– Joaquim Magalhães de Castro
From Guwathi to Cooch Behar is a whole rural world that reveals itself, seen from the windshields and side windows of the rented van. There are small villages and fields of cultivation with straw ricks, similar to those of the Portuguese villages. Whenever we cross bridges, we realize that the river below serves as a bathing place for the villagers and playground for the kids.
At one of stops (to stretch our legs) I have a conversation with three individuals, one of them with a distinct European physiognomy, and I ask them if there are any “firingis.” They react to one face, mixed with admiration and repulsion, which makes me stupefied. It is only later that I come to know that this term – very common since the sixteenth century throughout Southeast Asia, with the variants “farang,” “ferringhi” or “bayingyi,” according to the countries, and that means “franc”, that is to say, “Portuguese” currently has a pejorative meaning, hence no one accepts being identified as such. For now there is nothing that connects these people to the Portuguese. And yet … among the various “enclaves of Portugal” in northeastern India are Rangamati and Goalpara, on the banks of the Brahmaputra and the former Bengal border of the Mughal empire. I locate the last one on the map, but not the first one. Or rather, I find it not once but half a dozen times. All in different places and in no case near the imposing river. I conclude that Rangamati is a fairly common name in Bengal. Both Gaolpara and Rangamati (of interest to us) originate in colonies founded by Portuguese mercenaries, and their descendants are known as “Sons of Indos” and among Indians as “firingees”. In later generations the term Firingi applies also to people of local extraction converted to Christianity. As the Scottish Orientalist Henry Yule recalls, the term firingi or firinghee “when used by the natives of India applies to all Portuguese born in India, or, if used to designate Europeans in general, translates some form of hostility or depreciation.”
As we have already pointed out, the first Portuguese to claim the west, south and east coast of India had as their main objective the commercial activity and very soon they became involved in local societies. There were others, also in great numbers, who went into the interior of the subcontinent, especially in the northern regions, offering their services as men of arms, with artillery as a specialization. Interestingly, the earliest records of travelers who visited the border of the Mughal Empire with the province of Assam do not realize the presence of “firingis” among the imperial hosts. Both Ralph Fitch, an Englishman who in 1586 resided for a time at Cooch Behar, such as Estêvão Cacela and João Cabral, who crossed Assam in 1626, do not mention the existence of Christians or Portuguese communities beyond the frontier established by the Mughals. The fact that it is not mentioned does not mean that it does not exist. This is premised on the 1635 news of the arrest of a “firingi” soldier who, while attempting to hunt birds of prey, had inadvertently entered Ahom territory (Assam natives and Mughal enemies). And nothing more was known about his whereabouts.
In fact, as noted by the English historian Edward Maclagan, in his reference work The Jesuits and the Great Mughal, the Portuguese had been serving in the Mughal army since the time of Emperor Akbar. Upon arrival in the capital Fatehpur Sikri in 1580, the Company’s priests met Portuguese who had lived there with their families for decades. Later, in 1624, more than two hundred of them were counted in the army with which Shah Jahan rebelled against the more tolerant father, Emperor Jahangir, under his name Mirza Nur-ud-din Beig Mohammad Khan Salim, the the eldest son and heir to Akbar’s grandiloquent posture.
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