Meeting Dom Garcia de Orta - Bombay's Jewish Master and Official First Resident

Bombay the Financial Capital of the second most populated country in the world started off humbly as seven individual islands off the western coast of the Indian peninsula. These islands were Colaba or Kolbhat, Old Woman's Island, Bombay, Parel, Mazgaon, Worli and Mahim. These islands were further separated from the mainland by a larger, and more dicreet in history, islands of Salcette [Bandra], Thane, Bassim [Vasai] and beyond. 

Francisco de Almeida

The islands first came under the radar of the wandering Portuguese was with the advent of the soon to be First Portuguese Viceroy of Goa, Dom Francisco de Almeida, who was guiding his fleet in search of the Lisboa of the East for a stronger foot hold in the Indian subcontinent. Having lost their bases in Gujarat, the Portuguese needed a stronger enclave that could give them a better control over the Indian Ocean. It is interesting to note that Dom Lourenço de Almeida son of Francisco de Almeida, was sent by his father and captured Ceylon for the Portuguese crown.

It was on his way down the western coast of India that he stopped on the tip of the Salcette island, at a place called Vandra which in Marathi translates as Port, in 1505. It was however, only in 1534 that the Portuguese could take control of the Salcette island. Bandra soon became a Portuguese possession with the Sultanate of Cambay ceding the region in the Treaty of St Matthew signed aboard the Portuguese brig St. Matthew in Baçaim harbor 1534, particularly as a result of the efforts of the

Nuno da Cunha

Governor-General Nuno da Cunha and Diogo da Silveira. The Portuguese acquired Bandra, Kurla, Mazagaon and four other villages in 1548 to a certain Antonio Pessao as a reward for his military services. This was confirmed by the Royal Chancellery on the 2 February 1550. As these villages were given for a period of 'two lives,' they reverted to the Crown after the death of Isabella Botelha, Pessao's widow. The Jesuits who had applied for these villages in anticipation of the death of Isabella Botelha obtained them from the Viceroy in 1568, receiving Royal confirmation in 1570.

It was however, in the 1500's, the seven islands which were separated from Salcette by a creek that would soon shave a secret worthy only for the inquisitive. Dom Francisco de Almeida, on landing upon these islands realised that there was not much use for them and considering that they were inhabited by local koli fishing folk, decided to call the islands Bom Bhaia meaning Good Bay. But chose not to do much with it as they were in quest for Panjim, the Lisboa 0f the East. 

20 Escudos of Portugal with Garcia de Ortega

Garcia de Orta was born in Castelo de Vide, probably in 1501, the son of Fernão (Isaac) da Orta, a merchant, and Leonor Gomes. He had three sisters, Violante, Catarina and Isabel. Their parents were Spanish Jews from Valencia de Alcántara who had taken refuge, as many others did, in Portugal at the time of the great expulsion of the Spanish Jews by the Reyes Catolicos Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in 1492. Forcibly converted to Christianity in 1497, they were pejoratively classed as Cristãos Novos (New Christians) and marranos ("swine"). Some of these refugees maintained their Jewish faith secretly. A friendly neighbour at Castelo de Vide was the nobleman Dom Fernao de Sousa, Lord of Labruja, who may have influenced the idea Garcia father to send him to University. Dom Fernao's son Martim Afonso de Sousa would become a key figure in later life.

D. Joao III of Portugal

Garcia studied medicine, arts and philosophy at the Universities of Alcalá de  Henares  and  Salamanca in Spain. He graduated and returned to Portugal in 1525, two years after his father's death. He practiced medicine first in his home town and from 1526 onwards in Lisbon, where he gained a lecturership at the university in 1532. He also became royal physician to John III of Portugal.

Perhaps fearing the increasing power of the Portuguese Inquisition, and fortunately evading the ban on emigration of New Christians, he sailed for Portuguese India leaving Tagus in March 1534 as Chief Physician aboard the fleet of Martim Afonso de Sousa, later to be named Governor. He reached Goa in September. He travelled with Sousa on various campaigns, then, in 1538, settled at Goa, where he soon had a prominent medical practice. He was physician to Burhan Nizam Shah I of the Nizam Shahi dynasty of Ahmadnagar, and concurrently to several successive Portuguese Viceroys and governors of Goa. 

He was the first European to describe Asiatic tropical diseases, notably cholera; he performed an autopsy on a cholera victim, the first recorded autopsy in India. Garcia de Orta reveals in his writings an unusual independence in face of the usually revered texts of ancient authorities, Greek, Latin and Arabic.

Cover of Clusius' 1574 Latin translation.

It was in gratitude to his service to the Portuguese crown that the then King of Portugal, through the Viceroy Dom Pedro Mascarenhas, granted a lifelong lease (on payment of a quit-rent) to Garcia da Orta for the Ilha da Boa Vida ("the Island of the Good Life") which became a part of Bombay. This was probably somewhere between September 1554 and June 1555. The only condition of the lease was that he had to improve the place. He had a manor house with a large garden. He probably maintained an excellent library here. This manor stood not far from where the Town Hall of Bombay was built. Garcia probably let out the house to Simao Toscano. At the time of Bombay's transfer to the English, the manor was occupied by Dona Ignez de Miranda, widow of Dom Rodrigo de Monsanto. It was in this house that the treaty by which Bombay was transferred to the English was signed by Humphrey Cooke on the 18th of February 1665. 

Garcia de Orta married a rich New Christian relative, Brianda de Solis, in 1543; the marriage was unhappy, but the couple had two daughters.Brianda de Solis was the lady of Bombay, the only lady-owner of an island that Camôes ever came to know. After the death of Orta’s mother, in 1557, the couple left Goa, to go and live in Bombay, and it must be here that Brianda welcomed not "Gama", but Camôes himself. There are some who say that there was no such island inhabited only by women, but the fact is that when Garcia de Orta , and his male retinue, traveled to the court of the Nizam, the island was peopled only by women. Brianda had two daughters, Beatriz and a younger one, and had at least three Indian maids - Antónia, Brianda and Leonor, who maybe went around half-dressed, just as many Indian women are depicted – and she had moreover at least one negro slave, called Joana. In 1549 his mother and two of his sisters, who had been imprisoned as Jews in Lisbon, managed to join him in Goa.

Luis de Camôes 

 In 1549 his mother and two of his sisters, who had been imprisoned as Jews in Lisbon, managed to join him in Goa. According to a confession by his brother-in-law after his death, Garcia de Orta privately continued to assert that "the Law of Moses was the true law"; in other words, he, probably in common with others in his family, remained a Jewish believer. In 1565 the Inquisition was introduced to the Indian Viceroyalty and an inquisitorial court was opened in Goa. Active persecution against Jews, secret Jews, Hindus and New Christians began. Garcia himself died in 1568, apparently without having suffered seriously from this persecution, but his sister Catarina was arrested as a Jew in the same year and was burned at the stake for Judaism in Goa in October 25, 1569. 

Garcia himself was posthumously convicted of Judaism. His remains were exhumed and burned along with an effigy in an auto da fé on December 4, 1580. They were among 342 New Christians accused of crypto-Judaism of whom 68 were executed between 1561 and 1623. His books were most likely burnt as well, possibly a reason why no copy of his book exists in Goa. The fate of his daughters is not known. During his lifetime, Orta had been protected from the Goa Inquisition by his friend and patron, Martim Afonso de Sousa, Governor-General of Portuguese India from 1542 to 1545.

Martim Afonso de Sousa

the Inquisition in Goa lasted 252 years, from 1560 until 1812, and were it not for the fact that Goa was occupied militarily by the British during the Napoleonic wars as French in South India were a serious threat to Goa. It believe that the British had a lot to do, to banish this iniquitous organization, which sent to the stake, more than 39,000 people, not only "new Christians" (marranos), but also many Goans who had been Christianized, and were unjustly accused of venerating in secret their ancient gods.

It was however, in 1661, with the rise of the English Empire that the then King of Portugal, John VI, the 8th Duke of the house of Braganza, having proclaimed himself King by deposing the then ruling Habsburg Dynasty in 1640, realised great potential in the friendship between Portugal and England. In 1661, he married off his 14 year old daughter Catherine of Braganza to the then English monarch Charles II in what was to become the longest surviving friendship in the world despite Spanish opposition. 

With the marriage, Portugal obtained military and naval support against Spain and liberty of worship for Catherine. while the English, apart from, the city of Tangiers in Morocco, Tea from Macau, trading privileges in Brazil and the East Indies, religious and commercial freedom in Portugal, and two million Portuguese crowns (about £300,000), also ceded the seven islands of Bombay which they marketed as being off the coast of Brazil.

King Charles II & Queen Catherine of Braganza

Since King Charles II was in perennial needs of funds. He leased the islands to the East India Company in exchange for a loan and a yearly rent of ten pounds in 1668. Sir George Oxinden was the first Governor appointed by the East India Company.

With the formal ceding of the Bombay islands in 1665, the English built a fort in southern Bombay and called it Fort St. George. Extentions of the fort were made in the form of Mahim, Sion, Riva and Worli forts that were to protect the now English territory from possible attacks by the Portuguese in Salcette and the Maratha from mainland India.

The British then extended the Fort to accommodate the existing the historical structure, “Manor House” referred to in records as the “Portuguese Governor's House” which was built by Garcia da Orta.  He leased the Bombaim Island as proprietor or vazador from the Portuguese authorities in 1554 until his death in Goa, in 1570. Later, it became the residence of the Portuguese Governor. 

Bombay Castle

In 1830 Bombay Castle became the Headquarters of the Indian Navy, which was constituted form the old Bombay Marine.

Today however, as one passes by the Bombay Castle, he is greeted by Two figures of Portuguese soldiers bearing aloft the great globe itself, significant emblem of an inflated dominion by sea and land'. 

The Times of India of 15th January 1941 said that Castle Barracks was built "on the original structures which centuries ago was the headquarters of the Portuguese Government and was later used as Government House by the first 20 British Governor.”