Drawing the “colour line”: Race, ethnicity and religion in Diu

Abstract

This article explores how the ideas of race, ethnicity and religion shifted with modernity in Diu. While it concentrates on findings about Diu, the arguments it develops are more wide-ranging and have a series of architectural, urbanistic, and anthropological implications. It addresses the construction of identity by exploring the multiplicities and slippages of colonial imagery, social histories, and spatial production in the management of populations and colonial cities. We argue that the Portuguese shared ideologies rooted in race, ethnicity and religion that provide a consistent, detectable structure for a specific interpretation of spatial-morphological arrangements in Diu (the city’s buildings, architecture, urban layout, and spatial structure) in the context of the European colonial city in South Asia. We analyze the discourse with which the Portuguese created knowledge through cartography, tracing how ideologies linked to race, ethnicity and religion were historically internalized, and how they worked in conjunction with social structures and practices to produce the colonial city of Diu.