Background
The land
Geography
By Indian standards Goa is a tiny state. The coastline on which much of its fame depends is only 97 km long. The north and south are separated by the broad estuaries of the Zuari and Mandovi rivers. Joined at high tide to create an island on which Panaji stands, these short rivers emerge from the high ranges of the Western Ghats less than 50 km from the coast. In the 16th century, Alfonso de Albuquerque quickly grasped the advantages of this island site: large enough to give a secure food-producing base but with a defensible moat, and well placed with respect to the important northwestern sector of the Arabian Sea.
Climate
Goa is always warm, but its coastal position means it never becomes unbearably hot. Nonetheless, from mid-April until the beginning of the monsoon in mid-June, both the temperature and humidity rise sharply, making for steamy hot days and balmy nights. The six weeks of the monsoon in June/July often come as torrential storms, while the warm dry weather of its tropical winter (October-March) is the best time to visit. Weather patterns are fluctuating: 2007 had the coldest January in 40 years; 2008 the hottest February for 40 years.
History
Some identify Goa in the Mahabharata (the Sanskrit epic) as Gomant, where Vishnu, reincarnated as Parasurama, shot an arrow from the Western Ghats into the Arabian Sea and with the help of the god of the sea reclaimed the beautiful land of Gomant.
Arab geographers knew Goa as Sindabur. Ruled by the Kadamba Dynasty from the second century AD to 1312 and by Muslim invaders from 1312 to 1367, it was then annexed by the Hindu Kingdom of Vijayanagar and later conquered by the Bahmani Dynasty of Bidar in North Karnataka, who founded Old Goa in 1440. When the Portuguese arrived, Yusuf Adil Shah, the Muslim King of Bijapur, was the ruler. At this time Goa was an important starting point for Mecca-bound pilgrims, as well as continuing to be a centre importing Arab horses.
The Portuguese were intent on setting up a string of coastal stations to the Far East in order to control the lucrative spice trade. Goa was the first Portuguese possession in Asia and was taken by Alfonso de Albuquerque in March 1510. Three months later Yusuf Adil Shah blockaded it with 60,000 men. In November Albuquerque returned with reinforcements, recaptured the city after a bloody struggle, massacred all the Muslims and appointed a Hindu as governor. Mutual hostility towards Muslims encouraged links between Goa and the Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar. A Christian-Hindu fault-line only appeared when missionary activity in India increased. Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits arrived, carrying with them religious zeal and intolerance. The Inquisition was introduced in 1540 and all evidence of earlier Hindu temples and worship was eradicated from the territories of the ‘Old Conquests’. Goa became the capital of the Portuguese Empire in the east. It reached its greatest splendour between 1575 and 1600, the age of ‘Golden Goa’, but when the Dutch began to control trade in the Indian Ocean it declined. The fall of the Vijayanagar Empire in 1565 caused the lucrative trade between Goa and the Hindu state to dry up. Between 1695 and 1775 the population of Old Goa fell from 20,000 to 1600; by the 1850s only a few priests and nuns remained.
Albuquerque’s original conquest was of the island of Tiswadi, where Old Goa is situated, plus the neighbouring areas – Bardez, Ponda, Mormugao and Salcete. These formed the heart of the Portuguese territory, known today as the Old Conquests. The New Conquests cover the remaining areas and which came into Portuguese possession considerably later. By the time they were absorbed, the intolerant force of the Inquisition had passed. As a result, the New Conquests did not suffer as much cultural and spiritual devastation.
The Portuguese came under increasing pressure in 1948-1949 to cede Goa to India. The problem festered until 1961 when the Indian Army, supported by a naval blockade, marched in and brought to an end 450 years of Portuguese rule. Goa became a Union Territory together with the enclaves of Daman and Diu. On 30 May 1987 it became a full state of the Indian Union.
WWhen British explorer Richard Burton arrived in Goa in 1850, he described Old Goa, once the oriental capital of Portuguese empire-building ambition and rival to Lisbon in grandeur, as a place of “utter desolation” and its people “as sepulchral-looking as the spectacle around them.”
Culture
Religion
While in the area of the Old Conquests tens of thousands of people were converted to Christianity, the Zuari River represents a great divide between Christian and predominantly Hindu Goa. Today about 70% of the state’s population is Hindu, and there is also a small but significant Muslim minority.
Language
Portuguese used to be much more widely spoken in Goa than English was in the rest of India, but local languages remained important. The two most significant were Marathi, the language of the politically dominant majority of the neighbouring state to the north, and Konkani, the language commonly spoken on the coastal districts further south and now the state’s official language. English and Hindi are understood in parts visited by travellers.
Local cuisine
The large expat community has brought regional kitchens with them to make for an amazingly cosmopolitan food scene. You can get excellent, authentic Thai spring rolls, Italian wood-baked pizza, German schnitzel, Russian borscht, California wheatgrass shots and everything in between. Local food is a treat, too, sharing much with the Portuguese palate, and building on the state’s bounty in fresh fish and fruit. Unlike wider India, Christianity’s heritage means beef is firmly on the menu here, too. Generally, food is hot, making full use of the local bird’s-eye chillies. Common ingredients include rice, coconut and cashew nuts. Spicy pork or beef vindalho marinated in garlic, vinegar and chillies is very popular, quite unlike the vindaloo you’ll taste elsewhere. Chourisso is Goan sausage of pork pieces stuffed in tripe, boiled or fried with onions and chillies, eaten in bread. Sorpotel, a fiery dish of pickled pig’s liver and heart seasoned with vinegar and tamarind, is the most famous of Goan meat dishes. Xacutti is a hot chicken or meat dish made with coconut, pepper and star anise. For chicken cafrial, the meat is marinated in pepper and garlic and braised over a fire.
‘Fish curry rice’, is the Goan staple (the equivalent of England’s fish’n’chips or ham and eggs). Most beach shacks offer a choice of fish depending on the day’s catch. Apa de camarao is a spicy prawn pie and reichado is usually a whole fish, cut in half, and served with a hot masala sauce. Bangra is mackerel and pomfret a flat fish; fish balchao is a preparation of red masala and onions used as a sauce for prawns or kingfish. Seet corri (fish curry) uses coconut. Spicy pickles and chutneys add to the rich variety of flavours.
Goan bread is good. Undo is a hard-crust round bread. Kankonn, hard and crispy and shaped like a bangle, may be dunked in tea. Pole is like chapatti, often stuffed with vegetables. The Goan version of the South Indian iddli is the sanaan. The favourite dessert is bebinca, a layered coconut and jaggery treat of egg yolks and nutmeg. Other sweets include dodol, a mix of jaggery and coconut with rice flour and nuts, doce, which looks like the North Indian barfi, mangada, a mango jam, and bolinhas, small round semolina cakes. There are also delicious fruits: alfonso mangos in season, the rich jackfruit, papaya, watermelons and cashew nuts.
Drinks in Goa remain relatively cheap compared to elsewhere in India thanks to the state’s low taxes. The fermented juice of cashew apples is distilled for the local brew caju feni (fen, froth) which is strong and potent. Coconut or palm feni is made from the sap of the coconut palm. Feni is an acquired taste; it is often mixed with soda, salt and lime juice.
Modern Goa
The Goa Legislative Assembly has 40 elected members while the state elects three members to the Lok Sabha, India’s central government. Political life is strongly influenced by the regional issue of the relationship with neighbouring Maharashtra. Communal identity also plays a part in elections, with the Congress largely securing the Catholic vote and the BJP winning the support of much of the Hindu population. There is also a strong environmental lobby, in which the Catholic Church plays a role. Goa has had a series of unstable governments with periods of governors imposed by the central government to try and override failures of the democratic process. The state assembly elections in 2007 saw the Congress win 16 and the BJP 14 of the total of 40 seats, and a Congress administration resumed office under the Chief Ministership of Digambar Kamat, who took office on 8 June 2007. The state elects two, not three, members to the Lok Sabha. In the 2009 elections, these were split evenly between the Congress and the BJP.
In common with much of India’s west coast, Goa’s rural economy depends on rice as the main food crop, cash crops being dominated by coconut, cashew and areca. Mangos, pineapples and bananas are also important. Seasonal water shortages have prompted the development of irrigation projects, the latest of which was the interstate Tillari Project in Pernem taluka. Iron ore and bauxite have been two of the state’s major exports but heavy industrial development has remained limited to pockets in the east. Tourism (domestic and international) remains one of the state’s biggest earners, and money also comes in the form of remittance cheques from overseas workers stationed in the Gulf or working on cruise ships.
