Christians in Mumbai get a glimpse of their origin, history

Forty-five-year-old Eglert Pereira had no idea how and when his surname came about. But now, he wants to delve into history, after hearing Fr Larry Pereira speak. Fr Pereira, church history enthusiast, was speaking at a seminar on the ‘History of Christians,  Church, Methods of Restoration and Artifacts’ at Mt Carmel Church hall in Bandra recently.

“Pereira, D’Souza, Fernandes and Church are surnames given by the Portuguese who did not understand Indian surnames,” Pereira said, adding that he traced history up to the 1600s, but failed to get to his original surname. “Only people who have very old land records may actually know what they changed from.” 

The seminar was organised by Archiocesan Heritage Committee (AHC) that aims to educate Christians about their history and heritage. It was the first lecture in a series of lectures that are to be held along with power-point presentations and heritage tours.
“Many feel that Christianity came to India during the colonial period, but that is not the case,” said Pereira who went on to talk about relations of Christians with other religions,  rulers, forts, decline of Portuguese support, loyalty issues of Bishops with nations and conversions. “Cosmos Indio had written of a Bishop already being in Kalyan. But if we have to look at the well documented records, they date back to 1321 by one Jordan Cataloni from France.” 

The seminar also informed people of church architecture and how it changed over the years. Heritage conservationist and architect Vikas Dilawari gave a presentation on the challenges of classic v/s modern restoration work and industrial, religious and archaeological heritage and the problems and difficulties in conserving them.

“It was a very good idea to have such a seminar. Conservation is difficult. With awareness, action automatically happens. I hope this leads to some action,” said Seedon D’Souza, an audience.