procession of the Inquisition at Goa. An annual event to publicly humiliate and punish the heretics, it shows the Chief Inquisitor, Dominican friars, Portuguese soldiers, as well as religious criminals condemned to be burnt in the procession. An appeal to start the Inquisition in the Indian colonies of Portugal was sent by Vicar General
Miguel Vaz. According to Indo-Portuguese historian
Teotonio R. de Souza, the original requests targeted the "Moors" (Muslims), New Christian, Jews and those Hindus involved in propagating 'Gentility' and heresy, and it made Goa a centre of persecution operated by the Portuguese. The colonial administration under demands of the Jesuits and Church Provincial Council of Goa in 1567 enacted
anti-Hindu laws to end what the Catholics considered to be heretical conduct and to encourage conversions to Christianity. Laws were passed banning Christians from keeping Hindus in their employ, and the public worship of Hindus was deemed unlawful. Hindus were forced to assemble periodically in churches to listen to the Christian doctrine or to the criticism of their religion. Hindu books in
Sanskrit and
Marathi were burnt by the Goan Inquisition. It also forbade Hindu priests from entering Goa to officiate Hindu weddings. The inquisition forced Hindus to flee Goa in large numbers The Hindus responded to the destruction of their temples by recovering the images from the ruins of their older temples and using them to build new temples just outside the borders of the Portuguese controlled territories. In some cases where the Portuguese built churches on the spot the destroyed temples were, Hindus started annual processions that carry their gods and goddesses linking their newer temples to the site where the churches stand, after Portuguese colonial era ended.
Persecution of Goan Catholics The Inquisition considered those Hindus who had converted to Catholicism, but continued to observe their former Hindu customs and cultural practices, as heretics. The Catholic missionaries aimed to eradicate indigenous languages such as
Konkani and cultural practices such as ceremonies, fasts, growing of the
tulsi plant in front of the house, the use of flowers and leaves for ceremony or ornament. There were other far reaching changes that took place during the Portuguese occupation, these changes included the prohibition of traditional musical instruments and the prohibition of the singing of celebratory verses, which were replaced with Western music. People were renamed when they converted and they were not permitted to use their original Hindu names. Alcohol was introduced and dietary habits changed dramatically so that foods which were once taboo, such as pork which is shunned by Muslims and beef which is shunned by Hindus, became part of the Goan diet. Most records of the nearly 250 years of Inquisition trials were burnt by the Portuguese after the Inquisition had been banned. Those that have survived, such as those between 1782 and 1800, state that people continued to be tried and punished. As the persecution increased, missionaries complained that the
Bamonns continued to perform the Hindu religious rites and Hindus defiantly increased their public religious ceremonies. This defiance by the Hindus, alleged the missionaries, motivated the recently converted Goan Catholics to participate in Hindu ceremonies and relapse into Hinduism. In addition, states Délio de Mendonça, there was a hypocritical difference between the preaching and the practices of the Portuguese who were living in Goa. The Portuguese Christians and many clergymen were gambling, spending extravagantly, practicing public
concubinage, extorting money from the Indians, and engaging in
sodomy and
adultery. The "bad examples" of Portuguese Catholics were not universal and there were also "good examples" in which some Portuguese Catholics offered medical care to the Goan Catholics who were sick. However, the "good examples" were not strong enough when they were contrasted with the "bad examples", and the Portuguese betrayed their belief in their cultural superiority and their assumptions that "Hindus, Muslims, barbarians and pagans did not possess virtues and goodness", states Mendonça.
Suppression of Konkani In stark contrast to the Portuguese priests' earlier intense study of the
Konkani language and its cultivation as a communication medium in their quest for converts during the previous century, under the Inquisition,
xenophobic measures were adopted to isolate new converts from the non-Catholic populations. The use of Portuguese was enforced, and Konkani became a language of marginal peoples. Urged by the
Franciscans, the Portuguese viceroy forbade the use of Konkani on 27 June 1684 and he also decreed that within three years, the local people would generally speak the
Portuguese tongue. They would be required to use it in all of their contacts and they would also be required to use it in all contracts which were made in Portuguese territories. The penalty for violations of this law would be imprisonment. The decree was confirmed by the king on 17 March 1687. With the fall of the Province of the North (which included
Bassein,
Chaul and
Salsette) to the Marathas in 1739, the Portuguese renewed their assault on Konkani. while the Hindu and Catholic elites turned to Marathi and Portuguese, respectively. Since India annexed Goa in 1961, Konkani has become the cement that binds all Goans across caste, religion and class; it is affectionately termed
Konkani Mai (Mother Konkani).
Persecution of St Thomas Christians In 1599 under
Aleixo de Menezes, the
Synod of Diamper forcefully converted the
East Syriac Saint Thomas Christians (also known as Syrian Christians or Nasranis) of
Kerala to the
Catholic Church. He stated that they needed to be converted to Catholicism because they were practicing
Nestorianism, a
Christological position which was declared heretical by the
Council of Ephesus. The synod imposed severe restrictions on their practice of their faith and it also imposed severe restrictions on their practice of using Syriac/Aramaic. They were politically disfranchised and their Metropolitanate status was discontinued by the blocking of bishops from the East.
Charles Dellon, the 18th-century French physician, was another Christian who was arrested and tortured by the Goa Inquisition because he questioned Portuguese missionary practices in India. For five years, Dellon was imprisoned by the Goa Inquisition and he was not released until France demanded it. Dellon described, states Klaus Klostermaier, the horrors of life and death at the Catholic Palace of the Inquisition that managed the prison and deployed a rich assortment of torture instruments per recommendations of the Church tribunals. There were assassination attempts against Archdeacon George , so as to subjugate the entire Church under Rome. The common prayer book was not spared. Books were burnt and any priest who was professing independence was imprisoned. Some altars were pulled down to make way for altars which were conforming to Catholic criteria. Fr. Diogo da Borba and his advisor Vicar General Miguel Vaz followed the missionary goals to convert the Hindus. In cooperation with the Jesuit and
Franciscan missionaries, the Portuguese administration in Goa and military were deployed to destroy the cultural and institutional roots of Hindus and other Indian religions. For example, Viceroy and Captain General
António de Noronha and, later Captain General
Constantino de Sa de Noronha, systematically destroyed Hindu and Buddhist temples in Portuguese possessions and during attempted new conquests on the
Indian subcontinent. Exact data on the nature and number of Hindu temples destroyed by the Christian missionaries and Portuguese government are unavailable. A 1569 royal letter in Portuguese archives records that all Hindu temples in its colonies in India had been burnt and razed to the ground. According to
Ulrich Lehner, "Goa had been a tolerant place in the sixteenth century, but the Goan Inquisition had turned it into a hostile location for Hindus and members of other Asian religions. Temples had been razed, public Hindu rituals forbidden, and conversions to
Hinduism severely punished. The Goa Inquisition prosecuted harshly any cases of public Hindu worship; over three-quarters of its cases pertained to this, and only two percent to
apostasy or
heresy." New laws promulgated between 1566 and 1576 prohibited Hindus from repairing any damaged temples or constructing new ones. An order was issued in June 1684 for suppressing the
Konkani language and making it compulsory to speak
Portuguese. The law provided for dealing harshly with anyone using the local languages. Following that law, all non-Catholic cultural symbols and books written in local languages were to be destroyed. The French physician
Charles Dellon experienced first-hand the cruelty of the Inquisition's agents, and complained about the goals, arbitrariness, torture and racial discrimination against the people of Indian origin, particularly Hindus.
Persecution of Buddhists Many of the atrocities committed by the Portuguese against Buddhists in South Asia took place in present-day Sri Lanka, which had maintained a Buddhist majority since around the 3rd century BC. The Portuguese first established trading relations with the coastal Kingdom of Kotte in 1505, but later expanded their authority over much of coastal Sri Lanka, taking control of the former territories of the Kingdoms of Kotte and Jaffna. From 1597 until 1658 these areas were incorporated as Portuguese Ceylon, becoming part of the Portuguese Estado da Índia. One example of Buddhist persecution during the Inquisition was the alleged destruction of the
Buddha's tooth relic in Sri Lanka in 1560. The tooth relic considered as the most revered object of veneration among Buddhists in Sri Lanka, cherished as a sacred cetiya relic of the Buddha. According to Portuguese historians
Diogo de Couto and
João de Barros, the relic was seized during the 1560 Portuguese expedition of the Jaffna Kingdom and later taken to Goa, where it was destroyed on the orders of the Viceroy of Goa, Don Constantino de Braganza. The Portuguese built city fortification walls between 1564 and 1568. It ran adjacent to the Jew street, but placed it outside of the fort. Ultimately, all of them were sent from Goa to
Lisbon to be tried by the Portuguese Inquisition. There, she was sentenced to death. ==In Literature==