study of their own. O'Hanlon's critique of the essentialist character of the Subaltern pro- ject and her call for recognition of more complex categories in making analyses of those under colonial rule is thus upheld in the Goan case: important differences exist in those oppressed by colonial rule and indeed the nature of colonial rule itself varies and needs to be taken into account.'03 Changing Portuguese status in the world system, varying conversion policies between the Catholic orders, everyday protest in non-elite Catholic Goa, caste and status differences within Hindu society have all been influential in the dynamics of change and resistance in Goan society.

Haynes and Prakash have challenged us to understand better the underlying causes of resistance.'04 Our study has focused on the inter- face between the style of colonialism of the Portuguese and the pro- ductive and ritual system of pre-Portuguese Goa as major factors for the particular form of resistance. The mercantile system of early Portuguese rule and its limited territorial ambitions, the Portuguese focus on symbols and not production as the main battleground for mastery over Goa's native peoples, and the allocation of Goa to the various religious orders were imposed on a regional cultural and pro- ductive system dominated by the Gaud Saraswat Brahmans and the peculiar organizational characteristics of the communidades to produce a struggle between colonizer and colonized quite unlike that seen elsewhere in South Asia.

102 Antonio Mascarenhas, Goa from Prehistoric Times (Vasco da Gama: Author, 1987), pp. 20o-; S. Marco, 'The Kunbis of Goa, Goa Today, III (1969), pp. 14-15.

103 Rosalind O'Hanlon, 'Recovering the Subject. Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia,' Modern Asian Studies 22.1 (1988), p. 203. 104 Haynes and Prakash, 'Introduction: The Entanglement of Power and Resist- ance,' p. 20.

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