Susegad remains the way of life in Daman – to us, for centuries, always Damão - at the very tip of the ancient Aparanta, where the Konkan coastline spills into Gujarat. Here, the erstwhile Estado da Índia managed to defend twinned sea-facing fortresses – then called Grande and Pequeno, now Moti and Nani – from the 16th century right until 1961, and while there have been dramatic demographic changes since then some precious things have remained as they should. For me, top of the list is that delicious unhurriedness we once knew so well in India’s smallest state, in simpler times of greater contentedness. No one can or wants to turn back the clock, but what I experienced among the Damanenses earlier this month was an interesting glimpse into alternative ways of being and belonging, with lots of relevance to Goa.
I went up for the advent of Mario de Miranda’s centenary, because our great artist was born there on May 2, 1926, and his sister Fatima Miranda Figueiredo alerted me to an interesting commemorative event planned for an intimately personal geography: at the tiny 1896 chapel built by Mario’s maternal grandfather, just around the corner from the (now demolished) house where his mother delivered him into the world. All this is Nani Daman, very close to the lovely little fortaleza that also encompasses the church of Nossa Senhora do Mar where the artist-to-be was baptized. Criss-crossing to Moti Daman that evening and in the days that followed - there is a nice pedestrian bridge across the river that separates the two fort walls – I was delighted to encounter an unexpectedly outstanding art and architecture, and became thoroughly charmed by the sincerity, style and enthusiasm by which the Damanenses continue to celebrate their intricate, in-between cultural heritage, at once remarkably similar but distinctly different from Goa.
Today, we tend to relegate Daman to afterthought, just another insignificant former colonial enclave lumped in with Diu, Silvassa, and etcetera. But that was historically never the case, and at various times this superbly located entrepôt was actually the mainstay of the old Estado. Here’s what the terrific historian Amar Farooqui writes in an invaluable 2016 essay about the all-important opium trade, once the mainstay of the British Raj: “Indo-Portuguese business groups were key players in developing a network of trade that encompassed western and central India, Bombay (now Mumbai), Daman, Diu, Goa, Sind, Macau and Canton [and the] long association of Indo-Portuguese traders with the sea-borne commerce of the West Coast, combined with the links they had with the Portuguese at Macau who aided in smuggling the drug into China, gave them a distinct advantage. The traders of the Portuguese settlements in Konkan and Gujarat thus opened up new opportunities for the economies of the landlocked princely states of the Malwa plateau.”
Farooqui says “it was the Indo-Portuguese traders on the West Coast of India who acquired large stakes in the growth of the Malwa opium trade. Being closer to the areas of production, they could pocket larger profits. The Indo-Portuguese traders of the West Coast virtually pioneered large-scale exports of Malwa opium to China in partnership with the Gujarat and Bombay traders at one end and the Macau Portuguese at the other. A leading role was played in this by Rogério de Faria, a native-born Indo-Portuguese merchant of Goa [who] was king of the Malwa opium sea-borne trade at the turn of the [19th] century. He was part of a group of Indo-Portuguese entrepreneurs who procured Malwa opium from Rajasthani and Gujarati suppliers for onward shipment to Macau. The Indo-Portuguese traders had set up their base at Bombay and/or Daman rather than at Goa since the capital of the Estado da Índia was situated at too great a distance from the main Malwa supply networks.” That is how, for significant periods in history, “Daman was the economic pivot of the Portuguese colonial empire in Asia”.
For me at first encounter, the art, architecture, and cultural expressions of the Damanenses immediately represented a challenge to our longstanding effort in Goa to resist the term “Indo-Portuguese” – which has been remarkably successful, to the point it is now widely accepted the classification is misleading and inaccurate. Here is just one illustrative example, from the perceptive Coimbra-based architect and academic Walter Rossa in 2022: “at least with regard to architectural and urban heritage, it can be confidently stated that it is, in fact, Goan. Ambiguous, Eurocentric and even Manichean expressions such as “Indo-Portuguese” should be definitely abandoned.” But if that is the case, what do we say about Daman and its artistic, architectural and cultural marvels – like the utterly glorious 17th century Church of the Holy Rosary – where the base idiom is unmistakably Gujarati, and the presence of Africa, coastal Islam and the Parsis is similarly evident in unfamiliar ways? Akin but not alike, for starters it is clearly, most definitely not Goan.
I spent pleasant days pondering this conundrum before, during and after the centenary, where I was lucky to meet the organizer Silvana Pereira, an impressive one-woman heritage movement, and recently retired civil servant who made it possible for me to properly experience the surviving – I might even say thriving – Damanenses community spirit via the Feast of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios on May 4th, in a lovely little turn-of-the-17th-century church (which Mario has depicted, in perhaps his only artwork of his beloved birthplace) packed with parishioners in their Sunday best, including several who had flown down specially from the UK (where some 90% of the original locals have migrated via the Portuguese passport route). I loved the spirited choir, led by Belino Mendonca and Noel Gama on their guitars, along with 73-year-old Ninette Rosario and 79-year-old Marcelina Guedes - lifelong parishioners all – and especially appreciated how well they sang the hymns of their ancestors, the Lusophone repertoire almost lost in Goa, which survives very well in this much tinier citadel of the long-gone order. I could almost feel history flicker alive, and then it was straight back into Mario’s world.