Wow! What village is this? I delighted to hear that some village communidades are still thriving. Most are not. The problem is that once the gaunkar dies, the zonn is not passed on to his surviving spouse. If it were, then there would be some form of equity – but it would still be unfair to single women. Sorry for making light of this. Well, because of Portuguese law you certainly have a share in the family home and land which once went to only the male children. That means the communal land, operating under the gaunkari system is under the purview of the gaunkars who are male. Maybe the Portuguese thought they’d better not monkeying around with the communidade system of zonn as they had their hands full trying to convert people. Does anyone know how many villages still give out zonn these days?
I suspect that that would be difficult to change because that system is on the way out, giving way to the panchayats. But the villagers should fight to keep ownership of the communal land and be compensated if the government is going to take it away. John Nazareth From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Marianne de Nazareth Sent: Tuesday, April 9, 2024 9:38 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [GRN] Understanding the clans of Goa... (John Nazareth) Hi, The system is alive and well in my village in Goa for decades. Infact the males who register get a very handsome zonn. To clarify ---this is in MY family property and NOT my husbands. By Portuguese law everyone gets a share including the spouses. I am happy to look after the family homestead, as my connections to it are strong. I just felt the zonn was meant to help maintain the property which due to my gender I am not eligible. Marianne On Tue, Apr 9, 2024 at 6:55 PM John Nazareth <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Well, first of all, the system is now practically defunct so there would be nothing left to reform. I guess at the time it was formulate the intention was that the woman would join the communidade of her husband and as such she had access to her husband’s zonn. Frankly, I have found that Goan women were/are very strong and often save their men from themselves. (For a personal example, when Uganda exploded in 1972 I was thinking of joining the guerrillas in neighbouring Tanzania to fight Amin. I got married to girlfriend Cynthia Fernandes who was outside the country at the time. That was the end of my guerrilla thoughts.) I have always joked with my friends that Goan society was the only “patriarchal” society run by the women. This is only half a joke; it is a reality. Goan women have run their homes. The only thing is that they would do in their husband’s village. But further to that – I have noticed in my research on clans that a significant percentage of cases the family unit has moved to live in the village of the mother (while getting the zonn from the husband’s village. This too confirms my belief that God is a great joker, but the whole world is afraid to laugh. John P.S. In the old days the Goan inheritance rules were that the villager’s family property was shared between the male children. I believe that it changed so that women also had inheritance rights. I am not sure when it changed – someone else would be better positioned to say more. From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Marianne de Nazareth Sent: Tuesday, April 9, 2024 2:29 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [GRN] Understanding the clans of Goa... (John Nazareth) What I feel sad about is that we daughters of the family -- who are the ONLY ones looking after the family homes -- are not part of the Zonn. Isnt it time such patriarchy was changed to include us women inheritors? Dr Marianne Furtado de Nazareth On Mon, Apr 8, 2024 at 9:41 AM John Nazareth <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: The relationship between the gavnkars, zonnkars, munddkars, and other players in the gavnkari have been written about for many years and I was used to reading about them. But when Leroy Veloso first showed me his work in 2007 about using the Matricula – which was primarily for registering people who were to receive some fraction of the zonn – to identify clans I immediately recognized it as a valuable bi-product. I don’t think that was its intention but it is important. And its simplicity is elegant. I was surprised that more historians were not doing it. Of course, there is deeper work that can proceed from it and the master of such work is Bernardo De Sousa in his book “The Last Prabhu”. Someone needs to create a how-to paper to work with the mahajans to identify the root surnames the way Bernardo has done. That is not simple. But I wanted to point out how simple it is to work with the matricula, say from 1940, to unearth the clans of a village. That is important because now that the Gavnkari has been treated so callously by the new institutions of governance those documents are in danger. Everyone needs to work quickly to work with their communidade to create a clan list. Once the matricula ledgers go to the Panjim Archives it is all over. I couldn’t find anyone there who knew what they were and how to get access to them. They are lost in the ether. Finding books of baptisms, marriages and deaths are easy, but you can forget about the matriculas. So work with what you can find in the village communidades today. I sat in the Nachinola communidade for just 2 hours and was able to create a table. Nachinola was my late wife’s village. I couldn’t thank them enough for their kindness. They wouldn’t even accept a donation for their institution. But what I have created has been highly prized by my Nachinola friends. I stand in awe of the traditional system of village governance that stood for over 1000 years and that is now in its twilight years. John Nazareth From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of wrdsilva Sent: Sunday, April 7, 2024 12:15 AM To: Goa-Research-Net <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [GRN] Understanding the clans of Goa... (John Nazareth) My fieldwork in Goa shows the Matricula etc. have merit, but the 'clan' system is difficult to describe the way it is often done. Ganvponn, Ganvkari, Zonn, Zonnkar, Munddkar, Mittgaudde etc.etc. makes the rural system a little more complicated than it is recovered from 'communidades' accounts, or vangodd systems. We need good fieldwork complimented by documents, Portuguese and local (Konkani, Marathi) in order to get a better grasp of the system operating and changing over external interventions in Goa. William Robert Da Silva On Thursday, April 4, 2024 at 1:34:30 PM UTC+5:30 Rowena wrote: Very exciting. I remember wanting to work on this decades ago. Glad someone is 👍🏼 Regards, rowena On Thu, 4 Apr, 2024, 13:25 Frederick Noronha, <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: A paper by John Nazareth <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, Canada-based statistician and history enthusiast. Check it out below. He writes: "These tables can be gleaned from the Matricula, while is the ledger within the Communidade office on which they log the gaunkars who are registering for their zonn." He says while his work covers only a few villages, others could do so for more. "I got one of my friends to do the necessary in Anjuna in just two days." -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CAMCR53J0ZVMvJshaYnnvNNeceRcNt55AKEG%2B%3D9CyUo0m2cVBxQ%40mail.gmail.com<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CAMCR53J0ZVMvJshaYnnvNNeceRcNt55AKEG%2B%3D9CyUo0m2cVBxQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/19cf537c-3cb9-4170-b53a-67501262ed34n%40googlegroups.com<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/19cf537c-3cb9-4170-b53a-67501262ed34n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/IA1PR11MB61470DDD7B560D4074E0729EFF002%40IA1PR11MB6147.namprd11.prod.outlook.com<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/IA1PR11MB61470DDD7B560D4074E0729EFF002%40IA1PR11MB6147.namprd11.prod.outlook.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- Dr Marianne de Nazareth Former Asst. 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To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/IA1PR11MB61470436A8A4DC24F64FBDF6FF072%40IA1PR11MB6147.namprd11.prod.outlook.com<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/IA1PR11MB61470436A8A4DC24F64FBDF6FF072%40IA1PR11MB6147.namprd11.prod.outlook.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- Dr Marianne de Nazareth Former Asst. Editor, The Deccan Herald, Freelance Environmental Journalist Fellow UNFCCC, UNEP, UNWater Editor Romantic Getaways https://www.bellaonline.com/ http://mariannedenazareth.blogspot.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. 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