Mangalorean Konkani

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The Mangalorean Konkani are a people of Konkani ethnic origin living in Tuluva, the native homeland of the Tulu speaking ethnic community, and centered around the city of Mangalore and its environments, called the Districts of North Canara, Udipi and South Canara.

The first Konkani immigrants were Hindus expelled from Goa by the Portuguese. Seeing their agricultural skills, the Raja of Bednore (modern Nagar) sent them back to procure further colonists to open his forest lands for cultivation and thus to augment his tax base. With the official encouragement of the Portuguese, with whom Bednore signed a treaty guaranteeing the immigrants religious freedom and access and authority to the Church of Goa, many migrated and settled down forming the nucleus of the Christian community.

Further effluxes occurred as a result of the depredations and terrorism inflicted upon the Goans by Shivaji and then Shambaji in retaliation for their adherence and loyalty to Portugal. Many Goans migrated in haste in boats (called tarvots) and resettled in Tuluva.

The refugees were able to take only the Christa Purana, a work written by the English Jesuit missionary in Goa, Fr. Tome Estevao, S.J. (Thomas Steven) written in the then Konkani dialect spoken in Goa and this document sustained their faith until the Archbishop of Goa was able to set-up regular parishes in the area.

During the time of the Sultanate of Khodadad, founded by Tipu, who had usurped the throne from the Wodeyars of Mysore, the Christians sought and failed to receive protection from Portugal, and then turned to the English. A mission to secure the Hindu kingdoms of the area by General Gordon failed, and the area was annexed by Tipu, who in revenge, decided to exterminate the Christians, enslaved them, and forced them to adopt Islam. With reverses from combined enemies, many Christians escaped captivity in Srirangapattana and teamed up with the armies of the Wodeyar, of Kodagu, the East India Company and other powers until the destruction of Khodadad and the restoration of the Wodeyars of Mysore.

It is estimated that only about fourteen thousand Christians out of the original eighty thousand enslaved survived the genocide inflicted by Tipu.

Tipu was aided and assisted by the French Revolutionary regime and Napoleon, which regimes also shared an anti-Christian bias and so looked on indifferently on the forced conversion of English captives and the Mangalorean Christians by Tipu.