Inside the ruins of Bacaim, the forgotten capital

Vasai Fort was once a sprawling walled city and the capital of the Portuguese’s northern territory in India

- Lisann Dias

The ruins of an ancient city appear in the distance as our bus drives along a dusty municipal road.

The stone gleams beneath the sun, and the church ruins emerge through vegetation and palm trees, their trunks scarred from the knives of toddy tappers.

When the Portuguese sailed towards Daman and Diu, up the west coast of India, after conquering Goa in the early 1500s, they came across a strategic piece of land. Bassein, or Bacaim in Portuguese, was a marshy pocket about 70km north of Mumbai (then Bombay). It held a fort ruled by Bahadur Shah, the last Mughal Emperor, whose territory included Daman and Diu. They changed plans instinctively and attacked Bacaim, now known as Vasai, and what followed was a sustained campaign of burning, sacking and pillaging the region.

The fort was captured by the Portuguese on the feast of St Sebastian in 1534, and by 1590, it was transformed into a sprawling walled city covering 110 acres. Fortaleza de Sao Sebastiao de Bacaim, they christened it in Portuguese, and it served as the capital of the Northern Territory.

Vasai, now an overlooked suburb of Mumbai, was once a thriving centre of trade and culture, says Mogan Rodrigues, co-founder of the Mumbai-based Sangath Varta, an organisation working to revive East Indian culture and heritage. “Though South Mumbai is the hub now, the city’s centre was once in the north—the port, business, trade, opportunity, and wealth were all situated here.”