Escaping the Captivity[1]

Tipu’s operation was so sudden, swift, and comprehensive that the captives were caught totally off guard. Desperation, ingenuity, and neighbourly assistance helped some escape the dragnet.

The Monteiro and Alvares family traditions remember how they escaped into the hilly forested region just north of Mangalore. The Aranhas of Mulki hid in haystacks, almost certainly with the help of their non-Christian relatives. At this time, Manuel, probably in his early 40s, had two known sons, Cyprian and Pedru, aged about 14 and nine respectively. Joachim (c. 1790), the youngest known son, was born midway through the Captivity. Another escapee was a woman popularly known as koleo akai. Akai is aunt, and koleo are dry leaves under which she hid and escaped detection. The Conde Lobo Kamath family remember a female member who hid in a ravine with her child while another hid in a box. The Konkani word for box is condo; perhaps that is how the family got their name.

The ancestor of Fr Mathew Almeida, Forso Babuti Nayak from Salcete, Goa, landed in Kallianpur in 1784. Small enough to hide under a colomb, the hollowed out wooden receptacle used to irrigate rice fields, he escaped detection. His father was taken.

The aged, like Pascal Gonsalves’s mother, were left behind. The Fernandeses of Tonse escaped deportation possibly with the help of their employer, a wealthy non-Christian merchant named Baliga. By the time of Diogo’s death in 1782, he had sired three sons and two daughters. The Saldanhas (Kamath), Coelhos (Porob), and Bragas of Omzur were allowed to remain because of their expertise in the cultivation of pan (betel leaf). The Pais and Rego families of Urwa were saved by their landlords. In Kirem, a Saldanha boy was adopted by a Bunt Shetty family; his descendants are said to be still known as Shetty.

In all, perhaps 5,000 to 7,000 escaped deportation (Moore 1905: 39; The Mangalorean, Vol XVI, No 9, September 1948: 2). They survived as dispossessed refugees constantly on the move. Others lived in hiding protected by and working for old associates (Silva 1958: 123).

[1] Machado (Prabhu), Alan. 2015. Slaves of Sultans. Goa 1556. Saligao: 288-289. Details are reproduced from family traditions: Thonse Fernandes-(Fernandes 1953: XXVIII, 16); Coelho, Saldanha, Pais, Rego-(Silva 1958: 124 quoting Alex Pais, The Mangalorean, Vol XVI, No 9, September 1948: 2); Conde Lobo-family history; Kirem Saldanha-(Silva 1958: 123); Almeida-told to me by the late Fr Almeida, a Mangalorean priest based in Goa, in 2009.