Concept · colonial & ecclesiastical polity · India
Estado da Índia — Portuguese India
The Estado da Índia was the Portuguese crown's territorial and ecclesiastical presence on Indian shores from 1505 to 1961: Goa, Daman, Diu, Bassein and Salsette as territory; the Padroado do Oriente as the crown's right to appoint every Catholic bishop east of the Cape. It reached from the Zambezi to Macao at its widest and shrank steadily after 1665, but the ecclesiastical reach outlived the territorial one and shaped Kerala's Thomas Christians, Konkani Catholic caste hierarchies, Ceylon's Sinhala Christians and the martial and mercantile presence that met the Mughal empire on the Konkan.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
The last three Portuguese possessions — Goa, Daman and Diu — were held into December 1961, thirty-five years after Britain left India, and were taken by an Indian military operation that lasted thirty-six hours. Portugal did not recognise the annexation until 1974, after the Carnation Revolution.
Connections (9)
- Imperial administration ofOld Goa
Old Goa is the seat: Velha Goa was the capital of the Estado da Índia from its capture from Bijapur in 1510 until malaria drove the city to New Goa in 1843. The Portuguese kept the viceroy, the Inquisition, the archbishopric of the whole Padroado east of the Cape and the Casa da Índia here across three centuries, and it is the one place where every ministry of the Estado can still be walked to on foot.
- Imperial administration ofBasilica of Bom Jesus, Old Goa
The Basilica of Bom Jesus holds the tomb of Francis Xavier and is the one building still consecrated of the many the Estado da Índia raised in Old Goa. Xavier reached Goa in 1542 as papal nuncio under the Padroado do Oriente, ran the East Indies mission from here, and died on Shangchuan Island in 1552; his body was returned to Goa and has been shown to pilgrims every ten years since. The basilica is UNESCO World Heritage.
- Imperial administration ofThe Goa Inquisition
The Goa Inquisition was an arm of the Estado da Índia, run out of the Sabaio Palace in Old Goa from 1560 to 1812. It prosecuted Catholic converts suspected of retaining Hindu or Muslim practice, and its trials shaped Konkani Catholic caste and cuisine as much as they broke Konkani Hindu manuscripts and iconography. Repeated papal calls to end it failed until Napoleon abolished it, and the Portuguese crown restored and then quietly closed it in 1812.
- Imperial administration ofVasai (Bassein) Fort
Vasai — Bassein of the Portuguese — was the northern anchor of the Estado da Índia on the Konkan, held from 1534 to 1739 when the Marathas took it after a three-year siege. The Estado ran the shipyards here, and the fort still holds the churches of the seven Portuguese orders that were founded inside its walls. Its loss ended Portuguese territorial control north of Goa.
- Imperial administration ofMoti Daman
Moti Daman is one of the four Portuguese pockets that survived to 1961: Damão was held from 1559 as the northern port of the Estado da Índia, twinned across the river with Nani Daman. The Bom Jesus church, the fort walls and the Portuguese street grid inside them are still legible, and its incorporation into the Indian union in December 1961 came in the same operation that took Goa.
- Imperial administration ofDiu Fort
Diu Fort at the tip of the Kathiawar peninsula was the strategic prize the Estado da India held against Gujarat Sultanate and Ottoman siege in the 1530s and 1540s. Diu was the last of the Portuguese possessions to hold a garrison, and its lighthouse and battlements survived intact into 1961. The old fort still contains its church of St Thomas and the smaller church of St Paul, now the two seats of Diu's Catholic community.
- Imperial administration ofOur Lady of Life, Mattancherry
The Coonan Cross Oath of 1653 was sworn against the Estado da Índia and its Padroado — the Thomas Christians vowed under the granite cross at Mattancherry never to submit to the Portuguese archbishop who had tried to force them into the Latin rite at the Synod of Diamper in 1599. It is the one place where a specifically Indian church stood against Portuguese ecclesiastical authority and broke it.
- Imperial administration ofSan Thome, Mylapore
San Thome de Meliapor was the Portuguese basilica raised over the traditional tomb of the apostle Thomas in Mylapore. The Estado da Índia acquired the coast in 1523, built the church over the earlier Nestorian one, and administered the mission through the Bishop of Cochin until Madras was ceded to the English in 1639. It is one of only three known churches in the world built over a claimed apostle's tomb.
- Shared sacred geographyGunadala Matha Shrine, Vijayawada
Gunadala is what came after the Estado da Índia in the Telugu country: the shrine was raised in 1925 by an Italian PIME priest in the Diocese of Guntur, on ground the Padroado had never held, and its Marian devotion is Roman Catholic in form but not Portuguese by history. It stands for the second, post-Padroado Catholic geography of Andhra Pradesh — one built by Italian and Irish missions rather than the crown of Lisbon.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Portuguese India", "Padroado", "Estado da Índia" and "Annexation of Goa".
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