Forced out of Goa by the ominous shadow of war, epidemics and the Santo Officio, immigrants to Kanara fell under another of the darkest shade, that of the ‘Shadow of God’.
Shades within Shadows is the story of Jaki, Zuan, João, Foka and Paulu, Konngi, Karminn and Katrin, Natal and Bastião, and of others, during the turbulent months of Tipu’s seige of Mangalore fort and its horrendous aftermath.
‘The Captivity’ occurred in 1784. Tradition has it that the deportation of Kanara’s Christians, immigrants from Goa over the previous 200 years, to Srirangapatna by Tipu Sultan took place on Ash Wednesday. Males of a suitable age were circumcised and inducted into his military slave battalions and younger females were absorbed in his service. The following fifteen years of his reign saw large numbers of these captives dead or converted to Islam. Less than a third returned, impoverished and deprived, most of them having lost their families and property. An estimated Christian population in Kanara of 40,000 in 1784 was reduced to 10,000 by 1800.
This work is fiction, but Machado is also the author of Sarasvati’s Children, a history of the Mangalorean Christians. He notes there: “In a land, which Arnold Toynbee described as ‘a whole world in herself’, the Christians of Kanara form one more community, small in numbers but unique in their history, their cultural and religious observances, that enrich a vibrant intermingling of the peoples comprising the Indian nation. This story began as a personal quest for roots and understanding of the complexities of a community in which the Prabhu of the pre-Portuguese past and the Machado of yesteryear combine into the Machado-Prabhu of today, and the resilience which saw it through near annihilation 200 years ago for being what they were and represented, and which has brought it today to an honoured and respected position among the peoples of India and, indeed, of the world.”
Coming soon: Ebook version of Sarasvati’s Children, a history of the Mangalorean Christians.
