Goa Inquisition and the Portuguese

What do you remember when you think about Goa? Most probably it would be its sea beaches. But here is someone who found out some uncomfortable truths about history of the same beautiful place we call Goa.

Richard Zimler is an award winning author and journalist who also wrote a book titled ‘Guardian of the Dawn’. This novel documents the little-known Portuguese Inquisition in India of the 16th century.

Some portions of his interview titled ‘Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel’ published with Rediff is here for your read and pondering over:

About 15 years ago, while doing research for my first novel, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, I discovered that the Portuguese exported the Inquisition to Goa in the sixteenth century, and that many Indian Hindus were tortured and burnt at the stake for continuing to practice their religion. Muslim Indians were generally murdered right away or made to flee Goan territory.

I couldn’t use that information for my novel but decided, a few years later, to do more research into that time of fundamentalist religious persecution. I discovered that historians consider the Goa Inquisition the most merciless and cruel ever developed. It was a machinery of death. A large number of Hindus were first converted and then persecuted from 1560 all the way to 1812!

Over that period of 252 years, any man, woman, or child living in Goa could be arrested and tortured for simply whispering a prayer or keeping a small idol at home. Many Hindus — and some former Jews, as well — languished in special Inquisitional prisons, some for four, five, or six years at a time.

I was horrified to learn about this, of course. And I was shocked that my friends in Portugal knew nothing about it. The Portuguese tend to think of Goa as the glorious capital of the spice trade, and they believe — erroneously — that people of different ethnic backgrounds lived there in tolerance and tranquillity. They know nothing about the terror that the Portuguese brought to India. They know nothing of how their fundamentalist religious leaders made so many suffer.

Few people in today’s Portugal know anything about the Inquisition. Many of them would rather not examine what their ancestors did, both in Portugal and its colonies. But others are very curious about what they didn’t learn in school about their own history. Yes, in a sense I am opening old wounds. But I think it’s important to do that. I think that we need to face the bad things we do — both individually and as a society. In general, the Portuguese have been very receptive to my books.

Full article: http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/sep/14inter1.htm