Forts of Bombay: Castella de Aguada - Part I
(This is, hopefully, the start of a series of posts exploring the history of some of the colonial era forts which pepper Bombay. Perhaps owing to the lack of obvious grandeur when compared to the fortifications built by the Delhi Sultanate, Mughals, Rajputs, etc. across North India, the functional colonial forts of Bombay have been sadly neglected and are rarely afforded any status as historic sites. Yet, they played an integral part in the history of colonial Bombay and are well worth a visit.
Since I do not expect anyone other than my friends and family to read these posts, that too upon coercion, I do not need to clarify that I am not a historian by training. Factual inaccuracies, if any, may be attributed to poor research skills and faith on the internet.)
A mention of the name Castella de Aguada is probably evocative of the famous (and incidentally, older) Fort Aguada in Goa, overlooking Sinquerim beach. That is not surprising since, unlike its namesake, Fort Aguada (built in 1612) is a fairly popular tourist attraction and a much larger, well - preserved structure. Castella de Aguada is however, mostly in ruins and known popularly as Bandra Fort. Interestingly, both these forts owe their names to the presence of a freshwater spring close to the sea shore; 'aguada' in Portuguese meaning 'watering place', referring to the availability of potable water.
While Bandra Fort is not in short supply of visitors, owing to the gorgeous views its ramparts provide of the seascape and the Bandra - Worli Sea Link, there is little there, if any, in the way of information explaining the history of the place.
Built in 1640, at a time when the Portuguese were seeking to consolidate their control in the region, the Bandra Fort assumed greater strategic importance following the famous grant by dowry of the seven islands of Bombay by the Portuguese to Charles II, when he married Catherine of Braganza in 1661. However, before delving into the history of the Fort in the mid - 17th century, let us turn our attention to how the Portuguese came to occupy these islands, almost a century earlier.
The discovery of India by Vasco da Gama (and by extension, the western world) in 1498 is part of folklore. (I say 'discovery', for truly, did the existence of a civilization really matter until it was discovered and subsequently 'enlightened', by the Europeans? One could have asked the Aztecs but the enlightenment proffered by the Spanish was quite hard on them.) Within a remarkably short time of Vasco da Gama's landing in Calicut (Kozhikode, in modern day Kerala), the Portuguese steadily crept up the coast to conquer Goa in 1510. Soon they had reached the island fragments and wetlands, that today comprise Bombay.
Since the late 14th century, the islands of Bombay had been the domain of the Gujarat Sultanate, a breakaway of the Tughlaqs. While the arrival of the Portuguese in these parts led to a number of skirmishes with the Gujarat military, the Portuguese threat was overshadowed by the massive Mughal army, led by Humayun, that had marched on Gujarat in 1532. Over the next few years, almost all of Gujarat had been captured by Humayun, when he was abruptly forced to re-direct his attentions to quell an uprising in the eastern fringes of the Mughal empire. A revolt was being led there by Sher Shah Suri, the slayer of tigers, the layer of arterial highways that endure till today (I refer, of course, to Grand Trunk Road) and the man who would go on to defeat the mighty Mughal army of Humayun and become Emperor.
But let us not get ahead of ourselves. In the early 1530s, the Mughal army was still a force to reckon with and had left Bahadur Shah (the Gujarat Sultan) reeling in its wake. Forced into a corner and possibly to avoid military conflict on two fronts, Bahadur Shah had signed the Treaty of Bassein (Vasai) in 1534 handing control of Bombay (and its surrounding areas) to the Portuguese in a bid for peace and Portuguese support to repel the Mughal onslaught. However, once Humayun turned east, Bahadur Shah regained his lost kingdom in 1536 and started re-considering the liberties he had granted to the Portuguese. What follows is a fascinating testament to the manner in which history is recorded and reliance that can be placed on it.
By all accounts, Bahadur Shah died in 1537. However, there are said to exist eight different versions of this event, describing how he died while meeting the Portuguese viceroy 1. While the Portuguese and the indigenous narratives unsurprisingly tend to apportion blame and glory as per convenience, a consistent thread is the existence of mutual distrust and stratagems that were played out by each, to upend the other. In any event, whether by treachery or through his own undoing, Bahadur Shah found a watery grave and so in earnest, began the Portuguese occupation of Bombay.
1 History of Gujarat, James M. Campbell, Appendix 1 (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54652/54652-h/54652-h.htm)↩