1During the process of colonial conquest and subjugation, Portuguese enclaves in India saw assertions of religious dominance that conform to a model developed by researchers of the Antagonistic Tolerance Project, which seeks to study, comparatively across cultures and historic eras, sacred spaces that are both shared and contested by members of different religious communities. At the island of Goa, a strategic port in coastal western India, the Portuguese conquered a Muslim-ruled city of mainly Hindu inhabitants and transformed it, adapting the urban space to create an imperial European Christian capital for all their holdings in Asia (known collectively as the Estado da Índia) from the early sixteenth century to the mid-twentieth. It was by far the largest Portuguese colonial city in India, with an urban population at its height approaching 75,000 souls, of whom only a very small percentage were European-born (Pearson 1987, 88-94).
2There, beginning in 1510, over the course of three generations, a spectrum of Roman Catholic missionary orders established churches and shrines on sites previously occupied by Muslim mosques and, shortly thereafter, Hindu temples (either of which may have also been constructed over pre-existing South Asian sacred spaces) (Rossa 1997, 43-44; Osswald 2013, 137; Souza 2009, 64, 127). By the late seventeenth century, the enclave of Goa would boast more than fifty churches, chapels, monasteries, and convents – the largest and most intensely ecclesiastical Christian site in Asia – and become known to Europeans (somewhat hyperbolically) as “The Rome of the East” (Disney 2009, v. 2, 159-165), just as the Portuguese, who saw themselves as the imperial successors of the Romans and proponents of a golden age of western Christian (Roman Catholic) civilization in Asia, intended (Xavier and Županov 2015, 7). Similar appropriations of sacred space, though on a smaller scale, occurred at other Portuguese colonization sites along the west Indian coast, including Cochin (Kochi), Damão (Daman), Chaul, Diu, and Baçaim (Bassein), as well as in Ceylon and Bengal.
3At the same time, Portuguese civil authorities in Goa, after an initial period of tolerance toward the majority Hindus while the colonizers consolidated their gains, attempted to systematically eliminate all non-Christian religious sites within the colonized territory (Robinson 1998, 48-49). The starkest period of religious intolerance began in 1540, as increasing numbers of militant missionary organizations, the Society of Jesus foremost among them, established themselves in Goa (Subrahmanyam 2012, 234-235, 274-277; Pearson 1987, 116-130). The Portuguese colonial era in Goa, however, had begun a generation earlier, in 1510, mainly as a military and commercial endeavor, combined with an underlying religious motivation. Recognizing that Goa’s port was a pivotal entrepôt for Muslim trade across the Arabian Sea, the Portuguese conquest was, at least in part, a calculated strategic blow designed specifically to undermine Islamic wealth and power in southern India (Souza 1979, 110).
4Portuguese colonial occupation in Goa can be divided into two general phases: the initial occupation of the “Old Conquests,” comprising the core regions of Ilhas (modern Tiswadi), Bardez, Salcete and Mormugao, which were aggressively colonized during the sixteenth century, and the “New Conquests,” which represent an ambitious program of expansion into adjacent territories during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, more than trebling the size of the colony (Disney 2009, v. 2, 319-322). A chronological comparison of Portuguese colonial policies toward non-Roman Catholic sacred spaces in Goa is instructive, contrasting the earlier intensive, comprehensive efforts to impose Christianity and establish religious dominance in the Old Conquests with a far more relaxed, almost laissez faire attitude toward religion observed later in the New Conquests (Pearson 1987, 116-119; Disney 2009, v. 2, 319-327).
5During the early phase of colonization, Portuguese rule in Goa was particularly vulnerable and tenuous: though they had better martial technology, the number of Portuguese inhabitants was always relatively few; thus, their position was chronically weak militarily on land (Souza 1979, 20-29, 115-116; Subrahmanyam 2012, 228-236; Xavier 2008, 151-4). The Portuguese approach to conquest consolidation, conditioned by the centuries-long campaign of Reconquista to wrest territory on the Iberian Peninsula from Islamic rule, employed forced religious adherence as a tool of assimilation and social control over conquered populations whose faiths differed from that of the conquerors (Disney 2009, v. 1, 77-89). Mainly for these reasons, in India the Portuguese would initially engage in zealous, highly intrusive tactics to establish their cultural dominance in the core Goan territories they occupied.
6In particular, one can point to specific Portuguese colonial methods in India: the systematic destruction of mosque and temple sites, often coopting these sacred spaces to build structures for Christian worship (Rossa 1997, 43-50; Pereira 2008, 224, 228, 264; Souza 2009, 45, 63); the strategic placement of churches, shrines, and chapels at visually prominent locations (Gomes 2011, 18-22; Rossa 1997, 47-48; Souza 2009, 64); the incorporation of decorative Hindu temple components into the fabric of churches and secular structures for reasons of asserting symbolic cultural and religious dominance (Dehejia 1997, 373-376; Carita 2009, 293-298; Shirodkar 1983, 145-147); and the establishment of an Inquisition tribunal to enforce Hindu converts’ adherence to Roman Catholic orthodoxy (1560-1812) (Saraiva 2001, 342-353; Lopes 1998; Gracias 1912). By the end of the seventeenth century, however, Portuguese authority in the Old Conquests had long since been consolidated, largely by the creation – through conversion and procreation over generations – of a loyal Christianized Indo-Portuguese population (Robinson 1998, 46; Mendonça 2002, 81-82). Though spreading Christianity remained an important component of expansion during the campaigns of the New Conquests, evangelical proselytizing no longer represented a fundamental life-and-death program to guarantee the survival of the colony (Disney 2009, v. 2, 200-204, 314-322; Souza 1985, 10-24; Robinson 1998, 10).
7The following essay is organized into five main sections. The first part will provide an explication of the “Antagonistic Tolerance” (AT) project, explain how the project’s theoretical research model works, and describe how that model was developed. Section two contextualizes and justifies the use of Portuguese colonial-era Goa as an exceptionally fine example of historical circumstances to which the Antagonistic Tolerance model can be applied. The third section consists of a series of case studies examining specific sites in colonial Goa as examples of the processes and outcomes that the AT model predicts and describes. Section four focuses specifically on the Portuguese use of highly visible church façades to project and assert dominance over colonial space across Goa – a characteristic technique and tactic of the AT model. The conclusion summarizes the argument, places it into historiographical context, and comments on the AT model’s wide applicability as a tool of historical analysis.
- 1 Anthropologist Robert M. Hayden is the project leader for “Antagonistic Tolerance: A Comparative (...)
- 2 The project’s theoretical foundation and preliminary findings are detailed in Hayden (2002, 205-2 (...)
8This article proceeds from work completed in collaboration with an international, interdisciplinary team of scholars on a project aimed at assessing comparatively the competitive sharing of religious sites across disparate geographic regions and culturally diverse eras.1 A principal finding of our research is that, historically, during episodes of conquest, in cities and regions inhabited by two (or more) communities of differing faiths or creeds, social dominance is indicated by manifestations of control of key structures in a built environment; that is, of religious buildings established or altered in a contested space inhabited by two (or more) rival groups of differing faiths or creeds. Change in dominance is indicated by changes in control over these key sites, and their physical transformation to meet the tenets of the newly dominant faith. During or following periods of conquest of a place or region, such sites may be seized and destroyed, or reconstructed drastically. Classic examples include the conversion into a mosque of the Hagia Sophia church in Istanbul following the Turkish conquest in 1453, or the destruction of the Aztec Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlán after the Spanish conquest in 1519, and the use of its stones to build the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Mexico City.2
- 3 A recently published article (Aldrovandi 2020), which came to my attention only as this work was (...)
9Since our project model views religious sites as cultural indicators of political dominance, or challenges to it, we have developed a theoretical framework – with measures of dominance – that we believe has broad historical applicability. These measures are based on what we regard as important features of major religious sites that our work shows are power indicators of dominance: perceptibility (especially visibility, audibility and massiveness) and centrality. In general, greater centrality in a settlement indicates dominance; assuming equal centrality, a greater level or measure of perceptibility indicates an assertion of social or political dominance. In zones of actively contested politico-religious dominance, vying groups will build structures that competitively challenge the height, visibility, audibility, and/or massiveness of the rival group’s religious or political structures.3
10Once clear dominance has been established in fact and symbolically, conquering rulers will usually permit the members of a subordinated community to continue to engage in their own religious practices in sites dedicated to those purposes. Occasionally rival faith groups will come to an accommodation and share culturally resonant religious sites – though the dominant group maintains clear control of the site. However, contestation of culturally resonant religious sites by rival faith groups will be ongoing, often through symbolic acts, like the construction of a subordinate religious edifice adjacent to a contested site, protesting, or even periodic violence. Our “Antagonistic Tolerance” theoretical model leads us to anticipate periods of peaceful coexistence between rival groups in a conquered colonial setting, punctuated by periods of violence, and sometimes of extreme violence, including the complete destruction of sites previously shared, and possibly the expulsion of members of defeated rival groups from a contested territory (Hayden et al. 2016, 25-49).
11The explicit purpose of our project model is to provide analysis that is comparative – meant to draw attention to common historical dynamics in cases of competitive dynamics between co-resident religious communities, or newly arrived, conquering ones, in circumstances that may be broadly disparate, geographically, culturally, or chronologically. Our model is not meant to challenge or discredit other types of historical analysis, especially those that focus closely on a single place to explicate the unique political and social contexts in which a specific incident of religious conquest took place. Rather, our research model is intended to be applied to augment existing studies, assessing historical data using an alternative but compatible interpretive framework, thus providing new ways of thinking about incidents of socio-religious conquest in comparison with other similar occurrences, even in seemingly dissimilar places or eras. Through the application of the Antagonistic Tolerance model, unexpected commonalities can come into focus. Hence, our work is positioned to contribute to major historiographical currents regarding imperial experiences and global cross-cultural interactions – especially studies that examine linkages between the imposition of religion and the exercise of political power, as well as the role and agency of conquered or colonized peoples in these processes (see Xavier and Županov 2015, xxvi-xxvii).
12Historic Goa provides multiple powerful examples of this dynamic – controlling religious sites as a means of asserting political dominance – from earlier epochs, pre-dating the European colonial period (Pereira 2008, 224-225). Hindu temples or shrines supplanted and eclipsed Buddhist religious sites (monasteries, or viharas, sacred caves, and prayer halls, or chaityas), which had been founded from the third century B.C.E., when Goa came under the rule of the Maurya Empire (Pitre 1987, 16-24). After a Hindu resurgence among local elites and the expulsion of Goa’s Buddhists in the twelfth century C.E., Shiva lingas and nandi bull images were installed to occupy the vihara caves at Lamganv, the most prominent Buddhist sites in the region (this following a period of relatively tolerant – though at times antagonistic – religious coexistence that had lasted for centuries) (Souza 1990, 79-80).
13Two hundred years later, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries C.E., Goa’s earliest mosques were built, sometimes on the sites of demolished Hindu temples (according to local tradition, as reported by early Portuguese sources) in and around Old Goa, as a consequence of Muslim occupations of this key trade port (Castanheda 1928, v. 2, book 3, 20-23). Thus, when the Portuguese arrived in Goa, they came to a land long used to conflict and the fluctuation of religious power (Mendonça 2002, 67). With each new oscillation, the victors would assert their religious ascendance by supplanting religious edifices (Saldanha 1990, v. 1, 11-24; Fonseca 1994, 119-135; Robinson 1998, 42). Only in 1510 did the Portuguese (with significant military support from regional Hindu forces) definitively conquer Goa from Ibrahim Adil Shah, the Muslim ruler of the Bijapur Sultanate (Subrahmanyam 2012, 72-73); their subsequent rule lasted unbroken for four and a half centuries, until 1961.
14Of course, temple destruction is nothing new in the Indian context; as a tool of conquest and dominance it began long before European arrival to South Asia, and such acts continue to be politically charged and culturally relevant in modern India. Because of their prior experiences with sacred site destruction by invaders for political ends, the local Goan population may have immediately understood the Portuguese destruction of mosques and temples as constituting just another example of a “legible grammar” of cultural/political domination as practiced in South Asia. Richard Eaton’s work on modern religious site destruction provides a point of comparison for our discussion that links sixteenth-century developments in Goa to earlier and later historical processes that occurred across South Asia, but did not involve European agency (Eaton 2000, 283-319). Building on such research, the present study may be seen as another attempt to, in the words of historians Xavier and Županov (2015, xxi), “redraw the map of Catholic knowledge,” through an objective reassessment of Portuguese conversion strategies focused on transforming and coopting pre-existing South Asian religious sites, be they longstanding Hindu or more recent Muslim sacred places”.
15Immediately following their initial consolidation of power in Old Goa, the Portuguese, employing tactics developed during the Iberian Reconquista, embarked on a sustained program to establish their enduring, thoroughgoing political/cultural/religious domination of the city and surrounding area (Xavier and Županov 2015, 12-15). For justification, Pope Nicholas V’s papal bull Romanus Pontifex of 1454 had established the Padroado in all newly discovered overseas territories claimed by the Portuguese crown, conveying responsibility for propagating the Catholic Christian faith beyond Europe – and bestowing a monopoly right with patronage power to achieve this end. Goa would become the capital of the Portuguese Padroado in the Estado da Índia (Lach 1994, v. 1, 230-245). The aggressive, militant, Christian conquest of the Goa district resulted in initial widespread destruction of Islamic mosques and, within a generation (after 1540), a comprehensive campaign to seize and destroy Goa’s opulent Hindu temples (Pearson 1987, 116-130; Rossa 1997, 42-50).
16A Portuguese royal edict (1519) backed by Papal proclamations in the 1540s explicitly empowered colonizers in Goa to confiscate Muslim- or Hindu-held properties and convert them to Crown use; subsequent policies forbade residence by non-Christians in some regions of the conquered territories (Osswald 2013, 131-132). These developments coincided synergistically with the arrival of the Society of Jesus in 1542, led by Francis Xavier, who found in Goa’s tropical climate a ready explanation for the region’s religious degeneracy. From the beginning, the Jesuits associated the “sin of idolatry” with India’s sweltering environment. To cultivate Christianity in this climate, the mission fields had to be spiritually cleansed; this rationale in turn helped justify their zealous efforts to rid Goa of temples and idols (Županov 2005, 8). Of course, the Holy Office used essentially the same rationale to pursue a similar strategy in Goa following the formal organization of an Inquisition tribunal with jurisdiction over the region in 1560 (Paiva 2017, 566-575).
17During the administration of viceroy and governor Dom João de Castro (1545-1548), Portuguese colonial authorities initiated a system of land registrations and inventories (forais) of temple compounds and their ample properties – a necessary precursor to their confiscation, demolition, and repurposing as Christian sites, built and supported with revenue realized through seizure of temple assets (Souza 2009, 155; Xavier and Županov 2015, 55-58, 60-61). Dom João de Castro then expanded this campaign beyond the central Ilhas territory of Goa to include the adjacent Bardez and Salcete provinces (Henn 2014, 42). Shortly thereafter, in 1550, King João III issued a royal edict confirming that all Hindu temples in Goa were to be demolished, and expanding the scope of this effort to include all Hindu idols and images, as well (Wicki, vol. X, 1968, 162ff). Subsequent royal orders over the next decade asserted the “obligation to extinguish” the Islamic and Hindu faiths throughout Portuguese territories in India, whether practiced in private homes, or in public mosques and temples (Henn 2014, 42-43; Wicki, vol. X, 1968, 163-164ff; Robinson 1998, 49-50). The authority for these royal orders rested on two Papal Bulls promulgated in 1452 and 1456. In the context of maritime expansion, these sanctioned Portuguese efforts to conquer, subdue, and convert all pagan territories (Robinson 1998, 44).
18Predictably, such policies would exacerbate the decline of urban Goa’s indigenous population during the seventeenth century, as practicing Hindus elected to leave zones wherein their faith was persecuted (Souza 1979, 115-116). Many of those Hindus who remained converted to Christianity, at least outwardly – though they, along with christianized enslaved Africans in Goa, would not share anything approaching social equality with their European coreligionists, nor even unrestricted access to the sacraments (López-Salazar 2019). Determined missionary and government activity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries generated a vibrant local Roman Catholic culture that flourished in “Gilded Goa” (Pereira 2005, 77-79; Osswald 2013, 129-142). Within the city confines, Portuguese colonial agents erected a monumental cathedral (the Cathedral of Santa Catarina, the largest Christian church in Asia), a basilica (housing the relics of Saint Francis Xavier, the consummate Jesuit missionary in the East), a grand palace of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (to enforce religious orthodoxy among the converted), more than a dozen major convents, monasteries, missionary colleges, and scores of other churches (Rossa 1997, 41-52; Mendonça 2002, 68-69). One, that of Nossa Senhora da Serra, built in 1513 by Afonso de Albuquerque, the governor and grand strategist who laid the foundations for the Portuguese Asian empire, was constructed on the site of the main southern gate of the conquered city, and incorporated a fortified Muslim keep as its bell tower. Thus, the church could serve as a defensive position in case of attack (a feature common in Christian churches built during the Iberian Reconquista). Albuquerque’s mausoleum was placed here; his tomb became a pilgrimage spot for Hindus who initially saw Goa’s Portuguese conqueror as a protector from Muslim transgressions against their religious liberties (Fonseca 1994, 245-246; Rossa 1997, 49).
19When Portuguese civil and ecclesiastical authorities initiated their comprehensive campaign to eradicate Hindu temples in the 1540s, over several years they seized and demolished nearly 300 such structures in the areas they controlled – 150 alone in the main urban area, Old Goa. Subsequent colonial government regulations forbade all Portuguese subjects (particularly wealthy Hindus or recent Christian converts) from supporting any temple repairs or new construction, whether inside colonized enclaves or beyond the borders, and imposed draconian fines (Osswald 2013, 136-137). Resistance by native peoples occurred, but clandestinely. For example, in 1541, the Portuguese ordered the demolition of a Brahman temple in Carambolim village, in the central Ilhas district. According to indigenous tradition, the villagers secretly moved the ruined temple’s relics to Satari, a location then outside the zone of Portuguese control (now a northeastern Goan district bordering Karnataka). The primary temple relic was a granite statue of Brahma, 1.5 meters high, flanked by images of the Hindu gods Saraswati and Savitri. This statue sustained significant damage, apparently having been subjected to zealous Portuguese iconoclasm (Pereira 2008, 224).
20Goa functioned as the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishopric after 1560, the same year that the Holy Office commenced operations in the colony (Pearson 1987, 117, 119). The Society of Jesus in particular welcomed the advent of an Inquisition tribunal “as a prophylactic and surgical instrument of the royal Portuguese padroado designed to restore the purity of faith and blood” to Goa (Županov 2005, 12). After two decades of evangelical activity in India, the Jesuits increasingly saw Goa as a spiritually precarious territory, constantly under threat from the Hindu and Muslim regions surrounding the colony, and chronically infected by pagan or infidel ideas and practices. Being under the eye of the archbishop – the supreme ecclesiastical Roman Catholic authority in Asia – gave additional incentive for uncompromising enforcement of Christian orthodoxy and missionary activity (Henn 2014, 40-47). At the close of the sixteenth century, Archbishop Aleixo de Menezes is credited with building the church of the Holy Trinity (Igreja de Santíssima Trindade) within the confines of Old Goa; he is recorded as having constructed it purposely on the site of a demolished Hindu Siva pagoda, or temple (Fonseca 1994, 274; Rossa 1997, 47).
21Evidence of Portuguese attempts to impose religious and cultural dominance is conspicuous across Goa. In the four districts that together make up the oldest zone of Portuguese conquest, colonial Roman Catholic churches in Portuguese Manueline, Renaissance, and Baroque styles dominate virtually every town center, and whitewashed chapels or shrines surmount most prominent elevated points of land, there to assert the cultural dominance of Christianity (Županov 2005, 18-19). Similarly, Portuguese fortresses supplanted Muslim and Hindu fortifications at strategic points throughout the colonized region (Saldanha 1990, v. 2, 262-283; Santos and Mendiratta 2012, 92-106; Lopes 2017, v. 1, 57-72, v. 2, 9-11), and the Portuguese colonial Governor’s palace was erected on the site, employing the ruins of the former Muslim ruler’s fortified palace (Couto 1616, livro I, capítulo iii; Fonseca 1994, 194-195; Saldanha 1990, v. 2, 165-167; Santos and Mendiratta 2012, 93; Gomes 2011, 56-58).
22Clearly, seizing, claiming and occupying conspicuous spaces was done with a distinct military purpose in mind – high ground is easier to defend, and communication signals can be sent from hilltop to hilltop. In confirmation of this point, an illustration published in Dom João de Castro’s Roteiro de Goa a Dio depicts two fortified hilltops in Tiswadi Island, Goa, circa 1530, with a distinct visual sight-line indicated between the two fortifications (Castro 1843 [1538-1539]). But the deliberate Portuguese policy of taking possession of key, highly visible commanding heights can also be understood as a calculated attempt to influence the morale and behavior of the colonized indigenous population: every salient hilltop cross and every dazzling whitewashed church façade was a constant reminder to the Goan natives and visiting Arabian Sea traders of the ascendency of European Christianity in India (Malekandathil 2009, 13-38). Such motives were evident to contemporaries who arrived from Europe: for example, the English traveller Peter Mundy noted in the mid-seventeenth century that, in Goa, “many of the churches, monasteries, and colleges were located on the best sites of the city, that is, upon the hills” (cited in Osswald 2013, 122).
23The assertion of religious superiority is a clear tool of empire and a method of establishing cultural dominance. In accordance with the Antagonistic Tolerance (AT) theoretical model, because Roman Catholicism arrived in Goa through conquest, and because the territory was contested, remaining chronically vulnerable to counterattack (first from regional Islamic or Hindu forces, and later from rival Protestant European powers), the Portuguese appropriated the most prominent religious sites associated with the previous regime, destroyed or desecrated existing sacred structures, and then converted or rebuilt them for their own religious purposes (Fonseca 1994, 140-144). We will next consider some specific examples of sites that illustrate this dynamic.
24Saint Catherine’s Chapel: The Capela de Santa Catarina is the oldest church in Goa, so named because Goa fell to the Portuguese on Saint Catherine’s feast day, 25 November (Costa and Rodrigues 2008, 53-64). The extant small chapel has been rebuilt several times since 1510, but the original structure was consecrated by Dominican priests, who accompanied Afonso de Albuquerque on his expedition to take Goa (Pereira 2005, 79-83). Given the church’s size, location, and geographic orientation, it appears that it may have been built atop a Muslim mosque site. The current Saint Catherine’s chapel is situated in a favored location adjacent to the site of the Adil Shah’s palace, just above the Mandovi River bank. According to contemporary chroniclers, Portuguese troops refreshed themselves at a well near this spot during their final victorious assault, just after gaining a foothold within the town walls. A ruined cistern or tank built of laterite stone is located approximately forty meters northeast of the extant church, adjacent to the old city fortifications facing the river (Brito 1998, 102-103). A sixteenth-century stone marker on the church memorializes this as the place where Portuguese forces focused their attack and breached the walls of the city during the storming of Goa (Rossa 1997, 43; Laval 2000, v. 2, part 1, 53-54; Saldanha 1990, v. 2, 23-25; AT Project site surveys, 2009 and 2012).
25Portuguese accounts of the conquest specifically mention the despoliation of Islamic sites and homes shortly after the moment of Muslim capitulation, and the precipitate re-consecration of a nearby mosque within days as a Roman Catholic chapel (Correia 1858-63, v. 2, 148-160, v. 4, 715-717; Barros 1553, Livro 5, ff. 59-76; Pereira 2005, 79-83; Rossa 1997, 45-6) – just as had happened in Ceuta nearly a century before (Walker 2019, 301-304). Moreover, the compass orientation of Saint Catherine’s chapel is highly unusual; its single nave is aligned along a north-south axis – that is, along the coastal sea route toward Mecca (AT site surveys, 2009 and 2012). Almost all other church buildings in Goa are oriented on a more traditional east-west axis. This is made plain in Dr. Sidh Losa Mendiratta’s detailed survey map of urban religious buildings in Old Goa, on display at the museum operated in Goa by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) (Mendiratta 2005; Rossa 2011, 233-235; Fonseca 1994, 110-111). While such evidence may be compelling, it remains speculative. It is also possible, of course, that a Goan mosque standing in 1510 had been built atop a former Hindu temple site (Shokoohy 2003, 253-268).
26The Arch of the Viceroy: Almost all travellers and commerce arrived to Old Goa by water, sailing eastward up the Mandovi River from the Arabian Sea. At the main entrance to the city, built into the Viceroy’s riverfront palace above the principal landing jetty, the Portuguese constructed from the remnants of the conquered city’s main entrance an impressive arched gate dedicated to Vasco da Gama, leader of the first European expedition to reach India by sea and one of the early viceroys of the Estado da Índia. The original sixteenth-century Portuguese gate had three levels, surmounted by a gilded bronze statue of Saint Catherine, patron saint of the city. An imposing statue of Dom Vasco himself occupied a niche in the middle level; legs apart in a broad imperial stance, he scrutinizing all comers from directly above the arched gate (Moreira 1987, 156-160; Fonseca 1994, 192-194; Rossa 2010, 262-263). Viceroy Francisco da Gama, great-grandson of Vasco da Gama, and his royal architect, Júlio Simão, completed this “Arch of the Viceroy” between 1597 and 1599 (Gomes 2011, 56-57). As the most prominent access portal to the city, leading to the principal trading street, the Rua Direita, the majority of visiting merchants or dignitaries, as well as many commoners, would have entered Goa through it. Thus, the gate had a highly ceremonial and symbolic purpose – before assuming their duties, newly arrived Portuguese governors or viceroys stepped over this portentous threshold upon disembarking in India (Souza 1979, 111). The gate symbolized the arrival of Portuguese power, but its iconography also served to intimidate and remind non-Christians – particularly envoys from rival potentates – about the ascendency of the Europeans and the power of their Roman Catholic faith (Saldanha 1990, v. 2, 214-217).
27In the early seventeenth century a group of disaffected Portuguese aristocrats, in an act of a political protest, destroyed the original Vasco da Gama statue. In its place, the colonial authorities for a time positioned another image of Saint Catherine (Laval 2000, v. 2, part 1, 47; Saldanha 1990, v. 2, 214-217), this one made of stone and notable for its overtly militant evangelical iconography. Saint Catherine is here depicted with a crown and scepter, symbols of sovereign Portuguese power, standing triumphantly (and literally) on the back of a vanquished and forlorn Muslim ruler; she stands with her long scepter poised to smite the heretic muçulmano in the back (Gonçalves and Gracias 1898, 21-37). Her physical domination of the infidel, made more caustic because the sculpture depicts the subjugation of an indigenous South Asian Muslim male by a European Roman Catholic female, carries an explicit, blunt message: Portuguese civil authority, backed by (tacitly superior) Christian divine power, rules within these walls.
28The Pelourinho and Hindu Stambh Pillars in Old Goa: In medieval and early modern Portuguese society, whether in the metropole or in the colonies, a municipal pelourinho (pillory) was a fundamental symbol of state authority. These ornate stone pillars are evident in almost every Portuguese-ruled municipality in the world. It was the obligation of colonial authorities when founding a new settlement to construct an indispensable nucleus of municipal structures: a church, a city hall, a jail, and a pillory (Magalhães 1988, 6-11). Pelourinhos were usually erected in a central public square next to a civic building recognized as the local seat of authority, where they became a focus of key civic functions, like the dispensing of justice, public castigation, and the promulgation of decrees or laws (Serrão 1986, v. 5, 43-44; Marques 1991, v. 1, 85-100, v. 2, 54-55).
29In Old Goa, the extant civic pelourinho is constructed with pieces of two stone pillars expropriated from a demolished Hindu temple site. The main surviving Portuguese pillory, called the Pelourinho Novo, stands at a key urban crossroad and plaza in the southern district of the old town, near where the main road leading south to Goa Velha exited the city defensive walls (Mendes 1886, v. 1, 161; Saldanha 1990, v. 2, 223-224). No stronger symbol of religious and government dominance can be imagined than to appropriate a sacred temple stambh pillar, which to Hindus represents the bond linking heaven with earth, and use it to construct the quintessential symbol of Portuguese ruling power. In the local Konkani language, the Pelourinho Novo has for generations been called the hat katro khambo, or “hand cutting pillar” (Saldanha 1990, v. 2, 224; Shirodkar 1983, 145-147), a reference to the bloody corporeal punishments once carried out there.
- 4 See Linschoten (1595), A ilha e cidade de Goa metropolitana da India e partes orientais… (Amsterd (...)
30The existing pillory, still in situ, dates from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century – the Pelourinho Novo is clearly visible on the late sixteenth-century map by Jan Huygen van Linschoten, as well as the early seventeenth-century map of Old Goa by Manuel Godinho de Erédia.4 It is formed of two disparate sections of pillar, held together with iron staples and fittings. The lower section is faceted and bears decorative carvings in an indigenous artistic style typical of stone columns created for south Indian Hindu temples. There is little doubt that the pillar is of native Indian origin and came from a Brahman temple, though some questions remain about its specific provenance (Rajagopalan 2004, 75). Because of an inscription on the lower part of the pillar reading Dayadnya, a word in old Kannada that is thought to be a reference to Lord Shiva, local historians have asserted that its components came from the Saptanath temple of Divar Island, destroyed by Portuguese forces in the sixteenth century and the only Shiva temple known to have existed in the Goa region at that time (Shirodkar 1983, 145-147).
31A second Portuguese public monument formed from what appears to be an appropriated Hindu temple stambh pillar now stands at a prominent symbolic location directly in the municipal center of Old Goa, in a cleared square adjacent to what was once the Archbishop’s palace. Urban landscape historian Walter Rossa calls this “the most awe-inspiring and solemn urban space in the city” (Rossa 1997, 49). Though strongly reminiscent of a pelourinho, it did not serve as such; the base of this pillar has been drilled out to accommodate plumbing, fitted with metal spigots and set into a small stone basin, or trough, giving it the form and function of a public water fountain (AT site surveys, 2009 and 2012). It is most likely of seventeenth or early eighteenth-century construction, made with a combination of European and South Indian stylistic components.
32The structure’s most prominent feature is the stone pillar, which appears to be of pre-colonial indigenous manufacture, with European-influenced carved decorative work on the column the result of subsequent Indo-Portuguese manipulation. However, the column could also be of post-1510 Portuguese colonial-era manufacture, but crafted to replicate indigenous architectural forms. In either case, stylistically the column is very similar to, and evocative of, the stambh pillar that stands in front of the Mahalakshmi Temple near Ponda, one of the oldest “fugitive” Hindu temples established outside the Portuguese zone of colonial control in the mid-sixteenth century. Both the Old Goa fountain pillar and the Pelourinho Novo pillar are nearly identical in style to extant stambh columns found at temple ruins in Vijaynagara (though the latter are built on a larger scale). The Vijayanagara Empire had ruled Goa in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; its architecture set the standard for Hindu temple construction across southern India during that time (Noronha 1997, 155-169; Mitchell 1995, 1-6, 12-13, 25-70; AT site surveys, 2009 and 2012).
- 5 See also Acordãos do Senado, 4 June 1535 (Panaji, India: Historical Archives of Goa).
33To incorporate an appropriated Hindu temple pillar, essentially a trophy of war and conquest, into a public colonial government edifice sends an exceptionally powerful symbolic message, made stronger by the structure’s highly prominent, centralized placement. Originally, this fountain stood in another of Old Goa’s significant public squares, a piazza in front of the Casa da Pólvora, an important riverside palace west of the city center used by the colonial government as a gunpowder manufactory and hospital (Saldanha 1990, v. 2, 82-83, 212; Rossa 2010, 238-240).5 It was moved to its present location during the mid-twentieth century as part of a Portuguese project to recover Old Goa for tourism (Rossa 2010, 239; Brito 1998, 102-103; Moreira 1995, 177-221; Mendiratta 2011, 4-5). Thus, during the height of the anti-colonial “Quit India” Movement, when the Portuguese were under exceptional international pressure to divest their Indian colonies, this fountain was deliberately positioned at the focal point of the city’s preeminent public space. Surrounding it are other key symbols of Portuguese colonial and religious power: the church of Saint Francis of Assisi, the Basilica of Bom Jesus (site of Saint Francis Xavier’s tomb), and the Sé (Holy See) dedicated to Saint Catherine, the main Roman Catholic cathedral of Old Goa and largest Christian church in Asia (Pereira 2005, 139-147, 215-223).
34For Old Goa’s majority Hindu population, who for centuries passed daily through the prominent squares where this fountain stood, or who were obliged to draw from its pillar such a fundamental resource as fresh water, this structure represented a startling, unambiguous assertion of Portuguese political, cultural, and military ascendency. The fundamental point here is the symbolic weight and effectiveness of appropriating an evocative emblem of Hindu faith and recasting it as a potent icon of Portuguese authority and dominance. Whether used as a pelourinho or simply as a prominent public fountain, these pillars – spoils of war and cultural conflict – represent the ascendency of Portuguese power over the indigenous population. The Portuguese rulers of colonial Goa appear to have consciously, deliberately, and pointedly used them as such, even into the twentieth century.
35Nossa Senhora do Monte Church: Built on a strategic height just east of Old Goa with an unobstructed view along the Mandovi River nearly to its mouth, the Portuguese Nossa Senhora do Monte (“Our Lady of the Mount”) church stands on the former site of a fortified Muslim position and watch tower constructed during the reign of Adil Shah (Saldanha 1990, v. 2, 28; Fonseca 1994, 256). The original chapel (subsequently rebuilt) was one of the first religious structures the Portuguese raised after the conquest of Goa in the early sixteenth century, for reasons that are easy to see (Correia 1858-63, v. 2, 93, 193-195; Gomes 2011, 18-22, 32-33, 80-82). This commanding hill is the highest point in the vicinity of Old Goa (the hilltop is over seventy meters high; the church tower adds another fifteen meters), making it a perfect signaling and observation post covering all directions – every point on the compass. Moreover, this topographical prominence rises above the dense tropical foliage, giving the white chapel façade striking visibility from great distances. For purposes of establishing religious dominance, Nossa Senhora do Monte serves as a beacon proclaiming the indefatigable presence of the Christian faith. In choosing the new name for this site, the Portuguese used a powerfully evocative moniker: the name mirrors that of a similar strategic hill in Lisbon, from which a Christian Portuguese army launched the attack in 1147 C.E. that drove Muslim rulers from Lisbon during the Iberian Reconquista (Barbosa 2004, 42-44, 72-76).
- 6 See Erédia (1610), “Descripção de distreito e serras de Goa”, in Plantas de praças das conquistas (...)
36In India, the Nossa Senhora do Monte church overlooks all of Old Goa; looking west from this hill provides direct line-of-sight contact with the Reis Magos fortress at the bar of the Mandovi River, allowing for notification of the approach of hostile waterborne forces by sea, but the 360° view could provide invaluable security – an early warning of invasion from land or sea in any direction (AT fieldwork, 2009 and 2012). This and several other strategic elevated points of ground along the Mandovi River corridor are clearly marked on early navigational charts of Old Goa.6
37Afonso de Albuquerque, conqueror and military architect of the Estado da Índia, planned and sited the Nossa Senhora do Monte chapel on the east side of the city, as well as another fortified hilltop church to the west, that of Nossa Senhora do Rosário (“Our Lady of the Rosary”) (Gomes 2011, 32-33). This second prominent church and bell tower fortress complex was positioned conspicuously atop the westernmost hill of Old Goa (Souza 1979, 111). For anyone arriving to Old Goa aboard a ship sailing up the Mandovi River, this strongly-built church was the city’s first European-designed structure to come into view, conveying a powerful initial impression of the prosperous Roman Catholic metropolis just beyond (Pereira 2005, 88-93). A third prominent hilltop church, Nossa Senhora da Luz (“Our Lady of Light”), its whitewashed fortified tower highly visible on the heights to the south of the city, completed this symbolic trinity of beacons that literally and figuratively kept watch over the capital of Christian Portugal’s eastern empire, and heralded its presence to non-believers (Gomes 2011, 32-33).
38Reis Magos Fortress and Church: Situated on a commanding height on the north bank of the Mandovi River at the strategic point where the fluvial sandbar marks a broadening of the river estuary, this Portuguese fortification and adjacent church were constructed on the site of earlier Muslim, and possibly indigenous Hindu, fortifications (Saldanha 1990, v. 2, 270-271). Portuguese construction began in 1551 and was most likely completed in 1555 during the administration of Viceroy Dom Afonso de Noronha. Before Afonso de Albuquerque could conquer Goa in 1510, Reis Magos was a Muslim stronghold controlling access to the fluvial port, with a watchtower occupied by troops under Adil Shah of Bijapur (Costa and Rodrigues 2008, 32-34, 41-42, 46). The present Reis Magos (“Wise Kings”) church site, because of its propitious location next to the elevated fort, was (according to local indigenous tradition) long venerated as a sacred Hindu temple space, as well, prior to Muslim and Portuguese conquest.
- 7 See Erédia (1610) and Erédia (c. 1622-1640).
39To assert the dominance of the Christian faith at this site, the Portuguese placed appropriated Hindu temple “Lion Stones” at the base of a broad grand stairway leading up to the main façade and entrance to the Reis Magos church (Carita 2009, 237-247). The clear subordinate position of these highly resonant Hindu religious components simultaneously symbolizes their subjugation to a greater Christian power, but also provided a familiar welcoming iconographic reference for indigenous people whom the Portuguese wished to convert to Roman Catholicism. Sight lines from the Reis Magos fortress, essential for signal communication and security, easily connect westward to the Aguada Fort, located on the seventy-meter high headland at the mouth of the Mandovi River, and eastward across the river to Altinho Hill in Panjim (modern Panaji, capital of Goa since the early nineteenth century). From there, this system of elevated signaling sites continued six kilometers further eastward along the river corridor to Ribandar Hill, and on another four kilometers to the church tower on Nossa Senhora da Monte hill, perched above the capital city and fluvial port at Old Goa (AT Project site surveys, 2009 and 2012).7
- 8 See Castro (1843 [1538-1539]) and the anonymous design “Vista da Terra de Goa […]” (1758), printe (...)
40As we have seen, several Portuguese church and fortress towers in Goa were built in elevated strategic locations, within sight of one-another, so that signals could have been passed from tower to tower over long distances (Rossa 1997, 47-48). Sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Portuguese colonial maps and maritime charts make clear that the colonial authorities in Goa were very cognizant of the importance of sightlines between points of high ground; they established communication sight-lines consciously from one occupied hilltop to another.8 Because telegraphic military signaling was so important to preserving their security and rule, maintaining control of strategic heights was a Portuguese colonial imperative. Field research conducted for this project, supported by relevant secondary literature (Rossa 1997, 47-48; Pereira 2005, 87), strongly suggests that, in accordance with the Antagonistic Tolerance model, the Portuguese often built their churches in Goa deliberately to occupy prominent heights, maximizing wide visibility, thus helping to overawe the local population and establish cultural dominance (Gomes 2011, 18-22, 33-34). Simultaneously, Portuguese church and fortress towers established and controlled strategic sightlines that served to improve Portuguese colonial security and communications through a rapid signaling capability (Gomes 2011, 18-22, 32-33; AT fieldwork, 2009 and 2012). This, too, served the complementary triple ends of colonial military, religious, and cultural dominance (Santos and Mendiratta 2012, 92-106).
41Contemporary European military signaling methods reveal how such communication may have been carried out using simple flags or a semaphore system (Perrin 1922, 140-161; Woods 1976, 75-86, 112-123, 141-144, 203-213, 256-271; Sterling 2007, 24-25, 82-83, 154-161, 208, 270, 286, 397). Many Portuguese colonial churches throughout Goa were built as fortified seats of colonial power from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries (Rossa 1997, 49; Gomes 2011, 23-34; Fonseca 1994, 245-246). Because invasion or rebellion was an ever-present fear, Portuguese colonial and ecclesiastical authorities designed church buildings strongly to do double duty for war or worship – this was another lesson taken from long practical experience during the Iberian Reconquista (Gomes 2011, 23-34). Moreover, Portuguese colonial military commanders during the founding days of the Estado da Índia were almost all experienced combatants, both at sea and on land (they often held the formalized title capitães de mar e guerra – “captains of sea and warfare”), so they would have been familiar with contemporary ship-to-ship signaling methods, which lent themselves easily to adaption for use on land in the colonies (Subrahmanyam 2012, 59-74; Costa and Rodrigues 2008, 14-21).
- 9 See Erédia (1610) and Erédia (c. 1622-1640).
42Using hills and towers to send signals from place to place was nothing new – European armies and navies had used such methods since ancient times (Perrin 1922, 1-29; Woods 1976, loc. cit.; Sterling 2007, loc. cit.). By the early modern period, Portuguese colonial forces or authorities might have sent simple signals using flags or torches; later they may have used slightly more complex “semaphore” and visual “telegraphy” technology. Representations of signaling flags do survive in contemporary illustrations (Castro 1843 [1538-1539]; Erédia c. 1615-22; Cortesão and Mota 1960, 53-60). The clearest avenue of communication runs from Fort Aguada to Old Goa along the Mandovi River corridor, with signaling way-stations at the Reis Magos Fort, Panjim Altinho Hill, Ribandar Island hill and the Nossa Senhora da Monte church in Old Goa (AT fieldwork, 2009 and 2012).9
43Ultimately, the Portuguese vision for the new colonial capital in India made manifest in the construction that evolved gradually through the efforts of colonial Viceroy Albuquerque and his successors (like Nuno da Cunha or Aleixo de Meneses, to give just two examples), was a product of ambient European ideas about how to successfully manage colonial conquest. Such concepts were a natural extension of the practical strategies and tactics employed during the Iberian Reconquista, but not exclusively so; they were also driven in great measure by the exigencies of consolidating absolute state colonial power, far from the metropole, under the new reigning conquerors. This idea of establishing a secure “colonized area,” adapted from practices that were centuries old by the sixteenth-century conquest of Goa, was predicated upon a concept of centralized colonial authority supported almost entirely by revenue derived externally through maritime commerce, and to a lesser extent internally through exploited agricultural labor and natural resources, as well as the wealth of appropriated religious sites (Bethencourt 2007, 197-206; Santos and Mendiratta 2012, 92-106). To realize that goal, it was necessary to decisively subordinate, with methods both artful and uncompromising, the traditional socio-religious powers in Goan society to those of the ascendant colonial authority – displacing Hinduism and Islam with Roman Catholicism, while managing the supremely delicate political balance required to rule an indigenous society whose most influential members were upper caste, aristocratic, land-holding Brahmin families, with their own competing, often contradictory interests.
44Through the mandates of post-conquest religious or military site acquisitions and an aggressive rebuilding program, Albuquerque’s plan set the tone for a forward-looking colonial administration focused on imperial political, commercial, and religious domination, in which Roman Catholic missionary institutions could wield significantly enhanced power to conduct their work of evangelizing the indigenous population. The colonial state’s salient public role effectively eclipsed the social influence – political, religious, and economic – that Hindu or Muslim elites had long exercised. Steadily but deliberately over time, Afonso de Albuquerque and his successors designed and built the new Portuguese colonial capital city of Goa to confirm, with prominent, unmistakable physical landmarks, a profoundly changed social order, in which the Portuguese Crown and the Roman Catholic Church aggressively asserted their dominance, taking clear precedence over the traditional prominence of the Muslim aristocratic class and high-caste Hindus.
45Thus, as asserted by Indo-Portuguese historian Ângela Barreto Xavier, perhaps alongside the significance of the resulting religious conversions to Christianity, and as important, the ultimate effect of the Portuguese presence in Goa may be reckoned by a profound cultural conversion wrought in the Goan population – especially among converted Hindu elites in the Old Conquests – by the nearly half-millennia relationship of exchanges with the European metropole. The enduring result, she argues, has been a colonization of the imagination, or conscience, that created a hybridized, simultaneously bi-cultural class of beings, who recognize and practice a blended Indo-European religious and cultural reality in their lives (Xavier 2008, 26-27).
46This singular aspect of the post-conquest transformation of Goa has rarely been noted in prior scholarship, and never explored in such detail. Earlier writers have discussed the role of Albuquerque and his successors in asserting Portuguese religious and cultural dominance over Goa, but few have identified or analyzed this particular dimension of his practical strategy in tangible terms. Neither have they noted his technique – the tactics by which he put his policies into effect: through the demolition and reconstruction of culturally symbolic architecture in the conquered colonial capital; by advancing Portuguese imperial domination through broad institutionalization of the Roman Catholic Church; and increasing the perceptibility and centrality of European cultural/religious structures while decreasing those of competing indigenous religions.
