In the heart of Panaji is an arresting bronze statue that seems completely out of temporal and geographic context. A caped figure, arms outstretched, looms over a reclining woman: Is he casting a spell on her? Was she caught mid-fall? The statue is a silent symbol connecting this bustling corner of India to the turbulent streets of revolutionary Paris.
The caped figure is Abbé Faria, an 18th-century Luso-Goan Catholic priest who is considered the “father of hypnotism”, and shows up in the most remarkable historical and fictional contexts. Lodged between a busy ferry wharf on one side and Adil Shah Palace, Panaji’s oldest surviving building, on the other, Faria’s statue serves as a marginally amusing backdrop to the selfies of incurious casino-goers. Faria remains largely forgotten, not just in India, but also within the state. And a small group of dedicated Goan citizens are just not having it.
They are activists, writers, and artists. They are teachers, journalists, lawyers, and psychiatrists. They are politicians. And they are all united in the passionate quest to get “Goa’s son” his due and keep his legacy alive. In Faria, these modern Goans have found a polymath hero, who made his mark on the world stage, yet remains largely unrecognised in the annals of Indian history.
A life that reads like fantasy
José Custódio de Faria was born in 1756 in the village of Candolim and led a life that reads like a fantastical novel. The son of a former seminarian-turned-revolutionary, Faria’s young adulthood was marked by intense political intrigue, including his family’s involvement in the Pinto Revolt of 1787, a failed uprising against Portuguese colonial rule. His extraordinary journey to Europe, however, began a few years prior.
From the sunny shores of Goa, Faria’s path led him to the hallowed halls of Rome, the courts of Lisbon, and eventually to the tinderbox of pre-revolutionary Paris, where his life intersected with some of the most tumultuous events of the 18th century.
Somewhere around this time, the details begin to turn into a blend of fact and fiction. Did he become a leader of a revolutionary battalion in 1795? Was he imprisoned at the infamous Château d’If where he developed his early hypothesis of hypnotism? Did he have a gambling addiction?
This is further complicated by his fictional alter ego in Alexandre Dumas’ classic The Count of Monte Cristo, where Abbé Faria appears as a pivotal character. In the novel, Faria is an Italian priest, a master of mesmerism, and mentor to the protagonist, Edmond Dantès, both of whom are imprisoned at the dreaded Château d’If. This literary incarnation cemented Faria’s place in the popular imagination and added another layer to his already complex legacy.
But it’s also a metaphor for the real Faria’s role in history: A man of science and mystery, capable of unlocking hidden potentials, yet constrained by the circumstances of his time and origin.
Faria’s contributions to hypnotism were groundbreaking for his time. He rejected the popular “animal magnetism” theory of Franz Mesmer, instead proposing that the hypnotic state was caused by the power of suggestion and the subject’s own mental concentration. In his seminal work De La Cause du Sommeil Lucide, Faria introduced the concept of “lucid sleep”, which laid the groundwork for future understanding of the hypnotic trance. His methods, emphasising verbal suggestion and the subject’s suggestibility were precursors to modern hypnotherapy techniques. Despite these significant contributions, Faria was considered a charlatan during his time, and his work was largely overlooked – possibly due to the colour of his skin.
“Remember, these were brown people in Rome, France, and Lisbon. They were global citizens in a time when that term was probably unheard of,” said Isabel Santa Rita Vas, the writer and director of Kator Re Bhaji, a play based on the life of Abbé Faria. Along with Cecil Pinto, Vas is also the co-author of the documentary, In Search of Abbé Faria: The Hypnotic Vision of a Goan Pioneer.
The Konkani phrase, “kator re bhaji” is a reference to one of the most famous stories from Faria’s life. After successfully defending his thesis in Rome, Faria’s reputation preceded him to Portugal, where the queen, Mary I of Portugal summoned him to deliver a sermon in the royal chapel. However, facing the assembled nobility, Faria found himself paralysed with stage fright when his father came to his rescue. The elder Faria leaned in, and whispered in their native Konkani, “kator re bhaji” – literally “cut the vegetables”, but idiomatically meaning “just do it”.
This phrase became a turning point in Faria’s life and resonates throughout his history. By most accounts, Faria would go on to wonder how the simple words could alter the state of his mind so profoundly, and possibly formed the basis for his research. Vas said that she grew up listening to stories around this legend but does not believe the phrase originated with Faria Sr. “Men don’t really talk about bhaji. It is the women who cut the bhaji in the kitchen. And so it seemed to me that one of the members of the Faria family, who has been totally forgotten, maybe she’s the one who said it,” she said.
Vas is referring to Catarina, an adopted child of Faria’s mother, who grew up alongside him. Vas believes Catarina “is too interesting a personality to be allowed to fade into nothingness”, even though there isn’t a lot of biographical material to support it. But where facts disappoint, the imagination steps up.
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Goa as a crucible of cultures
A fair bit of imagination has gone into Konkani author Uday Bhembre’s fictionalised novel, also titled Kator Re Bhaji, and launched late last year. Bhembre told me that even though he had read many biographies, he wasn’t inspired to write about Abbé Faria until he found himself teaching a class of MA students, none of whom had heard of the man. “It was a very pathetic situation; Abbé Faria was a son of Goa!” he said. “Goans by and large, have no sense of history. We don’t write history, unlike the Portuguese who had a record of everything.”
Bhembre didn’t see the point in writing another biography after having read eight himself, including the definitive Memoire Sur La Vie de l’Abbe de Faria by Goan doctor, Daniel Gelasio Dalgado, and O Padre Faria na História do Hipnotismo by Portuguese Nobel laureate, António Egas Moniz. But all of these biographies have significant gaps, so Bhembre used his imagination to fill in the blanks. “No biographer explains how he went about finding the science behind hypnotism, or who he experimented on, or how he made money. So I fictionalised the parts using logic and my imagination.” Bhembre hopes that Faria will continue to be remembered, maybe through a museum dedicated to his work.
The fervent efforts to preserve Abbé Faria’s legacy transcend mere historical commemoration. They embody a tiny but spirited struggle for recognition of a unique syncretic culture in contemporary India. For this impassioned group of Goans – who assemble at the statue and chant “kator re bhaji” and fight to have Abbé Faria represented in official symbols – this overlooked luminary epitomises an amalgamation of Indian roots and European influences.
Faria is a testament to Goa’s historical role as a crucible of cultures, a place where the East and West merged to create something entirely new. He is a transgressive figure who navigated the complexities of European society, an emblem for a state where migration and multifaceted heritage has been a way of life. The theatrical productions, literary works, and documentaries about Faria are cultural touchstones, anchoring Goan identity in a sea of diverse Indian experiences. These efforts to resurrect Faria’s memory represent an attempt to define Goa itself – its history, identity, and place in the world.
This article is part of the Goa Life series, which explores the new and the old of Goan culture.
Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)