Why Hindus Hate Christian Goa

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Portugal, like Spain, had been one of the Christian countries that had been occupied by the Mahommetan invaders and which had toiled under the onerous burden of Mohemmetan benightment for centuries before it secured its liberty once again. Therefore, once it had achieved the liberation of the Algarve, the last tract of Portuguese territory occupied by the Mahommetans, the Portuguese sought to spread their war against the Mahommetans, whom they knew as the Moros, into Africa and beyond.

Under Prince Henry the Navigator, the Portuguese pushed further and further down the west coasts of Africa, seeking for a route to the East Indies, in order to outflank the Mahommetans and to strike at, and overwhelm them from the rear. This was achieved when Vasco da Gama made landfall at Calicut on the Malabar Coast of the Indian Sub-continent, 1498.

When Vasco had arrived first, off the isles of Mocambique, then ruled by the Arab Sultan of Quilon, a city on the Malabar Coast, the Arabs had mistaken the Portuguese for fellow-Mohemmatans, and had re-victualised them. However, once they realized that the newcomers were Christians, they sought to attack and destroy them, repeatedly. The several attempts against the Portuguese failing, Vasco arrived at Malindi, whose sultan cooperated with him and enabled him to acquire an Arab-Indian pilot to guide him to the sub-continent. Again, when Vasco da Gama arrived at Calicut and sought trading rights and permission to harbor, the Arabs who dominated the shipping of the Indian Ocean, pressured the Hindu King of Calicut, the Samudripadin ("Zamorin") against the Christians, and then attempted to attack them.

Once Portugal broke the power of the Mahommetans, the Hindu princes became allies. Portugal's major ally was the Vijayanagar Empire, which had constituted itself the champion of Hindu India against the eternal encroachments of the Mahommetans. Both shared a common revulsion towards the Mahomettan.

In early 1510, when Affonso de Albuquerque, the then Governor-General of the Portuguese possessions in the East, was gathering his forces for an expedition against Arabia and Mecca, the nerve center of the Mahommetan heresy, a delegation of Goan leaders, led by Mala Pai and Thimayya, wended its way from Vijayanagar to Cochim to call upon him.

Goa fell under the rule of the Mahommetans for the first time in 1312, being seized by Malik Kafir, the general of Allaudin Khilji, the second Khilji sultan of Delhi. However, Delhi's grip was weak; the murder by poison of Allaudin by Malik Kafir in 1316 precipitated the Delhi Sultanate into chaos, and most of the conquests rebelled and fell away. When order had been restored by the ascent of Mubarak Khan, Ain-ul-Mulk was sent out in 1317-1318, to bring the former conquests back to submission. Under Mahomed Tughlak, 1325-1351, Goa, along with other territories of the Delhi Sultanate underwent severe vicissitudes; Tughlak, to replenish his treasury emptied due to his own massive ineptitude, imposed onerous taxes on one and all. The Tughlak governor of the south Concan rebelled. Tughlak set out to subdue him, but on the way, his army was struck by a pestilence and he himself nearly perished. Recovering, he gave up the expedition and returned north.

When the Mahomettan princes of the Deccan rebelled against Mahomed Tughlak, resulting in the foundation of the Bahamani Sultanate at Gulbarga by Allaudin Hasan Gangu Bahamani (Shah Allaudin), Goa either became part of this kingdom, or was conquered by it. Under the second Bahamani king Mahomed Shah Bahamani I (Shah Mahomed I), the Goan Hindus rebelled and appealed to Vijayanagar for aid, and by 1367 Goa was conquered by Vidyaranya Madhava, general of Bukka Raya I, the 2^nd Emperor of Vijayanagar, a status regularized by treaty in 1370.

In 1440, the Goan Hindus overthrew Vijayanagari sovereignty and succeeded in retaining its independence until 1469.

In 1469, the Emperor Virupaksha I of Vijayanagar sought to punish his Mahommetan subjects in the port city of Bhatkal for their treachery in selling horses imported from Arabia to his enemies, the Bahamani Shahs. Virupaksha's orders were implemented by his subsidiary prince, Vikrama Raya, the Raja of Belgão, a feudatory who had jurisdiction over Bhatkal. About ten thousands of these Mahomettans were slain while the rest fled and forced their way into Goa, from where they urgently besought the Bahamani Shah of Gulbarga to harbor them from Virupaksha's wrath. At this time, Mahomed Shah Bahamani II (Shah Mahomed II) was the Bahamani king, and Khwaja Mahmud Gawan his chief minister. Gawan made a surprise attack by land and sea to relieve the besieged Mahommetans in Goa, while another force attacked and conquered Belgão and all of Vikrama Raya's lands. Thus Goa passed once again into the hands of the Bahamani sultans.

With the death of Shah Mahomed II, the Bahamani sultanate disintegrated into several independent kingdoms. Goa had been made part of the Bahamani province of Bijapur. When Shah Mahomed II was tricked into ordering the murder of Khwaja Mahmud Gawan on trumped up charges of treason, his adopted son, Yusuf Adil Khan, called Idal Cão by the Portuguese, rebelled along with two other officers, Imad-ul-Mulk and Khudavand Khan, and seized for himself the governorate of Bijapur, making himself a de facto independent ruler. In 1490, Adil Khan and other governors (Malik Ahmad at Ahmadnagar, Imad-ul-Mulk at Berar, Kutb-ul-Mulk at Golconda and Ali Barid at Bidar), declared his independence as Yusuf Adil Shah I, founding the Adil-Shahi dynasty of Bijapur. The last of the Bahamanis, Shah Karimullah, died in 1549, ten years after his minister's son, Ali Barid, had usurped his throne at Bidar (1539).

The Hindus everywhere looked upon the succession of Mahomettan rulers as a concatenation of evils. Ferishta, the chronicler of the Mahomettans rejoiced that the chief glory of Shah Mahomed I, the second of the Bahamani sultans of Gulbarga, was that he had killed at least half a million Hindus in seventeen years. The Hindus looked to the Vijayanagar Empire as their champion, and hoped to be liberated from the Mahomettans by it. Yet it was not that Vijayanagar was invincible, that it always succeeded against the Mahommetans. And indeed, Vijayanagar reached the zenith of its power and glory when the Portuguese first arrived off the peninsula and began to aid this Empire in its life-long contest with the Mahomettans. In 1520, the Emperor Krishnadeva Raya vanquished, with the aid of Portuguese auxiliaries, the Sultan of Bijapur and recovered the long disputed Krishna-Tungabhadra Doab and the citadels of Raichur and Mudkal — a task long aspired to by the Empire, but which had never yet been achieved, and in the seeking of which, many of the kings of Vijayanagar had been humiliated by the Mahomettans. However, swollen with the intoxication of victories and triumph over the five Mahomettan kings, the Emperor Rama Raya, an usurper related to the imperial dynasty, humiliated and thereby antagonized his allies, the Sultans of Bijapur, Bidar and Berar so that they put away their differences between themselves and the Shahs of Ahmadnagar and Golconda and uniting their five armies, utterly overwhelmed Vijayanagar in 1564 at the Battle of Talikote. The allied Bahamani kings utterly destroyed the city of Vijayanagar, which never rose again. However, a branch of the Vijayanagar imperial house re-established itself under Prince Ranga Raya in the western foothills, founding the new city of Sri Rangapatinam, or Seringapatnam, which later developed into the Kingdom of Mysore.

Yusuf Adil Shah I, the founder of the Adilshahi dynasty of Bijapur, pretended to be the younger brother of Mahomed II, the Sultan of the Turks who had seized Constantinopolis in 1453. Shortly before 1510, the Hindus of Goa received the news that he planned to shift the capital of his kingdom from Bijapur to Goa. This alarmed them, for if it was achieved, they would be more directly persecuted by the Mahomettans. For this reason, the petty Goan chieftains put aside their differences and went in a delegation to the Emperor of Vijayanagar, asking him to liberate them from Adil Shah. However, the Emperor declined and advised them to approach the Portuguese in Cochim, a port on the Malabar Coast that they had seized from the Mahomettans. The delegation of Goans accordingly wended its way thither. There they found Affonso de Albuquerque preparing his forces for an expedition against Arabia and Mecca. The Goans sought to impress Albuquerque to divert his forces to Goa, which he was loath to do; however, they impressed him on the strategic importance of Goa, and its usefulness as a more secure base than Cochim for their campaigns against the Mahomettans. Lastly, Albuquerque acceded to their pleas and altered his plans accordingly. The attempt to seize Mecca was postponed to years later, when he succeeded in seizing Jeddah but failed in his attempt to capture Mecca itself, and had to withdraw.

In February 1510, Albuquerque sailed up the Mandovi to the city of Goa with a force of some two thousands and defeating its garrison, seized the city. The news angered Yusuf Adil Shah I, who assembled an army of 50,000 and attacked the Portuguese in Goa. Albuquerque was forced to evacuate the city of Goa, but he sought to fight by holding to the fortress at the mouth of the river, at the present site of Ponjhe (Pangim, later Nova Goa). After several months of fighting, aided by the Goan Hindus, Albuquerque evacuated the estuary in August 1510, and withdrew to the isle of Anjediva which he made into his new base, and calling for reinforcements from across the Indian Ocean, he began preparations for a second attempt. In the meantime, under his directions, the Goans kept up a guerrilla warfare against the forces of Bijapur, spreading it out thin.

In November 1510, his forces augmented to some eight thousands men, the majority being native recruits from the Malabar Coast and Goa, Albuquerque sailed once again to the City of Goa and after a day's intense fighting, overwhelmed the Bijapur garrison. Before this second conquest, or Reconquista of November 21, 1510, the Goan Hindus had negotiated a treaty with Albuquerque under which the Portuguese were to entirely exterminate the hated Mahomettan settlers in Goa, but not molest any of the Hindus. This was an assignment not far from the heart of the Portuguese, and they fell to the work with a gusto. The Portuguese only spared some of the captured Moro womenfolk, whom Albuquerque had had baptized and given in marriage to Portuguese officers on condition that they settle down in the city. This procedure was objected to by the Catholic priests, who doubted the sincerity of these women's conversions. However, Albuquerque overruled them. A short time later, the priests were proven right when some of these women were discovered to have conspired to subvert and overthrow the Portuguese in coordination with the Bijapur armies.

The final liberation of Goa by Albuquerque was greeted with great joy and relief by the Hindus. At the same time, Albuquerque's conquest was followed by an influx of a great number of missionaries, who zealously proselytized the Goans. At this time, the Portuguese conquest covered only the city of Goa and some parts of the main island of Goa upto the fortress of Ponjhe. The vast majority of the native population of this tract, in the first flush of the Liberation, and earnestly urged by the large number of missionaries, freely converted to Christianity. At the same time, the Portuguese began to expand the area of their control to the districts both north and south of this tract, and the missionaries frequently preceded Portuguese soldiers into these areas. However, as Portuguese rule was consolidated, there came a sharp schism between the remaining Hindus and the Portuguese, with the former reproaching the later for the conversions, and seeking to subvert the new converts to backslide into paganism. In the decades following the Liberation, this schism grew more and more acute, and even resulted in some acts of violence, such as the Martyrdom of some twentyone missionaries and native Goan Christians at Cuncolim. The recussants were entirely high caste men who were used to a life of parasitism sanctioned under the garb of Hindu scriptural authority, and who did not take kindly to the majority of Goans abandoning the Hindu religion for Christianity. Finally, the situation became explosive and the missionaries began to storm the King of Portugal demanding the expulsion of the recalcitrant and mischief-making Hindu remnant, and the suppression of their temples, centres of religious and political subversion. Alarmed, the Hindu remnant also sent a delegation to the King asking that these appeals be disregarded. After hearing delegations representing the missionaries, the Portuguese government of Goa and the Hindu remnant, the King ordered the remnant to either convert or to evacuate Goa within a set period of time.

Following the order, some of the recussants followed a scheme tht seems endemic to Hindu India: one of the family would convert and remain, taking over the family's immoveable assets, while the others emigrated. The bulk of the recussants emigrated, most of them into the districts surrounding the Portuguese territories, while others emigrated further into the Kingdom of Bednore and into the Malabar Coast. Everywhere that these refugees, most of them being Brahmin Hindu priests, went, they poisoned the ears of kings and social leaders against the Portuguese, spreading calumnies, slanders and misrepresentations, and attempting to set them against the Portuguese. In Bednore, the king gave them forest lands to settle, and seeing them clear the lands and cultivate them successfully, he sought that they should procure more Goans to settle in his kingdom and open even more lands for cultivation, even despite they being Christians. The Portuguese did not object to this emigration and in fact, even encouraged them, signing a treaty with Bednore by which Portugal had access and jurisdiction over these Christians. These Christian emigrants became the nucleus of the Christian Concannim people of the Mangalore region.

Hindu propagandists have pretended that Goans were forcibly converted, and that large numbers or a significant portion of the population was forced to flee Goa. Both claims are false. When a close relative of mine, one who has lived for long among the Hindus and who has unquestioningly swallowed their lies repeated this pretension of forced conversions, I challenged him, and any other Goan, Christian or Hindu, for proof. I pointed out that if there had been forced conversions, Goan families would have oral traditions of such forced conversions. There are no such oral traditions, as I have pointed out to this relative, in my family, and excepting a small minority of Goan Christians, especially from Cuncolim, such as the traitors Jose Martins and Mario Cabral e Sa, no Goan families have any such oral traditions. On the contrary, Goan families have oral traditions of peaceful and voluntary conversions! Till date no one has taken up my challenge.

Again, the pretension about a large efflux of population is false. There was, as a matter of fact, an influx of population, with Hindus moving into Portuguese territory from Bijapur territory. Again, that the expellees were a insignificant minority of the then Goan population is proven by the Portuguese authorities permitting further emigrations to Bednore, which they would not at all have permitted, if there had been a previous significant efflux. The reason for this is that every government depends on revenue, and a massive emigration would have rendered fields untended and reduced Goa's tax base. It was precisely in order to enlargen his own tax base that the then King of Bednore sought to persuade Goan farmers to immigrate and colonize his forest lands!

Portuguese power suffered its first shocks when the Avis dynasty ended with the loss of King Sebastian in the Battle of Alcacer Quibir in 1578 against the Moors of Africa, while his uncle King Cardinal Henry was celibate and had no successors. In 1580, Philip II of Spain, claiming the rights to the vacant throne of Portugal on basis of being the grandson on his mother's side, of King Emmanuel I of Portugal, invaded and seized Portugal. A further setback occurred when the Low Countries, subject to the Kings of Spain, apostatized to Protestantism and therefore rebelled, leading to a long and vicious war. The Calvinist Dutch sailed out around the world in the wake of the Spanish and Portuguese and perpetrated terrorism against their stations, instigating, at the same time, native monarchs to expel them and to seize their lands. To save Portuguese overseas possessions, the Portuguese rebelled and, with the help of Protestant England, secured its independence from Spain in 1640 under King John IV of the Bragança dynasty. The newly re-established Bragança Portugal was however, not of the same caliber as the Avis Portugal and relied more on England than itself to survive.

Under the fifth king of the Bragança dynasty, Joseph I, Sebastian de Melo, later Marquis of Pombal, a Freemason and a disciple of the English was elevated into power, where he sought to achieve the same ends as Henry VIII of England and his successors. Pombal enfranchised Goans but the political benefits he gave Goa are far outweighted by the negative effects he had on Goa. He suppressed the Jesuit order, and then all religious orders in Portugal, thereby destroying the nascent universities in Goa, and thereby setting back Goan intellectual development by centuries. He abolished the old law forbidding the pagans from settling in the Old Conquests of Goa, and forcibly resettled pagans from the predominantly Hindu New Conquests into the Old Conquests. It is these Pombaline pagan colonists in Goa who have been the most tenacious traitors and saboteurs of Goan national identity, and who orchestrated the Indian Union's Rape of Goa. Pombal also abolished the Holy Inquisition which had kept the Goans from backsliding into paganism or semi-paganism, as occurred among the Mangaloreans.

The Portuguese called the native pagans of the East Indies, whom the Arabs, from the Persians, knew as Hindus, as Gentios, or Gentiles. The English, when they first arrived in the East, took up the Portuguese names and called these pagans Gentoos, before finally reverting to the Perso-Arabic Hindoo or Hindu.

Goa's population has been predominantly Christian since the time the majority of the Goans of the then Portuguese territories, what later came to be known as the Velha Conquistas or Old Conquests — the countries of Ilhas da Goa, Bardez and Salsette, had converted. By the time the later seven countries were added, the evangelical zeal of the Portuguese had been spent, and that of the Goans frustrated by Pombal's vandalization of the Church. Therefore, these seven countries retained their pagan majorities. Taken as a whole, however, the Old Conquests supply more population than the New Conquest countries, and therefore, Goa continued to remain a Christian majority land, as demonstrated in my page Goan Demographics.

The pagans are proud and racist, looking upon all foreigners as unclean barbarians (Mlechhas), even if necessity compelled them sometimes to rely upon these Mlechhas to rescue them from their enemies. They therefore cannot digest the truth that the Goans voluntarily and freely converted to Christianity, and so they invent and spread lies and slanders that Goans were forcibly converted, and that there was a large exodus of those who would not convert.

They spread lies that Goans were forced to convert, but their lies are contradictory and fantastic. Some allege that the converts were made by bread being cast into the wells and water sources, so that those who drank this water lost their caste standings and were forced to convert, since they could no longer remain Gentoo. Ironically, today, it is the pagans who eat more bread, both in Goa and in India, than the Christians, but the logical conclusion that they have thereby lost their caste standing is not made! Indeed, among the Marathi, they boast that 'vada-pão', where a ball of mashed potatoes with a batter-coating is deep-fried and sold in bread, is their 'national' snack!

Others allege that the Goans were constrained to conversion by the stratagem of having cows slaughtered and thrown into Goan wells. I ask, if so, where did the Goans drink their water from? Or, where did the Portuguese drink their water from? And are the Goans not the natives of Goa, so that, if they wished, they could have found secret sources of water and avoided 'contamination'? There is not only no historic evidence for such a fantastic claim, it is also an idiotic claim, one that has not been thought out well, but which has been actuated by pure and unadulterated malice. These Gentoo pretensions do not reflect on Portugal but actually betrays the low thinking and tricks to which the pagans are willing to stoop in order to overcome their enemies!