The Origins of Konkani Language
©Prakash John Mascarenhas. Bombay, India. 20th August 2003. This page is copyright.
The late Mr. Kamat was a Konkani Brahmin, hailing from the Tulunad, the country to the immediate south of the Konkan. His version of the history of the Konkani language (see here) is very widely favoured and prevalent on the internet. Unfortunately and very regretably, however, that version is very biased in favour of his own sect and is full of errors and misrepresentations, besides lacking in the most common estimation of Konkan history.
Kamat, like many others, labour under a misconception that Konkani was historically restricted to what is today the territory of Goa, perhaps also to its near environment and that present day communities of non-Goan Konkani and Konkani dialect speakers within the Konkan outside of Goa are descendants of refugees or settlers from this central area. That version is a-historical.
As a matter of fact, what happened is that the entire Konkan was Konkani speaking and that it was invaded and colonized, and that native Konkani have been marginalized and islanded. Also, under the influence of alien cultures and languages, they have modified their dialects.
Kamat claims that Konkani is an Aryan language originating in the lost land of Saraswat and disingeniously does not even mention that scholars believe otherwise, and very strongly. As a matter of fact, Konkani and the Konkan receives its name from the non-Aryan tribe, the Konka, who belonged to the Munda family. Modern Konkani is a fusion of Konka, Dravidian and Aryan inputs.
Konkani developed as a distinct language long before Marathi, and it also had its own script, as most other vernaculars did, the Candavi. Marathi, on the other hand, developed in the last few centuries from the Maharashtri that was spoken even during the time of Shivaji. The main impetus for the development of the Marathi language from Maharashtri was the pain and trauma, the violence, displacement and revenge that was involved in the Hindavi Swaraj project of Shivaji and his successors.
The Portuguese did not take Goa due to any kind of land hunger, as the author maliciously misrepresents. Rather, and it is an important difference that must be always borne in the mind, the Portuguese were actually invited by the then predominantly Hindu Goans, so that they could be rid of the obnoxious Muslim Sultanate of Bijapur.
The Portuguese took over Goa in 1510, and over the next few years expanded into the Isles of Goa and then north and south into the districts of Bardes and Shashti. It was a long time from then until 1548, before they acted against the Hindus, and then only because of provocations by the Hindus.
In attacking the Hindus who had instituted a veritable persecution and climate of hysteria against those Goans who voluntarily converted to Christianity or tended to favour the Christian missionaries, the Portuguese did not attack or derogate the Konkani language. There is no evidence that the Portuguese blindly destroyed Konkani literature. In fact, they merely sought out the Hindu scriptures and destroyed most of those, reserving some for research. Other Konkani literature was not touched. More importantly, the Konkani language was not proscribed or forbidden.
It is a shameless and unswerving habit of Hindu fascists to misrepresent the facts by pretending that only those Goans converted to Christianity who were of the low castes and poor or, as Kamat cutely — lyingly — puts it, "weaker sections of the society" and that conversion was forced, not voluntary.
As a matter of fact, the vast majority of Goans of the time had already become favourable towards Christianity due to the intensive missionizing. While rabid Hindus created a climate of anti-Christian hysteria and of treason against the Portuguese, a number of Goans took the step of actually embracing Christianity. Others were held back by the climate of hate created and fostered. This even went to active coercion to force the new converts to revert to paganisms. It was in response to these tactics, that the missionaries stormed the King of Portugal with complaints, and it was only after hearing out both sides — favourable to a compromise with the Hindus and unfavourable towards a compromise — did the King finalise the drastic step of expelling all recalcitrant Hindus.
It would have been a very extra-ordinary step for a ruler to depopulate his lands, thus render himself without a real taxbase, or a population amenable — in some form or the other — to his rule.
The Portuguese had to also consider carefully whether, given their engagements fighting Islam, they would want to open another front and alienate the numerous Hindu kingdoms and peoples all over the East Indies.
I have yet to see any scholarly — or otherwise — attempt to put a figure to the numbers displaced and their proportion to the general population, but I guess that they were far fewer than 10%.
Evidently, they were near exclusively from the ranks of the social elite of Goa till then. And who exactly were these folks? They are the Parasites, the descendants of the Aryan conquerors who imposed themselves and their permanent "Apartheid" (the Varna Asrama or Colour Code) upon the palaeo-Indians, reducing them and dehumanizing them on a permanent basis. That is, they were social parasites, miscreants, misanthropes. And it is they who had whipped up the atmosphere of anti-Christian hysteria that provoked Portugal to expel them from the land.
These Parasites have an ancient and hereditary program — a never relenting subversion, dehumanization and subjugation of those who do not belong to their elite club, seeking to relentlessly maintain their dominion over and enslavement of their victims.
Therefore, their departure was not a loss but a veritable blessing upon Goa.
If we accept the hysteric exaggeration of the pagans that, in one fell swoop, Portugal depopulated Goa, it would mean that Portugal willingly took a step to depopulate Goa and make it useless to itself — it being a fact that the Portuguese did not supplant the expelled natives with either Portuguese colonists or with transplanted Christian natives from elsewhere.
Such a claim then, is utterly untenable and without any foundation in history and facts.
As for history, two complementary facts stand out to call the lie of this pagan claim:
These converts and immigrants constitute the Mangalorean Konkani Christian community.
Which does not make sense if Goa was depopulated or largely depopulated, so that there could have been NO Goan farmers to spare or to even invite. If few, the Portuguese would not have looked on unmoved or even encouraged, as they infact did, the emigration of these would-be Goan colonists to Ikkeri. As a matter of fact:
There came a time, much latter, (I believe in 1628?) when the Portuguese government, under the then Premier, the Marquis de Tavora, forbade the public use of Konkani. Frankly, however, I am clueless about the causes, reasons and motivations for that step, so I will not comment on it yet.
What is certain is that the missionaries spent a lot of time and effort to study and record the Konkani language between 1510 and Pombal's expulsion of the religious from Goa, (I believe in 1837?) and they regularly used to publish catechetical and other works in the Konkani language. That rich tradition was brutally ended by Pombal. In the future, Portuguese missionaries in Goa tended to be ignorant of the Konkani language.
Lastly, it is not true that the Roman script is unsuitable for expressing oneself in Konkani. The single largest subset of Konkani speakers are Lusitanized Christian Konkanis, and they are historically more favourable towards the Roman script. Roman is a versatile script, and can be modified and added to, to cater to the needs of particular peoples, as demonstrated even more recently by the Malaysians and Indonesians. This is even more true today in the Computer Age.
Over the last few centuries, the Goan Christian has been systematically subverted from within by "anti-clericals" and "liberals." This has been made worse when, since late 1958, the most important institution that provided them ideological guidance and protection, the Church, has been hijacked by these same "anti-clericals."
On the contrary, the Parasites have never relented from their ancient program of subverting, but have sought relentlessly to re-enslave the freed captives of Pagan Satanism, waging a relentless campaign of psychological warfare, of browbeating us with lies and more lies, until we are overwhelmed.
As I see it, we, as Goan Christians have a two-fold task before us to protect and defend ourselves from this campaign of psychological warfare being waged against us:
©Prakash John Mascarenhas. Bombay, India. 20th August 2003. This page is copyright.