English In this paper, the author defends that Goan elites were active agents of imperial power, and therefore essential to the durability of Portuguese imperial domination. However, already before the Portuguese presence, different groups within these elites disputed primacy in the local order. They then continued this rivalry after the arrival of the Portuguese, and their submission to Christianity. Actually, since conversion allowed these groups to present themselves as internal colonizers, each of them-Brahmins and Charodos-started to deny this status to the other, by denouncing its members of not having noble origins. On the other hand, they argued that their own group descended from either the old Brahmin and Kshatrya, and even of one of the tribes of Israel. This strategy aimed at affirming their own group as the best-placed one to mediate political relations between the imperial center and the colony, and therefore to keep or even reinforce their local hegemony.