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2008 Toronto International Goan Convention
Theme: Goan Identity And Networking Today.
http://2008goanconvention.com/index.php
Mario Miranda Festival, July 24-26, 2008 Old GMC Building
http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2008-July/077732.html
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GOA’S MINEOWNERS
By Valmiki Faleiro
That mining has long been the spine of Goa’s economy is undisputed. That
mineowners
helped create an enormous amount of wealth is undoubted, even if they kept most
of it
for themselves. That some dabbled in smuggling, under-invoicing exports to
evade taxes
and funnel part of the nation’s wealth into private bank accounts offshore, has
long been
suspected.
That some of them provided noble community services like colleges, hospitals,
newspapers and sports clubs – at a time when none or few existed – is known to
more
than those who benefited from brand names like Dempo, Salgaocar and Chowgule.
That
mining is the single biggest cause of Goa’s environmental degradation – a
scarred
countryside and populace, fields turned fallow, rivers silted with alternating
monsoon
floods and summer water shortages, roads mutilated, road deaths and traffic
snarls,
breaking bridges and beached vessels – is also well known.
What, then, am I going to write about them this Sunday?
Obviously, stories not too well known. Only two for today, on one of Goa’s
best-known
mining families. Read both in the realm of legend or lore.
This family had, ages ago, returned to their ancestral land from the coast of
Canara.
They traded in a particular commodity that earned them a name, initially as a
sobriquet.
The business earned more name than money, at least not sufficient to be called
rich.
But, the family became wealthy. The story is told of how that happened.
Guised as a human, Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, one day decided to pay the
family a
visit. The family received the stranger with usual courtesy and obsequiousness,
without
knowing who the visitor really was. But, the uncanny elderly matriarch of the
household
sensed right. When, after some time, Laxmi rose to leave, the lady of the house
dashed
in and beseeched her to wait a little longer while she went to the nearby well
to fetch
some water. She extracted a promise that the visitor would not leave the house
until her
return. Laxmi agreed to wait.
The lady of the house rushed out to the well and leapt in, never to return home
alive.
And that is how the wealth goddess Laxmi resides in their house ever since.
Being rich, in that age and time, was one thing. Being ‘powerful’ was quite
another. The
most powerful man then was the Portuguese Viceroy (or Governor General.) The
symbol
of his power was not military might, but a staff – the ceremonial staff the
Viceroy carried.
This staff was said to have attained some mysterious vitality from the late
17th century.
Whoever carried it obviously became Goa’s most powerful man.
How that staff came to attract such mysticism is itself an interesting story.
Late 1683, the Maratha warrior Sambhaji overran Goa and surrounded its capital
city,
with a force of 20,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry, 10 elephants, and plenty of war
material.
The Portuguese, with less than 2,000 men, were as good as gone. A panic-quaking
Viceroy, Pedro de Almeida, the Conde de Alvor, knelt at the relics of St.
Francis Xavier,
surrendering the staff at its feet. Even before he rose from prayer, the
Viceroy was given
the news that Sambhaji had turned back. The “miracle” that saved Goa was
credited to
divine intercession.
(It was not the Portuguese Dona Maria, “Maid of Goa,” as many err, but an
influential
woman of Goan descent, Juliana Dias e Costa, at the Agra Court, who ensured
that no
less than Crown Prince Shah Alam, once her student, led the mighty Moghul force
knocking at the Maratha northern gates at Ramghat Pass.)
And ever since that day, every incoming Viceroy was ceremoniously received at
the
quay of the city, taken through the Viceroy’s Arch to the Basilica of Bom
Jesus, along the
city’s arterial ‘Rua Direita,’ where the outgoing Viceroy would hand over that
staff to him
– at the feet of St. Francis Xavier!
The last Portuguese Governor General, Gen. Vassalo e Silva, was a great friend
of the
scion of this mining family. When the first bombs exploded on Dabolim and
Bambolim,
Silva, as per plan, scampered to Mormugao – to be protected by three concentric
rings
of retreating Portuguese forces and hold on until the UN met after Christmas.
Which, as
we know, never happened. What we do not know is where that Vice-regal staff
disappeared.
Silva did not take it with him to Mormugao. Nor did he leave it back at the
Cabo palace.
Where, then, is that staff, which, for centuries, symbolized Goa’s supreme
temporal
power?
One will perhaps have to ask the most powerful family in Goa today! (Ends.)
The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at:
http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330
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The above article appeared in the July 27, 2008 edition of the Herald, Goa
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Tri Continental Film Festival 2008
July 25 - 30, 2008
Goa, India
http://www.moviesgoa.org/page/tri_continental/
http://www.moviesgoa.org/tricon/schedule_2008.pdf
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