History of Mangalorean Catholics
[1] Four centuries of living in South Canara gave these Catholics an identity of their own, distinct from Goans and Bombay East Indians.
The first wave of migrants left due to the Goan Inquisition that made the use of Konknni, a punishable offence for converts to Western Christianity.
Soon after his son Tippu Sultan gained possession of Mangalore in January 1784, he issued orders to seize the Christians in Canara, confiscate their estates, and deport them to Seringapatam.
They had to suffer extreme hardships, torture, death by execution, and other kinds of persecution during the captivity, in which many were forcibly converted to Sunni Islam.
Traditional accounts of the ancestral roots of Mangalorean Catholics have taught that they are descended from the Indo-Aryans who lived on the banks of the now extinct Saraswati River.
[citation needed] The Goud Saraswat Brahmins are believed to have migrated to Goa later around 300 CE from the Saraswati River settlement in present-day Bengal.
[citation needed] All records of an early existence of Christians in South Canara were lost at the time of their deportation by Tippu Sultan in 1784.
[7] The Italian traveler Marco Polo recorded that there were considerable trading activities between the Red Sea and the Canara coast in the 13th century.
It was made of Olive wood, well finished and one span and a half in length, indicating the possibility of a Christian community in Mangalore.
[11] Some crosses painted black and red were discovered by the Portuguese in 1505 while digging up for laying the foundation for a fortress at Anjediva in North Canara.
[8] In 1498, the Portuguese explorer Vasco Da Gama landed on a group of islands in South Canara on his voyage from Portugal to India.
In his book, A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar (1807), he stated that "The princes of the house of Ikeri had given great encouragement to the Christians, and had induced 80,000 of them to settle in Tuluva.
[citation needed] More social contacts and cultural exchanges were however maintained with Konkani Hindus of the same castes as them, who like the Christians were refugees from Goa.
A Portuguese era annul of 1747 presently in the Panjim archives recorded that around 5,000 Christians fled from the Bardes and Tiswadi areas of Goa during the invasion of the Mahrattas and Peshva Brahmins.
[27] On 20 May 1783, Tippu Sultan laid siege to the Mangalore fort, where the Mangalorean Catholics and English army were taking refuge.
[36] He issued orders to seize the Christians in Canara, confiscate their estates,[37] and deport them to Seringapatam, the capital of his empire, through the Jamalabad fort route.
[39] They were forced to climb nearly 4,000 feet (1,200 m) through the dense jungles and gorges of the Western Ghat mountain ranges along the Kulshekar-Virajpet-Coorg-Mysore route.
The young men who offered resistance were disfigured by cutting their noses, upper lips, and ears and paraded in the city.
[43] According to Mr. Silva of Gangolim, a survivor of the captivity, if a person who had escaped from Seringapatam was found, the punishment under the orders of Tipu was the cutting off of the ears, nose, the feet and one hand.
[50] Padre José Miguel Luis de Mendes, a Goan Catholic priest, was appointed Vicar of Our Lady of Rosary at Mangalore on 7 December 1799.
According to various parish books existing that time, Mangalorean Catholics numbered 19,068 in South Canara (12,877 in Mangalore and Bantwal,[39] 3,918 in Moolki, 2,273 in Cundapore and Barcoor).
[51] Regarding the Christians, Stokes mentioned, "They have raised themselves to a name unquestionably the most respectable in every situation in which they move in Kanara, whether as holding high public".
[55] The opening of the Protestant German Basel Mission of 1834 in Mangalore brought many handicraft and tile-manufacturing industries to the region and led to a large-scale rise in employment.
[56] In 1836–7, when the political situation in Portugal was in turmoil, Antonio Feliciano de Santa Rita Carvalho, a Portuguese priest, was appointed Archbishop-elect of Goa in September 1836 without authorization from the Pope.
[57] Many Mangalorean Catholics did not accept the leadership of Carvalho but instead submitted to the Vicar Apostolic of Verapoly in Travancore, while some of them continued to be under the jurisdiction of Goa.
[58] Conceding to their request, Pope Gregory XVI established Mangalore as a separate Vicariate on 17 February 1845 under the Verapoly Carmelites.
On 25 January 1887, Pope Leo XIII established the Diocese of Mangalore, which is considered to be an important landmark in the community's history.
[citation needed] Till 1930 it was boom time when educated young Mangalorean Catholic men were drawn to Bombay from Mangalore in search of lucrative employment.
Five Catholics walked from Seringapatam to Mangalore to retrace the 278 km route that Tippu Sultan forced the Christians to take in 1784.
[71] Events related to Mangalorean Catholics that took place in Mangalore, and made national headlines were the attacks on Christian churches in September 2008.
