When Kalyan was a Jewish colony
Read more:jesus|Gospel of Mathew|Fr Benny Aguiar|Catholic priest
1
MUMBAI: Bombay's history, like the history of most cities by the sea,
is inked in blue. Traders arrived by water, colonised and rearranged the
land, and as colonisers are wont to do, recast it in their own image,
beginning with that elemental grain of identify—faith. While most
historical tracts burrow into the economic, social and cultural
realities of the Portuguese and British campaigns in the islands and
adjacent mainland of Salcette, few observe the simultaneous politics of
religion that occupied the times. Fr Benny Aguiar
hopes to build up that lean body of historiography, with his recent
book The Making of Mumbai: A History of the Metropolis and its Catholic
Past.
The historian, now 86, has himself come to reside by the sea near Bandstand in a sanctuary for ailing and aged Catholic priests called Clergy Home. Outside, the sea trashes about like a pack of demons. Fr Aguiar, despite a recent illness that twice hospitalised him, shows no fatigue; instead he picks out details from his brain as efficiently as if he were fishing them out of a filofax.
"In the 2nd century AD, Pantenus, a Stoic philosopher arrived from Alexandria to argue the merits of Christianity with the Brahmans.
In Kalyan, he found a copy of the Gospel of Mathew in Hebrew, in the handwriting of the evangelist himself," narrates Fr Aguiar. In his book, he goes to say that the Gospel had been brought to India by Jesus' apostle Bartholomew. However, Kalyan lost this invaluable heirloom when Pantenus pocketed it on his return to Egypt. Why did Bartholomew trek to Kalyan in the first place? Presumably because it was originally a Jewish colony, Fr Aguiar writes.
A distance runner in the fields of journalism and history, Fr Aguiar was the second Indian editor of The Examiner, the 162-year-old Catholic current affairs weekly. He led the magazine for 31 years, while writing also for international publications like The Tablet and National Catholic Reporter. He started to research the Christian history of Bombay and Salcette 10 years ago, when he embarked on a serialised account of it for the religious periodical, Awaken in Faith. "I continued researching the subject even after I stopped writing for the magazine, and eventually took the manuscript to St Paul's, which published the book."
Specialised as it may be, his research disinters several long-forgotten facts of Christian life in the islands and their surrounds. He illuminates the missionary efforts of the 15th-century Franciscans, who came in on the coattails of the Portuguese colonists and started to proselytise with speed. "It is said that every missionary converted three to four hundred persons every year. This may be an exaggeration, but the fact remains that by the 17th century, the whole of the population: kunbis (peasant farmers), kolis (fishermen), bhandaris (toddy tappers) and agris (salt pan workers), were Christianised," according to Fr Aguiar.
While Salcette was the site of feverish church-building, the islands of Bombay in 1630 had four main churches: NS da Esperanca on Bombay Island proper, NS da Salvacao at Dadar, St Michael's at upper Mahim and NS da Gloria at Mazagon. Incidentally, of the four, the church of Our Lady of Expectation—which, in a series of relocations, was ultimately moved right off the map—was originally fixed in the centre of the plot on which CST now stands. Not all their churches were movable; one of the caves of Kanheri that housed the chapel of St Michael stayed put, but it was the priests who eventually decamped.
Where there were churches, there was conversion. "Conversion was chiefly effected by persuasion, not coercion," says Fr Aguiar, alluding to the fringe benefits of orphanages and schools built for those who switched lanes to Christianity and also better employment opportunities for those who came recommended by the religion and its attendant education.
Adept as they were in 'faith'craft, Christian missionaries were wholly unprepared for the censer to swing back at them when the British came along and rolled out similar sops to those willing to convert to Protestantism. If that wasn't bad enough, schismatic forces were busy dividing Christianity itself, as parishes and people split ranks between Portugal and Rome, or Padroado and Propaganda, as the two jurisdictions were called. It was around this time (in 1794) that Christians in Bombay were allowed to elect their own priests, subject to the Governor's vote. Hell naturally broke loose, even if it did lead to the erection of new churches, one of which was the church of Our Lady of the Rosary in Mazagon.
As Fr Aguiar's research has shown, the Christian history of Bombay was not without its intrigues and counter strikes. Do they continue to exist? Only a future book will tell.
The historian, now 86, has himself come to reside by the sea near Bandstand in a sanctuary for ailing and aged Catholic priests called Clergy Home. Outside, the sea trashes about like a pack of demons. Fr Aguiar, despite a recent illness that twice hospitalised him, shows no fatigue; instead he picks out details from his brain as efficiently as if he were fishing them out of a filofax.
"In the 2nd century AD, Pantenus, a Stoic philosopher arrived from Alexandria to argue the merits of Christianity with the Brahmans.
In Kalyan, he found a copy of the Gospel of Mathew in Hebrew, in the handwriting of the evangelist himself," narrates Fr Aguiar. In his book, he goes to say that the Gospel had been brought to India by Jesus' apostle Bartholomew. However, Kalyan lost this invaluable heirloom when Pantenus pocketed it on his return to Egypt. Why did Bartholomew trek to Kalyan in the first place? Presumably because it was originally a Jewish colony, Fr Aguiar writes.
A distance runner in the fields of journalism and history, Fr Aguiar was the second Indian editor of The Examiner, the 162-year-old Catholic current affairs weekly. He led the magazine for 31 years, while writing also for international publications like The Tablet and National Catholic Reporter. He started to research the Christian history of Bombay and Salcette 10 years ago, when he embarked on a serialised account of it for the religious periodical, Awaken in Faith. "I continued researching the subject even after I stopped writing for the magazine, and eventually took the manuscript to St Paul's, which published the book."
Specialised as it may be, his research disinters several long-forgotten facts of Christian life in the islands and their surrounds. He illuminates the missionary efforts of the 15th-century Franciscans, who came in on the coattails of the Portuguese colonists and started to proselytise with speed. "It is said that every missionary converted three to four hundred persons every year. This may be an exaggeration, but the fact remains that by the 17th century, the whole of the population: kunbis (peasant farmers), kolis (fishermen), bhandaris (toddy tappers) and agris (salt pan workers), were Christianised," according to Fr Aguiar.
While Salcette was the site of feverish church-building, the islands of Bombay in 1630 had four main churches: NS da Esperanca on Bombay Island proper, NS da Salvacao at Dadar, St Michael's at upper Mahim and NS da Gloria at Mazagon. Incidentally, of the four, the church of Our Lady of Expectation—which, in a series of relocations, was ultimately moved right off the map—was originally fixed in the centre of the plot on which CST now stands. Not all their churches were movable; one of the caves of Kanheri that housed the chapel of St Michael stayed put, but it was the priests who eventually decamped.
Where there were churches, there was conversion. "Conversion was chiefly effected by persuasion, not coercion," says Fr Aguiar, alluding to the fringe benefits of orphanages and schools built for those who switched lanes to Christianity and also better employment opportunities for those who came recommended by the religion and its attendant education.
Adept as they were in 'faith'craft, Christian missionaries were wholly unprepared for the censer to swing back at them when the British came along and rolled out similar sops to those willing to convert to Protestantism. If that wasn't bad enough, schismatic forces were busy dividing Christianity itself, as parishes and people split ranks between Portugal and Rome, or Padroado and Propaganda, as the two jurisdictions were called. It was around this time (in 1794) that Christians in Bombay were allowed to elect their own priests, subject to the Governor's vote. Hell naturally broke loose, even if it did lead to the erection of new churches, one of which was the church of Our Lady of the Rosary in Mazagon.
As Fr Aguiar's research has shown, the Christian history of Bombay was not without its intrigues and counter strikes. Do they continue to exist? Only a future book will tell.
