Goa - Early Portuguese era
The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed in Calicut, in present day Kerala in 1498. This discovery and the establishment of a new sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope gave an impetus to to the Portuguese who wanted very much to exploit it to their advantage and profit from it. They soon realized that they had to have a permanent trading post established to effectively do so. Repeated attempts to do just that along the malabar coast ( controlled by the Zamorin of Calicut) of India proved difficult and finally they decided to try their luck northwards along the coast.
In 1510 under the command of Alfonso de Albuquerque they laid siege upon Goa, then under Sultan Adil Shah of Bijapur. On February 17th he entered the city of Goa for the first time and met little resistance as the Sultan was engaged with his forces elsewhere. Sultan Adil Shah soon came after him with a vengeance and and on May 23rd 1510 Alfonso de Albuquerque had to flee the city of Goa. Determined to win it for good, Alfonso de Albuquerque made another attempt a few months later with the help of a Hindu Chieftain called Timoja. This time his timing could not have been more than perfect. Sultan Adil Shah had just died and the heir to the throne was the infant Ismail Adil Shah. Ela or the city of Goa was under Rasul Khan, one of his generals. After an initial attack on the Arsenal and a quick and bloody battle, Alfonso de Albuquerque victoriously entered the city of Ela, Goa on St. Catherine’s Day, November 25th 1510.
As revenge for his earlier defeat, he massacred and decimated all of the city’s Muslim population over the next three days. He however spared the Hindu population and appointed Timoja as his Thanedar. By 1543, the Portuguese were able to extend their control over Salcette, Mormugao and Bardez, thus ending their first phase of expansion into Goa. The territories of Ilhas, Salcette, Mormugao and Bardez formed part of the Portugal’s “Velhas Conquestas” or Old Conquests, and formed only one fifth of the total area of modern Goa. By this time, Goa became the jewel of Portugal’s eastern empire.
The first attack was by Sambhaji, son of Shivaji’ defeat was narrowly averted by the appearance of their rivals, the Mughals on the scene. The second attack in 1737 was led by King Shahu, grandson of Shivaji and this ended in a truce. The treaty of may 1739 gave control of Portugal’s northern Indian provinces including Bassein to the Marathas in return for the withdrawal of Maratha forces from Goa. In 1741, the Marathas invaded Bardez and Salcete and threatened the city of Goa itself. Fortunately for the Portuguese, a new viceroy, the Marquis of Lourical arrived with substantial reinforcements and defeated the Marathas in Bardez.
During this period, the Portuguese slowly expanded their territories which enabled them to extend their control over Bicholim and Satari (in 1780-1781), then Pernem later that decade and finally Ponda, Sanguem, Quepem and Canacona in 1791. These acquisitions known as the” Novas Conquestas ” were quickly integrated with the Velhas Conquestas consisting of Salcette, Bardez and Tiswadi. This second and final phase of Portuguese expansion was rather different from their initial conquests. By the time these territories were added, their attitude had changed and their zeal for religious conversions had died down.
In a strange quirk of fate they banned the order of Jesuits in 1759, because they believed them to be puppets of the pope in Rome. By 1835, all religious orders were banned, and the Hindu majority were granted the freedom to practice their religion. As a result, the “New Conquests” retained their Hindu identity, a characteristic feature that persists even today, and this is also why there is a religious/cultural/language or dialect difference existing in Goa between the Talukas of Tiswadi, Bardez, Salcette and Mormugao on one side and Pernem, Bicholim, Sattari, Ponda, Sangem, Quepem and Canacona on other.
Sanskrit was used as the official in Goa and throughout Konkan for many centuries. Konkani evolved much later. Until recently, it was believed that there was hardly any evidence of Konkani literature before the arrival of the Christian missionaries. This has since been disputed. Fr. Thomas Stephens an Englishman and one of the early missionary Jesuit scholars is credited with writing the first book in Konkani. His magnum opus being the “Krista Purana ” or “The story of Christ”, written in the style of Hindu Folklore. He subsequently also produced his other classic “Doutrina Cristao”, a compendium of Christian doctrines in Konkani. The late Dr. Pissurlencar and others, believe that the Konkani works he had discovered at Braga, were translations from Marathi for the use of the Christian missionaries only.
The missionaries studied both Marathi and Konkani texts and therefore did not probably need the Konkani translations of the same books. Hence his and some other’s conclusion was that they were meant for the use of the common people who could not read them in the original. There is also evidence that the clergy promoted Portuguese, made a strong attempt in the seventeenth century to destroy konkani as they thought that it would help convert more to Christianity. In spite of all this until 1961 only 5% spoke Portuguese, mostly in administration and in the commercial sector. It was only after liberation and statehood did the dream of Konkani as the state language saw realization.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
