#marakkayar

[thecontemporarian]

Religious conversions - Midas touch of the missionaries

If one travels down south in Tamil Nadu, particularly to the coastal places stretching from Tuticorin till Kanyakumari and to some extent uptil Trivandrum, you can bump into people having surnames with D'Cruz, Fernandez, Fernando, Rodriguez and so on and so forth. These Portuguese sounding names are not peculiar along the coastal Tamilnadu which witnessed a wave of conversions over the last several centuries. To understand the genesis of these coastal conversions, one has to go back to the 16th Century. Tuticorin and adjoining coastal villages were dominated by Hindu seafaring community called "Paravars" which derived from the word Bharathar. The group is mainly into seafaring and other Oceanic activities like Pearl harvesting, salt mining and fishing. 

They were considered to be the associates of Pandiya Kingdom which ruled from Madurai with Fish as its Royal emblem. Paravars, being seafarers naturally, were part of Pandiya Kingdom though not much is known about their antecedents and the exact role they played in the Pandya Kingdom. But the community with the help of Pandiya Kingdom controlled the coastal trade involving the Ocean. Tuticorin, being a pearl harvesting centre known for its finest pearls around the World, attracted the foreign traders, mainly the Europeans and the Arabs who frequently visited and later on invaded to take control of this Ocean rich area. 

It started with the Arabian traders who started frequenting Tuticorin coastal belt and with the help of Calicut's Zamorin, they started taking control of the area and its population which largely consisted of the paravars. Disturbed by the sudden invasions and enslavement under the sea traders, Paravars sought the help of the Portuguese who ruled the roost on the eastern coast of India, starting from Goa till the Malabar coast. Upon meeting the Portuguese representatives, paravars were assured of protection from the attacks of the Muslim traders. The prospect of a new area of control also interested the Portuguese in offering protection to the paravars. But the conditions did apply. Portuguese clergy wanted the paravars to embrace Catholicism and it was instantly accepted by its group head Vikrama Aditya Pandya who got baptised as Joao de Cruz, following which his clan got baptized in large numbers under the advice of Portuguese.

The visit by Francis Xavier, the head of Portuguese clergy in India and the person behind Goan inquisition, ensured the entire community of Paravars embraced Catholicism in and around the coastal Tamilnadu, Srilanka and some parts of Kerala. Some of the paravars also embraced Islam and can be identified by the surnames of Marakkayars, who were also seafarers. But the vast majority embraced catholicism under the pressure of Portuguese in exchange of protection to their lives and livelihoods. 

It's another matter that these paravars converted for the sake of protection and were not aware about the nuances of the new faith and probably they continued with their age old practices and rituals even after their conversions. Over the Centuries, subsequent invasions and occupations of the other Europeans ensured they remained catholics though their identity was more Portuguese and less British & French and the Dutch. Time for these ancient seafarers for a warm ghar wapsi!....