PilgrimstaysOriginally built around 1184 AD, the Vasai Fort, Mumbai on Vasai creek is best known for the time it served as the capital of the Portuguese Northern Province. The fort came into Portuguese hands as one of the possessions handed over in terms of the Treaty of Vasai in 1534 with Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat. What was an inconsequential holding for the Sultan, located as it was at the southern-most tip of his kingdom, proved invaluable to its new Portuguese owners. Using the Fortaleza de São Sebastião de Baçaím or the Fort of St Sebastian of Bassein as it was re-christened, the Portuguese were able to exert a vice like grip on the seaborne trade passing from India to Arabia and the Red Sea. Bassein flourished under Portuguese rule and abounded with numerous churches and convents . The gentry built large manorial residences, revenues from which kept the capital city of Bassein well oiled and ticking. In keeping with their maritime and military priorities, all buildings be they government, private or religious, which bordered the sea were fortified with thick walls and in many cases equipped with cannons. What is known as Vasai Fort, Mumbai today was a small city in itself, housing around 3000 in its 110 acres. Seven of Bassein’s thirteen churches were located within the fort’s premises. The four major missionary orders- the Augustinians, the Dominicans, the Franciscans and the Jesuits set up their monasteries, colleges and churches at Bassein and in its surrounding areas. The fort today is a pale shadow of its former self, but in the silence of its crumbling churches and almost indecipherable tombstones, remain hidden many signs of the great city it once was. For most of the two centuries under Portuguese rule, the wealth generated from the Northern Province was an irresistible magnet that attracted the fidalgos (noblemen) of the Portuguese aristocracy. Such was its opulence that Bassein was viewed in its heyday as the jewel in the crown of the Portuguese Empire in India, or Estado da India . Some of that shine continues to this day as the fort is one of the major attractions on the tourist map of Mumbai .
Originally built around 1184 AD, the Vasai Fort, Mumbai on Vasai creek is best known for the time it served as the capital of the Portuguese Northern Province
The gentry built large manorial residences, revenues from which kept the capital city of Bassein well oiled and ticking
What is known as Vasai Fort, Mumbai today was a small city in itself, housing around 3000 in its 110 acres
The fort today is a pale shadow of its former self, but in the silence of its crumbling churches and almost indecipherable tombstones, remain hidden many signs of the great city it once was
The Cathedral of Our Lady of Grace at Vasai — the largest building in the fort complex, now completely ruinous but with walls standing 20 metres high, nave and transept still legible, the apse at the east end still identifiable — is one of the most dramatic ruined churches in Asia. To stand inside the ruined nave with the sky where the vault should be, the altar end still standing, and the grass growing on what was the floor, is to encounter 400 years of absence.
The ruins of the Augustinian, Franciscan, and Dominican monasteries within the fort — each with its own ruined church, its collapsed cloisters, its scattered stone — are a physical inventory of the mendicant orders that the Portuguese brought to Vasai. Walking from one ruin to the next is walking through the institutional history of Portuguese Catholic India.
The outer walls of the Vasai Fort — the massive Portuguese military engineering of the 16th century, the bastions and cannons, the sea gate and the land gate — survive in better condition than the buildings inside. The walk along the walls provides views of the Vasai Creek on one side and the ruins of the colonial city on the other.
The East Indian Catholics of Vasai — a community that takes its name from the East India Company designation for the Catholic converts of the north Konkan coast — are the living continuation of the Portuguese Catholic civilization whose ruins surround them. Their food, their music (the Marathi-Portuguese hybrid called Konkani-East Indian), and their distinctive Catholic practices are the living inheritance of what the fort ruins embody in stone.
Walking through the Vasai Fort ruins is an exercise in the theology of ruins: the recognition that every human construction is temporary, that empires end, that what seemed permanent is gone. The grass on the cathedral floor, the trees growing through the convent walls, the silence where the bells rang and the choirs sang — this is one of the most powerful meditations on the transience of human enterprise and the permanence of faith that any pilgrimage can offer.
The roof is gone. The vault that once echoed with the Kyrie is open to the Maharashtra sky. The nave is grass. The altar is gone — plundered or crumbled. The walls stand because stone is harder than any administration. This is what remains of the Portuguese Catholic civilization in Vasai: walls without roofs, rooms without ceilings, churches without congregations. Except that the congregation is still there — the East Indian Catholics who walk among the ruins of the churches their ancestors were baptised in, who carry the faith that those walls once housed, in bodies that are sturdier than stone. The building ruined; the Church endured.
“In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment.”
Read in full on Bible Gateway →Originally built around 1184 AD, the Vasai Fort, Mumbai, on Vasai creek, is best known for the time it served as the capital of the Portuguese Northern Province. The fort came into Portuguese hands as one of the possessions handed over in terms of the Treaty of Vasai in 1534 with Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat. What was an inconsequential holding for the Sultan, located as it was at the southern-most tip of his kingdom, proved invaluable to its new Portuguese owners.
Using the Fortaleza de São Sebastião de Baçaím, or the Fort of St Sebastian of Bassein as it was re-christened, the Portuguese were able to exert a vice-like grip on the seaborne trade passing from India to Arabia and the Red Sea. Bassein flourished under Portuguese rule and abounded with numerous churches and convents. The gentry built large manorial residences, revenues from which kept the capital city of Bassein well oiled and ticking. In keeping with their maritime and military priorities, all buildings — be they government, private or religious — which bordered the sea were fortified with thick walls and in many cases equipped with cannons.
What is known as Vasai Fort today was a small city in itself, housing around 3,000 people in its 110 acres. Seven of Bassein’s thirteen churches were located within the fort’s premises. The four major missionary orders — the Augustinians, the Dominicans, the Franciscans and the Jesuits — set up their monasteries, colleges and churches at Bassein and in its surrounding areas. The fort today is a pale shadow of its former self, but in the silence of its crumbling churches and almost indecipherable tombstones remain hidden many signs of the great city it once was.
For most of the two centuries under Portuguese rule, the wealth generated from the Northern Province was an irresistible magnet that attracted the fidalgos (noblemen) of the Portuguese aristocracy. Such was its opulence that Bassein was viewed in its heyday as the jewel in the crown of the Portuguese Empire in India, or Estado da Índia. Some of that shine continues to this day, as the fort is one of the major attractions on the tourist map of Mumbai.
