As stated earlier, by 1760 the Portuguese stay i n India was already two and half centuries old. The territories they had occupied so far were the three talukas of Ilhas , Bardez and Salcete. Wih the annexation of seven more talukas in the late eighteen century two new terms appeared on the Goan scene Velhas Conquistas ( the three old talukas ) aand the Novas Conquistas ( the seven new additions ) I think it would be more appropriate to call the three old talukas as the original Goa.
Around 1757 King Dom Jose of Portugal finally opened his eyes and decided that something had to be done to reward the mestisso community in Goa. After all the mestissos and their Portuguese ancestors were instrumental in maintaining Portuguese suzerainty over Goa for so long. Hence Portuguese metropolitan citizenship was offered to them by the issue of a Royal Edict. That the neo high castes took full advantage of it is another story altogether. The original high castes had fled to the Novas Conquistas with their idols , didn't they ? Fr. Charles Borges, S.J. former Director of Xavier Centre for Historical Research in Goa wrote an article entitled '' The College of St. Paul and Jesuit Education in Goa '' ::: By 1556 the college had an international flavour about it with one hundred and ten students listed on the rolls as being either Portuguese, Armenians , Mestissos, Castissos, Keralites, Gujratis, Bengalis and Chinese. ::::: The word mestisso has already been explained before. But I thing the word Castisso need a bit of clarification . Even today in the Hindu society, caste people ( castissos ) mean those belonging to the ''twice born''castes . But I doubt, whether the missionaries who arrived in Goa during sixteen and seventeen centuries, were familiar with the theory of re-incarnation on which the caste system is based. It ( castisso ) may have sounded all mumbo jumbo to them unlike the Anglican churchmen and other sociologists of the nineteen century ( collectively known as the Orientalists ) who made a deep study of the Dharmic literature and translated the Sanskrit works in English language. The Portuguese missionaries may have accepted the term castisso in their lexicon without knowing what the term actually meant. I am sure, the ecclesiastics at the Inquisition Office would not have tolerated this term either, had they known that castisso reeked so blatantly of heresy from the viewpoint of Christianity. When sea travel became safe, the Portuguese brought their families who settled down in Goa and some extended their stay for 2 or 3 generations to come. These familie were known as Descendentes and they were not well disposed towards mestissos When i was studying in Liceu, there were a couple of fair looking students who had relatives on the darker side. They resented on being called Mestissos because by then Mestisso had become a derrogatory term. Towards the end of the colonial era , there were hardly any mestissos left in Goa. It would appear that nowhere else in India, not even in Varanasi where old pious brahmins congregate and wish to die on the banks of the river Ganga in order to escape the clutches of reincarnation, there is such a large concentration of high castes as it is found in the original Goa of the Portuguese. It is possible to avoid the stigma of being a mestisso, they may have slowly assismilated in the neo high castes. The latter whose skin normally wore the colour of midnight might have accepted as marriage partners to have children of lighter shade.. As the old saying goes : Na natureza nao se perde nada, tude se transforma (concluded) antonio.
