By: Kaustubh Naik Published in: *Scroll* Date: February 21, 2026 Source: https://scroll.in/article/1090422/the-bible-and-the-brahmin-the-18th-century-defence-of-hindu-bigamy-in-portuguese-goa Historical documents tell a story of mutual collaboration between the colonial state and the Hindu elite to preserve patriarchal customs.
In the contemporary landscape of Indian historiography, a fierce ideological battle is being waged over the subcontinent’s past. A powerful right-wing ecosystem is increasingly leveraging its institutional infrastructure to discredit established scholarship, often labeling credible histories as “left-liberal” or “Marxist” abstractions. In its place, a new, unitary narrative is being constructed which imagines a singular, Hindu subject driven through the ages by a “Dharmic calling” in perpetual opposition to Muslim and Christian “invaders”. This teleological project seeks to write out the staggering complexity of social interactions that defined the subcontinent for centuries, thriving instead on a binary of Hindu victimhood and a foreign oppressor. Yet, when one looks beneath these polarised narratives, history reveals itself not as a clash of religions, but as a messy product of class, commerce, and pragmatic caste solidarities. The modern deployment of polygamy as a political dog whistle against Muslims in India is a strategic distortion that weaponises demographic anxiety to further a unitary ideological agenda. Frequently used by the Hindu Right as a central pillar of conspiracy theories like “Love jihad”, the popular narrative suggests that while Hindus have always been inherently monogamous, it is the religious “other” who threatens the social fabric. However, deep in the colonial archives of the Estado da Índia, there exists a history that complicates this convenient binary. While the Portuguese Empire is often remembered as a monolith of religious zealotry defined by the Inquisition and forced conversions, the reality of colonial administration tells a story of mutual collaboration between the colonial state and the Hindu elite to preserve patriarchal customs. A document from Goan archives, dated August 1782, titled *Informação sobre a bigamia dos Gentios* (“Information on the bigamy of Gentiles”), offers a rare window into this historical nuance. Published in the *Collecção de Bandos* compiled by Filipe Nery Xavier in 1840, the document, written by a Portuguese official José Joaquim de Sequeira Magalhães e Lançoes, serves as a legal defence for a practice that was anathema to Catholic doctrine: a Hindu man’s right to marry a second wife while his first was still alive. The case involved a man whose marriage to a woman named Santai had collapsed; desperate for an heir and a caretaker for his old age, he petitioned the State for a licence to marry again. Magalhães e Lancoes performed extraordinary theological gymnastics to justify the request, turning to the Bible itself. He reminded the Viceroy that the great Patriarchs – Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David – all possessed multiple wives without incurring God’s wrath. If the God of the Old Testament permitted Abraham to have both Sarah and Hagar, the official argued, the Portuguese Crown could surely permit a merchant in Ponda to do the same. This was not an isolated incident but part of a broader genealogy of legal privilege enjoyed by the Hindu elite. The document cites precedents set by Saraswat Brahmin men such as Lacximonà Sinai (1765) and later examples such as the Panjim-based brothers Venctexá and Madeva Sinay Agny, who continued the practice of bigamy well into the 1820s. Perhaps the most striking revelation is the involvement of the Inquisition. The request of wealthy businessman Sadassivà Sinai in 1763 was reviewed and approved by Manoel Marques de Azevedo, the Inquisitor of the First Chair. Azevedo saw “no repugnance” in granting the request to a man of Sadassivà’s high social standing, an euphemism for caste capital. This collaboration highlights a strategic reality where the Portuguese had realised that enforcing strict Christian monogamy on the Hindu Saraswat merchant class risked a “revolution” that would economically ruin the State. Consequently, the Saraswat merchants also leveraged their position to accrue significant legal and social concessions that allowed them to preserve their patriarchal hierarchies while navigating the colonial apparatus. By securing these exceptions, they transformed what was once a traditional practice into a formalised legal privilege, effectively creating a sanctuary for caste-specific customs within the framework of European law. Such historical negotiations challenge the “unitary Hindu subject” currently championed by right-wing narratives, revealing instead a subcontinent where elite interests often superseded religious binaries to ensure the survival of local power structures. To rationalise this legal double standard, the colonial administration relied on racialised and Orientalist constructions of gender. Magalhães e Lancoes argued that while a “lady of haughty spirit” from Europe would never tolerate sharing a husband, Asian women were conditioned by “education and nature” to a state of "invisible slavery" and absolute obedience where jealousy was unknown. This allowed the state to maintain order by asserting that local women were naturally suited to polygamous arrangements. The eventual codification of these customs into the *Código de Usos e Costumes* in 1880 ensured that these specific patriarchal privileges survived long after the Inquisition faded and were eventually integrated into the overarching Portuguese Civil Code. Today, this history casts a long shadow over the debate on the Uniform Civil Code in India. While the Hindu Right frequently cites Goa as the shining example of a secular, uniform legal system, the irony remains stark. The “uniform” code in Goa still technically allows a Hindu man to contract a second marriage if his first wife fails to deliver a child by age 25, or a male heir by age 30 – an exception not granted to other communities. The Civil Code of Goa was never a simple instrument of secular equality; it was a document of caste consensus. It was deliberated upon and ratified by upper-caste men, both Catholic and Hindu, to protect their status, proving that history is far more complicated than the modern myth of a singular, victimised Hindu subject would suggest. *Kaustubh Naik is a doctoral candidate at University of Pennsylvania.*
