Dr Koenraad Elst discusses the Hindu forgetfulness over the activities of ‘Saint’ Francis Xavier who brought the Inquisition into India to torture and kill Hindus during the Portuguese occupation of Goa but worse many Hindus send their children proudly to educational institutes named after him.
Can you imagine schools and colleges named after Hitler, Himmler or Goebbels, and other prominent Nazis in Israel with Jews sending their kids to them proudly? never and not even in your imagination because the Jewish public would be going on a rampage to tear them all down and rightly so. But Hindus never take action which is why they are seen as weak and spineless inviting more attacks against them.
Also discussed are the activities of another Jesuit missionary Roberto de Nobili who used the art of Inculturation dressed up as Hindu Swami to fool Hindus into Christianity.Dr Elst also mentions the Catholic Church’s continuous refusal to apologize to hindus over its crime record in India.
The Goa Inquisition
Perhaps the most barbaric and most horrendous Human rights violations ever committed in history.
The Followers of the Prince of Peace and Love, as they called Jesus Christ, got busy with conversion of the Hindus, because they had been commanded by Jesus: Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Mt.xxvii:19). Therefore, they set up in Goa (A.D. 1560) the Inquisition to teach the Hindus the tenets of their religion which, they claimed, like the Muslims, was the only true religion in the world!. They called it the Holy Office; the Hindus who suffered at its hands called it the Bloody Inquisition. The followers of Jesus Christ made free and forcible use of the faggot, the thumbscrew, the whip, the stake and the scaffold to teach the Hindus what the true religion.
(source: The Hindu – By Krishna Vallabh Paliwal and Brahm Datt Bharti p.10).
For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity – Watch Constantine’s Sword movie – By Oren Jacoby. Refer to Documentaries – The Holy Inquisition – History Channel and Secret Files of the Inquisition – PBS. Watch video – Church’s Inquisition -Torturing Those Who Disagreed (1 of 6). Refer to Index of Forbidden Booksand Mexican Inquisition
Refer to ‘Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel’ and An account of the Inquisition at Goa, in India – By Gabriel Dellon, Archibald Bower and NaMo & The Truth About US Visa – Mediacrooks.com
Here are some observations of Babasaheb Ambedkar on the ruthless exploits of the Portuguese missionaries in Goa in the 16th century:
“The entry of the Catholic Church in the field of spread of Christianity in India began in the year 1541 with the arrival of Francis Xavier. He was the first missionary of the new society of Jesus formed to support the authority of the Pope. The Syrian Christians shrank with dismay from the defiling touch of the Roman Catholics of Portugal and proclaimed themselves Christians and not idolaters. The other is that the Malabar Christians had never been subject to Roman supremacy and never subscribed to the Roman doctrine.”
“The inquisitors of Goa discovered that they were heretics and like a wolf on the fold, down came the delegates of the Pope upon the Syrian Churches. Don Alexis de Menzes was appointed Archbishop of Goa. It was his mission less to make new converts than to reduce old ones to subjection; and he flung himself into (the) work of persecution with an amount of zeal and heroism that must have greatly endeared him to Rome. Moving down to the South, with an imposing military force, he summoned the Syrian Churches to submit themselves to his authority.
“Fraud took the place of violence; money took place of arms. He bribed those whom he could not bully, and appealed to the imaginations of men when he could not work upon their fears. The persecutions of Menzes were very grievous for he separated priests from their wives; excommunicated on trifling grounds, members of the Churches; and destroyed old Syriac records which contained proofs of the early purity of faith.”
(source: Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Writing and Speeches, Volume 5, pg 435-37). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression – By Sita Ram Goel and Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
Refer to Goa’s rich Hindu past can’t be brushed away – By Anirban Ganguly
One Jacinto Frere Andrade in his Life of Dom Joao Casho (1664) cites the decree of the king of Portugal, Joāo III who ruled from 1521-1557, to his Viceroy Joao de Castro, commanding him to discover idols and to demolish and break them up in pieces where they are found, proclaiming severe punishments against anyone who shall dare to work, cast, make in sculpture, engrave, paint or bring to a light any figure of an idol in metal, brass, wood, plaster or any other matter… and against who publicly or privately celebrate any of their sports, keep by them any heathenish frankincense or assist and hide the Brahmins, the sworn enemies of the Christian profession”. Joāo III directed de Castro to punish them severely “without admitting any appeal or dispensation in the least”.
Reputed historian of Goa and a Goan Christian himself Dr Teotonio R de Souza, founder of the Goa-based Xavier Centre of Historical Research in his The Portuguese in Asia and Their Church Patronage, (1988) explicitly cites how Hindu temples were destroyed and idols annihilated. By 1540, says de Souza, all Hindu idols and temples were destroyed in Goa and building materials were in most cases utilised to erect new Christian churches and chapels”.
It did not stop at that, de Souza continues as saying, “Various viceregal and church council decrees banished the Hindu priests from the Portuguese territories” and the “public practice of Hindu rites, including marriage rites, was banned”. Temple properties were confiscated and de Souza says that the Portuguese Government of the day transferred to the church and religious orders the properties and other sources of revenues that had belonged to the Hindu temples that had been demolished”. Entire villages were taken over for being considered rebellious and handed over with all their revenues to the Jesuits’ for monitoring. De Souza also describes a “particularly grave abuse in Goa in the form of ‘mass baptism’, Hindus would be seized and their lips smeared with a ‘piece of beef’ forcing them to convert.
Uruguay-based Alfredo de Mello, a Goan born historian, in his Memoirs of Goa (2003) writes how in a span of 252 years, the inquisition held sway in Goa “with a power that Stalin and other tyrants would have liked to hold.” Referring to the dreaded Goan Inquisition de Mello calls it “the worst of the existing inquisitions in the Catholic orb of the five parts of the world”. De Mello also cites from the memoirs of Judges Magalhāes and Louisada (1859), who described what they witnessed, “…The inquisition, this tribunal of fire, thrown on the surface of the globe for the scourge of humanity, this horrible institution which will eternally cover with shame its authors, fixed its brutal domicile in the fertile plains of the Hindustan. On seeing the monster everyone fled and disappeared, Mughals, Arabs, Persians, Armenians and Jews. The Indians, i.e., Hindus even more tolerant and pacific, were astounded to see the God of Christianism more cruel than that of Mohammed, [and] deserted the territory of the Portuguese …In this fashion, the fields and cities became deserted as are today Diu and Goa”.
A K Priolkar, leading historian of the Goan inquisition in his The Terrible Tribunal for the East: The Goan Inquisition (1961) cites from primary sources a 41 point-plan of 1545 sent to the king of Portugal, found in the Archivo Nacional of Torre de Tombo, the Portuguese National Archives, for the suppression and conversion of the natives in Goa. The third point of the plan asks the king not to tolerate or allow idolatry which is ‘so great an offence against God’ and says that an ‘order should be promulgated in Goa to the effect that in the whole island there should not be any temple public or secret, contravention whereof should entail grave penalties…no Hindu festival should be publicly celebrated in the whole island; that Brahmin preachers from the mainland should not gather in the house of the Hindus; and that persons who are in charge of St. Paul’s should have the power to search the houses of the Brahmins and other Hindus, in case there exists a presumption or suspicion of the existence of idols there”.
The truth is that Hindus had historically existed and thrived in the entire region of Goa, the truth is that they were gradually exterminated or exiled through a genocidal process known as the Inquisition and the truth is that for such a past treatment, the Hindus never sought to retaliate or seek redressal. The truth is also that in today’s Goa such past historical wrongs have not coloured the Hindus stand on the need for peaceful co-existence with the Christians.
(source: Goa’s rich Hindu past can’t be brushed away – By Anirban Ganguly). Refer to World Conquering Creeds – By Dr. Koenraad Elst – chapter on Glimpses XVI
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The Inquisition made its way to India under the Portuguese Jesuit, St. Francis Xavier in 1545. The first demand for the establishment of the Inquisition in Goa was made by St. Francis Xavier. In a letter addressed from Amboina (Moluccas) to D. Joao III, King of Portugal, on May 16, 1545, he wrote:
“The second necessity for the Christians is that your majesty establish the Holy Inquisition, because there are many who live according to the Jewish law, and according to the Mohammedan sect, without fear of God or shame of the world. And since there are many who are spread all over the fortresses, there is the need of the Holy Inquisition, and of many preachers. Your majesty should provide such necessary things for your loyal and faithful subjects in India.”
The eminent Jesuit historian, Fr. Francisco de Souza, describes in the following passage an incident which served as the immediate cause for the introduction of the Inquisition in Goa:
“Whilst in the island of Goa, heated efforts were made to destroy Hinduism, father Provincial Gonslavo da Silveira and bishop Belchior Carneiro were moving about in Cochin persecuting the insidious Judaism. These priests came to know how in that city were living some descendants of the Israelite people, rich and possessing much, but infected with Judaism…”
Francois Pyrad, a French traveler, was in Goa during the period of July 1608 to January 1610. In his account of his travels he gives the following information of the Inquisition in Goa:
“The Inquisition consists of two fathers, who are held in great dignity and respect; but the one is much greater man than the other and is called Inquisitor Major. Their procedure is much more severe than in Portugal; they often burn Jews, whom the Portuguese call Christianos noeuous, that is to say, ‘New Christians.’
It came into existence in 1560. The Jesuit historian Father Francisco de Souza tells us that the goal of the Inquisition in India was to destroy Hinduism and also persecute Indian Jews who had lived peacefully with the Hindus for centuries. Francois Pyrad, a Frenchman who lived in Goa from 1608-1610, tells us that the number of victims persecuted was very large. We have eyewitness accounts telling us that it was far worse than in Europe. J C Barreto Miranda, a Goanese historian, in his book Quadros Historicas de Goa p.145, wrote of the Inquisitors sent by the Pope:
“The cruelties which in the name of the religion of peace and love this tribunal practiced in Europe, were carried to even greater excesses in India, where the Inquisitors, surrounded by luxuries which could stand comparison with the regal magnificence of the great potentates of Asia, saw with pride the Archbishop as well as the viceroy submitted to their power. Every word of theirs was a sentence of death and at their slightest nod were removed to terror the vast populations spread over the Asiatic regions, whose lives fluctuated in their hands, and who, on the most frivolous pretext could be clapped for all time in the deepest dungeon or strangled or offered as food for the flames of the pyre.”
Campo Sancto Lazaro in Goa, where condemned prisoners were burnt.
For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity – Watch Constantine’s Sword movie – By Oren Jacoby. Refer to Documentaries – The Holy Inquisition – History Channeland Secret Files of the Inquisition – PBS. Watch video – Church’s Inquisition -Torturing Those Who Disagreed (1 of 6). Refer to Index of Forbidden Booksand Mexican Inquisition
Refer to ‘Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel’ and An account of the Inquisition at Goa, in India – By Gabriel Dellon, Archibald Bower
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A vivid idea of the feelings of deep-rooted terror with which the Holy Office in Goa was viewed by the common people is provided by the following story recounted by F Nery Xavier in Instruccas do Marquez du Alorna as seu successor p. 38:
“The terrible acts of the Inquisition during the early period of its existence had caused terror to be so deeply rooted in the memories of the people that none dared to name the place where it was housed as the house of the Inquisition, but gave it the mysterious appellation “Orlem gor” (The Big House).”
Fr. James Brodrick, well known biographer of St. Xavier and himself a Jesuit wrote in his book, Saint Francis Xavier p. 201 footnote, about the limitations of the understanding and outlook of St. Xavier:
“St. Francis Xavier’s knowledge of Hinduism, was, if possible, even less adequate than his few notions of Mohammedanism. Though the Portuguese had been in India for over forty years, none of them appears to have made the slightest attempt to understand the venerable civilization, so much more ancient than their own, on which they had violently intruded.”
Francis Xavier hostility towards the heathen (Brahmin) priesthood:
“These are the most perverse people in the world….they never tell the truth, but think of nothing but how to tell subtle lies and to deceive the simple and ignorant people, telling them that the idols demand certain offerings, and these are simply the things that the Brahmans themselves invent, and of which they stand in need in order to maintain their wives and children and houses…They threaten the people that, if they do not bring the offerings, the gods will kill them, or cause them to fall sick, or send demons to their houses, and through the fear that the idols will do them harm, the poor simple people do exactly as the Brahmans tell them…If there were no Brahmans in the area, all the Hindus would accept conversion to our faith.”
(source: The Heathen in His Blindness – by S. N. Balagangadhara Brill Academic Publishers ISBN 9004099433 p.120-121).
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth. Refer to World Conquering Creeds – By Dr. Koenraad Elst – chapter on Glimpses XVI
Alan Machado-Prabhu records how the Portuguese conquered Goa and ruled by terror:
In its two and a half centuries of existence at Goa, the Inquisition burned at the stake 57 alive and 64 in effigy. Others sentenced to various cruel punishments totaled 4,046. The people who were converted but still continued secretly to perform Hindu rituals were treated even more harshly… The manner in which the Church enriched itself was just scandalous. Half the property of a person found in possession of idols went to the Church…The Church acquired urban and rural properties on an impressive scale. The open performances of Hindu ceremonies were replaced by great public processions on Christian feast days. One of the worst criminals was Francis Xavier, later to be made into a saint.”
The Anglican historian Dr. Fryer wrote:
“In the principal market was raised an engine of great height, at top like a Gibbet, with a pulley …which unhinges a man’s joints, a cruel torture.”
(source: The Ethics of Proselytizing – By Rajiv Malhotra). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression – By Sita Ram Goel
Goa gained a reputation as an important distribution point for Arab horses. Fine Arab steeds were very much in demand in India, and the Portuguese importers found this trade very lucrative. But another profitable trade had developed in another form of livestock – human beings! S.C. Pothan tells us that:
“The Portuguese also inaugurated slave trade by seizing able-bodied men and women in the neighbouring Indian territory and selling them. They opened a slave market in Goa.” (“The Syrian Christians of Kerala”, 1963, p.31).
Apparently this market not only served the export trade but was in much demand by the local Portuguese whose lifestyle was extravagant and profligate. But we are also told that there was a lively trade in Kaffirs, a derogatory term for the natives of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. The girls who, we are told, were very much in demand, were paraded for sale in the nude. (B. Penrose – “Goa, Queen of the East” p.67).
In 1592 the viceroy of Goa “proclaimed that slaves of infidels who converted themselves to Christianity would be freed.” (Cunha Rivara – cited by Priolkar, “The Goa Inquisition” p.141).
“Those who have escaped death by their extorted confessions, are strictly enjoined, when they leave the prisons of the Holy Office, to declare that they have been treated with great tenderness and clemency, in as much as their lives, which they justly merited to lose, should be spared. Should anyone, who has acknowledged that he is guilty, attempt to vindicate himself on his release, he would be immediately denounced and arrested, and burnt at the next Act of Faith, without hope of pardon.” (Dellon, quoted by Priolkar “The Goa Inquisition”, Sec.2, p.34).
Dr Dellon described the Archbishop’s prison as:
“The most filthy, dismal, and hideous of all I ever witnessed, and I doubt if there can be any other in the world more repulsive.”
Another particularly odious Edict of Faith was the obligation of Goa’s citizens to spy on behalf of the Inquisition.
[Its] “infamy never reached greater depths, nor was more vile, more black, and more completely determined by mundane interests than at the Tribunal of Goa, by irony called the Holy Office. Here the Inquisitors went to the length of imprisoning in its jails women who resisted their advances, and after having satisfied their bestial instincts there, ordering that they be burnt as heretics.” (“A India Portuguesa, Vol.11, Nova Goa”, 1923, p.263 – cited in “The Goa Inquisition” p.175).
(source: The Inquisitive Christians – By H. H. Meyers). Refer to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple
Anti-Hindu Laws in Goa
In his book Goa Indica: A Critical Portrait of Post Colonial Era:
“The impact of Christianity is there for all to see. “For almost four hundred years since he conquered Goa the Portuguese king acted like half-emperor, half-Pope. Not just the privilege of clerical appointments, the king even appropriated to himself the right to examine all the Papal Bulls, allowing their enforcement in his conquered lands only if he found nothing detrimental to Portugual’s interest in them,” says Arun Sinha quite forcefully.
(source: TribuneIndia.com).
The Hindus living within the Portuguese dominion, were forbidden to observe their ancestral rites and customs, even behind closed doors, and subjected to many other discriminatory laws. The Inquisition took a prominent part in enforcing these measures and the resulting harassment was so great that many of the Hindus also emigrated to neighboring territories.
Various measures were taken by the Portuguese rulers in Goa with the object of converting the natives to Christianity. Firstly, there were those measures to make it difficult for the natives to continue to retain their old religion. The temples and shrines of the Hindus were destroyed and they were forbidden to erect or maintain new ones even outside the Portuguese territories; practice of Hindu rites and ceremonies such as the marriage ceremony, the ceremony of wearing the sacred thread, ceremony performed at the birth of a child, was banned; priests and teachers of Hindus were banished; those who remained were deprived of their means of subsistence and ancestral rights in village communities; they were also subjected to various humiliation, indignities and disabilities; orphan children of the Hindus were snatched away from the families for being baptized; and men and women were compelled to listen to the preaching of Christian doctrine. In 1560, the Viceroy D. Constantino de Braganza, ordered a large number of Brahmins of the island of Goa. The result of such orders was that the Hindus migrated to the neighboring lands en masse. The Hindus of Salsette approached the Viceroy and clamored against this order but their appeals fell on deaf ears. They thereupon returned home “and placing in carriages the idols, whose temples were threatened with ruin, they moved to the other side where there were no Portuguese to persecute them.” The image of Shri Mangesh was probably moved from Cortalim (earlier known as Kushasthali) at this time in 1566. (The temple was dedicated to Lord Shiva). The Jesuit historian Francisco de Souza writes that: “The Church of Cortalim is erected in the same site, where formerly the idol of Mangesh was worshipped.”
Other measures were incentives for convesion to Christianity, such as jobs, altering the laws of inheritance in favor of those who changed their religion.
Use of Torture by Inquisition
Torture was used freely and with all severity by the Inquisition in Goa may be inferred from the following passage in Dr. C Dellon’s in the book, Relation de l’Inquisition de Goa:
“During the month of November and December, I every morning heard the cries of those whom the torture was administered, and which was inflicted so severely, that I have seen many persons of both sexes who have been crippled by it, and amongst others, the first companion allotted to me in my prison.”
Torture was used by the Inquisition as an expedient to obtain a confession where the evidence against the accused was incomplete, defective or conflicting.
Water torture and torture of pulleys
For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity – Watch Constantine’s Sword movie – By Oren Jacoby
For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity – Watch Constantine’s Sword movie – By Oren Jacoby. Refer to Documentaries – The Holy Inquisition – History Channeland Secret Files of the Inquisition – PBS. Watch video – Church’s Inquisition -Torturing Those Who Disagreed (1 of 6). Refer to Index of Forbidden Booksand Mexican Inquisition
Refer to ‘Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel’ and An account of the Inquisition at Goa, in India – By Gabriel Dellon, Archibald Bower
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During the torture the only words to be addressed to the accused were “Tell the truth.” The notary faithfully recorded all that passed, even to the shrieks of the victim, his despairing ejaculations and his piteous appeals for mercy or to be put to death, nor would it be easy to conceive anything more fitted to excite the deepest compassion than these cold-blooded matter of fact reports.
The Manual of Regulations provided that ordinarily the ‘torture of pole’ (pulleys) should be administered but where the physician or surgeon feels that on account of weakness or indisposition the accused could not stand it, ‘the torture of potro; may be given.
The Inquisition at different times and places made use of a variety of other forms of torture also. Referring to the forms of torture used by the Inquisition, E T Whittington, writes as follows:
“As to the torture itself, it combined all that the ferocity of savages and the ingenuity of civilized man had till then invented. Besides the ordinary rack, thumb-screws, and leg crushers or Spanish boots, there were spiked wheels over which the victims were drawn with weights on their feet; boiling oil was poured over their legs, burning sulphur dropped on their bodies, and lighted candles held beneath their armpits.”
Alexandre Herculano, a famous writer of the 19th century, mentioned in his “Fragment about the Inquisition”: “…The terrors inflicted on pregnant women made them abort….Neither the beauty or decorousness of the flower of youth, nor the old age, so worthy of compassion in a woman, exempted the weaker sex from the brutal ferocity of the supposed defenders of the religion….”
“…There were days when seven or eight were submitted to torture. These scenes were reserved for the inquisitors after dinner. It was a post-prandial entertainment. Many a time during those acts, the inquisitors compared notes in the appreciation of the beauty of the human form. While the unlucky damsel twisted in the intolerable pains of torture, or fainted in the intensity of the agony, one inquisitor applauded the angelic touches of her face, another the brightness of her eyes, another, the volluptuous contours of her breast, another the shape of her hands. In this conjuncture, men of blood transformed themselves into real artists !!”
(source: History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in in Portugal 1926 – By Alexandre Herculano).
Scholars are generally agreed that the Inquisition of Goa had earned “a sinister renown as the most pitiless in Christendom.”
The story of the Inquisition in Goa is a dismal record of callousness and cruelty, tyranny and injustice, espionage and blackmail, avarice and corruption, repression of thought and culture and promotion of obscurantism.
(source: The Goa Inquisition – By Anant Kakba Priolkar p. ix – 57). Refer to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple.Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression – By Sita Ram Goel.
Refer to World Conquering Creeds – By Dr. Koenraad Elst – chapter on Glimpses XVI
Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress – By Howard Zinn
Arthur Schopenhauer(1788-1860), German philosopher and writer. He was one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th century. He was the first Western philosopher to have access to translations of philosophical material from India, both Vedic and Buddhist, by which he was profoundly affected. Counted among his disciples are such thinkers as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, as well as Sigmund Freud, who takes a large part of his psychological theory from the writings of Schopenhauer.
He comments on the atrocities inflicted on the Hindus:
“…on the fanaticism and endless persecutions, the religious wars, that sanguinary frenzy of which the ancient had no conception! Think of the crusades, a butchery lasting two hundred years and inexcusable, its war cry ‘It is lasting two hundred years and inexcusable, its war cry ‘It is the will of God,’ Think of the orgies of blood, the inquisitions, the heretical tribunals, the bloody and terrible conquests…in three continents, or….in America, whose inhabitants were for the most part, not looked upon as human! And above all, don’t lets forget India, the cradle of the human race, or at least of that part of it to which we belong, where first.. were most cruelly infuriated against the adherents of the original faith of mankind. The destruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act still bear witness to the monotheistic fury…carried on from Mahmud, the Gahaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aurengzeb, the fratricide, whom the Portuguese…have zealously imitated by destruction of temples and the auto defe of the Inquisition of Goa…”For the sake of truth, I must add that the fanatical enormities perpertrated in the name of religion are only to be put down to the adherents of monotheistic creeds…We hear nothing of the kind in the case of the Hindoos and Buddhists.”
(source: The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer – By T. Bailey Saunders p. 1 – 42). Refer to World Conquering Creeds – By Dr. Koenraad Elst – chapter on Glimpses XVI
Missionary Oath:
Missionaries had to take an oath which enjoined them, “to be loyal to Portugal in all the countries discovered or to be discovered, conquered or to be conquered, by Portugal. And to warn Portugal of any activity which may be contemplated against her”.
The British prescribed a similar oath: “I include in this promise exact obedience to any rules laid down by His Majesty’s representatives, and also an undertaking to refrain from doing, saying or writing anything either publicly or privately, to the prejudice of the British Government in India.”
K. M. Pannikar author of Asia and Western Dominance published in 1953. Panikkar’s study was primarily aimed at providing a survey of Western imperialism in Asia from CE 1498 to 1945. Christian missions came into the picture simply because he found them arrayed always and everywhere alongside Western gunboats, diplomatic pressures, extraterritorial rights and plain gangsterism. Contemporary records consulted by him could not but cut to size the inflated images of Christian heroes such as Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci. They were found to be not much more than minions employed by European kings and princes scheming to carve out empires in the East. Their methods of trying to convert kings and commoners in Asia, said Panikkar, were force or fraud or conspiracy and morally questionable in every instance. Finding that “missionary activities… which became so prominent a feature of European relations with Asia were connected with Western political supremacy in Asia and synchronised with it” He concluded: “It may indeed be said that the most serious, persistent and planned effort of European nations in the nineteenth century was their missionary activities in India and China, where a large-scale attempt was made to effect a mental and spiritual conquest at supplementing the political authority already enjoyed by Europe. Though the results were disappointing in the extreme from the missionary point of new, this assault on the spiritual foundations of Asian countries has had far-reaching consequences in the religious and social reorganization of the people…”
(source: Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report On Christian Missionary Activities – By Sita Ram Goel). Refer to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple
For interesting information about Democracy in Ancient Indian please refer to chapter on Hindu Culture II
The British rule often claim to have given India – Democracy. If so, Why did it take 200 years to give India Democracy?
For more read: Democracy in Ancient India – By Steve Muhlberger
St. Francis Xavier wrote from Cochin on 20 Jan. 1548 to King John III of Portugal, ” You must declare as plainly as possible ……that the only way of escaping your wrath and obtaining your favor is to make as many Christians as possible in the countries over which they rule.’ (source” Macnicol, The Living Religions of India 1934 p. 268. ) Vasco da Gama told the first Indians he met on the Malabar coast that he came to seek “Christians and spices.”
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Eminent Indian Historians? (excerpts)
http://www.indiastar.com/wallia19.html
Included as principals in this group of Marxist historians are Romila Thapar, Satish Chandra, K.M. Shrimali, K. M. Pannikar, R. S. Sharma, D. N. Jha, Gyanendra Pandey, and Irfan Habib. This group has, Shourie charges, “worked a diabolic inversion: the inclusive religion [Hinduism], the pluralist spiritual search of our people and land, they have projected as intolerant, narrow-minded, obscurantist; and the exclusivist, totalitarian, revelatory religions and ideologies — Islam, Christianity, Marxism-Leninism– they have made out to be the epitome of tolerance, open-mindedness, democracy, secularism!” By promoting each other’s publications and puffing up their reputations, this group has long been “determining what is politically correct.” (note: Romila Thapar is totally ignorant of Sanskrit, though it has not stopped her from posing as an authority on Vedic India! In fact, a recent newspaper column by a retired bureaucrat — which reads like a paid advertisement — goes on to call her ‘India’s most eminent historian’!)
For several decades, these “eminent historians” have striven hard to continually denigrate Hindu cultural history, the oldest surviving civilization in the world, by “blackening the Hindu period and whitewashing the Islamic period.” Indeed, Arun Shourie should have challenged them to refute American historian Will Durant’s assertion in his The Story of Civilization: “The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within.” Or that of French historian Alain Danielou’s statement, in his Histoire de l’ Inde : “From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoilations, destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of ‘a holy war’ of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races.”
The largely Marxist membership of the Indian Council of Historical Research appointed by the socialistic Congress party, which was in power for nearly all of the fifty years since independence, was reconstituted in July 1998 by the Bharatiya Janata Party, currently ruling at the center. Unfortunately, it will take a long time for undoing the harm done by the Marxist historians to the Indian psyche: “they have used these institutions to sow in the minds of our people [the Hindus] the seeds of self-hatred.”
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According to columnist, Meenakshi Jain: “Leftist historians in India have deliberately omitted in the entire discussion on the Delhi Sultanate, the words dhimmi and (hated) jaziya tax are deliberately omitted, though they are crucial to understanding the dynamics of that epoch. Overlooking all forms of Hindu persecution, the book states that Brahmins and ulema were equally permitted to propagate their respective faiths. References to the infamous ‘pilgrimage tax’ are conveniently dropped. The Mughal period, too, is selectively purged of its unpleasant facets. Akbar’s early measures like the re-naming of Hindu holy cities, the imposition of the jaziya and forced conversions are ignored, as also the fact that as much as seventy percent of his nobility consisted of foreign Muslims. The limited Hindu participation in the upper echelons of the nobility (besides the Rajputs, just four other Hindus) is not alluded to.”
(source: Selective Memory – By Meenakshi Jain – Hindustan Times, May 8, 2001).
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
The Goa Inquisition
Perhaps the most barbaric and most horrendous Human rights violations ever committed in history.
The Followers of the Prince of Peace and Love, as they called Jesus Christ, got busy with conversion of the Hindus, because they had been commanded by Jesus: Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Mt.xxvii:19). Therefore, they set up in Goa (A.D. 1560) the Inquisition to teach the Hindus the tenets of their religion which, they claimed, like the Muslims, was the only true religion in the world!. They called it the Holy Office; the Hindus who suffered at its hands called it the Bloody Inquisition. The followers of Jesus Christ made free and forcible use of the faggot, the thumbscrew, the whip, the stake and the scaffold to teach the Hindus what the true religion.
(source: The Hindu – By Krishna Vallabh Paliwal and Brahm Datt Bharti p.10).
For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity – Watch Constantine’s Sword movie – By Oren Jacoby. Refer to Documentaries – The Holy Inquisition – History Channel and Secret Files of the Inquisition – PBS. Watch video – Church’s Inquisition -Torturing Those Who Disagreed (1 of 6). Refer to Index of Forbidden Booksand Mexican Inquisition
Refer to ‘Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel’ and An account of the Inquisition at Goa, in India – By Gabriel Dellon, Archibald Bower and NaMo & The Truth About US Visa – Mediacrooks.com
Here are some observations of Babasaheb Ambedkar on the ruthless exploits of the Portuguese missionaries in Goa in the 16th century:
“The entry of the Catholic Church in the field of spread of Christianity in India began in the year 1541 with the arrival of Francis Xavier. He was the first missionary of the new society of Jesus formed to support the authority of the Pope. The Syrian Christians shrank with dismay from the defiling touch of the Roman Catholics of Portugal and proclaimed themselves Christians and not idolaters. The other is that the Malabar Christians had never been subject to Roman supremacy and never subscribed to the Roman doctrine.”
“The inquisitors of Goa discovered that they were heretics and like a wolf on the fold, down came the delegates of the Pope upon the Syrian Churches. Don Alexis de Menzes was appointed Archbishop of Goa. It was his mission less to make new converts than to reduce old ones to subjection; and he flung himself into (the) work of persecution with an amount of zeal and heroism that must have greatly endeared him to Rome. Moving down to the South, with an imposing military force, he summoned the Syrian Churches to submit themselves to his authority.
“Fraud took the place of violence; money took place of arms. He bribed those whom he could not bully, and appealed to the imaginations of men when he could not work upon their fears. The persecutions of Menzes were very grievous for he separated priests from their wives; excommunicated on trifling grounds, members of the Churches; and destroyed old Syriac records which contained proofs of the early purity of faith.”
(source: Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Writing and Speeches, Volume 5, pg 435-37). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression – By Sita Ram Goel and Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
Refer to Goa’s rich Hindu past can’t be brushed away – By Anirban Ganguly
One Jacinto Frere Andrade in his Life of Dom Joao Casho (1664) cites the decree of the king of Portugal, Joāo III who ruled from 1521-1557, to his Viceroy Joao de Castro, commanding him to discover idols and to demolish and break them up in pieces where they are found, proclaiming severe punishments against anyone who shall dare to work, cast, make in sculpture, engrave, paint or bring to a light any figure of an idol in metal, brass, wood, plaster or any other matter… and against who publicly or privately celebrate any of their sports, keep by them any heathenish frankincense or assist and hide the Brahmins, the sworn enemies of the Christian profession”. Joāo III directed de Castro to punish them severely “without admitting any appeal or dispensation in the least”.
Reputed historian of Goa and a Goan Christian himself Dr Teotonio R de Souza, founder of the Goa-based Xavier Centre of Historical Research in his The Portuguese in Asia and Their Church Patronage, (1988) explicitly cites how Hindu temples were destroyed and idols annihilated. By 1540, says de Souza, all Hindu idols and temples were destroyed in Goa and building materials were in most cases utilised to erect new Christian churches and chapels”.
It did not stop at that, de Souza continues as saying, “Various viceregal and church council decrees banished the Hindu priests from the Portuguese territories” and the “public practice of Hindu rites, including marriage rites, was banned”. Temple properties were confiscated and de Souza says that the Portuguese Government of the day transferred to the church and religious orders the properties and other sources of revenues that had belonged to the Hindu temples that had been demolished”. Entire villages were taken over for being considered rebellious and handed over with all their revenues to the Jesuits’ for monitoring. De Souza also describes a “particularly grave abuse in Goa in the form of ‘mass baptism’, Hindus would be seized and their lips smeared with a ‘piece of beef’ forcing them to convert.
Uruguay-based Alfredo de Mello, a Goan born historian, in his Memoirs of Goa (2003) writes how in a span of 252 years, the inquisition held sway in Goa “with a power that Stalin and other tyrants would have liked to hold.” Referring to the dreaded Goan Inquisition de Mello calls it “the worst of the existing inquisitions in the Catholic orb of the five parts of the world”. De Mello also cites from the memoirs of Judges Magalhāes and Louisada (1859), who described what they witnessed, “…The inquisition, this tribunal of fire, thrown on the surface of the globe for the scourge of humanity, this horrible institution which will eternally cover with shame its authors, fixed its brutal domicile in the fertile plains of the Hindustan. On seeing the monster everyone fled and disappeared, Mughals, Arabs, Persians, Armenians and Jews. The Indians, i.e., Hindus even more tolerant and pacific, were astounded to see the God of Christianism more cruel than that of Mohammed, [and] deserted the territory of the Portuguese …In this fashion, the fields and cities became deserted as are today Diu and Goa”.
A K Priolkar, leading historian of the Goan inquisition in his The Terrible Tribunal for the East: The Goan Inquisition (1961) cites from primary sources a 41 point-plan of 1545 sent to the king of Portugal, found in the Archivo Nacional of Torre de Tombo, the Portuguese National Archives, for the suppression and conversion of the natives in Goa. The third point of the plan asks the king not to tolerate or allow idolatry which is ‘so great an offence against God’ and says that an ‘order should be promulgated in Goa to the effect that in the whole island there should not be any temple public or secret, contravention whereof should entail grave penalties…no Hindu festival should be publicly celebrated in the whole island; that Brahmin preachers from the mainland should not gather in the house of the Hindus; and that persons who are in charge of St. Paul’s should have the power to search the houses of the Brahmins and other Hindus, in case there exists a presumption or suspicion of the existence of idols there”.
The truth is that Hindus had historically existed and thrived in the entire region of Goa, the truth is that they were gradually exterminated or exiled through a genocidal process known as the Inquisition and the truth is that for such a past treatment, the Hindus never sought to retaliate or seek redressal. The truth is also that in today’s Goa such past historical wrongs have not coloured the Hindus stand on the need for peaceful co-existence with the Christians.
(source: Goa’s rich Hindu past can’t be brushed away – By Anirban Ganguly). Refer to World Conquering Creeds – By Dr. Koenraad Elst – chapter on Glimpses XVI
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The Inquisition made its way to India under the Portuguese Jesuit, St. Francis Xavier in 1545. The first demand for the establishment of the Inquisition in Goa was made by St. Francis Xavier. In a letter addressed from Amboina (Moluccas) to D. Joao III, King of Portugal, on May 16, 1545, he wrote:
“The second necessity for the Christians is that your majesty establish the Holy Inquisition, because there are many who live according to the Jewish law, and according to the Mohammedan sect, without fear of God or shame of the world. And since there are many who are spread all over the fortresses, there is the need of the Holy Inquisition, and of many preachers. Your majesty should provide such necessary things for your loyal and faithful subjects in India.”
The eminent Jesuit historian, Fr. Francisco de Souza, describes in the following passage an incident which served as the immediate cause for the introduction of the Inquisition in Goa:
“Whilst in the island of Goa, heated efforts were made to destroy Hinduism, father Provincial Gonslavo da Silveira and bishop Belchior Carneiro were moving about in Cochin persecuting the insidious Judaism. These priests came to know how in that city were living some descendants of the Israelite people, rich and possessing much, but infected with Judaism…”
Francois Pyrad, a French traveler, was in Goa during the period of July 1608 to January 1610. In his account of his travels he gives the following information of the Inquisition in Goa:
“The Inquisition consists of two fathers, who are held in great dignity and respect; but the one is much greater man than the other and is called Inquisitor Major. Their procedure is much more severe than in Portugal; they often burn Jews, whom the Portuguese call Christianos noeuous, that is to say, ‘New Christians.’
It came into existence in 1560. The Jesuit historian Father Francisco de Souza tells us that the goal of the Inquisition in India was to destroy Hinduism and also persecute Indian Jews who had lived peacefully with the Hindus for centuries. Francois Pyrad, a Frenchman who lived in Goa from 1608-1610, tells us that the number of victims persecuted was very large. We have eyewitness accounts telling us that it was far worse than in Europe. J C Barreto Miranda, a Goanese historian, in his book Quadros Historicas de Goa p.145, wrote of the Inquisitors sent by the Pope:
“The cruelties which in the name of the religion of peace and love this tribunal practiced in Europe, were carried to even greater excesses in India, where the Inquisitors, surrounded by luxuries which could stand comparison with the regal magnificence of the great potentates of Asia, saw with pride the Archbishop as well as the viceroy submitted to their power. Every word of theirs was a sentence of death and at their slightest nod were removed to terror the vast populations spread over the Asiatic regions, whose lives fluctuated in their hands, and who, on the most frivolous pretext could be clapped for all time in the deepest dungeon or strangled or offered as food for the flames of the pyre.”
Campo Sancto Lazaro in Goa, where condemned prisoners were burnt.
For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity – Watch Constantine’s Sword movie – By Oren Jacoby. Refer to Documentaries – The Holy Inquisition – History Channeland Secret Files of the Inquisition – PBS. Watch video – Church’s Inquisition -Torturing Those Who Disagreed (1 of 6). Refer to Index of Forbidden Booksand Mexican Inquisition
Refer to ‘Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel’ and An account of the Inquisition at Goa, in India – By Gabriel Dellon, Archibald Bower
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A vivid idea of the feelings of deep-rooted terror with which the Holy Office in Goa was viewed by the common people is provided by the following story recounted by F Nery Xavier in Instruccas do Marquez du Alorna as seu successor p. 38:
“The terrible acts of the Inquisition during the early period of its existence had caused terror to be so deeply rooted in the memories of the people that none dared to name the place where it was housed as the house of the Inquisition, but gave it the mysterious appellation “Orlem gor” (The Big House).”
Fr. James Brodrick, well known biographer of St. Xavier and himself a Jesuit wrote in his book, Saint Francis Xavier p. 201 footnote, about the limitations of the understanding and outlook of St. Xavier:
“St. Francis Xavier’s knowledge of Hinduism, was, if possible, even less adequate than his few notions of Mohammedanism. Though the Portuguese had been in India for over forty years, none of them appears to have made the slightest attempt to understand the venerable civilization, so much more ancient than their own, on which they had violently intruded.”
Francis Xavier hostility towards the heathen (Brahmin) priesthood:
“These are the most perverse people in the world….they never tell the truth, but think of nothing but how to tell subtle lies and to deceive the simple and ignorant people, telling them that the idols demand certain offerings, and these are simply the things that the Brahmans themselves invent, and of which they stand in need in order to maintain their wives and children and houses…They threaten the people that, if they do not bring the offerings, the gods will kill them, or cause them to fall sick, or send demons to their houses, and through the fear that the idols will do them harm, the poor simple people do exactly as the Brahmans tell them…If there were no Brahmans in the area, all the Hindus would accept conversion to our faith.”
(source: The Heathen in His Blindness – by S. N. Balagangadhara Brill Academic Publishers ISBN 9004099433 p.120-121).
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth. Refer to World Conquering Creeds – By Dr. Koenraad Elst – chapter on Glimpses XVI
Alan Machado-Prabhu records how the Portuguese conquered Goa and ruled by terror:
In its two and a half centuries of existence at Goa, the Inquisition burned at the stake 57 alive and 64 in effigy. Others sentenced to various cruel punishments totaled 4,046. The people who were converted but still continued secretly to perform Hindu rituals were treated even more harshly… The manner in which the Church enriched itself was just scandalous. Half the property of a person found in possession of idols went to the Church…The Church acquired urban and rural properties on an impressive scale. The open performances of Hindu ceremonies were replaced by great public processions on Christian feast days. One of the worst criminals was Francis Xavier, later to be made into a saint.”
The Anglican historian Dr. Fryer wrote:
“In the principal market was raised an engine of great height, at top like a Gibbet, with a pulley …which unhinges a man’s joints, a cruel torture.”
(source: The Ethics of Proselytizing – By Rajiv Malhotra). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression – By Sita Ram Goel
Goa gained a reputation as an important distribution point for Arab horses. Fine Arab steeds were very much in demand in India, and the Portuguese importers found this trade very lucrative. But another profitable trade had developed in another form of livestock – human beings! S.C. Pothan tells us that:
“The Portuguese also inaugurated slave trade by seizing able-bodied men and women in the neighbouring Indian territory and selling them. They opened a slave market in Goa.” (“The Syrian Christians of Kerala”, 1963, p.31).
Apparently this market not only served the export trade but was in much demand by the local Portuguese whose lifestyle was extravagant and profligate. But we are also told that there was a lively trade in Kaffirs, a derogatory term for the natives of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. The girls who, we are told, were very much in demand, were paraded for sale in the nude. (B. Penrose – “Goa, Queen of the East” p.67).
In 1592 the viceroy of Goa “proclaimed that slaves of infidels who converted themselves to Christianity would be freed.” (Cunha Rivara – cited by Priolkar, “The Goa Inquisition” p.141).
“Those who have escaped death by their extorted confessions, are strictly enjoined, when they leave the prisons of the Holy Office, to declare that they have been treated with great tenderness and clemency, in as much as their lives, which they justly merited to lose, should be spared. Should anyone, who has acknowledged that he is guilty, attempt to vindicate himself on his release, he would be immediately denounced and arrested, and burnt at the next Act of Faith, without hope of pardon.” (Dellon, quoted by Priolkar “The Goa Inquisition”, Sec.2, p.34).
Dr Dellon described the Archbishop’s prison as:
“The most filthy, dismal, and hideous of all I ever witnessed, and I doubt if there can be any other in the world more repulsive.”
Another particularly odious Edict of Faith was the obligation of Goa’s citizens to spy on behalf of the Inquisition.
[Its] “infamy never reached greater depths, nor was more vile, more black, and more completely determined by mundane interests than at the Tribunal of Goa, by irony called the Holy Office. Here the Inquisitors went to the length of imprisoning in its jails women who resisted their advances, and after having satisfied their bestial instincts there, ordering that they be burnt as heretics.” (“A India Portuguesa, Vol.11, Nova Goa”, 1923, p.263 – cited in “The Goa Inquisition” p.175).
(source: The Inquisitive Christians – By H. H. Meyers). Refer to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple
Anti-Hindu Laws in Goa
In his book Goa Indica: A Critical Portrait of Post Colonial Era:
“The impact of Christianity is there for all to see. “For almost four hundred years since he conquered Goa the Portuguese king acted like half-emperor, half-Pope. Not just the privilege of clerical appointments, the king even appropriated to himself the right to examine all the Papal Bulls, allowing their enforcement in his conquered lands only if he found nothing detrimental to Portugual’s interest in them,” says Arun Sinha quite forcefully.
(source: TribuneIndia.com).
The Hindus living within the Portuguese dominion, were forbidden to observe their ancestral rites and customs, even behind closed doors, and subjected to many other discriminatory laws. The Inquisition took a prominent part in enforcing these measures and the resulting harassment was so great that many of the Hindus also emigrated to neighboring territories.
Various measures were taken by the Portuguese rulers in Goa with the object of converting the natives to Christianity. Firstly, there were those measures to make it difficult for the natives to continue to retain their old religion. The temples and shrines of the Hindus were destroyed and they were forbidden to erect or maintain new ones even outside the Portuguese territories; practice of Hindu rites and ceremonies such as the marriage ceremony, the ceremony of wearing the sacred thread, ceremony performed at the birth of a child, was banned; priests and teachers of Hindus were banished; those who remained were deprived of their means of subsistence and ancestral rights in village communities; they were also subjected to various humiliation, indignities and disabilities; orphan children of the Hindus were snatched away from the families for being baptized; and men and women were compelled to listen to the preaching of Christian doctrine. In 1560, the Viceroy D. Constantino de Braganza, ordered a large number of Brahmins of the island of Goa. The result of such orders was that the Hindus migrated to the neighboring lands en masse. The Hindus of Salsette approached the Viceroy and clamored against this order but their appeals fell on deaf ears. They thereupon returned home “and placing in carriages the idols, whose temples were threatened with ruin, they moved to the other side where there were no Portuguese to persecute them.” The image of Shri Mangesh was probably moved from Cortalim (earlier known as Kushasthali) at this time in 1566. (The temple was dedicated to Lord Shiva). The Jesuit historian Francisco de Souza writes that: “The Church of Cortalim is erected in the same site, where formerly the idol of Mangesh was worshipped.”
Other measures were incentives for convesion to Christianity, such as jobs, altering the laws of inheritance in favor of those who changed their religion.
Use of Torture by Inquisition
Torture was used freely and with all severity by the Inquisition in Goa may be inferred from the following passage in Dr. C Dellon’s in the book, Relation de l’Inquisition de Goa:
“During the month of November and December, I every morning heard the cries of those whom the torture was administered, and which was inflicted so severely, that I have seen many persons of both sexes who have been crippled by it, and amongst others, the first companion allotted to me in my prison.”
Torture was used by the Inquisition as an expedient to obtain a confession where the evidence against the accused was incomplete, defective or conflicting.
Water torture and torture of pulleys
For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity – Watch Constantine’s Sword movie – By Oren Jacoby
For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity – Watch Constantine’s Sword movie – By Oren Jacoby. Refer to Documentaries – The Holy Inquisition – History Channeland Secret Files of the Inquisition – PBS. Watch video – Church’s Inquisition -Torturing Those Who Disagreed (1 of 6). Refer to Index of Forbidden Booksand Mexican Inquisition
Refer to ‘Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel’ and An account of the Inquisition at Goa, in India – By Gabriel Dellon, Archibald Bower
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During the torture the only words to be addressed to the accused were “Tell the truth.” The notary faithfully recorded all that passed, even to the shrieks of the victim, his despairing ejaculations and his piteous appeals for mercy or to be put to death, nor would it be easy to conceive anything more fitted to excite the deepest compassion than these cold-blooded matter of fact reports.
The Manual of Regulations provided that ordinarily the ‘torture of pole’ (pulleys) should be administered but where the physician or surgeon feels that on account of weakness or indisposition the accused could not stand it, ‘the torture of potro; may be given.
The Inquisition at different times and places made use of a variety of other forms of torture also. Referring to the forms of torture used by the Inquisition, E T Whittington, writes as follows:
“As to the torture itself, it combined all that the ferocity of savages and the ingenuity of civilized man had till then invented. Besides the ordinary rack, thumb-screws, and leg crushers or Spanish boots, there were spiked wheels over which the victims were drawn with weights on their feet; boiling oil was poured over their legs, burning sulphur dropped on their bodies, and lighted candles held beneath their armpits.”
Alexandre Herculano, a famous writer of the 19th century, mentioned in his “Fragment about the Inquisition”: “…The terrors inflicted on pregnant women made them abort….Neither the beauty or decorousness of the flower of youth, nor the old age, so worthy of compassion in a woman, exempted the weaker sex from the brutal ferocity of the supposed defenders of the religion….”
“…There were days when seven or eight were submitted to torture. These scenes were reserved for the inquisitors after dinner. It was a post-prandial entertainment. Many a time during those acts, the inquisitors compared notes in the appreciation of the beauty of the human form. While the unlucky damsel twisted in the intolerable pains of torture, or fainted in the intensity of the agony, one inquisitor applauded the angelic touches of her face, another the brightness of her eyes, another, the volluptuous contours of her breast, another the shape of her hands. In this conjuncture, men of blood transformed themselves into real artists !!”
(source: History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in in Portugal 1926 – By Alexandre Herculano).
Scholars are generally agreed that the Inquisition of Goa had earned “a sinister renown as the most pitiless in Christendom.”
The story of the Inquisition in Goa is a dismal record of callousness and cruelty, tyranny and injustice, espionage and blackmail, avarice and corruption, repression of thought and culture and promotion of obscurantism.
(source: The Goa Inquisition – By Anant Kakba Priolkar p. ix – 57). Refer to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple.Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression – By Sita Ram Goel.
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth. Refer to World Conquering Creeds – By Dr. Koenraad Elst – chapter on Glimpses XVI
Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress – By Howard Zinn
Arthur Schopenhauer(1788-1860), German philosopher and writer. He was one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th century. He was the first Western philosopher to have access to translations of philosophical material from India, both Vedic and Buddhist, by which he was profoundly affected. Counted among his disciples are such thinkers as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, as well as Sigmund Freud, who takes a large part of his psychological theory from the writings of Schopenhauer.
He comments on the atrocities inflicted on the Hindus:
“…on the fanaticism and endless persecutions, the religious wars, that sanguinary frenzy of which the ancient had no conception! Think of the crusades, a butchery lasting two hundred years and inexcusable, its war cry ‘It is lasting two hundred years and inexcusable, its war cry ‘It is the will of God,’ Think of the orgies of blood, the inquisitions, the heretical tribunals, the bloody and terrible conquests…in three continents, or….in America, whose inhabitants were for the most part, not looked upon as human! And above all, don’t lets forget India, the cradle of the human race, or at least of that part of it to which we belong, where first.. were most cruelly infuriated against the adherents of the original faith of mankind. The destruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act still bear witness to the monotheistic fury…carried on from Mahmud, the Gahaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aurengzeb, the fratricide, whom the Portuguese…have zealously imitated by destruction of temples and the auto defe of the Inquisition of Goa…”For the sake of truth, I must add that the fanatical enormities perpertrated in the name of religion are only to be put down to the adherents of monotheistic creeds…We hear nothing of the kind in the case of the Hindoos and Buddhists.”
(source: The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer – By T. Bailey Saunders p. 1 – 42). Refer to World Conquering Creeds – By Dr. Koenraad Elst – chapter on Glimpses XVI
Missionary Oath:
Missionaries had to take an oath which enjoined them, “to be loyal to Portugal in all the countries discovered or to be discovered, conquered or to be conquered, by Portugal. And to warn Portugal of any activity which may be contemplated against her”.
The British prescribed a similar oath: “I include in this promise exact obedience to any rules laid down by His Majesty’s representatives, and also an undertaking to refrain from doing, saying or writing anything either publicly or privately, to the prejudice of the British Government in India.”
K. M. Pannikar author of Asia and Western Dominance published in 1953. Panikkar’s study was primarily aimed at providing a survey of Western imperialism in Asia from CE 1498 to 1945. Christian missions came into the picture simply because he found them arrayed always and everywhere alongside Western gunboats, diplomatic pressures, extraterritorial rights and plain gangsterism. Contemporary records consulted by him could not but cut to size the inflated images of Christian heroes such as Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci. They were found to be not much more than minions employed by European kings and princes scheming to carve out empires in the East. Their methods of trying to convert kings and commoners in Asia, said Panikkar, were force or fraud or conspiracy and morally questionable in every instance. Finding that “missionary activities… which became so prominent a feature of European relations with Asia were connected with Western political supremacy in Asia and synchronised with it” He concluded: “It may indeed be said that the most serious, persistent and planned effort of European nations in the nineteenth century was their missionary activities in India and China, where a large-scale attempt was made to effect a mental and spiritual conquest at supplementing the political authority already enjoyed by Europe. Though the results were disappointing in the extreme from the missionary point of new, this assault on the spiritual foundations of Asian countries has had far-reaching consequences in the religious and social reorganization of the people…”
(source: Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report On Christian Missionary Activities – By Sita Ram Goel). Refer to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple
For interesting information about Democracy in Ancient Indian please refer to chapter on Hindu Culture II
The British rule often claim to have given India – Democracy. If so, Why did it take 200 years to give India Democracy?
For more read: Democracy in Ancient India – By Steve Muhlberger
St. Francis Xavier wrote from Cochin on 20 Jan. 1548 to King John III of Portugal, ” You must declare as plainly as possible ……that the only way of escaping your wrath and obtaining your favor is to make as many Christians as possible in the countries over which they rule.’ (source” Macnicol, The Living Religions of India 1934 p. 268. ) Vasco da Gama told the first Indians he met on the Malabar coast that he came to seek “Christians and spices.”
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Eminent Indian Historians? (excerpts)
http://www.indiastar.com/wallia19.html
Included as principals in this group of Marxist historians are Romila Thapar, Satish Chandra, K.M. Shrimali, K. M. Pannikar, R. S. Sharma, D. N. Jha, Gyanendra Pandey, and Irfan Habib. This group has, Shourie charges, “worked a diabolic inversion: the inclusive religion [Hinduism], the pluralist spiritual search of our people and land, they have projected as intolerant, narrow-minded, obscurantist; and the exclusivist, totalitarian, revelatory religions and ideologies — Islam, Christianity, Marxism-Leninism– they have made out to be the epitome of tolerance, open-mindedness, democracy, secularism!” By promoting each other’s publications and puffing up their reputations, this group has long been “determining what is politically correct.” (note: Romila Thapar is totally ignorant of Sanskrit, though it has not stopped her from posing as an authority on Vedic India! In fact, a recent newspaper column by a retired bureaucrat — which reads like a paid advertisement — goes on to call her ‘India’s most eminent historian’!)
For several decades, these “eminent historians” have striven hard to continually denigrate Hindu cultural history, the oldest surviving civilization in the world, by “blackening the Hindu period and whitewashing the Islamic period.” Indeed, Arun Shourie should have challenged them to refute American historian Will Durant’s assertion in his The Story of Civilization: “The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within.” Or that of French historian Alain Danielou’s statement, in his Histoire de l’ Inde : “From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoilations, destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of ‘a holy war’ of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races.”
The largely Marxist membership of the Indian Council of Historical Research appointed by the socialistic Congress party, which was in power for nearly all of the fifty years since independence, was reconstituted in July 1998 by the Bharatiya Janata Party, currently ruling at the center. Unfortunately, it will take a long time for undoing the harm done by the Marxist historians to the Indian psyche: “they have used these institutions to sow in the minds of our people [the Hindus] the seeds of self-hatred.”
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According to columnist, Meenakshi Jain: “Leftist historians in India have deliberately omitted in the entire discussion on the Delhi Sultanate, the words dhimmi and (hated) jaziya tax are deliberately omitted, though they are crucial to understanding the dynamics of that epoch. Overlooking all forms of Hindu persecution, the book states that Brahmins and ulema were equally permitted to propagate their respective faiths. References to the infamous ‘pilgrimage tax’ are conveniently dropped. The Mughal period, too, is selectively purged of its unpleasant facets. Akbar’s early measures like the re-naming of Hindu holy cities, the imposition of the jaziya and forced conversions are ignored, as also the fact that as much as seventy percent of his nobility consisted of foreign Muslims. The limited Hindu participation in the upper echelons of the nobility (besides the Rajputs, just four other Hindus) is not alluded to.”
(source: Selective Memory – By Meenakshi Jain – Hindustan Times, May 8, 2001).
Source Hindu Wisdom
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