The village communities existed in Goa and the Konkan centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese. The Portuguese initially called them “municipios” thinking that they were like the Portuguese “municipios” (municipalities). Later the Jesuits in Goa invented the word “comunidades” which was far more appropriate. The exclusion of women pre-dated the Portuguese. But let us not forget that in the USA women could not vote until 1919-1920 (19th Amendment to the US Constitution). In Portugal, women were granted the right to vote for the first time in 1931 under Salazar’s Estado Novo. The Portuguese respected the local traditions and institutions in Goa during the first 30 years (with rare exceptions such as the abolition of the “suttee/sati”, a practice they considered inhumane) and made minimal changes to the village community system during their 451 year rule. They also implemented laws favoring women following the Portuguese civil code.John M de Figueiredo Sent from my iPhone On Apr 13, 2024, at 6:21 AM, Marianne de Nazareth <mde.nazar...@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you for that education -- I just surmised that since it was called the Communidade it was set up by them. Wonder if one of the 'tweaks' was to leave us women out!
Marianne
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.
John
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!
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
Ok! Thats good to know as I heard in Pilerne, its in the region of 14- 17 k per person.
Our tenants are holding the panchayat posts now!
Pilerne is an exception. The
zonn is coming from the sale of their permanent land assets to the industrial estate atop the village hillock. In comunidades I know of, the zonn is about Rs 100 per year, and that too, only if you register a year in advance. Not worth the time and trouble.
What is the zonn in the other areas?
An interesting study would be to see how comunidades got treated since the 1960s, when they were stripped of their powers and income, especially during the era of land reforms across
India... That was also incidentally when large landholders in parts of Goa joined politics and didn't lose most of their assets. FN
The system is alive and well in my village in Goa for decades. Infact the males who register get a very handsome zonn.
To clarify ---this is in MY family property and NOT my husbands. By Portuguese law everyone gets a share including the spouses.
I am happy to look after the family homestead, as my connections to it are strong.
I just felt the zonn was meant to help maintain the property which due to my gender I am not eligible.
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.
What I feel sad about is that we daughters of the family -- who are the ONLY ones looking after the family homes -- are not part of
the Zonn.
Isnt it time such patriarchy was changed to include us women inheritors?
Dr Marianne Furtado de 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
My fieldwork in Goa shows the Matricula etc. have merit, but the 'clan' system is difficult to describe the way it is often done. Ganvponn, Ganvkari, Zonn, Zonnkar, Munddkar, Mittgaudde
etc.etc. makes the rural system a little more complicated than it is recovered from 'communidades' accounts, or vangodd systems. We need good fieldwork complimented by documents, Portuguese and local (Konkani, Marathi) in order to get a better grasp of the
system operating and changing over external interventions in Goa.
On Thursday, April 4, 2024 at 1:34:30 PM UTC+5:30 Rowena wrote:
Very exciting. I remember wanting to work on this decades ago. Glad someone is
👍🏼 Regards, 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."
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
goa-research-net+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/19cf537c-3cb9-4170-b53a-67501262ed34n%40googlegroups.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
goa-research-net+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/IA1PR11MB61470DDD7B560D4074E0729EFF002%40IA1PR11MB6147.namprd11.prod.outlook.com.
--
Former Asst. Editor, The Deccan Herald,
Freelance Environmental Journalist
Fellow UNFCCC, UNEP, UNWater
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
goa-research-net+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CAOqQHeK0AkswyPG0F3T5P1yFvuUJg0KOAMyWcOfFTv-uMQ-rKg%40mail.gmail.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
goa-research-net+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/IA1PR11MB61470436A8A4DC24F64FBDF6FF072%40IA1PR11MB6147.namprd11.prod.outlook.com.
--
Former Asst. Editor, The Deccan Herald,
Freelance Environmental Journalist
Fellow UNFCCC, UNEP, UNWater
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
goa-research-net+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CAOqQHeKAMuuo9cAih9_5FOjVxxxom3MtgEgchd%3D_YmA1hksUfg%40mail.gmail.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
goa-research-net+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CAMCR53KnAPrPCSB20odRKfhKz4yrWbq0zNfQURjTAxMZeOOAyg%40mail.gmail.com.
--
Former Asst. Editor, The Deccan Herald,
Freelance Environmental Journalist
Fellow UNFCCC, UNEP, UNWater
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
goa-research-net+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CAOqQHeKMmeBTjWw-V38aW5v_n_dGz6by_CCG8HGPAEyVmj4fDg%40mail.gmail.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
goa-research-net+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/IA1PR11MB6147309A4B78411ECF031BBFFF052%40IA1PR11MB6147.namprd11.prod.outlook.com.
--
Former Asst. Editor, The Deccan Herald,
Freelance Environmental Journalist
Fellow UNFCCC, UNEP, UNWater
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
goa-research-net+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CAOqQHeJtmFSEJ9Y%3DDi4UWaEnUszju1q2qhE1uaDHA79XfcqhiQ%40mail.gmail.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-research-net+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/IA1PR11MB6147B00DB3D84256A42C8F04FF052%40IA1PR11MB6147.namprd11.prod.outlook.com.
--
Dr Marianne de Nazareth
Former Asst. Editor, The Deccan Herald, Freelance Environmental Journalist Fellow UNFCCC, UNEP, UNWater
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-research-net+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CAOqQHe%2B6zyCAG-htv1Fe8SZAgjLKni05n%3DiWf-%3DQe0qiWG5XPw%40mail.gmail.com.
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-research-net+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/A03F6B20-C62D-423F-B9AE-9D047D4C59EC%40sbcglobal.net.
|
