L14: Communidades

Good morning, everyone! Take your seats, please. How many of you found a communidade land dispute article? Show of hands — good, most of you, excellent. We will hear some of those in the discussion segment today. They will be very relevant to what we cover this morning. So, a quick recap. Last week in Lecture 13, we explored the Gaunkari — the ancient, pre-Portuguese village assembly institution. We traced its origins, its structure of hereditary collective membership, its land management practices, its relationship with the caste system, and how the Portuguese co-opted rather than destroyed it. Today in Lecture 14, we turn specifically to the communidade — the institution as formalised under Portuguese law — and look at it in more structural and legal detail. Think of the Gaunkari as the seed and the communidade as the tree that grew from it under Portuguese cultivation. [0–10 minutes: Introduction] I want to start with a simple observation that will ground everything we discuss today. Goa is the only place in India where a formal institution of collective village land ownership — a communal corporation, essentially — has persisted continuously from ancient times through colonial rule and into the present Indian state. In the rest of India, colonial revenue settlement and later land reforms broke up or replaced indigenous collective land management systems. The Zamindari system introduced by the British, the ryotwari system, the various land revenue surveys — all of these tended to convert collective or customary land rights into individual private property. In Goa, the communidade system was so deeply embedded, and the Portuguese were so pragmatic about working with it, that it survived all of this. This is not just an academic curiosity. It means that today in Goa — in 2026, in the twenty-first century — there are still hundreds of villages where the communidade holds title to agricultural land, where the descendants of old gaunkar families have rights in that land, and where decisions about that land must go through the communidade's legal structure. If you are interested in real estate, law, tourism development, or governance in Goa, you will encounter the communidade. It is very much a living institution. [10–40 minutes: Core Content] Let me walk you through the communidade systematically. I want to cover its legal structure under the Portuguese Codigo das Comunidades, its economic functions, its social functions, the specific rights and obligations of members, and finally its status and challenges in post-1961 Goa. First, the legal structure. The word communidade is simply the Portuguese word for 'community' — but in the Goan context it has a specific legal meaning. The Codigo das Comunidades, or Code of Communidades, was a comprehensive legal framework developed over time under Portuguese rule and substantially consolidated in the nineteenth century. Under this code, each communidade was a legal entity — a corporate body — with the power to own land, to make contracts, to sue and be sued. This is remarkable. These were not informal customary arrangements. They were formal legal corporations, with constitutions, officers, registers, and defined procedures. The governing body of the communidade was the Junta — the assembly. In some communidades, the Junta was a general assembly of all gaunkars. In larger or wealthier communidades, there was a smaller executive committee — the Directoria — that handled day-to-day administration. The Directoria was elected by the gaunkars and was responsible for managing the communidade's accounts, overseeing the land, and representing the communidade in legal matters. The membership — the gaunkars — held shares in the communidade called zons or bhag. These shares were hereditary and passed through the male line. Now, this is an important technical point: the gaunkar's share did not entitle him to a specific piece of land. It entitled him to a share in the periodic distribution of the communidade's land and its revenues. This is the key difference between communidade land rights and ordinary private property. You owned a share of the institution, not a parcel of land. The land of the communidade was classified into different types. Khazan land was the most important category — these are the low-lying coastal and riverine fields, often reclaimed from tidal zones through a sophisticated system of bunds and sluice gates called manos. The khazan lands of Goa are one of the great engineering achievements of traditional Goan civilisation. By building earthen embankments and installing wooden sluice gates that opened to drain water out at low tide and closed to prevent salt water from flooding in at high tide, the gaunkars converted what would have been useless tidal flats into productive rice fields. Some of the khazan systems in Goa are centuries old. They require continuous maintenance and collective management — which is exactly what the communidade provided. Let me dwell on this for a moment because I think it beautifully illustrates why the communidade system was so rational and so durable. Khazan agriculture is not something you can do individually. It requires collective action — everyone who benefits from the khazan land must contribute to maintaining the bunds and sluice gates. A single neglected bund can flood the entire khazan and destroy everyone's crops. The communidade, with its collective ownership and collective responsibility, was the perfect institutional form for managing this kind of resource. The institution matched the ecology. Beyond khazan land, the communidade also held orchard land, toddy palm land, forest areas, and sometimes fishing rights in rivers. The toddy palm — the coconut palm tapped for sap to make toddy, the local palm wine — was a major economic asset. The communidade would auction toddy tapping rights to toddy tappers, called rendeiros, and this rental income formed part of the communidade's revenue. This brings me to the economic function. The communidade was essentially a collective landlord. It rented its land to farmers — often from lower caste or landless families — and collected rent. This rent formed the communidade's income, which was then distributed among the gaunkars as dividends — called penduras — and used to fund community activities, primarily the maintenance of the village religious institution, whether temple or church. The pendura distribution was one of the most tangible and direct ways in which the communidade affected everyday life. At harvest time, the gaunkars would assemble, the accounts would be presented, and the income — after expenses — would be divided among the registered gaunkars in proportion to their shares. This was cash income distributed to hereditary shareholders from collectively managed community land. A gaunkar family, even if they were not themselves farmers, received income from the communidade simply by virtue of their hereditary membership. You can see how this made Gaunkari membership very valuable and also why it was so jealously guarded. Now, the social function. The communidade was not just an economic body. It was the social institution of the village. It organised the village festival — the feast of the patron saint in Catholic villages, the village deity festival in Hindu villages. It mediated disputes between families. It maintained the public spaces of the village — the wells, the paths, the common areas. It was, in effect, the local government of the village for most of the Portuguese period. Under the Codigo das Comunidades, there were detailed rules about who could be a gaunkar, how membership was established and proved, how the Directoria was elected, how accounts were maintained, how disputes were resolved. The Portuguese bureaucratisation of the communidade gave it legal permanence but also introduced a rigidity that the older, more customary Gaunkari may not have had. Now, what happened after 1961? When Goa was liberated and integrated into India, the Indian government faced an interesting question: what to do with the communidades? These were legal entities under Portuguese law. They held land. They had members. They had ongoing economic activities. The decision was made — wisely, I think — not to abolish the communidades but to continue them under Indian law. The Goa, Daman and Diu Administration of Communidades Order of 1961, followed later by the Communidade Act, provided the legal framework for the communidades to continue operating. The Joint Director of Communidades in the Goa government is the administrative authority overseeing them. Today there are several hundred communidades still active in Goa. But they face very serious challenges. Urban expansion, tourism development, and real estate pressure have made communidade land enormously valuable. There are disputes about land classification — developers seek to have khazan land reclassified so it can be built upon. There are disputes about gaunkar membership — who qualifies? There are concerns about the ecological khazan system being destroyed as bunds fall into disrepair. Environmental activists point out that the khazan lands are not just agricultural land — they are vital wetland ecosystems providing flood control, fish habitat, and bird habitat. The communidade is at the crossroads today, caught between its role as a traditional institution of collective community governance on one hand and the pressure to liquidate its assets for development on the other. This tension is one of the defining struggles of contemporary Goa. [40–55 minutes: Activity and Discussion] Alright, let us hear those news articles. Who found an interesting story? Vijay, what did you find? [Allow student to share] Good — a dispute about khazan land being filled for construction. That is very typical. And what communidade is involved? From which taluka? [Allow response] Interesting. And the gaunkar families — are they supporting the development or opposing it? [Allow response] And there we have the central tension. Some gaunkars see a chance to get large cash settlements from developers. Others want to preserve the land. Now, here is a discussion question for the whole class. So let me ask you this — the communidade was designed to hold land collectively so it could not be broken up and sold by individual families. It was a form of protection against fragmentation and against the rich buying up all the land. In the twenty-first century, does that collective protection serve the community, or does it actually trap the community in an institution that no longer matches their economic needs and aspirations? There is no simple answer here. I want to hear different perspectives. Anita, what is your view? [Allow student response] Good point about ecological protection. If the khazan is sold and built over, it is gone forever. The communidade's collective structure at least creates a legal obstacle to rapid development. Sameer, you looked like you wanted to push back? [Allow student response] Also valid — if people who are legal gaunkars and need money cannot access the value of their inherited land because the institution won't allow it, there is a justice question there too. This is exactly the debate happening in Goa right now. [55–60 minutes: Summary and Assignment] Let me bring us together. Today we covered the communidade as a formal legal institution. Key points: the communidade is a corporate legal body holding collective title to village land; gaunkars hold hereditary shares called zons; khazan land is the most important category and represents a sophisticated traditional engineering achievement; the communidade managed economic, social, and religious life of the village; it was codified under the Codigo das Comunidades; it survived liberation and continues under Indian law; it now faces severe challenges from development pressure and ecological degradation. Your assignment: write a one-page position paper. The question is: Should the Goa government dissolve the communidades and distribute their land to current members as private property, or should the communidades be preserved as collective institutions? Argue one side. Give at least three reasons. Bring it to next class. We will debate. Next lecture — Lecture 15 — we take a step sideways from formal institutions into something more intimate and more personal: the intangible heritage of Goa as preserved in its phrases and idioms. The everyday language of Konkani and the Konkani-Portuguese mix is a treasure chest of history, and we are going to open it. See you then!