Comunidades of Goa

The Comunidades of Goa were a form of land association developed in Goa, India, where land-ownership was collectively held, but controlled by the male descendants of those who claimed to be the founders of the village, who in turn mostly belonged to upper caste groups. Documented by the Portuguese as of 1526, it was the predominant form of landholding in Goa prior to 1961. In form, it is similar to many other rural agricultural peoples' form of landholding, such as that of pre-Spanish Bolivia and the Puebloan peoples now in the Southwestern United States, identified by Karl Marx as the dualism of rural communities: the existence of collective land ownership together with private production on the land.

Comunidades were a variant of the system of gaunkari system called gramasanstha (ग्रामसंस्था)) that pre-existed the arrival of the Portuguese, but was codified by them. The term gram in gramasanstha refers to the village. Comunidades is the Portuguese word for "communities". The khazan system of managed wetlands in Goa is an offshoot of the gaunkari system, but now quite distinct from the comunidades.

Members of the comunidades were called gaonkars, or zonnkars (in Portuguese, jonoeiros). The former were the members of the village, the latter were entitled to zonn, or jono, which is a dividend paid by the comunidade to gaunkars and accionistas, the holders of acções (sing. acção), or shares. The system applied equally to agricultural land and to village housing.

Over time and subject to conflicting land ownership and administration systems, the old institutions lost their original characteristics and comunidades are now mere societies of rights-holders who are members by birth.

After Portuguese rule ended in Goa in 1961, the village development activities, which were once the preserve of the communidades or more specifically the gaunkaris, became entrusted to the gram panchayat, rendering the gaunkaris non-functional.

The emergence of private property in land created a new set of socio-economic relationships at the village level, especially the comunidades and the ghar-bhaatt, the two principal forms of land tenure that came to characterise Portuguese Goa.

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