Early Portuguese Colonialism in India: Background of the Tragedy in Goa
This article is a part of a series aimed at educating the reader about the Goa Inquisition.
"The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects.
- Hans-Hermann Hoppe
With the onset of the Age of Exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries great development in the field of sea navigation were made. Driven by the unquenchable thirst for wealth and territory, European nations fielded ships and navies across continents. Trade, commerce and empires were expanding.
Religion was another factor since Spain and Portugal had overthrown Islamic rule only in the mid-thirteenth century. Under Christian leadership and backing from the Pope himself, the search for the mythical Christian lands of the East was started. All elements were directed at this extraordinary task of spreading Christianity in the East. The cause of Christianity and the Kingdom of Portugal were one. One result of this was Colombus’ mission to find a sea route to India. It was in this mission that Columbus discovered the Americas. Although Colombus and his crew failed to land in India, they managed to find entirely lands, new people, cultures and civilizations. This was the discovery of the New World.
What followed this ‘discovery’ in the subsequent decades and centuries is the absolute destruction of the residents, cultures, practices, traditions and civilizations native to those lands. Indians were lucky to have escaped this fate then but the thing with luck is that you never know when you're going to run out of it. One such mission managed to reach Indian shores.
This was the mission led by Vasco Da Gama. With the help of a Gujarati pilot named Kanji Malam, the Portuguese crew landed in Calicut in July 1498. He met the Zamorin of Calicut. The meeting was a failure, but Vasco Da Gama was not just another trader or explorer, as Indian kingdoms were soon going to understand, he was a representative of the King of Portugal in full might and weight. His mission was set off from Lisbon with the best of ships, men, material, guns and know-how available at that time. He managed to secure a trading post in Calicut and departed to Cannanore, whose king was an enemy of the Zamorin.
One thing led to another and the Portuguese soon found themselves at conflict with the natives and the other set of foreign traders in the region, the Arabs. Dozens of Firangee sailors were massacred in Calicut in 1500. When the Portuguese returned, they absolutely devastated the local kingdoms with their superior military strategy and artillery. They rained destruction on the land from far away in the sea, Indians were hapless. Needless to say, the navies of the native kingdoms and the Arab traders consisting only of vessels meant for warding off pirates were no match to the mighty Portuguese Armada. Once again, the lack of unity among the Indians and their unwillingness to respond or even catch up to the developments in the outside world led to their fall.
The kingdom of Cochin became a protectorate of Portugal in 1505 and the Portuguese established their base of operations in Fort Manuel in Malabar. Hostilities continued between the Portuguese and the Zamorin of Calicut and the Zamorin asked for help from the Bijapur Sultanate. They were thoroughly defeated and Goa was captured by the Portuguese.
With this, the Portuguese Empire firmly set it's foot in Goa in 1510 and thus began the European Colonisation of India.
A Hindu privateer, Timoji, knowing about the discontent among the local Hindu population because of the falling to the Bijapur sultanate, had helped and guided them in the nascent and crucial phase of their conquest. He was rewarded and made the Aguazil of Goa.
The Portuguese had three important aims with the expedition to India:
To find and establish an alternate sea route to India
To check the spread of Islam in Asia
To spread Christianity in the East
The Portuguese had largely succeeded at this. We must now look into each of these briefly for a better understanding.
After discovering the route to India, in the process of conquest of India, they had fought multiple Muslim kingdoms across Asia. Apart from a post in Jaffna, they had led campaigns in the strait of Malacca and Hormuz etc. In 1507, they battled and defeated the Egyptian Mamluk fleet sent to secure their interests in the region and help the Zamorin. They continued clashing for the next few years and though the Muslims also inflicted significant damage, but Portugal ultimately managed to secure it's Empire in India, with Goa as it's headquarters. Even the local Hindus came to help them and chased the Muslims and killed them. We see this again in Bengal when Hindus kill the Muslims nearby for the Portuguese at a later date. It is said that local mosques in Goa were destroyed and local Muslims were burnt with them. Portuguese invasions were marked by ruthlessness and were a disaster for Muslim power in the region. Although, they did appoint a Muslim, Coje Bequi, as the representative of the local Islamic population.
It is to be noted that the spices that Vasco Da Gama had taken back with him were worth 60 times the cost of the entire expedition to India. This had broken the Arab monopoly over the trade of spices in Europe.
One last important goal of the expedition was also the spread of Christianity in the east. It is this that would be the subject of our curiosity in the final section of our assessment. What role did Christianity play in the early days of Portuguese empire-building in India? How did it affect the natives?
As discussed earlier, the Church had major role in encouraging the expedition and conquest of India. From the early days of the establishment of the colony the colonialists worked with single-minded devotion to further the interests of the Empire. To them, this also meant the spread of Christianity.
In the report submitted upon the return from their first voyage, they reported the existence of the Syriac Christians whom they considered to be followers of a very primitive form of Christianity. Attempts were made to make them accept the authority of Rome.
Many New Christians(converts who practiced their original religion secretly, mostly Jews) had come to Portuguese India because they thought they would be safer in this part of the world and would be able to practice their actual religion more easily. Many converted Hindus and Muslims, many of whom were forcefully converted, also did the same. They practiced their religion, customs and practices secretly while pretending to be Christians in public life.
Hindus were particularly badly hit by these Christian extremities. Over the course of time, every aspect of the Hindu religion, institutions and way of life was systematically targeted, criminalized and destroyed. From prohibitions on worship of Hindu gods and Hindu marriages, to demolition of Hindu temples and bans on public celebrations, everything that could be done to curb the practice of Hinduism was done. No facet of Hindu life remained unflinched and untouched from Christian terror.
In 1541, idol worship was banned in Goa and 350 temples were razed. In 1620, Hindu rituals were prohibited. A 1569 royal letter in Portuguese records says that all Hindu temples in the colonies had been burnt and razed to the ground. Orphans were forcefully taken to be converted by Jesuits. King John III issued an order forbidding Hinduism in 1546. Even possession of Hindu images and idols and keeping fasts on Ekadashis were crimes!
M.D. David, the author of Western Colonialism in Asia and Christianity, writes: “...A particularly grave abuse was practiced in Goa in the form of ‘mass baptism’ and what went before it. The practice was begun by the Jesuits and was initiated by the Franciscans also. The Jesuits staged an annual mass baptism on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25), and in order to secure as many neophytes as possible, a few days before the ceremony the Jesuits would go through the streets of the Hindu quarter in pairs, accompanied by their African “Negro” slaves, whom they would urge to seize the Hindus. When the blacks caught up a fugitive, they would smear his lips with a piece of beef, making him an ‘untouchable’ among his people. Conversion to Christianity was then his only option.”
In Tamilnadu, many fishermen willingly converted to Christianity, many did not. The ones who did not had their entire fishing boats set aflame. Those who tried to escape the fire by jumping into the water were mercilessly bayoneted or shot dead as their wives and children helplessly watched from the shore.
Roberto de Nobili, the White Brahman, took to saffron robes and travelled to Madurai where he converted hundreds of people to Christianity.
These Christian missionaries used to be quite insecure of Brahmins and their sway over the masses so lies were cooked up to anger the converts against Hindus. It was wrongly propagated that a Brahmin stabbed St. Thomas.
It is clear that no stone was left unturned in converting people. Everything possible was tried.
So-called Saint Xavier deserves a special mention here. He first came to India with the new Viceroy in 1542. This man today has numerous institutions in his name across India yet only a few know about his crimes against the Hindu faith. His activities while in India were dedicated to propagation of Catholic Orthodoxy and he was willing to go to any extent for the sake of his goal. He approved of even the most extreme forms of violence and force against individuals for this. Fraudulent and forceful conversions, destruction of Hindu temples and idols are some of the feathers in his cap. It was he who first requested the infamous Goan inquisition to the king of Portugal in 1545.
“I know not how to describe in words the joy I feel before the spectacle of pulling down and destroying the idols.”
Francis Xavier
Although it must be noted that there is no publicly-known evidence of the king acknowledging this demand of Francis Xavier. Similar demands by others continued to be raised but it was only after the death of King John III that the Goa Inquisition was set up. An inquisitor, Aleixo Diaz Falcão, was sent to Goa in March 1560. By the end of the year, a tribunal was setup by him that came to earn “a sinister renown as the most pitiless in Christendom.”
The immediate reason for the introduction of the Inquisition was the ‘New Christian’ Jews secretly practicing their original religion. This prompted a certain Father Silveira to preach against the rebellious people. He declared that the Messiah of the Abrahamic religions had arrived it and was none other than God. The Jews were angered and spoke against the priests. Blasphemous writings were sent to the boxes kept in churches speaking against the Divinity of Jesus, Church and Society of Jesus(co-founded by Francis Xavier). Many jews got caught and were sent to Lisbon where they were tried and punished for practicing Judaism, many of whom were burnt alive.
Need was felt for an Inquisition in India and two inquisitors were sent, and thus, the Goa Inquisition of infamy came to be. 1
The Goa Inquisition by AS Priolkar
Arrival of Portuguese in India and its Role in Shaping India by Col. (Dr.) D. P. K. Pillay
The Horrific Truth of the Goa Inquisition by HinduJagruti. org
The Goan Inquisition by the Portuguese: A forgotten holocaust of Hindus and Jews by OpIndia. com
The Goa Inquisition How and Why it Happened by Ruthwick on Medium. com
The Epitome of Christian Missionary Violence- GoaInquisition. info
The Goa Inquisition- projecthindukush. com
Goa Inquisition on Wikipedia. com
Timoji on Wikipedia. com
Portuguese conquest of Goa on Wikipedia. com
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