35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
5
‘A Flame of Faith’
GOA, 1975–76
In a small island near this, called Divari, the Portuguese, in order to build the
city, have destroyed an ancient temple . . . which was built with marvellous
art and with ancient figures wrought to the greatest perfection, in a certain
black stone, some of which remains standing, ruined and shattered, because
these Portuguese care nothing about them. If I can come by one of these shattered
images, I will send it to your Lordship, that you may perceive how much in old
times sculpture was esteemed in every part of the world.
– Andre Corsalli to Giuliano De Medici, January 6, 1516
The churches of old Goa were already a hundred years old before
the Red Fort in Delhi or the Taj Mahal were built. The first
Europeans to establish themselves on Indian soil, the Portuguese
were also the last to leave.
From the late thirteenth century until November 25, 1510, when
Afonso de Albuquerque’s armada finally captured it, Goa had been
in a tug-of-war between Hindu and Muslim rulers. Granada, the
last bastion of Muslim rule in Iberia, had only fallen in 1492, five
years before Vasco da Gama sailed in search of a sea route to the
East. The Portuguese came to India intent on repaying in kind
those people who had subjugated their land for nearly five hundred
years, who had forcibly converted their people to an alien faith. For
the Portuguese, conquering and colonising were not complete
without Christianising. There was a competitive fury among the
various orders that established themselves in Goa, and not just the
Muslims suffered because of it.
The Portuguese started out quite reasonably. Although a religious
man, Afonso de Albuquerque was no evangelist. His only
interference in the religion of the natives was to ban the practice of
sati – widow burning, which was not common in Goa anyway. What
conversions he did authorise were carried out for practical reasons.
His sailors had started shacking up with local women, so he decided
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