GOAN HISTORY
By Valmiki Faleiro
Last Sunday, Goa lost another of her great sons. Fr. Moreno de Souza never
looked
like the repository of Goan history that he was. If you talked to him, it would
take quite
a while to sense the depth and span of his mind. Knowledge, acquired over years
of
labour, lay packed behind that simple, unassuming, almost self-effacing
countenance.
Fr. Moreno was a Jesuit, a term that immediately evokes mixed images. It was the
Jesuits who, in 1556, brought Asia’s first printing press to Goa, even if by
chance: it
was destined for somewhere in Africa. They also brought Salcete’s first press,
installed
at Rachol in 1615. It was here that the historic Marathi-language ‘Krist
Purana‘ by the
British Jesuit, Fr. Thomas Stephens was printed in 1616. As was ‘Doutrina
Cristam‘ by
the same author, also in Marathi but translated to Konknni (Marathi, then, said
historian Dr. SS Pissurlenkar, had no following in Goa.)
It was the Jesuits, again, who started the first schools ("Colegios") both in
the capital
city and in Margao by 1570, whence, for security, it was shifted to Rachol fort
in 1610.
One cannot imagine a world without the vast network of Jesuit schools, colleges
and
universities, worldwide.
The Jesuits gave the world, and particularly India, a crop of star historians
... Heras,
Hosten, Noti, et al, not to speak of several distinguished Goan Jesuits.
That is one side of the story. Early Jesuit missionaries, in their zealotry,
were the prime
inspiration of religious persecution (it had begun in 1541, a year before they
arrived.)
The subject would fill a book -- it almost does, in "Hindus e a Republica
Portuguesa,"
by Fr. Antonio de Noronha. Desecrating temples, confiscating lands and expelling
Hindus were the starker measures. There were many ludicrous ones.
Sample some. A Portuguese Viceroy threw Buddha’s tooth into the sea, despite a
buy
offer of Rs. Six lakhs (of those days!) by Lankan Buddhists. Portuguese
language was
made compulsory for converts of higher castes. If you were one, and couldn’t
speak it,
you couldn’t marry. Hindus couldn’t anyway, they had to go to nearby kingdoms,
marry, and return. Converts couldn’t avail of service of non-Christian doctors,
midwives
and barbers. Hindus couldn’t travel on horses and palanquins, use coloured
umbrellas,
or erect a Tulsi (holy basil) pedestal. Converts without pants and their women
without
blouses were jailed. Hindus couldn’t wear the Zannvem, Kukum, or Shendi. Later,
a
tax of Rs.8 per shendi was imposed.
The Jesuits were a state within a state. In 1575, the villagers of Assolna,
Ambelim and
Velim refused to pay doubled taxes and killed the Salcete tax collector, Estevao
Rodrigues and his sepoys. Deserted village lands, following a Portuguese
battering,
eventually went into Jesuit hands. They lorded, in true feudal style. They
leased lands,
collected rents at will, imposed levies on boats headed to or from Margao at
River Sal,
and paid not a Xerafim to the State. They guarded their domain with 300
musketeers
from the Assolna fort. But, when the marauding Marathas under Sambhaji began
plundering Salcete in 1683, the Jesuit at Assolna was the first to flee. His
defenceless
subjects purchased peace, for 8,000 Crusados. Their women hid neck-deep in
rivers
to escape the lust of the invaders. The Jesuits held on to the villages,
fighting a
centuries-long battle, getting royal decrees and court orders reversed when the
land
was being reverted to the villagers.
It is not easy for a historian to record such unpleasantness perpetrated by a
society to
which he belonged. Fr. Moreno was both a historian and a priest. He performed
both
roles with equal equanimity. To me, there lay the greatness of Fr. Moreno.
Born at Pilerne on November 3, 1923, he was ordained priest in Granada, Spain,
on
July 15, 1958. Besides his four-volume tome on Goa’s churches, he penned some
two
dozen books. The much sought-after preacher was the mainstay in the translation
of
Catholic liturgy from Latin to Konknni. He composed hymns for the ‘Gaionancho
Jhelo.’
He wrote hundreds of articles on Goa’s history and edited the ‘Dor Mhoineachi
Roti,’
founded in Karachi in 1915, shifted to Bombay in 1960, and, a decade later, to
his
‘Casa Professa’ at the Basilica.
Such was the man’s modesty that one wonders if he cared much for the many
honours
that came his way. He was member on the national board of the Sahitya Academy
and
recipient of the State Cultural Award, in a long list.
If the early Jesuits took the gospel to the masses by whatever means, Fr.
Moreno took
Goa’s history to them in the language they understood. He was fluent in four
Indian
languages, Konknni, Marathi, Tamil and Hindi, and six European, Latin, Greek,
Spanish, Catalina and of course, English and Portuguese. He wrote, invariably,
in
Konknni. English was reserved to write about the rich history of Konknni, its
literature,
its culture. Such men belong only to heaven. (ENDS)
The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at:
http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330
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The above article appeared in the October 21, 2007 edition of the Herald, Goa
