Panaji, July 18
Conventional wisdom has it
that lowly-ranked sepoy Mangal Pandey became the catalyst for India's
first uprising against Western rule in 1857 after he revolted against
the alleged use of cattle and pig lard smeared on bullet cartridges used
in Enfield rifles issued by the East India Company.
But here's what you perhaps do not know.
A
sustained campaign is on to haul back the date of India's first
rebellion against Western colonialism by a good 274 years - from
Barrackpore in eastern India to what is now Goa.
The campaign,
which is endorsed by historians, freedom fighters, elected
representatives and local residents, wants the central government to
officially endorse as the first real rebellion the prolonged, defiant
struggle of five south Goa villages - Cuncolim, Ambelim, Assolna, Veroda
and Velim - against the Portuguese colonists which saw bloodshed and
non-payment of taxes.
"The residents of the five villages, led by
Cuncolim, had, beginning from 1583, defied Portuguese taxes after
Christian missionaries destroyed five temples in the area to bring the
villagers into submission and also killed over a dozen of our
chieftains," Oscar Martins, who traces his lineage to one of the slain
chieftains, told IANS.
Many of the claims made by Martins find echo in church records and historical accounts of the time.
The
struggle, in which several lives were lost, dates back to 16th century
when early Christian missionaries along with their Portuguese armed
escorts tried to convert the residents of these five villages to
Christianity. When the attempts largely failed, the missionaries
destroyed nearby temples, which enraged the villagers, resulting in the
massacre of some priests including Fr. Rudolfo Acquaviva - an Italian
Jesuit who had also held position at Emperor Akbar's court and has since
been beatified - and their colleagues on July 15, 1583.
In retaliation, the colonists proposed a parley, which ended in yet another bloodbath.
"Sixteen
chieftains from Cuncolim were called for a truce to (nearby) Assolna
fort. They were ambushed and shot to death by the Portuguese soldiers as
retaliation. One of the chieftains managed to escape and tell the
story," said Martins, who now heads the Cuncolim Chieftain Memorial
Trust.
After the bloody feud, the five villages stopped paying
taxes to the Portuguese rulers for eight years from 1583 - centuries
before Mahatma Gandhi started his "no tax" campaign against British
colonists.
Congress Rajya Sabha MP Shantaram Naik, who has been a
part of the campaign to put the Cuncolim revolt as the first landmark
on the map of India's nationalist history, said he was confident
eventually the central government would formally acknowledge the event
as India's first recorded revolt against a European power.
"For
that, the state government will first have to include this incident in
our history books to convey Goa's formal recognition of the event. We
also need to give the central government rigorously researched material
to back our claim. We are confident that the Cuncolim revolt will get
its place in history that it richly deserves," Naik told IANS.
The
Bharatiya Janata Party-led ruling coalition had promised three years
ago to appoint a committee to study the matter for the Cuncolim revolt
to be included in school books, but Martins claimed it would need
persistent lobbying and reminding because history "cannot be hidden for a
long time even if the government neglects it".
The Trust has engaged a documentary maker to produce a historical film on the subject.
"We
did not want to wait for the government to take a decision. We do not
want to lose time in giving the Cuncolim revolt its rightful place in
history," Martins said.
(Mayabhushan Nagvenkar can be contacted at [email protected])
