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The History of Mangalorean Catholics comprises of three major eras. The first era consists of the Aryan inheritance from their ancestors, who once lived on the banks of the now extinct Saraswati River, and later migrated to Goa due to the drying up of the river. The second era being the Lusitanian legacy, due to the conversion of their Hindu ancestors in Goa to Roman Catholicism by the Portuguese, and the final era being the migration of these Roman Catholics in Goa to Mangalore and other parts of South Canara between the mid-16th and mid-18th centuries due to the Goa Inquisition and Portuguese–Maratha wars, forming a new Mangalorean Catholic identity, and the subsequent growth and development of the community.

Ancestral roots
Traditional accounts of the ancestral roots of Mangalorean Catholics have taught that they are descended from the Aryans who lived on the banks of the now extinct Saraswati River. Most historians agree that the Aryans descended into India from the areas of present-day Iran, and some came by themselves, while othere came with their leaders in search of territorial expansions. The Saraswati river dried up in long stretches around 1500 BCE, when it's source in the Himalayas got diverted into the Yamuna River due to sand deposition and river piracy. Due to the harshness in their native environments, several Aryan groups migrated to various different locations across India. According to Historian Alan Machado Prabhu, a research scholar on the history of the Mangalorean Catholic community, the modern Mangalorean Catholic community is mainly descended from two Aryan groups &mdash; the group which migrated to the Konkan coast and Goa; and the group which migrated to Bengal.

The Aryans are thought to have first migrated to Goa beginning in 600 BCE, and continuing in several waves until 400 CE. The Goud Saraswat Brahmins (GSBs) are believed to have migrated to Goa around 300 CE from the Saraswati River settlement in Bengal. The GSBs also claim their origin to the Brahmins who lived on the banks of the now extinct Saraswati River.

Pre-migration era
All records of an early existence of Christians in South Canara were lost at the time of their deportation by Tippu Sultan in 1784. Hence, it is not known when exactly Christianity was introduced in South Canara, although it is possible that Syrian Christians settled in South Canara just as they did in Kerala, a state south of Canara. 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 can be surmised that foreign Christian merchants were visiting the coastal towns of South Canara during that period for commerce and possibly some Christian priests might have accompanied them for evangelistic work. In April 1321, the French Dominican friar Jordanus Catalani of Severac (in south-western France) with four other friars landed at Thana. He then travelled to Bhatkal in North Canara, a port town on the coastal route from Thana to Quilon in 1328. According to Historian Severine Silva, the author of History of Christianity in Canara (1961), no concrete evidence has yet been found that there were any permanent settlements of Christians in South Canara before the 16th century.

It was only after the advent of the Portuguese in the region that Christianity began to be propagated. In 1498, the Portuguese explorer Vasco Da Gama landed on a group of islands in South Canara on his voyage from Portugal to India. He named them El Padron de Santa Maria, which later came to be known as St Mary's Islands. In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral, a Portuguese explorer, arrived at Anjediva in North Canara with eight Franciscan missionaries. These missionaries under the leadership of Henrique Soares de Coimbra converted 22 or 23 natives to Christianity in the Mangalore region. Even prior to Alfonso de Albuquerque's conquest of Goa in 1510, the Portuguese had some settlements in Canara. It was easy for the Portuguese to send re-inforcements of missionaries to the existing stations in Canara and also to advance the work of evangelization. During the early part of the 16th century, Canara was ruled by Krishnadevaraya (1509-1529), the ruler of the Vijayanagara Empire of Deccan. As it was not possible for the Portuguese to enter Canara with Krishnadevaraya as ruler, a Portuguese alliance with Krishnadevaraya was the only way to enter Canara. Krishnadevaraya granted commercial privileges to the Portuguese on the Canara coast and there was complete freedom of worship, belief and propagation of religious tenets in the Vijaynagara Empire.

In 1526, under the viceroyship of Lopo Vaz de Sampaio, the Portuguese took possession of Mangalore. During the rule of Lopo Vaz de Sampaio, a regular mission was established in Mangalore by some Franciscans who came from Goa, where they had been established in 1517. The Portuguese Franciscans slowly started Christianity in Mangalore. In 1533, the Diocese of Goa was created by a bull of Pope Clement VII, and confirmed in 1534 by Pope Paul III by his bull dated 3 November 1534. In 1534, Canara was placed under the ecclesiastic jurisdiction of the Bishop of Goa, where the Portuguese had a strong presence. Missionaries soon arrived and gained converts. The number of local converts in South Canara started increasing. During the mid 16th century, conversions slowed down because of resistance from Abbakka Rani of Ullal, the Queen of the Bednore dynasty.

Christianity in Goa
In 1510, the Portuguese wrested Goa from the Sultan of Bijapur and finally established themselves in Goa. By 1544, they conquered the districts of Bardez and Salcette in Goa. In 1534, the Archdiocese of Goa was established. Soon missionaries of the newly founded Society of Jesus were sent to Goa, which lead to conversion of many locals to Christianity. In 1542, the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Society of Jesus, arrived in Goa. He observed that the newly converted Christians were practicing their old customs and traditions. He requested John III of Portugal in 1545 to install an Inquisition in Goa. The Inquisition converted a sizeable population of Goa to Christianity.

Migration era
Many of the Goan ancestors of the present Mangalorean Catholics fled Goa because of the Goa Inquisition introduced by the Portuguese in 1560. King Sebastian of Portugal decreed that every trace of Indian customs be eradicated through the Inquisition. But many Christians of Goa were attached to some of their ancient Indian customs, especially their Pagan marriage costumes and refused to abandon them. Those who refused to comply with the rules laid down by the Inquisition were forced to leave Goa and to settle outside the Portuguese dominion. About 7,000 of them (mostly Saraswat Brahmins) fled Goa. Most migrated to South Canara in what is called the "First Wave of Migration".

The Christians who left Goa were skilled cultivators who abandoned their irrigated fields in Goa to achieve freedom. At the time of migration, Canara was ruled by the Bednore King Shivappa Naik (1540–60). He evinced great interest in the development of agriculture in his empire and welcomed these farmers to his fertile lands. They were also recruited into the armies of the Bednore dynasty. This was confirmed by Francis Buchanan, a Scottish physician, when he visited Canara in 1801. In his book, A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar (1807), he stated that "80,000 Christians came and settled in South Canara at the invitation of the King of Bednore." Later, this was identified as a probable mistake and should have read "8,000". However even this figure included the second emigration of Christians from Goa. Under the provisional treaties between the Portuguese and the Bednore rulers, the Christians were allowed to build churches and help the growth of Christianity in South Canara. The arrival of the British and the Dutch halted the activity of the Portuguese and gradually the Portuguese were unable to send the required number of missionaries to Mangalore. In 1568, the Church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário de Mangalore (Our Lady of the Rosary of Mangalore) was erected by the Portuguese at Bolar in Mangalore. The Churches of Nossa Senhora de Mercês de Velala (Our Lady of Mercy of Ullal) and São Francisco de Assis Igreja (St. Francis of Assisi) at Farangipet were also erected by the Portuguese during the same time in South Canara. These three churches were highlighted by the Italian traveller Pietro Della Valle, who visited Mangalore in 1623.

The Sultan of Bijapur attacked Goa in 1571 and ended Portuguese influence in the region. The Bijapur sultans were especially known for their loathing of Christianity. Fearing persecution, many Catholics from Goa migrated to South Canara. This migration is referred as the "Second Wave of Migration". The Milagres Church, one of the oldest churches in South Canara, was built in 1680 by Bishop Thomas De Castro, a Goan Catholic theatine priest who was appointed by Pope Clement X as the Vicar Apostolic of Canara. The attacks of the Maratha Empire on Goa, during the mid 16th century, was also a cause of migration. In 1664, Shivaji, the founder of the Maratha empire, attacked Kudal, a town north of Goa, and began his campaign for Goa. After Shivaji's death on 3 April 1680, his son Sambhaji ascended to the throne. The onslaught of Sambahji, along the northern territories of Goa drove nearly all the Christians from their homelands, and most of them migrated to South Canara. This migration is referred as the "Third Wave of Migration". From the Salcete district of Goa, according to one estimate, emigrations were around at the rate of 2,000 annually. From the Bardez district of Goa, Jesuit priests estimated that 12,000 Christians emigrated from Goa between 1710-1712, mot of them going southward. A Goa Government report of 1747 presently in the Panjim archives recorded that around 5,000 Christians fled from the Bardez and Tiswadi districts of Goa during the invasion of the Marathas. It was estimated that during the Maratha raids on Goa, about 60,000 Christians migrated to South Canara. During the later years, the migration slowed because of the Maratha-Mughal wars, which kept Sambhaji busy, and some 10,000 Christians returned to Goa. According to Historian Alan Machado Prabhu, the author of Sarasvati's Children: A History of the Mangalorean Christians (1999), the Mangalorean Catholics numbered about 58,000 by 1765.

Post-migration era and captivity
Hyder Ali occupied Mangalore in 1763. From 1766–1772, Hyder Ali took de facto control of the throne of the Mysore Kingdom through the Wodeyar dynasty. In February 1768, the English captured Mangalore from Hyder. The Portuguese had offered to help Hyder against the English. But when the Portuguese betrayed Hyder, he directed his anger towards the Mangalorean Catholics, who had been converted to Christianity by the Portuguese. Toward the end of 1768, Hyder defeated the English and captured Mangalore fort, where the Mangalorean Catholics were taking refuge. Around 15,675 of them were taken as prisoners to Mysore by Hyder. Only 204 returned; the rest died, were killed, or converted to Islam. After Hyder's death in the Second Anglo-Mysore War on December 1782, the British captured the fort again. Hyder was succeeded by his son Tippu Sultan. The Mangalorean Catholics helped the British in the fort by providing them rice, vegetables, and money. Tippu decided to come down heavily upon these Christians for providing aid to the British. On 20 May 1783, Tippu Sultan laid siege to the Mangalore fort, where the Mangalorean Catholics and English army were taking refuge. The fort was finally delivered to Tippu when the British capitulated it on 30 January 1784. More than 5,600 Mangalorean Catholics, who were condemned for treachery, were killed.

The captivity of Mangalorean Catholics at Seringapatam, which began on 24 February 1784 and ended on 4 May 1799, remains the most disconsolate memory in their history. Soon after the Treaty of Mangalore in 1784, Tippu gained control of Canara. He issued orders to seize the Christians in Canara, confiscate their estates, and deport them to Seringapatam, the capital of his empire, through the Jamalabad fort route. The account of the number of captives differ ranging from 30000 to 80,000. According to Thomas Munro, a Scottish soldier and the first collector of Canara, around 60,000 of them, nearly 92 percent of the entire Christian community of Canara, were captured, only 7,000 escaped. Francis Buchanan gives the numbers as 70,000 captured, from a population of 80,000, with 10,000 escaping. They were forced to climb nearly 4000 ft through the dense jungles and gorges of the Western Ghat mountain ranges along the Kulshekar-Virajpet-Coorg-Mysore route. It was 210 mi from Mangalore to Seringapatam, and the journey took six weeks. According to the Barkur Manuscrpt, written in Canarese by a Mangalorean Catholic from Barkur after his return from Seringapatam, 20,000 of them (one-third) died on the march to Seringapatam due to hunger, disease and ill treatment by the soldiers. Those who resisted were thrown down from the Jamalabad fort route. According to James Scurry, a British officer, who was held captive along with Mangalorean Catholics, 30,000 of them were captured. The young women and girls were forcibly made wives of the Muslims living there. The young men who offered resistance were disfigured by cutting their noses, upper lips, and ears and paraded in the city. 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.

British and modern era
In the Battle of Seringapatam on 4 May 1799, the British stormed the fortress, breached the town of Seringapatam, and killed Tippu. After his death in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, the Mangalorean Catholics were freed from his captivity. Of the 60,000-80,000 Mangalorean Catholics taken captive, only 15,000-20,000 made it out as Christians. After deliverance from captivity, while returning home to South Canara the King of Coorg offered the Mangalorean Catholics safe stay in their lands and many of them settled in Coorg. British general Arthur Wellesley helped 10,000 of them return to South Canara and resettle on their lands. According to the Mangalorean genealogist Michael Lobo, the present Mangalorean Catholic community is descended almost entirely from this small group of survivors. Later, the British took over South Canara. In 1800, they took a census of the region. Of the 396,672 people living in South Canara, 10,877 were Christians. Padre José Miguel Luis de Mendes, a Goan Catholic priest, was appointed Vicar of Our Lady of Rosary at Mangalore on 7 December 1799. He took a lot of interest in the re-establishment of the community from 1799 to 1808. Later, British general John Goldsborough Ravenshaw II was appointed collector of South Canara. He took active part in the re-establishment of their former possessions and recovery of their estates. He constructed a church for them, which was completed in 1806. Their population almost doubled in 1818. According to various parish books existing that time, Mangalorean Catholics numbered 19,068 in South Canara (12,877 in Mangalore and Bantwal, 3,918 in Moolki, 2,273 in Cundapore and Barcoor). Seventeen churches which were earlier destroyed by Tippu were rebuilt. After relocation, the community prospered under the British, and the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Goa commenced again. The 1820s being a period of economic depression led to discontent among the Christians and the Brahmins. The British Government appointed John Stokes as Commissioner in about 1830 to investigate the complaints. 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". The Mangalorean Catholics gradually prospered under the British.

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. 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. 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. The parishes in South Canara were divided into two groups — one under Goa and the other under Verapoly. Under the leadership of Joachim Pius Noronha, a Mangalorean Catholic priest, and John Joseph Saldanha, a Mangalorean Catholic judge, the Mangalorean Catholics sent a petition to the Holy See in 1840 to establish Mangalore as a separate Vicariate to ward off the differences. Conceding to their request, Pope Gregory XVI established Mangalore as a separate Vicariate on 17 February 1845 under the Verapoly Carmelites. The Mangalore Mission was then transferred to the French Carmelites by a Bull dated 3 January 1870. During the regime of Carmelites, the Mangalorean Catholics constantly sent memorandums to the Holy See to send Jesuits to Mangalore to start institutions for higher education, since the youth frequently had to go to Bombay and Madras for educational purposes. The Roman Catholic Church studied the situation and Pope Leo XIII by the Brief of 27 September 1878 handed over the Mangalore mission to the Italian Jesuit of Naples, who reached Mangalore on 31 December 1878. The Italian Jesuits played an important role in education, health, and social welfare of the community and built the St. Aloysius College in 1880, St Aloysius Chapel in 1884, and many other institutions and churches. 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. In 1901, Mangalorean Catholics accounted for 76,000 of the total 84,103 Christians in South Canara. , while in 1962, they numbered 186,741. During the mid-nineteenth century, Bishop Victor R. Fernandes, a Mangalorean Catholic priest, erected a large cross at former outskirts of Mangalore in Nanthoor near Padav hills to honour the memory of Mangalorean Catholic martyrs who died on the march and during their 15-year captivity at Seringapatam. During the later 20th century, they started migrating to other parts of India, especially Bombay and Bangalore. Till 1930 it was boom time when educated young Mangalorean Catholic men were drawn to Bombay from Mangalore in search of lucrative employment. It is to be noted however that the lower working class received no support from those of the upper class of their community in Bombay, Westernisation of habits and the rejection of the mother tongue was the reason for a sharp cleavage between the two classes. In 1930s, the profession taken up by the lower classes were as taxi drivers and fitters and as domestic service in homes. The men lived in koods mainly in Central and South Bombay. There were about 400 Mangalorean Catholics then in Bombay. The first Mangalorean Catholic to settle down in Madras in the 1940s was Dewan Bahadur Alexio Pinto. During the 1970s, coastal communication increased between Bombay and Mangalore, after introduction of ships by the London based trade firm Shepherd. These ships facilitated the entry of Mangalorean Catholics to Bombay. Events related to Mangalorean Catholics that took place in Mangalore, and made national headlines were the attacks on Christian churches in September 2008.