TGLife: What compelled you to pen this book?
Vatsala Mendonca: I have this exceptionally vivid image of a holiday in Goa as a child. It is dominated by the presence of a tall beautiful African woman in our family home who seemed to supervise the staff. I remember asking my aunts so many questions about her. What was she doing there? Where did she come from? What was her story? I got no answers. I believe that no one really knew. Years later when I was researching the Siddhis in Karnataka (for an article) I was amazed to learn that many of them were descendants of slaves who had been brought down by the Portuguese from their colonies in Mozambique and Angola. Their ancestors must have been runaways from Goa fleeing the Inquisition or other atrocities. Many of them speak Konkani and Marathi and are Catholic with surnames like Sousa and Fernandes. These Siddhis believe in ancestor worship and eat wild boar and buffalo, an indication that they are not originally from India.
I was so fascinated by this that I knew I had to write a story on the presence of Africans in Goa.
TGLife: Did you do any research? Is the book based on facts?
VM: I did a great amount of research before I embarked on the story. I learned that the Portuguese brought African slaves to Goa to work in military establishments and religious institutions and also to serve in homes. There are many documents that spotlight these unfortunate transactions. In 1787, the Prior of the Augustinian Convent in Daman proposed that his colleagues sell the so-called Black Manoel who had the temerity to suffer from excesso vicioso, an excess of ill-temper. The price wanted: 140 rupees. Another document mentions the purchase of a cafrinho for 162 xerafins to serve the convent. He was sold because of his “restless character, bad habits and unwillingness to work” for 315 xerafins,bringing in a tidy profit! One of the most surprising stories I encountered was that of the first nunnery of the East, the Monastery of Santa Monica. It admitted 18 widows in its first batch of inmates. One of these was Dona Fillipa Ferreira from Thana and her daughter Dona Maria de Sa. They brought to the convent the 200 slaves who were part of their patrimony. It was hard to imagine cloistered nuns needing so much indentured help!
In857, an African named Siddhi Bastian led fellow Siddhis and Kanarese For almost two years under Bastian’s command, troops looted and burned British and Portuguese settlements along the border of Goa. I could go on and on.
TGLife: Do you have figures?
VM: The earliest census of Goa dated 1697 includes 3,467 slaves. The census figures of 1848 show that the population of Goa, Daman and Dui included 771 Negroes, two-thirds of who were slaves. I don’t know if the decrease in the figures were because of the anti-slavery laws of the time or because many of them had fled to adjoining states.
TGLife: Did you meet with descendants?
VM: No, the gene pool has become too mixed. I did, of course, speak to many people of the older generation who knew of the presence of slaves in Goa. They also shared with me stories of resident ghosts, exorcisms, traditional healers, women with the evil eye…which I could not resist weaving into my story.
TGLife: Do Goans have African genes?
VM: Really don’t know the answer to that.
