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This month, Goa will celebrate its 38th anniversary of liberation from
the Portuguese rule. It threw off its 400 years of foreign yoke on
December '61, when Indian troops invaded Salcete and captured the
garrisons based at Ponda and Panjim.
One of the worst charges against the Portuguese was their practice of
forced conversions of the local inhabitants. Their domination in India
is intimately linked with the activities of the Christian religious
orders, particularly the Jesuit Order. Barring a short period' of the
rule by the famous Marquis of Pombal, Goan history is a litany of
religious bigotry and indoctrinations. Already in 1603, the Society of
Jesus was so powerful that the Chamber of Goa complained to the King of
Portugal that the income of the Jesuit properties, plundered from Hindu
temples, amounted to half of the entire state.
It was in 1541, when there were already a surfeit of priests in Goa and
only a few Christians, that the persecution of the Hindus began. An
order of the Governor, dated June 30 1541, in Ilhas read: "All the Hindu
temples be destroyed, not leaving a single one on any of the islands,
viz., Goa, Daman and Dieu." The natives were thus compelled to surrender
their temple properties for the maintenance of the churches and
monasteries, newly built. The conversions in Salcete and Bardez,
conquered in 1543, were entrusted respectively to the Jesuits and the
Franciscans.
On March 3 1546, under the influence of the Jesuit fathers, King D Joao
III ordered the Viceroy Cyril De Castro to destroy temples, forbid Hindu
festivities, banish all priests, and lop off the hands of craftsmen who
made idols of gods and goddesses. Simultaneously, public employment was
offered to the new converts. On May 23 1559, a law was passed that
non-Catholics will be debarred from holding any public office. Another
law proclaimed that the property of Hindus, who die without leaving any
male heir, will not pass on to other relatives unless they espouse
Christianity.
Soon after, Viceroy de Braganza banished all Hindus from Ilhas and
confiscated their belongings in the name of the Pope. The infamous Holy
Court of the Inquisition was then founded in 1560. Its functions were
to punish all those who practised non-Christian rites. This iniquitous
court, before which were brought the hapless victims of other faiths
(Hindus and Muslims), struck terror in the hearts of the people. It
devised ingenious contraptions of torture such as pillory and pilliwinks
(crushing of fingers and toes), anal insertions, blinding of eyes
through torches, and slow death by burning at the stake.
The degree of baseness and human wickedness of the Goa Inquisition is
testified by the unsuspicious evidence of the Archbishop of Evora at the
time of the third centenary of the Cathedral of Lisbon, who averred: "If
inquisition throughout Europe and the New World was an infamous Court,
it was never more so than the Inquisition of Goa, ironically called the
Holy Office. They deliberately sent women to prison who resisted them,
and after sating their beastly instincts, ordered them burnt as
heretics."
In 1567, Diogo Rodrigues, captain of the Fort of Rachol, pulled down 280
temples in Salcete. As there were still more temples in the villages of
Concolim, Veroda, Assolna, Velim and Ambelim, the Jesuit fathers,
Antonio Francisco and Pero Berno, asked to be accosted by a batallion of
the Viceroy's soldiers and raised the localities. Within two weeks they
razed and demolished every single shrine in those areas, killing in the
process, over six hundred inhabitants. Orphans were sent to the
seminaries to do menial work and baptized. The persecutions made the
weak and the pliant prone to conversions. They embraced Christianity so
that they could live safely and derive material benefits.
The Viceroy, Jeronimo do Azevodo, in 1603, informed the King of Portugal
that in some parts of the Colony, the monks and priests out numbered the
laity. Every Portuguese sailor landing in Goa preferred to become a
monk. Viceroys, Castro and Furtado, who governed later, complained that
the town streets were scrupulously shunned by females of all ages as the
Catholic clergy and the monks led debauched and scandalous lives. They
accused the Franciscans, particularly, of abducting women, of selling
sacraments, of using the churches in Bardez as houses of pleasure, and
of not burying the dead of the poor without extracting money. According
to the late T B Cunha, regarded as the father of Goan nationalism,
"During the whole of the 17th century, Goa saw a reign of cruelty and
licentiousness never surpassed before."
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