THE FURTADO SYNDROME 106 The Sixth Night
"Here is the article that I wrote. It is a history of the original people of Goa, according to me. It's not in any of the history books as yet." The doctor handed the manuscript to Linda and said "Go take it home and read it, but please return it to me." Dr B.J. Furtado¹s Manuscript. This article may offend the sensibilities of some closed minds that have a one sided view of caste, race or religion. It is written solely to foster a clear understanding among peoples of all creeds about certain events in ancient Indian history, which caused untold misery and pain to the sons of the soil, the ancient Shudras and their progeny through the years. I hope and believe that they will once again recover their stolen dignity. Everybody in India today assumes that all non Hindu Indians converted from one common faith, the Hindu religion. But I beg to differ. According to most historical accounts, the Hindu religion has existed in India only for about 5000 years since the advent of Aryans from the North. Before that, the natives who inhabited India were not Hindus. This document will explain logically the plight of natives in India and what happened to them since. The first people of India, the dark skinned natives lived in huts on their fertile lands. The entire country was made up of small villages. Each village had farmers, cobblers, potters, iron smiths, coppersmiths, builders, carpenters and workers in occupations that were needed to keep a village running smoothly. Everyone contributed their goods and services to society in their own way and exchanged them through the barter system. The village elders held regular meetings and resolved amicably all social and judicial matters that arose among the villagers. These decisions were binding on both parties. There were no kings, queens, cities or armies, as there was nothing to defend or fight for. The occupations of priests, tax collectors, clerks and warriors never existed. There were no middlemen, agents, brokers or merchants. There was equal status and respect for every occupation. The dignity of hard work was paramount in this form of democracy in pre historic India. Direct bartering and trade ran the whole economy of the country, benefiting both the producers and consumers of goods and services. The native people lived in mutual respect and faith and in peace. There were no contracts and no land registration. Everyone had a piece of land and a hut to sleep in. They all lived together in huge communes, each one contributing their individual services in kind towards their community. There were no landlords or landless peasants or tenants. The common public land was available for everyone's benefit in the village. But this quiet and carefree way of life came to an abrupt end, with the armed invasion of fierce Aryans from the North. The invaders were tall, fair skinned warriors, armed, dangerous and cruel. They came on horseback, armed with swords and arrows, plundering and killing any natives, who resisted their advance into this new, vast, fertile land. Countless natives bravely gave their lives to protect their territory. The rest were easily overrun and were conquered. The Aryans had better fighting skills, powerful weaponry, cunning tactics and strategy, acquired on their destructive path all the way from Central Asia. The natives on the other hand were a peaceful people to whom fighting was an alien concept. The conquerors gave a new name to these natives of India. They called them Shudras, the servants. The Aryans razed all villages, defiled their women and banished the remaining natives from the villages to the forests or hills. The poor natives had to take whatever they had of their personal belongings and move out of their land and household with their families, in what was probably the first and worst 'ethnic cleansing' the world has ever known. Hence, though India today has a majority Hindu population, it was not always so. The Shudras believed in spirits, but did not have an organized religion. The conquering Aryans created an entirely new, reorganized country and called it Bharatvarsh. A new religion was established called Hinduism. The victors forcibly converted the entire Shudra population en masse to Hinduism. This was the first known mass conversion in the history of the world. Of course, the invaders could not venture out into the wild forests and hills and other inaccessible areas. So they left them untouched, unconverted and called them banvasis, the residents of the forest. As a result, these native tribes in the inhospitable areas of India have never heard of Hindu Gods and Goddesses and do not know what Hinduism is even to this day. The Aryan religion did not include any noteworthy Shudra deities in the Hindu religion or in their epic books. The Aryans forced Shudras to blindly follow the doctrine of the new religion without any concern about their religious preference. Their caste system established the superiority of the fair skinned Aryans and deliberately subjugated Shudras by curtailing their rights in all matters, social, political and religious. No Shudra could perform religious rites in the Hindu temples, as they could not become Brahmins, and were therefore not eligible. The Aryans instituted the first racist regime. The real people of India, the Shudras, were classed as the lowest in the hierarchy of the Caste System. The Aryans divided themselves into three higher castes: the Brahmins (Bamonnns or priests), the Kshatriyas (modern Chaddos or warriors) and the Vaishyas (the merchants). The Aryans introduced new occupations priests, tax collectors, clerks, warriors, merchants and agents and the entire country was commercialised. The products and services of Shudras were exploited to the maximum. Shudras had to serve their Aryan masters as a matter of course. It was the perfect set up to keep the Aryans in total control. The world's first colony was thus, established in India by the Aryans. The concept of Kings and Queens was developed later after cities were built using Shudra slaves. They were forced to work on the new agricultural farms developed to satisfy new demands from the invaders and their extended families. The master slave concept was introduced and the Vedic Aryans lived in luxury in their ill gotten land, by exploiting the native Shudras astheir life long slaves and servants. Shudras could come into the central village only at mid day when their shadows were at the minimum because, if any Shudra cast his shadow on an Aryan, even unknowingly, he would be lynched right away for defiling the Aryan. The Aryan would then take a shower to rid himself of such contamination! Such extreme rules served to attach further social stigmas such as being "unclean" to the Shudras. The Aryans loved life in their new colony. To protect their newfound wealth and lifestyle, they introduced another system, the 'gaunvkaria'. In Goa, the Shudras, the owners of the land, suddenly became 'munddkars' overnight, tenants on their own land. The newly arrived Aryan Bamonnns and Chaddos became 'bhattkars', the big zamindars. The Brahmins, known as Bamonnns, and the Kshatriyas, some of whom later became Christian Chaddos, took over the entire village lands of Goa from Shudras and established the village co operative and landlord system, the gaunvkaria or comunidade, and made themselves owners and members of this comunidade. Here it is not the true natives, but the non native colonials who own the registered lands as 'gaunvkars', or the shareholders of the village community to the deliberate exclusion of the true village natives, the Shudras, whom the comunidade terms 'moradores', the settlers. Even today, only the Aryans, both Brahmin and Kshatriya caste members can become the gaunvkars of village Goa. To top it all, the Shudras who were the exploited workers toiling in the fields and plantations worked without any compensation, except for some nominal produce but the Aryans earned the right to claim the zonn or the dividends. After de franchising the Shudras, the Aryans divided the best fertile land amongst themselves and left the excess land to the gaunvkaria, but made sure that the Shudras were excluded from the membership of the gaunvkaria. No Dravidian Shudras had any right to property and were not gaunvkars as per the new Aryan order. Each Aryan was given a slave family, who was given the task of tending to the newly acquired properties of his Aryan master. These slaves were their servants for life, bonded forever with no compensation, but were given some minimum produce for their sustenance. The entire workforce involved in the gaunkaria came from the unpaid slave Shudra community. Thus was born a new country called Bharat, later called India by the rest of the world. The conquerors changed all old names and gave Sanskrit names to all places, rivers, lakes, mountains and roads. Five percent of the population of Bharat controlled ninety five per cent Shudra population then and the same holds true even today. The Vedic Aryans devised all kinds of inhumane systems, to guarantee their lifelong retention of prosperity and property in their new colony. They expected complete reverence and loyalty and respect from Shudras, but never gave them anything in return. Over the ages, the Shudras were programmed to believe they were the servant class or the subjugated class meant to serve the godly Aryans forever. It is amazing how there was not even one uprising of Shudras against the tyranny of the cruel upper castes for 5000 years. There have been revolutions throughout the history against tyranny in the rest of the world, but the Shudras in India suffered this slavery and suppression passively. And worse, they adhered to the religion that perpetrated their caste inferiority to such an extent that they were ready to worship the very gods that they were told would not allow them inside their sanctum sanctorum. Would any Shudra in his right mind get converted to such a religion except under duress? The natives of Australia and Canada have native rights and privileges because the white Europeans signed treaties with them. But in India, the Aryans never bothered about such treaties with native Shudras and made the whole country theirs. Not even the United Nations can reinstate native rights of the Shudras because the people who rule India today are themselves the progeny of that Aryan race which wants to continue with the status quo. Eventually down the history, some Shudras were used and abused by the invading Moguls who again forced them to build their monuments, roads, and palaces. Some of the Shudras got converted to the Muslim faith, as they abhorred being low caste Hindus. Eventually the Portuguese arrived in Goa and their missionaries offered these Shudras a new kind of hope, wherein they could lose their caste and become equals in the eyes of God by converting to Christianity. Well, five centuries later, they still remained the low caste members and untouchables even within the Catholic Church in Goa, for the hierarchy of Bishops and Archbishops of the Archdiocese of Goa, were either Brahmins or Chaddos. Valerian Cardinal Gracias was the sole exception. Young Valerian Gracias, an exceptional Shudra, grew up in Karachi, Pakistan during the British Raj. He became a priest at Kandy in Ceylon and got his doctorate in Rome. He got such an opportunity because the retiring English Archbishop of Bombay, whom he had served well as Secretary recommended him as his replacement. This was possible only outside the control of the Archdiocese of Goa. The Saraswat Brahmins of Goa are proud to declare that they originally came from the region around the Saraswati River somewhere near Punjab. When the Saraswati River dried up, they migrated and settled in Goa. There is even a legend that says Lord Parshuram brought them to Goa. Whatever the version, every one knows that the Saraswat Bamonnns definitely migrated to Goa during that drought and that they could not have taken anything with them to Goa. But we find that when they settled in Goa, all of them became rich landowners. How was this possible? When the Saraswats (along with their Kshatriya fighting compatriots) arrived in Goa there were already all kinds of indigenous people living in Goa, such as Velips, Gauddis, Kunbis and Shudras. So the Kshatriya fighters either decimated the indigenous natives or they chased them away to the hills, taking over their fertile land. Therefore, for the slogan, "Goa is for all Goans" to be true and just, all the original Shudra natives from Goa should have at least the same rights and privileges including the zonn, that all the other later immigrants and settlers, who call themselves gaunvkars today, have in Goa. Only then can Goa prosper in peace and harmony to remain the paradise on earth that nature intended it to be. VIVA GOA! *** END *** Linda read this article with interest and later commended Dr BJ for his scholarly, deductive and unbiased article. At least now, she understood how the caste system and gaunvkar systems came into existence. And if it was really so, then the interest alone on the properties confiscated from them by the Aryans would amount to huge sums of money. The irony was that most of the Shudras did not even own a home or a piece of land. It was shameful. She hoped the United Nations would take a genuine look at this issue and see if anything could be done to restore these rights to the poor landless Shudras. But for her part, Linda would not wait for anyone else to help her make it; she would stand on her own feet and struggle hard to live the best life she could on this earth. She would not rely on any handouts. ****************************************** Comments, please. Arjun _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list Goanet@lists.goanet.org http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
