To Plaster or Not

The Basilica of Bom Jesus needs to be re-plastered, without which it won’t survive for too long.

The Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa is important not only because it houses the relics of St Francis Xavier, but also because it is a critical part of Goa’s architectural history. Apart from being a religious building, constructed between 1587-97, the Basilica represents the flowering of Renaissance style architecture in Goa.  

A generation of Goans has grown accustomed to seeing the Basilica’s exposed laterite walls, but this is not the way the building was designed, nor indeed the way it looked until about 60 years ago.  In his research paper, “On the Trail of Baltazar Castro, a Portuguese Restorer in India” (Proceedings of the EAHN 2015: Entangled Histories, Multiple Geographies, Belgrade), architect-scholar Joaquim R. Santos reveals that it was discredited restorer Castro who, in the 1950s, brought about the dramatic transformation of the external appearance of the Basilica, by having the plaster removed and leaving the underlying laterite stone exposed. Santos claims that such de-plastering was a part of President Antonio Salazar’s nationalistic ideology, where monuments were falsely ‘restored’ to look ancient, or rather medievalised, to proclaim the antiquity of the Portuguese empire. Santos also adds that many such ideologically motivated restorations were initially undertaken in Salazar-ruled Portugal during the 1940s. Apart from the de-plastering of the Basilica, Castro also affected the removal of its pyramidal sloping roof which was over the bell tower. Today, these changes still haunt the Basilica.  Replying to the recent discussion in the media on plastering the church, the rector of the Basilica, Fr. Savio Baretto admits that “[t]he bell tower is a real problem during the monsoon. Maximum leakage takes place there” (The Goan Everyday, 10 Feb. 2016).

Source: Souza and Paul Album (Central Libray)

But despite the deterioration, Fr. Baretto and many others seem to be against the idea of re-plastering the Church. The Rector echoes a romantic appeal that “[m]ost of the Goans have been born to the sight of a red bricked [laterite] Church. Having it plastered will hurt the sentiments of the people of Goa more than anything. I agree with the fact [that] the church is deteriorating, but there must be more modern ways of preserving and improving the structure”.  The fact is that there is no better way to preserve the church other than plastering it. History also suggests that such sentiments are misplaced, because the Basilica was always meant to be plastered since the time it was built in the late sixteenth century. If the public affection in Goa for the Basilica did not dim, despite the removal of its plaster, why would it happen now when the result would be the protection of the Basilica.

In his book Whitewash, Redstone: A History of Church Architecture in Goa (2011), architectural historian Paulo Varela Gomes claims that the Bom Jesus is a “unique façade in the history of Christian architecture” (p.68). A closer observation of the façade will reveal that it consists of two kinds of stonework - the hard and intricately decorated Bassein basalt, brought all the way from the Bombay region, and the porous local laterite stone. Of these, it is the hard stone which is meant to be exposed and un-plastered. The story of the exposed stone in the Basilica’s design is more interesting than it appears. The design of the church, the construction of which began in 1587, was a modest affair, writes Gomes, and that around 1596 the complex (Casa Professa) was practically finished, with only its façade yet to be built. Gomes argues that there was a decisive shift from modesty to monumentality when the Jesuits decided at the last moment to have the Basilica’s façade built of pedra do norte (northern stone), that is Bassein basalt. This stonework is indeed exquisite and truly marks the uniqueness of the Basilica.  Discussing the lasting contribution of the Bom Jesus façade, Gomes declares that “it could have been the building that allowed Indian artisans to domesticate European architectural and ornamental vocabulary, to make it their own” (p.70). It is clear that it was the Bassein stone with its ornamentation which was to be seen in relief against the plastered and the whitewashed walls of the rest of the Basilica. 

Source: Souza and Paul Album (Central Libray)

The Basilica was already renowned for its aesthetics of exposed hard stone and whitewashed walls before Castro’s intervention. He seems to have followed the politically motivated aesthetics used in Portugal to justify de-plastering.  But, monuments which were de-plastered in Portugal were made of hard granite, which can withstand the vagaries of nature; the same is not true of Goan laterite.  A porous stone, laterite absorbs water by capillary action which leads to the soaking of the entire wall. The damage is therefore not restricted to the exterior surfaces alone.  

The fact that the exposed laterite walls of the Basilica have miraculously withstood the onslaught of the Goan monsoons since the 1950s should not make us complacent.  The same fate, Santos claims, was not accorded to the Arch of the Viceroys in old Goa. It was also de-plastered by Castro, and soon afterwards crumbled during a heavy monsoon storm. The arch which is visible today is the reconstructed version. The clerical authorities in the Archdiocese have to decide, therefore, if the current aesthetics of the Basilica are more important than the monument itself.

[This article was first publish on The Goan Everyday on 29/02/2016]

The Ruins that are Not

A large crowd had gathered for the Western classical music concert at the remains of St. Augustine’s in Old Goa on 7^th January, 2016. Was the gathering purely one whose purpose it was to witness a musical performance, or was the fact that it occurred at a historical location itself symbolic of something more? Or is it that the congregation in great numbers was a performance in itself, a gathering to assert Goan identity, which the place and the music is emblematic of.

The music concert was held in the Church of Our Lady of Grace which is a part of the Augustinian monastery built in late sixteenth century. The Church was vaulted single-nave, with inter-connecting lateral chapels and had two tower façade. Architectural historian Paulo Varela Gomes writes that the Augustinian church’s more enduring contribution, indeed ground breaking for the architecture of Goa, resided in its main façade: it was the first church in Goa with a two tower façade, a type normally reserved for Cathedral churches that only the Holy See had adopted. It seems, subsequently, practically all parish and convent churches would have two towers. The highly visible landmark, a 46 meter high tower, built in locally sourced laterite stone, once served as a belfry and formed part of the façade of a magnificent Church.

The entire site is in ruins today, and the remaining tower of the Church façade hints at the glorious edifice that once was. In the book Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination (2015), its editor Ann Laura Stoler proposes two ways of understanding the concept of ruins. She writes that “[r]uin is both the claim about the state of a thing and a process affecting it. It serves as both noun and verb. To turn to its verbal, active sense is to begin from a location that the noun too easily freezes into stasis, into inert object, passive form” (p.11). There is no doubt that St Augustine’s Church has achieved far greater fame because it is a ruin (as a noun). In many ways, the surviving tower is also symbolic of what remains of the once dominant Catholic culture. Stoler suggests that ruination is more than a process that ends up with building debris as a by-product. As per her, ruination is also a political project that lays waste to certain peoples, relations, and things that accumulate in specific places. The aftermath of such ruination invites visits by archeologists, art and architectural historians and, at best, tourists, notes Ronald Schulz, in his review of the aforementioned book published on H-Empire (February, 2015). In effect, then, ruins are rendered monumental, fossilized in time. There is something similar happening to colonial architecture in Goa as much as to the Goan Catholic culture it represents - both have become objectified in the way in which people from the rest of India look upon them through a touristic gaze, as if the place and its people were in a museum. 

It is here that I find Stoler’s concept useful, that “[t]o ruin [as a verb]…is to inflict or bring great and irretrievable disaster upon, to destroy agency, to reduce to a state of poverty, to demoralize completely" (p.9). The events that are unfolding in contemporary Goa seem to suggest that the Goan Catholic community is subjected to ruin through the undermining of its agency. This is because the dominant Brahmanical culture problematically characterizes Goan Catholic communities as native-managers and the sole beneficiaries of the erstwhile Portuguese colonial order, which in turn marks them as anti-national.  The Catholic community that produced a unique identity for Goa is thereby made to suffer the sins of an imagined ‘imperial’ past where Portuguese colonialism is rendered as being no different from British imperialism. Accordingly, Goa’s history is reduced to a small blot, to an undifferentiated and righteous Hindu-Indian past that rescued itself from the clutches of evil imperial oppression.  

What is conveniently obscured is that the history of the Portuguese empire in Goa led to the emergence of a unique local culture which was epitomised by the development of church architecture. In his book Whitewash, Red Stone: A History of Church Architecture in Goa (2011), Paulo Varela Gomes asserts that churches after the sixteenth century had “far less Portuguese influence than one would be led to believe” (p.4). Architectural practice during the colonial period in Goa assimilated global ideas and elements to create a unique local architecture, Gomes asserts. More importantly, in participating in the Renaissance and the Baroque styles of architecture, Goans were also contributing to global architecture. This is to say, they were producing modern aesthetics in their buildings, and therefore fashioning themselves as enlightened world citizens. It is this cultural heritage that contemporary Goan Catholics continue to hold on to.

The large gathering of Goans at the Western classical performance at what remains of the Augustinian complex is an assertion that they have not given up on the markers of their culture, the monuments, as much as the music. For these reasons, St. Augustine’s cannot be classified as a ruin just yet; the site is still an active monument, even if only a part remains. 

[This article first appeared on The Goan Everyday on 31 January 2016]

Local Identity, Global Architecture

Review: Whitewash, Red Stone: A History of church architecture in Goa by Paulo Varela Gomes

A thorny question faces a number of parishes in Goa where the congregation has outgrown the existing churches. Some are more than willing to tear down, or drastically modify, their old churches to build bigger ones. Others are horrified at such proposals and argue that these churches, like the one in Nuvem, are part of the unique architectural heritage of Goa.

But what makes the architecture of churches in Goa exceptional? When and how did the characteristically Goan church appear, if there is, indeed, a distinctly Goan style of church architecture? This is the subject of Whitewash, Red Stone: A History of Church Architecture in Goa (Yoda Press, 2011), a book by Paulo Varela Gomes, former professor of architectural history at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. The book traces the history of church architecture in Goa from its beginnings in the sixteenth century to the twentieth century.

Gomes documents three major stages on the development of church architecture in Goa. The first was the influence of European late medieval period, of which the church Our Lady of Rosary (still standing) in Old Goa, is an example. The Second phase was the influence of European Renaissance on church architecture of Goa, of which the two great examples are the Sé Cathedral (begun 1564-consecrated 1652) and the Jesuit church Bom Jesus (begun 1594, consecrated in 1605). The third major stage of the evolution of church architecture that Gomes identifies is from the late seventeenth century onwards when the specific form of the Goan church building emerged.

Our Lady of Rosary

Bom Jesus,,  Old Goa, sacristy

                                   

St Cajetans, Old Goa, Dome, interior view

St Cajetans, Old Goa, view from the rear

Although scholars like Jose Pereira (1995) and Antonio Nunes Pereira (2010) have focussed on the influence of Baroque and Renaissance styles on Goan churches respectively, it is Gomes’ attention on the emergence of specifically Goan church that is most critical to understanding the history of religious architecture in Goa. He argues that the advent of a Goan church form was the result of the deliberate attempt by the ‘native’ Catholic elites, especially the Brahmin and the Chardo clergy, to assert their identity as separate; as much from the metropolitan Portuguese, as the rest of non-Christian India. This reference to caste is refreshing, as caste politics is not often discussed in architectural history.

Gomes claims that the assertion of difference was born from the desire of the ‘native’ elites to assert themselves against the other elites in the territory – i.e. the metropolitan Portuguese, and the Luso-descedentes. The erection of monuments proved one way through which the ‘native’ elites could affirm their presence and relevance in the territory.

According to Gomes, the architecture of churches after seventeenth century had “far less Portuguese influence than one would be led to believe” (p.4). Regarding the multiple influences on the evolution of Goan Churches he writes, “It is true that, analysing the buildings in parts […….], one can see Portuguese wall composition, Flemish vaulting or ornament, Bijapuri tower design, Konkan stucco pattern and ornamental design, etc. But the churches as overall buildings did not result from the sum of their constitutive parts. The builders and patrons knew how they wanted a Catholic church to look and how they wanted it to be experienced…” (p.6). What was going on is that the ‘native’ builders and patrons were engaged in intelligent articulation of architecture to further their claim over it.

N.S. da Conceicao, Moira

The book allows us to appreciate the evolution of various components of the church architecture, including the uniqueness of its setting, the plan type, its external form, its interior elevation, its material and construction, and their decorative elements.

There is no doubt that Whitewash, Red Stone is a very important work. The book allows us to see that the Goan churches were able to assimilate global ideas and elements to create a unique local architecture, especially because many of these churches were built and financed by ‘native’ Goan elites. More importantly, in participating in a European language of architecture, they were also contributing to a European architecture. This is to say, they were producing European-ness in their buildings, and producing themselves as Europeans. Gomes claims that even in the twentieth century, despite the rise of neo-classical and modern styles, the churches in Goa continued to maintain Goan-Catholic identity forged in the seventeenth and eighteenth century because architecture was a way of maintaining their own identity from the rest of the world.

The lack of visual explanations seems to be a common weakness in most books on architectural history and Whitewash, Red Stone is no different. Although the book is geared towards academic readers, many Goans who use and manage local churches, like Nuvem, must read the book to know how special these churches are and not be in tearing hurry to pull these buildings down. But would merely savings the monument be enough? Probably not! As Gomes rightly asserts that the Goan churches are landscape monuments and they are not comprehensible without the territory in which they were built. So, shoving a monstrous new building next to a historic monument would also be insensitive.

 (This article was first published on The Goan Everyday)