GOAN MUSLIMS By Valmiki Faleiro Migrant Muslims are the flavour of current local debate. At least in the ‘Sangh Parivar,’ whose political arm is Goa’s only, and India’s principal, opposition party, the BJP. To the rest of Goa – Hindu, Catholic and, significantly, Goan Muslim – the issue is about migrants, not necessarily Muslim migrants. One Indian leader recently said that terrorists have no religion. I believe that to be true. (Though not all without religion are terrorists!) Terrorists could come from any religious calling. Similarly, migrants are migrants – of whatever religious creed. Muslim migrants (as against Goan Muslims) twice recently nearly succeeded in providing the powder keg for communal riots in my hometown, Margao. One must remember that generally speaking, Muslims in India, unlike Goan Muslims, belong to the illiterate and poor sections of the Indian social matrix. Like Christian tribals across the country, Indian Muslims have no SC/ST state patronage. They are orphans in a land of queer caste/creed-based politics. I am not some Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and have no plans to tell the powers- that-be about the need to lift India out of its social justice morass. What I plan to dwell on today is the story of Goan Muslims, here only a few centuries, but so assimilated that you cannot spot one from another Goan Hindu or Christian, save in the superficial manner of talk, dress and place of worship – inconsequential to life. Goa had no aboriginal Muslims, like native Christians, until the Portuguese arrived. Goa was either entirely Hindu or partly Buddhist. The first Muslim conqueror, Allauddin Khilji, Sultan of Bengal, ordered his general, Mallik Kafur, to take the Deccan from the Yadavas. Kafur did that, then marched into Goa. The year: 1312. The capital city then, shifted from Chandor in Salcete, was Govapuri (roughly today’s area between Agacaim and Siridao, the core being from Pilar to ‘Vodlem Goem’ or ‘Goa Velha’ – don’t mistake it with ‘Velha Goa’ or Old Goa as foreign authors do.) It had some kilometres-long harbour, Gopakapattana, a bustling entrepôt of trade where hundreds of ships docked from all over Asia. The foolish Mallik Kafur virtually destroyed the city. Tublibh, his Muslim Governor, could not regain Goa’s lost glory. Short of revenues, Muslim rulers harassed the local Hindu populace. Unable to suffer the oppression, Goans led by Vasant Madhav and Mayi Shenai Wagle, appealed to the Hindu Vijayanagar empire for deliverance. Its general, Madhavacharya Vidyaranya (“Madhav Mantri”) liberated Goa around 1366. Vijayanagar held sway for the next about one century. But the Bahamanis were back, until Goans, led by Mhala Pai of Verna, invited the Portuguese in 1510. Muslim rule had produced no indigenous Muslims. Like Christians from South India who worked in Goa several centuries before, there always were transient Muslim traders (from West Asia.) But none local. The Goan Muslims we know today were brought in – surreptitiously – by the Portuguese. For an interesting reason. The horse, in that era, was as crucial a weapon of war as today’s battle tank. Goa was the main point of importation of the best horses from Persia and Arabia. This trade was the strategic reason why Goa was coveted by every neighbouring kingdom. The Portuguese took the city (now Old Goa) to greater heights of glory. At its pinnacle, in the mid- to late-16th century, the city was Asia’s prime trading centre with the world. Its population was a cosmopolitan mix of Europeans and traders from West to Far East Asia. The Portuguese maintained a delicate regional balance, for their own survival – and profits – by supplying horses to the constantly warring Hindu and Muslim kingdoms of South India. If the Portuguese were smart, the horse exporters of West Asia were even smarter. They ensured that only horses – and not a single mare – went to Goa. They well knew that if a single mare were exported, the Portuguese would start breeding horses in Goa. Their livelihood would be imperilled. The Portuguese tried the next best option: they decided to crossbreed Arabian horses with Indian mares, brought from Gujarat. There was, however, a hitch: Goa had neither the knowledge, much less the expertise, for cross-breeding horses. That is how horse-breeding families were smuggled from Persia and Arabia into Goa. These Muslim families were lodged around Bicholim and Valpoi. The Portuguese experiment, as we know, failed. The horse-breeders took to driving, after the advent of the motorcar in Goa in the early 20th century. From one carrier to another, as it were. Goa’s Chief Town Planner, Morad Ahmed, is certainly not one of them – he drives other forms of ‘vehicles.’ (Ends.) The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at: http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330 ============================================================================== The above article appeared in the August 3, 2008 edition of the Herald, Goa
