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.