Agrarian Organisation and Praxis | Goa State PSC (GPSC) Preparation - GPSC (Goa) PDF Download

 Page 1


Agrarian Organisation and Praxis
B
Y AND LARGE rural agrarian life of Goa during the seventeenth century
continued to be ruled by the Charter of Afonso Mexia. The Charter,
however, merely delineates the outline of the agrarian organisation with
its essential characteristics. In order to capture the system at work with its
functional details one has to go beyond the Charter and scrutinise the con-
temporary records of individual village council proceedings and accounts.
This is precisely what has been attempted in the present chapter, and the ac-
tual working of the agrarian system is described in the context of land tenure,
land distribution, land revenue, and distribution of pro?t and loss. The chief
village functionaries and their functions, as well as the non-agricultural ser-
vices have also been discussed.
The village council
The dif?culties of transport and communication, and the consequent isola-
tion, were the chief factors that required each village to be a self-contained
and self-supporting unit. Even as late as 1781 the municipality of Bardez de-
scribes the means of transport as very primitive. It reports: “Here everybody
walks and there is no question of using vehicles.” Surprisingly, this is said
in a report complaining against the expenditure forced upon it by the State
Government for improving roadways in the rural area.
1
For all practical
purposes the administration of the village was in the hands of the village
council, and it was only for the purpose of revenue collection and certain
judicial cases, or law and order problems which the village administration
Page 2


Agrarian Organisation and Praxis
B
Y AND LARGE rural agrarian life of Goa during the seventeenth century
continued to be ruled by the Charter of Afonso Mexia. The Charter,
however, merely delineates the outline of the agrarian organisation with
its essential characteristics. In order to capture the system at work with its
functional details one has to go beyond the Charter and scrutinise the con-
temporary records of individual village council proceedings and accounts.
This is precisely what has been attempted in the present chapter, and the ac-
tual working of the agrarian system is described in the context of land tenure,
land distribution, land revenue, and distribution of pro?t and loss. The chief
village functionaries and their functions, as well as the non-agricultural ser-
vices have also been discussed.
The village council
The dif?culties of transport and communication, and the consequent isola-
tion, were the chief factors that required each village to be a self-contained
and self-supporting unit. Even as late as 1781 the municipality of Bardez de-
scribes the means of transport as very primitive. It reports: “Here everybody
walks and there is no question of using vehicles.” Surprisingly, this is said
in a report complaining against the expenditure forced upon it by the State
Government for improving roadways in the rural area.
1
For all practical
purposes the administration of the village was in the hands of the village
council, and it was only for the purpose of revenue collection and certain
judicial cases, or law and order problems which the village administration
was unable to cope with, that there was State machinery and a link organi-
sation between the State and the villages at the province or desa level. At the
State level the highest authority to whom belonged the administration of the
villages was the chief revenue superintendent. On certain issues pertaining
to the crown lands in the villages the crown attorney had a say before a ?nal
decision-making by the chief revenue superintendent.
2
At the provincial
level there was a chief thanadar in Tisvadi and military captains in Bardez
and Salcete with general supervisory powers over the administration of
villages in their respective provinces. They possessed administrative, police
and judicial attributions.
3
To help them in the collection of revenues there
was a collector in each province (recebedor) assisted by a clerk (nadkarni).
As a more direct link between the provincial administration and the villages
there was a General Assembly (camara geral) formed by the representatives
of the chief villages of each province.
4
Normally, it was the village council that took all the administrative decisions
in the village. The meetings of the village council, consisting of the elders of
each vangad, were held as needs arose and they were frequent. They would
meet generally at open places where there was shade and cool atmosphere.
Hence, these meetings (ganvpan) would take place under a mango tree or a
banyan tree. When only a few met, the meeting was held in the house of a
ganvkar or in the Church verandah. Occasionally meetings were called by
the chief thanadar or the province captain at his residence.
5
The ganvkars-in-council always had the village clerk (kulkarni) with them
to declare the nem and to record the proceedings. The of?ce of the clerk
was hereditary, but in addition to this so-called escrivão fatiosim there was
in a village another clerk-accountant, who kept the register of village lands
and revenues, and he was known as sanbuka, which was a corrupt version
of senabova, senaboga or shanbag. The Portuguese designation for the
same was escrivão corrente. This latter category of clerks was examined and
approved by the Revenue Department and their appointment to a particular
village had to be rati?ed by the village council concerned.
6
Land tenure
Hindu law codes had always recognised that the land belongs to the clearer
of the wood.
7
It was on this basis that the ganvkars in Goan village communi-
ties regarded themselves as rightful owners of all the village lands. However,
the Muslim rulers all over India, including Goa, had the tendency to overrule
the ownership of the original soil-clearers by their right of conquest and
thus the Muslim domination had set in the process of feudalisation in Goa
at the time of the Portuguese arrival.
8
This process was halted by Afonso
de Albuqeurque, who invited the native Hindus to cultivate their lands in
peace and pay their revenue, which he reduced by one-third in order to win
Page 3


Agrarian Organisation and Praxis
B
Y AND LARGE rural agrarian life of Goa during the seventeenth century
continued to be ruled by the Charter of Afonso Mexia. The Charter,
however, merely delineates the outline of the agrarian organisation with
its essential characteristics. In order to capture the system at work with its
functional details one has to go beyond the Charter and scrutinise the con-
temporary records of individual village council proceedings and accounts.
This is precisely what has been attempted in the present chapter, and the ac-
tual working of the agrarian system is described in the context of land tenure,
land distribution, land revenue, and distribution of pro?t and loss. The chief
village functionaries and their functions, as well as the non-agricultural ser-
vices have also been discussed.
The village council
The dif?culties of transport and communication, and the consequent isola-
tion, were the chief factors that required each village to be a self-contained
and self-supporting unit. Even as late as 1781 the municipality of Bardez de-
scribes the means of transport as very primitive. It reports: “Here everybody
walks and there is no question of using vehicles.” Surprisingly, this is said
in a report complaining against the expenditure forced upon it by the State
Government for improving roadways in the rural area.
1
For all practical
purposes the administration of the village was in the hands of the village
council, and it was only for the purpose of revenue collection and certain
judicial cases, or law and order problems which the village administration
was unable to cope with, that there was State machinery and a link organi-
sation between the State and the villages at the province or desa level. At the
State level the highest authority to whom belonged the administration of the
villages was the chief revenue superintendent. On certain issues pertaining
to the crown lands in the villages the crown attorney had a say before a ?nal
decision-making by the chief revenue superintendent.
2
At the provincial
level there was a chief thanadar in Tisvadi and military captains in Bardez
and Salcete with general supervisory powers over the administration of
villages in their respective provinces. They possessed administrative, police
and judicial attributions.
3
To help them in the collection of revenues there
was a collector in each province (recebedor) assisted by a clerk (nadkarni).
As a more direct link between the provincial administration and the villages
there was a General Assembly (camara geral) formed by the representatives
of the chief villages of each province.
4
Normally, it was the village council that took all the administrative decisions
in the village. The meetings of the village council, consisting of the elders of
each vangad, were held as needs arose and they were frequent. They would
meet generally at open places where there was shade and cool atmosphere.
Hence, these meetings (ganvpan) would take place under a mango tree or a
banyan tree. When only a few met, the meeting was held in the house of a
ganvkar or in the Church verandah. Occasionally meetings were called by
the chief thanadar or the province captain at his residence.
5
The ganvkars-in-council always had the village clerk (kulkarni) with them
to declare the nem and to record the proceedings. The of?ce of the clerk
was hereditary, but in addition to this so-called escrivão fatiosim there was
in a village another clerk-accountant, who kept the register of village lands
and revenues, and he was known as sanbuka, which was a corrupt version
of senabova, senaboga or shanbag. The Portuguese designation for the
same was escrivão corrente. This latter category of clerks was examined and
approved by the Revenue Department and their appointment to a particular
village had to be rati?ed by the village council concerned.
6
Land tenure
Hindu law codes had always recognised that the land belongs to the clearer
of the wood.
7
It was on this basis that the ganvkars in Goan village communi-
ties regarded themselves as rightful owners of all the village lands. However,
the Muslim rulers all over India, including Goa, had the tendency to overrule
the ownership of the original soil-clearers by their right of conquest and
thus the Muslim domination had set in the process of feudalisation in Goa
at the time of the Portuguese arrival.
8
This process was halted by Afonso
de Albuqeurque, who invited the native Hindus to cultivate their lands in
peace and pay their revenue, which he reduced by one-third in order to win
the goodwill of the Hindu population and to utilise their cooperation to
exterminate the Muslims.
9
The policy of Albuquerque was con?rmed by a royal proclamation of Decem-
ber 18, 1519, revising an earlier proclamation and stating that the lands that
had always belonged to the natives would not be taken away from them.
10
The issue of the Charter in 1526 marked a very signi?cant step towards the
recognition of the village community tenancy rights, though the Charter
retained quite a number of rules that had been introduced by the Muslims
and were detrimental to the village communities. Thus, for instance, the
rule in the case of failure of a whole village to pay strikes us as very harsh; for
here the other villages, not the treasury, are to bear the loss, although they
are in no wise to blame for it.
11
Moreover, the rules of ‘escheat’ (on failure of
heirs) have been largely extended to bene?t the Government, and collateral
succession is not required.
12
These rules were responsible to some extent for the dispossession of the
village communities of their lands, which became crown lands and passed
into alien hands by way of grants. This happened soon after the conquest of
Goa when the lands that were owned by the Muslim inhabitants of the city
and the suburbs were distributed among the Portuguese as revenue-free
grants, and since these lands had to pay revenue to the village communities
to the tune of 1460 ½ tangas and 14 leaes, this sum was discounted from
their dues to the State.
13
In the wake of the conversion policy and the subsequent destruction of the
Hindu temples, the lands which the village communities had applied to
the maintenance of cult and ministers of the cult were handed over to the
Jesuits and other ministers of the new religion in violation of a written con-
vention according to which the lands would remain in the possession of the
village communities and would only pay an agreed sum for the upkeep of
the new cult.
14
Some entire villages were con?scated in the Salcete province
to punish their rebellious villagers and they were given as grants to certain
individuals, who in turn passed them to the Society of Jesus by way of en-
dowment. Thus Kola, Ambely, Assolna, Kunkoly, Veroda and Velim became
properties of the Jesuits in Salcete.
15
In Bardez the village of Anjuna lost
some of its lands as punishment for rebellion,
16
and the villages of Nadora,
Pirna and Revora were given as grant to a certain Mukunda Rane in 1609,
probably for ensuring more effective defence of those border areas.
17
In addition to the of?cial action of the State there were private interests
trying to invest their capital in the village lands. With the beginning of the
seventeenth century this tendency becomes more marked because the Por-
tuguese seaborne trade was becoming more and more risky for investment.
In this rush for investment in the village lands the Religious whites proved
to be a serious hindrance to the lay whites, who had to be contented with
a poor show compared with what the organised and concentrated capital
Page 4


Agrarian Organisation and Praxis
B
Y AND LARGE rural agrarian life of Goa during the seventeenth century
continued to be ruled by the Charter of Afonso Mexia. The Charter,
however, merely delineates the outline of the agrarian organisation with
its essential characteristics. In order to capture the system at work with its
functional details one has to go beyond the Charter and scrutinise the con-
temporary records of individual village council proceedings and accounts.
This is precisely what has been attempted in the present chapter, and the ac-
tual working of the agrarian system is described in the context of land tenure,
land distribution, land revenue, and distribution of pro?t and loss. The chief
village functionaries and their functions, as well as the non-agricultural ser-
vices have also been discussed.
The village council
The dif?culties of transport and communication, and the consequent isola-
tion, were the chief factors that required each village to be a self-contained
and self-supporting unit. Even as late as 1781 the municipality of Bardez de-
scribes the means of transport as very primitive. It reports: “Here everybody
walks and there is no question of using vehicles.” Surprisingly, this is said
in a report complaining against the expenditure forced upon it by the State
Government for improving roadways in the rural area.
1
For all practical
purposes the administration of the village was in the hands of the village
council, and it was only for the purpose of revenue collection and certain
judicial cases, or law and order problems which the village administration
was unable to cope with, that there was State machinery and a link organi-
sation between the State and the villages at the province or desa level. At the
State level the highest authority to whom belonged the administration of the
villages was the chief revenue superintendent. On certain issues pertaining
to the crown lands in the villages the crown attorney had a say before a ?nal
decision-making by the chief revenue superintendent.
2
At the provincial
level there was a chief thanadar in Tisvadi and military captains in Bardez
and Salcete with general supervisory powers over the administration of
villages in their respective provinces. They possessed administrative, police
and judicial attributions.
3
To help them in the collection of revenues there
was a collector in each province (recebedor) assisted by a clerk (nadkarni).
As a more direct link between the provincial administration and the villages
there was a General Assembly (camara geral) formed by the representatives
of the chief villages of each province.
4
Normally, it was the village council that took all the administrative decisions
in the village. The meetings of the village council, consisting of the elders of
each vangad, were held as needs arose and they were frequent. They would
meet generally at open places where there was shade and cool atmosphere.
Hence, these meetings (ganvpan) would take place under a mango tree or a
banyan tree. When only a few met, the meeting was held in the house of a
ganvkar or in the Church verandah. Occasionally meetings were called by
the chief thanadar or the province captain at his residence.
5
The ganvkars-in-council always had the village clerk (kulkarni) with them
to declare the nem and to record the proceedings. The of?ce of the clerk
was hereditary, but in addition to this so-called escrivão fatiosim there was
in a village another clerk-accountant, who kept the register of village lands
and revenues, and he was known as sanbuka, which was a corrupt version
of senabova, senaboga or shanbag. The Portuguese designation for the
same was escrivão corrente. This latter category of clerks was examined and
approved by the Revenue Department and their appointment to a particular
village had to be rati?ed by the village council concerned.
6
Land tenure
Hindu law codes had always recognised that the land belongs to the clearer
of the wood.
7
It was on this basis that the ganvkars in Goan village communi-
ties regarded themselves as rightful owners of all the village lands. However,
the Muslim rulers all over India, including Goa, had the tendency to overrule
the ownership of the original soil-clearers by their right of conquest and
thus the Muslim domination had set in the process of feudalisation in Goa
at the time of the Portuguese arrival.
8
This process was halted by Afonso
de Albuqeurque, who invited the native Hindus to cultivate their lands in
peace and pay their revenue, which he reduced by one-third in order to win
the goodwill of the Hindu population and to utilise their cooperation to
exterminate the Muslims.
9
The policy of Albuquerque was con?rmed by a royal proclamation of Decem-
ber 18, 1519, revising an earlier proclamation and stating that the lands that
had always belonged to the natives would not be taken away from them.
10
The issue of the Charter in 1526 marked a very signi?cant step towards the
recognition of the village community tenancy rights, though the Charter
retained quite a number of rules that had been introduced by the Muslims
and were detrimental to the village communities. Thus, for instance, the
rule in the case of failure of a whole village to pay strikes us as very harsh; for
here the other villages, not the treasury, are to bear the loss, although they
are in no wise to blame for it.
11
Moreover, the rules of ‘escheat’ (on failure of
heirs) have been largely extended to bene?t the Government, and collateral
succession is not required.
12
These rules were responsible to some extent for the dispossession of the
village communities of their lands, which became crown lands and passed
into alien hands by way of grants. This happened soon after the conquest of
Goa when the lands that were owned by the Muslim inhabitants of the city
and the suburbs were distributed among the Portuguese as revenue-free
grants, and since these lands had to pay revenue to the village communities
to the tune of 1460 ½ tangas and 14 leaes, this sum was discounted from
their dues to the State.
13
In the wake of the conversion policy and the subsequent destruction of the
Hindu temples, the lands which the village communities had applied to
the maintenance of cult and ministers of the cult were handed over to the
Jesuits and other ministers of the new religion in violation of a written con-
vention according to which the lands would remain in the possession of the
village communities and would only pay an agreed sum for the upkeep of
the new cult.
14
Some entire villages were con?scated in the Salcete province
to punish their rebellious villagers and they were given as grants to certain
individuals, who in turn passed them to the Society of Jesus by way of en-
dowment. Thus Kola, Ambely, Assolna, Kunkoly, Veroda and Velim became
properties of the Jesuits in Salcete.
15
In Bardez the village of Anjuna lost
some of its lands as punishment for rebellion,
16
and the villages of Nadora,
Pirna and Revora were given as grant to a certain Mukunda Rane in 1609,
probably for ensuring more effective defence of those border areas.
17
In addition to the of?cial action of the State there were private interests
trying to invest their capital in the village lands. With the beginning of the
seventeenth century this tendency becomes more marked because the Por-
tuguese seaborne trade was becoming more and more risky for investment.
In this rush for investment in the village lands the Religious whites proved
to be a serious hindrance to the lay whites, who had to be contented with
a poor show compared with what the organised and concentrated capital
of the religious orders was achieving. Besides, the religious pastors of the
villages had a ?rm grip on the villages, and they did not mind exploiting
their social and spiritual position to promote the temporal interests of their
Orders ostensibly to plant Christianity in the new soil. The frustrated anger
of Portuguese laymen took the form of loud denunciations of clerical suc-
cess. The Portuguese settlers of the Goa city wrote to the king of Portugal in
1603: “If this State of India is lost, it will be solely because of the Society of
Jesus (. . . ) They are absolute masters of a great part of this island (of Goa),
most of which they have bought, and at this rate there will be no house or
palm grove left which will not be theirs within ten years from hence. The
Portuguese settlers ?nd themselves empoverished, because they have no
lands to invest in, and whatever capital they had they have lost it in the sea.
The income which the Fathers (of the Society) derive from their properties
in Salcete alone should be suf?cient to maintain all the Religious houses
that we have here.”
18
It was in response to repeated complaints of this nature that several royal
and viceregal orders were issued to control the establishment of new re-
ligious institutions and to check the acquisition of more land properties
by the existing ones.
19
The seriousness of the land grab on the part of the
religious orders is suf?ciently testi?ed by the registered property of the vari-
ous religious monasteries that ?ourished at Goa during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
20
It is interesting to note that lands were acquired by
the religious orders in Goa and not just as foundations for their sumptuous
houses in the city and its suburbs, but even for supporting their missionary
activities abroad. Thus, for instance, the Jesuits had purchased lands in Goa
to support their missions in Mozambique, Cochin and Japan.
21
It is important to note that the Europeans, with European agricultural pat-
terns in mind, employing their control of land not just to collect revenue, but
to organise production on new lines, led to the formation of large consoli-
dated plots of land as a novel feature in the village agriculture. The religious
proprietors employed local labour, but they did not as a rule sublet their
lands. They cultivated their paddy ?elds and particularly their palm groves
along more scienti?c lines.
22
Their large holdings and their large yield was
not to the liking of the village ganvkars, who continued to claim hereditary
powers guaranteed by the Charter while large tracts of the village land had
gone and were going out of their control. Even their former tenants-at-will
were becoming mundkars or rent-free tenants bound to the soil of the palm
groves owned by the religious orders.
23
In these circumstances, the foreign investors known as khuntkars were refus-
ing to acknowledge the administrative exclusivism of the ganvkars and had
found ways of in?ltrating the village councils as new ganvkars. The protests
of the ganvkars against this violation of their privileged rights evoked a Gov-
ernment response and brought about a number of legislative orders from
1604 onwards declaring that the khuntkars could not legitimately buy, or
Page 5


Agrarian Organisation and Praxis
B
Y AND LARGE rural agrarian life of Goa during the seventeenth century
continued to be ruled by the Charter of Afonso Mexia. The Charter,
however, merely delineates the outline of the agrarian organisation with
its essential characteristics. In order to capture the system at work with its
functional details one has to go beyond the Charter and scrutinise the con-
temporary records of individual village council proceedings and accounts.
This is precisely what has been attempted in the present chapter, and the ac-
tual working of the agrarian system is described in the context of land tenure,
land distribution, land revenue, and distribution of pro?t and loss. The chief
village functionaries and their functions, as well as the non-agricultural ser-
vices have also been discussed.
The village council
The dif?culties of transport and communication, and the consequent isola-
tion, were the chief factors that required each village to be a self-contained
and self-supporting unit. Even as late as 1781 the municipality of Bardez de-
scribes the means of transport as very primitive. It reports: “Here everybody
walks and there is no question of using vehicles.” Surprisingly, this is said
in a report complaining against the expenditure forced upon it by the State
Government for improving roadways in the rural area.
1
For all practical
purposes the administration of the village was in the hands of the village
council, and it was only for the purpose of revenue collection and certain
judicial cases, or law and order problems which the village administration
was unable to cope with, that there was State machinery and a link organi-
sation between the State and the villages at the province or desa level. At the
State level the highest authority to whom belonged the administration of the
villages was the chief revenue superintendent. On certain issues pertaining
to the crown lands in the villages the crown attorney had a say before a ?nal
decision-making by the chief revenue superintendent.
2
At the provincial
level there was a chief thanadar in Tisvadi and military captains in Bardez
and Salcete with general supervisory powers over the administration of
villages in their respective provinces. They possessed administrative, police
and judicial attributions.
3
To help them in the collection of revenues there
was a collector in each province (recebedor) assisted by a clerk (nadkarni).
As a more direct link between the provincial administration and the villages
there was a General Assembly (camara geral) formed by the representatives
of the chief villages of each province.
4
Normally, it was the village council that took all the administrative decisions
in the village. The meetings of the village council, consisting of the elders of
each vangad, were held as needs arose and they were frequent. They would
meet generally at open places where there was shade and cool atmosphere.
Hence, these meetings (ganvpan) would take place under a mango tree or a
banyan tree. When only a few met, the meeting was held in the house of a
ganvkar or in the Church verandah. Occasionally meetings were called by
the chief thanadar or the province captain at his residence.
5
The ganvkars-in-council always had the village clerk (kulkarni) with them
to declare the nem and to record the proceedings. The of?ce of the clerk
was hereditary, but in addition to this so-called escrivão fatiosim there was
in a village another clerk-accountant, who kept the register of village lands
and revenues, and he was known as sanbuka, which was a corrupt version
of senabova, senaboga or shanbag. The Portuguese designation for the
same was escrivão corrente. This latter category of clerks was examined and
approved by the Revenue Department and their appointment to a particular
village had to be rati?ed by the village council concerned.
6
Land tenure
Hindu law codes had always recognised that the land belongs to the clearer
of the wood.
7
It was on this basis that the ganvkars in Goan village communi-
ties regarded themselves as rightful owners of all the village lands. However,
the Muslim rulers all over India, including Goa, had the tendency to overrule
the ownership of the original soil-clearers by their right of conquest and
thus the Muslim domination had set in the process of feudalisation in Goa
at the time of the Portuguese arrival.
8
This process was halted by Afonso
de Albuqeurque, who invited the native Hindus to cultivate their lands in
peace and pay their revenue, which he reduced by one-third in order to win
the goodwill of the Hindu population and to utilise their cooperation to
exterminate the Muslims.
9
The policy of Albuquerque was con?rmed by a royal proclamation of Decem-
ber 18, 1519, revising an earlier proclamation and stating that the lands that
had always belonged to the natives would not be taken away from them.
10
The issue of the Charter in 1526 marked a very signi?cant step towards the
recognition of the village community tenancy rights, though the Charter
retained quite a number of rules that had been introduced by the Muslims
and were detrimental to the village communities. Thus, for instance, the
rule in the case of failure of a whole village to pay strikes us as very harsh; for
here the other villages, not the treasury, are to bear the loss, although they
are in no wise to blame for it.
11
Moreover, the rules of ‘escheat’ (on failure of
heirs) have been largely extended to bene?t the Government, and collateral
succession is not required.
12
These rules were responsible to some extent for the dispossession of the
village communities of their lands, which became crown lands and passed
into alien hands by way of grants. This happened soon after the conquest of
Goa when the lands that were owned by the Muslim inhabitants of the city
and the suburbs were distributed among the Portuguese as revenue-free
grants, and since these lands had to pay revenue to the village communities
to the tune of 1460 ½ tangas and 14 leaes, this sum was discounted from
their dues to the State.
13
In the wake of the conversion policy and the subsequent destruction of the
Hindu temples, the lands which the village communities had applied to
the maintenance of cult and ministers of the cult were handed over to the
Jesuits and other ministers of the new religion in violation of a written con-
vention according to which the lands would remain in the possession of the
village communities and would only pay an agreed sum for the upkeep of
the new cult.
14
Some entire villages were con?scated in the Salcete province
to punish their rebellious villagers and they were given as grants to certain
individuals, who in turn passed them to the Society of Jesus by way of en-
dowment. Thus Kola, Ambely, Assolna, Kunkoly, Veroda and Velim became
properties of the Jesuits in Salcete.
15
In Bardez the village of Anjuna lost
some of its lands as punishment for rebellion,
16
and the villages of Nadora,
Pirna and Revora were given as grant to a certain Mukunda Rane in 1609,
probably for ensuring more effective defence of those border areas.
17
In addition to the of?cial action of the State there were private interests
trying to invest their capital in the village lands. With the beginning of the
seventeenth century this tendency becomes more marked because the Por-
tuguese seaborne trade was becoming more and more risky for investment.
In this rush for investment in the village lands the Religious whites proved
to be a serious hindrance to the lay whites, who had to be contented with
a poor show compared with what the organised and concentrated capital
of the religious orders was achieving. Besides, the religious pastors of the
villages had a ?rm grip on the villages, and they did not mind exploiting
their social and spiritual position to promote the temporal interests of their
Orders ostensibly to plant Christianity in the new soil. The frustrated anger
of Portuguese laymen took the form of loud denunciations of clerical suc-
cess. The Portuguese settlers of the Goa city wrote to the king of Portugal in
1603: “If this State of India is lost, it will be solely because of the Society of
Jesus (. . . ) They are absolute masters of a great part of this island (of Goa),
most of which they have bought, and at this rate there will be no house or
palm grove left which will not be theirs within ten years from hence. The
Portuguese settlers ?nd themselves empoverished, because they have no
lands to invest in, and whatever capital they had they have lost it in the sea.
The income which the Fathers (of the Society) derive from their properties
in Salcete alone should be suf?cient to maintain all the Religious houses
that we have here.”
18
It was in response to repeated complaints of this nature that several royal
and viceregal orders were issued to control the establishment of new re-
ligious institutions and to check the acquisition of more land properties
by the existing ones.
19
The seriousness of the land grab on the part of the
religious orders is suf?ciently testi?ed by the registered property of the vari-
ous religious monasteries that ?ourished at Goa during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
20
It is interesting to note that lands were acquired by
the religious orders in Goa and not just as foundations for their sumptuous
houses in the city and its suburbs, but even for supporting their missionary
activities abroad. Thus, for instance, the Jesuits had purchased lands in Goa
to support their missions in Mozambique, Cochin and Japan.
21
It is important to note that the Europeans, with European agricultural pat-
terns in mind, employing their control of land not just to collect revenue, but
to organise production on new lines, led to the formation of large consoli-
dated plots of land as a novel feature in the village agriculture. The religious
proprietors employed local labour, but they did not as a rule sublet their
lands. They cultivated their paddy ?elds and particularly their palm groves
along more scienti?c lines.
22
Their large holdings and their large yield was
not to the liking of the village ganvkars, who continued to claim hereditary
powers guaranteed by the Charter while large tracts of the village land had
gone and were going out of their control. Even their former tenants-at-will
were becoming mundkars or rent-free tenants bound to the soil of the palm
groves owned by the religious orders.
23
In these circumstances, the foreign investors known as khuntkars were refus-
ing to acknowledge the administrative exclusivism of the ganvkars and had
found ways of in?ltrating the village councils as new ganvkars. The protests
of the ganvkars against this violation of their privileged rights evoked a Gov-
ernment response and brought about a number of legislative orders from
1604 onwards declaring that the khuntkars could not legitimately buy, or
in any other way acquire, the rights of ganvkars, but the legislation was not
applied with retrospective effect.
24
As a result of the land grab by the khuntkars, the village communities were
becoming unable to meet the growing demands of the State, which was
always short of funds and had developed the habit of milching them out
of the village communities as much as possible.
25
The white khuntkars,
particularly if they were Religious, did not easily yield to pressures. It was,
therefore, in its own best interests that the Government interfered with
determination to arrest the process of alienation of the village lands. This
was done by a decision of the Public Revenue Council in 1649, declaring
that all proprietary rights upon the village lands rested with the crown and
that the ganvkars were mere lease holders (rendeiros) with no rights to make
grants of lands or to alienate them in any way on their own. This decision
was based on an entirely irrelevant document, which it quoted to prove that
right from the early times the Government had farmed out the revenues of
Salcete and Bardez in triennial contracts. The term designating revenues in
the quoted document is rendas, which means non-agricultural revenues and
not land revenue for which the term foro was invariably used.
26
Therefore,
even though the validity of the decision was questionable, in the prevailing
circumstances it was a lesser evil to be chosen. The decision paid rich
dividends to the State exchequer during the period that followed, and at the
same time the village communities were saved from further disintegration.
Land distribution
The elevated areas of the village were, as a rule, set aside for residential
purpose, and these were perhaps distributed originally among the residents
of the village according to the number of the members of each family. Each
family was provided a plot for house and for an orchard close to it. Such
plots are designated in the village records as gharbata, gormanda, thikan.
27
The residential areas (vadde) were generally isolated from each other by low
lying ?elds which were used for paddy cultivation. Each of the residential
areas was known as vaddo, and several vadde together formed a village or
ganv. Among the paddy ?elds there were some reclaimed from river or
sea, and these were known as kantor or khazan lands. The highlands were
known as morod and molloi. The areas lying in the vicinity of a spring or a
lake and utilised for areca-groves were known as kulagar.
The lands in a village were classi?ed as ?rst and second class lands, and
those belonging to either class were divided into three portions, each por-
tion being applied to a different purpose. Thus, the ?rst class low-lying
paddy ?elds were distributed as follows: one portion consisting of the best
?elds was set aside for the sustenance of the temple priest and temple ser-
vants, as well as for defraying the other expenses of worship. These were