TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2024
Frazer Andrade
Cuncolim is a little village in South Goa, blessed with fertile soil and is bound by deep rivers, which led to traders and artisans settling here. The anniversary of the Cuncolim Massacre was a few days ago. One may come across many, demanding the need for the state to commemorate the chieftains (gãonkars) who were executed by the Estado da India for killing five Jesuit missionaries and several native Catholics, as the first ever revolt against the Portuguese. This is certainly a great example of the prevailing amnesia about Goa’s past. This amnesia is not wholly but at least partially induced on purpose. This is clearly seen from how the well-known Cuncolim incident has been woven to satisfy as many nationalist tropes as possible.
The Portuguese are regarded as continuous oppressors, Goa as a land of the Hindus, religious conversions as forced and violent, natives as Hindus alone and as united against foreign rulers with no mention of castes. All of this, makes the Cuncolim Revolt, the first war of independence. It is a fact that although nationalists insist that Goa was Hindu before the arrival of the Portuguese, many Goans of the time were actually Muslim while several others were part of indigenous communities with their own set of distinct beliefs and traditions.
During the initial years of the first half of the 16th Century, the southern parts of Goa were mainly ruled by Adil Shah. During this time, it was only three talukas i.e Tiswadi, Bardez and parts of Salcéte, which was inclusive of today’s Mormugão, that were under Portuguese governance. Cuncolim was still under the control of the local ‘Sanātana’ Chieftains. Salcéte came under Portuguese rule in 1543.
Though Goa was very important a port for trade and control, and a major strategic advantage for the Portuguese, their prime aspiration was introduction and promotion of Latin Christianity, in accordance with the papal bull 'Romanux Pontifex' which granted the patronage of the propagation of the Christian faith in Asia, to the Portuguese, though Christianity was first introduced into India and Goa by Saint Thomas, the apostle of Christ Himself.
Cuncolim was inhabited by a devout ‘Sanatana’ population who mainly belonged to the warrior ‘Kshatriya’ caste. There were 12 ‘vangodds’ (clans) of Gãonkars living here. Their names were Mhal, Shetkar, Naik, Mangro, Shet, Tombdo, Porob, Sidakalo, Lokakalo, Bandekar, Rounom and Benklo. These gãoncars had common ownership of the village and paid all taxes and were also the ‘mahajans’ (founders and caretakers) of the main village temple. In 1583, five Jesuit priests led by Pe. Rodolfo Acquaviva received orders from their superior to go to Salcéte to find an appropriate site for constructing a church.
The five Jesuit priests met at the Orlim Church on July 15, 1583, and from there proceeded to Cuncolim, accompanied by Gonçalo Rodrigues, a European (Portuguese) and 14 local neo-converts, with the purpose of setting up a cross and finding a suitable space for building a church. Meanwhile, the Gãonkars from Cuncolim, after holding a meeting, showed up in large numbers, armed with lances, swords and other weapons, towards the spot where the Clergy had arrived.
In accordance to the writings of one Anthony D'Souza, in the Catholic Encyclopaedia, Gonçalo Rodrigues stretched his gun towards the advancing crowd, but was stopped by Pe. Pacheco who said,
“We are not here to fight.” Then, he addressed the crowd, saying “Do not be afraid”. Following this, the villagers began their attack on the party.
Pe Rudolph received five cuts from a spear and a scimitar and was killed on the spot. As per D'Souza, he died asking God to forgive the attackers. The crowd then turned on Pe. Berno who was horribly mutilated and Pe. Pacheco, who was badly wounded with a spear, knelt on the ground stretching his arms in the form of a cross. Pe. Anthonio Francis was shot with arrows, and his head was split open with a sword.
Brother Aranha, wounded at the outset by a scimitar and a lance, fell down into the thick crop of a paddy field, where he is believed to have laid until he was discovered by an unknown person. Aranha was then carried to a Hindu idol, to which he was forced to bow his head. Upon his refusal to do the same, he was tied to a tree and was shot to death with arrows. The spot where this tree once stood is marked with an octagonal monument surmounted by a cross, which was renovated in 1885 by the Patriarch of Goa.
Gonçalo Rodrigues and fourteen native new converts were also killed. Of the latter, there was Dominic, a young boy of Cuncolim, who was a student at Rachol Seminary, and had accompanied the priests on their expeditions to Cuncolim and pointed out to them the Hindu temples. He was killed by his very own Hindu uncle for being associated with the priests.
Alphonsus, an altar-boy of Pe. Pacheco had followed him closely with a holy book. His hands were cut off on his refusal to part with the book and was cut through his knee-joints to prevent his escape. He survived in this condition until the next day when he was found and killed. He was later buried in Holy Spirit Church in Margão in South Goa.
Following the massacre in Cuncolim, the captain-major in charge of the Portuguese Army garrison at the Fort in Assolna, was determined to inflict harm to the chieftains in return of brutally killing the Jesuit priests. As punishment, the Portuguese army raided and destroyed orchards and fields in the village and unleashed many atrocities on the local population of Cuncolim.
The Kshatriya Gãonkars of Cuncolim were then invited for a talk at the Assolna fort situated on the banks of the River Sál where today, stands the Assolna church and in an act of betrayal of their trust, sixteen of them were summarily executed by the Portuguese authorities. It is said that one among them escaped execution by jumping into the river and swam to Karwar in Karnataka.
After the execution of the Gãonkars, the villages of Cuncolim, Velim, Assolna, Ambelim and Veroda refused to pay taxes on the produce harvested from their orchards to the Portuguese government. Hence, their lands were confiscated and entrusted to the Condado da Marquis de Fronteira. The temple of the Goddess Shri Shantadurga Cuncolikarian was relocated to the neighboring village of Fatorpa, situated about seven kilometres away from Cuncolim. The Church of Nossa Senhora de Sáude was constructed by the Portuguese at the site of the massacre.
It is necessary to mention that the village of Cuncolim was not united as a whole against the Jesuits and their companions. We can say this since firstly, the elites were divided among themselves; a newly converted Christian local villager is said to have rescued one of the Portuguese missionary who was attacked. One clear evidence of divisions amongst the villagers was the case of Domingos da Costa, a Brahmin youth from Cuncolim, studying in Rachol, who was killed for accompanying the soldiers who had earlier destroyed local temples from Cuncolim.
The bodies of the five priests were thrown into a well, which still stands today inside the chapel of St Francis Xavier, located in Cuncolim. The bodies, when discovered after about two and a half days, showed no signs of decomposition. They were solemnly buried in the church of Our Lady of the Snows at Rachol, and remained there until 1597. The bones were exhumed and were shifted to the St Paul’s College, in Old Goa. The remains of the Cuncolim Martyrs are now housed at the Sé Cathedral and the Basilica de Bom Jesus in Old Goa.
The five priests were declared as martyrs by the Catholic Church in 1741. On April 16,1893, the five martyrs were beatified at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This beatification was celebrated in Goa in 1894, and the Feast has ever since then been celebrated with great solemnity in Cuncolim. The calendar of the Archdiocese of Goa has fixed July 27 as their feast day.
The greatest fatality in the whole narrative of the Cuncolim Massacre, is the complete deliberate exclusion of the Bijapuri rule, even though the region within which Cuncolim was geographically located, was managed by governors appointed by the Adil Shahi administration of Bijapur which was known for supplying soldiers for Adil Shah’s army.
Cuncolim’s narrative was mainly about the local landed elites fighting to protect and preserve their indigenous lifestyle which was inclusive of their casteist privileges over the village land and Gãonkari. In fact, the natives of Cuncolim continued insisting that their hereditary pre-Christian and caste dependent privileges in various rituals be continued even in the 20th Century.
One cannot deny that, as a struggle for the freedom of Goan elites, the revolt of Cuncolim definitely wasn’t the first. The Adilshahi revolts were considerably bigger, more costly in terms of ‘martyrs’ they yielded and were much earlier in time.
