Understanding the clans of Goa... (John Nazareth)
Frederick Noronha
"These tables can be gleaned from the Matricula, while is the ledger within the Communidade office on which they log the gaunkars who are registering for their zonn." He says while his work covers only a few villages, others could do so for more. "I got one of my friends to do the necessary in Anjuna in just two days."
Rowena
A paper by John Nazareth <jhr_na...@hotmail.com>, Canada-based statistician and history enthusiast. Check it out below. He writes:
"These tables can be gleaned from the Matricula, while is the ledger within the Communidade office on which they log the gaunkars who are registering for their zonn." He says while his work covers only a few villages, others could do so for more. "I got one of my friends to do the necessary in Anjuna in just two days."
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wrdsilva
John Nazareth
The relationship between the gavnkars, zonnkars, munddkars, and other players in the gavnkari have been written about for many years and I was used to reading about them.
But when Leroy Veloso first showed me his work in 2007 about using the Matricula – which was primarily for registering people who were to receive some fraction of the zonn – to identify clans I immediately recognized it as a valuable bi-product. I don’t think that was its intention but it is important.
And its simplicity is elegant. I was surprised that more historians were not doing it.
Of course, there is deeper work that can proceed from it and the master of such work is Bernardo De Sousa in his book “The Last Prabhu”.
Someone needs to create a how-to paper to work with the mahajans to identify the root surnames the way Bernardo has done. That is not simple.
But I wanted to point out how simple it is to work with the matricula, say from 1940, to unearth the clans of a village.
That is important because now that the Gavnkari has been treated so callously by the new institutions of governance those documents are in danger.
Everyone needs to work quickly to work with their communidade to create a clan list.
Once the matricula ledgers go to the Panjim Archives it is all over.
I couldn’t find anyone there who knew what they were and how to get access to them. They are lost in the ether.
Finding books of baptisms, marriages and deaths are easy, but you can forget about the matriculas.
So work with what you can find in the village communidades today.
I sat in the Nachinola communidade for just 2 hours and was able to create a table. Nachinola was my late wife’s village.
I couldn’t thank them enough for their kindness. They wouldn’t even accept a donation for their institution.
But what I have created has been highly prized by my Nachinola friends.
I stand in awe of the traditional system of village governance that stood for over 1000 years and that is now in its twilight years.
John Nazareth
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Adolfo Mascarenhas
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Marianne de Nazareth
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John Nazareth
Well, first of all, the system is now practically defunct so there would be nothing left to reform.
I guess at the time it was formulate the intention was that the woman would join the communidade of her husband and as such she had access to her husband’s zonn.
Frankly, I have found that Goan women were/are very strong and often save their men from themselves.
(For a personal example, when Uganda exploded in 1972 I was thinking of joining the guerrillas in neighbouring Tanzania to fight Amin. I got married to girlfriend Cynthia Fernandes who was outside the country at the time. That was the end of my guerrilla thoughts.)
I have always joked with my friends that Goan society was the only “patriarchal” society run by the women.
This is only half a joke; it is a reality. Goan women have run their homes.
The only thing is that they would do in their husband’s village.
But further to that – I have noticed in my research on clans that a significant percentage of cases the family unit has moved to live in the village of the mother (while getting the zonn from the husband’s village.
This too confirms my belief that God is a great joker, but the whole world is afraid to laugh.
John
P.S. In the old days the Goan inheritance rules were that the villager’s family property was shared between the male children. I believe that it changed so that women also had inheritance rights. I am not sure when it changed – someone else would be better positioned to say more.
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Marianne de Nazareth
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Frederick Noronha
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John Nazareth
Wow! What village is this? I delighted to hear that some village communidades are still thriving. Most are not.
The problem is that once the gaunkar dies, the zonn is not passed on to his surviving spouse. If it were, then there would be some form of equity – but it would still be unfair to single women.
Sorry for making light of this.
Well, because of Portuguese law you certainly have a share in the family home and land which once went to only the male children.
That means the communal land, operating under the gaunkari system is under the purview of the gaunkars who are male.
Maybe the Portuguese thought they’d better not monkeying around with the communidade system of zonn as they had their hands full trying to convert people.
Does anyone know how many villages still give out zonn these days?
I suspect that that would be difficult to change because that system is on the way out, giving way to the panchayats.
But the villagers should fight to keep ownership of the communal land and be compensated if the government is going to take it away.
John Nazareth
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Marianne de Nazareth
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John Nazareth
Nevertheless, it is encouraging that the sale of land proceeds are being passed to the gaunkars.
But Marianne has a point that women are being left out.
John
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Frederick Noronha
Pune has always been a socially vibrant city and the following month of August 1961 witnessed the excitement of many public figures from Pune preparing to march to Goa, possibly to face gunfire as they prepared to cross the Goaborder to demand that the Portuguese quit India. The team was being led by Senapati bapat who had been conferred that title by the citizens of Maharashtra to his leadership of the satyagraha of farmers whose lands were being submerged under the Mulshi dam. His second in command was Mahadev Shastri Joshi. I had read with must interest Mahadev Shastri's books on places in Maharashtra well known for battles and for temples. More importantly, he had edited the ten-volume Bharatiya Sanskriti Kosh, the Encyclopaedia of Indian Culture, which I had referred quite frequently. He was born and brought up in Goa, although now settled on a farm in the outskirts of Pune city. His daughter Krishna was a classmate and close friend of my sister Sulabha, and we had visited his farm on many occasions. I therefore asked him about my guess that Goa owed its verdure and natural beauty to its village community-based management system, gaonkari, about which I had read in Dharmanand Kosambi's Writings. He confirmed that this was so and that these community management systems were characterized by practices of prudence and conservation.
Goa's village communities also suffered from the evils of the caste system as in other parts of India. The gaonkari was governed by settled agriculturists. Before they established themselves, the terrain would have been occupied by hunter-gatherer, shifting cultivator and fishing communities that were pushed off the land and were assigned a lower status in the caste hierarchy with rigidly fixed hereditary occupations. These castes then came to serve as landless labourers, as artisans like carpenters and potters and, even lower in status, as village guards or leather workers. Goa's society also came to be constituted of endogamous caste groups, with intermarriage being prohibited. The lower castes had little chance of rising in the social hierarchy and the dominant landowning community had scant concern for them. Nevertheless, they very effectively conserved and sustainably used their own natural resources. Such village community-based institutions prevailing all over India were destroyed in British India to facilitate the colonizers' drain of India's resources, including those inthe community-managed forests that were brought under the control of the state forest departments. The Portuguese also attempted to dissolve village community governance but gave up the attempt because it led to substantial losses in agricultural production and consequently in agricultural tax revenue. So, Goa had retained village community-level governance, or gaonkari, termed the comunidade system by the Portuguese. This was the secret of Goa's retention of its verdure, despite the inequities of the caste system, till its liberation in 1961.
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William Robert Da Silva
published his work. I think it could be a main or lateral information
piece for this discussion. The category 'clan' does not explain
anything in Goa in Konkani. If the original Konkani words are made
into categories of analysis and explanation, it could explain the past
relations in a better light.
William Robert Da Silva
On Thu, Apr 11, 2024 at 1:13 PM Frederick Noronha
Marianne de Nazareth
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John Nazareth
The Communidades were not set up by the Portuguese.
These village communities were originally call the Gaunkari – they were set up perhaps 1500 years ago. The are an indigenous society.
The Portuguese made some minor changes and renamed them to Communidades.
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Andrew Pereira
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Roland Francis
Toronto.
I find it extremely paradoxical that women were included in the inheritance of property by the Portuguese BUT the zonn issued by Communidade ( also set up by the Portuguese) leaves women completely out!I guess something is better than nothing is what I tell myself, when looking after the old homestead, for the family!Marianne
On Thu, Apr 11, 2024 at 11:59 AM John Nazareth <jhr_na...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Nevertheless, it is encouraging that the sale of land proceeds are being passed to the gaunkars.
But Marianne has a point that women are being left out.
John
Freelance Environmental Journalist
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Marianne de Nazareth
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John de Figueiredo
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Adolfo Mascarenhas
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John de Figueiredo
On Apr 13, 2024, at 3:46 PM, Adolfo Mascarenhas <adc...@gmail.com> wrote:
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John de Figueiredo
On Apr 13, 2024, at 3:46 PM, Adolfo Mascarenhas <adc...@gmail.com> wrote:
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William Robert Da Silva
trees and wrote their reports in kaanaddi or Goykaanaddi. Many were
available in the archives in Goa in the 19702s through 1990s. Probably
even now. Kolvontam existed before the abolition of sati, of the upper
caste or wives of soldiers. Mastikol. or the stone memorials of
self-immolating women was a characteristic of the West Coast and
Kannada region, even among Jains. Women were not part of zonn,
ganvkari and ganvponn. Widows and sati abolished women added to them
were temple residents, part of or separate from kolvont.
William Robert Da Silva
John de Figueiredo
I could not find any evidence of this. Obviously this does not mean that such evidence does not exist. There were educated Goans who were opposed to the village community system (most notably, Francisco Luiz Gomes was one of them), but there were others (e.g., Filipe Neri Xavier) who were in favor of maintaining them. Perhaps one of you could give me one or two examples that supports the statement that the Portuguese attempted to dissolve the village community system.“The Portuguese also attempted to dissolve village community governance but gave up the attempt because it led to substantial losses in agricultural production and consequently in agricultural tax revenue”
On Apr 13, 2024, at 7:47 PM, John de Figueiredo <john...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
An “innocent abroad”, Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, Portuguese writer who lived in Goa, referred to the temple of Mhalsadevi of Verna as “pagode de freiras” (temple of nuns) because the women (widows) confined to that temple had their hair shaved. How far was he from knowing the truth!
Adolfo Mascarenhas
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John de Figueiredo
On Apr 14, 2024, at 5:41 AM, Adolfo Mascarenhas <adc...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Adolfo Mascarenhas
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