Roman Catholic Brahmin


Roman Catholic Brahmin or Christian Brahmin is a Christianised caste among the Goan, Bombay East Indian & Mangalorean Catholics; who are patrilineal descendants of Brahmin and Prabhu converts to the Latin Church. This occurred parts of the Konkan region that were annexed into the Portuguese East Indies, with the capital at Velha Goa & Bombay was the largest territory of Portuguese India. They retain some of the ethno-social values and customs of their ancestors & most of them exhibit a noticeable hybrid Latino-Concanic culture.

Origins

In Goa, the Brahmins were engaged in the priestly occupation, but had also taken up various occupations like agriculture, trade, goldsmithing, etc. The origins of this particular caste can be traced back to the Christianisation of the Velhas Conquistas that was undertaken by the Portuguese, during the 16th & 17th centuries. It was during this period that, the Jesuit, Franciscan and Dominican missionaries converted many Brahmins to Christianity. The first mass conversions took place among the Brahmins of Divar and the Kshatriyas of Carambolim.
All converts from Brahmin sub-castes & Prabhus were unified into a single Christian caste of Bamonn. Since the conversions of Brahmins of a particular area, were instrumental in the conversions of members of other castes, due to the resulting loss of priests, such converts were highly valued by the church & Portuguese rulers alike.
The Christian Brahmins were even allowed to wear the Yajnopavita & other caste markings by a special dispensation of Pope Gregory XV in 1623; on the condition that these were to be blessed by a Catholic priest.
The Bamonns in general consider their Indian caste system, to be a class form of social categorisation. Since their concept is divorced from the religious elements associated to it, by their Hindu counterparts, they tend to justify their maintenance of caste as a form of social stratification, similar to the Western class concept. They are an endogamous group and have generally refrained from inter-marriage with Catholic Christians of other castes. However, while the Bamonns never inter-married or mingled with the lower castes, the statutes or norms of the Roman Catholic Church restrained them from practising Hindu caste based discrimination against the latter.
Although most now carry Portuguese surnames, some have retained the knowledge of their ancestral pre-conversion surnames; such as Bhat, Kamat, Nayak, Pai, Prabhu, Shenoy, Shett & others. The konkanised variants of these surnames are Bhôtt, Kāmot, Nāik, Poi, Porbų , Šeņai, Šet etc. However, only Pundit, Bhatta, Shenoy & Joshi suggest Brahminical roles; such as priesthood, astrology, etc. The meanings of the other surnames are as follows: Kamath, Nayak, Dessai, Pai/ Prabhu, Baaliga & so on. The Gaud Saraswat Brahmin subcaste was created by Shenoi Goembab in the 19th century, Shenoi found the supporting genealogy of GSBs in the writings of the Christian Brahmin Jose Gerson da Cunha, during this time the Brahminhood of Saraswats was denied by Hindu Marathi Brahmins & Jose was labeled a "defiled Christian" by a Mahratti-speaking Saraswat Brahmin.
Mudartha is a unique surname to be found among some Bamonn families that hail from Udipi district in Karnataka. Some Mangalorean Catholic Bamonn families trace their patrilineal descent to Konkani Saraswat Brahmins. There was one instance in the Mangalorean Catholic community, wherein some Protestant Anglo-Indians were admitted into the Bamonn fold, by Catholic priests at the time of their conversion to Catholic Christianity, their descendants are known as Pulputhru Bamonns.
In 1976, a genetic testing study conducted on three groups of Goan Saraswat Brahmins & one group of Goan Catholic Bamonns in Western India; confirmed the historical and ethnological evidence of a relationship between, Goan Catholic Bamonns & Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmins. The study further revealed that intergroup differences between the subject groups suggested a genetic closeness, with genetic distance ranging from 0.8 to 1.5.
Some Christian Brahmins such as the Pinto brothers Jose Antonio and Fransisco from the famous Goan noble family joined the army of Baji Rao II in Poona, after trying to overthrow Portuguese rule in the Conspiracy of the Pintos.

In popular culture

  • In her poem entitled de Souza Prabhu, the Goan poet Eunice de Souza muses about her Bamonn heritage:
  • The main protagonist of Mangalorean writer Richard Crasta's erotic novel The Revised Kamasutra is Vijay Prabhu, a small-town, middle-class Bamonn youth living in Mangalore during the 1970s. Filled with erotic longing and a deep desire to flee staunchly conservative Mangalore, he embarks on a sexual and spiritual odyssey that eventually lands him in the relatively liberal United States.
  • The protagonists of Konkani novelist V.J.P. Saldanha's novels such as Balthazar from the novel Belthangaddicho Balthazar, Sardar Simaon and Sardar Anthon from Devache Kurpen, Salu and Dumga Peenth from Sordarachim Sinol are Bamonns. A few characters such as Jaculo Pai and Monna Kamath from Sordarachim Sinol, Sardar Simaon Pedru Prabhu, Sardar Anthon Paul Shet and Raphael Minguel Kamath from Devache Kurpen have evidently Brahmin surnames.
  • Antonio Gomes' debut novel The Sting of Peppercorns focuses on the trials and tribulations faced by the de Albuquerques, a Bamonn family from Loutolim in Salcette. The family is headed by its patriarch Afonso de Albuquerque, a namesake of the conqueror of Goa to whom the family is linked through legend. Apart from him, it consists of his wife Dona Isabella, their two sons Paulo and Roberto, their daughter Amanda, an aunt Rosita noted for her cooking skills, ayah Carmina, and several servants who live on the de Albuquerque estate.
  • Shakuntala Bharvani's novel Lost Directions features a minor Goan Bamonn character, Donna Bolvanta-Bragança. She is a fervent Catholic who takes pride in her Brahmin heritage, scornfully reprimanding the protagonist Sangeeta Chainani for mistaking her to be an Anglo-Indian. When Chainani innocently inquires as to how she can call herself a Brahmin while adhering to Roman Catholicism, her inquiry is contemptuously dismissed by the character.

    Notable persons

  • Joseph da Cunha
  • Gerson da Cunha
  • Rodolf Dalgado