"The tallest ship of the Portuguese Navy, NRP Sagres is visiting Goa as a part of its 2010 circumnavigation of the world," Portugal Consul General Dr Antonio Sabido Costa said.
The visit is to mark "the arrival of the Portuguese to the Orient and Extreme Orient, 500 years ago", he said here.
The ship and its crew will be received in Mormugao port by Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai, flag officer commander of Goa. It will be docked there from November 12 to November 16.
Portuguese explorer Vasco-da-Gama was the first person to have touched the land for trade.
Let's look at another Portuguese who had a great effect in Goa. Positive to some and negative to some. Yet, historically undeniable.
St Francis Xavier.
Francis Xavier has been criticized by some for his role in initiating the Goa Inquisition, and for his iconoclasm. The Inquisition was established to punish relapsed New Christians – Jews and Muslims who converted to Catholicism, as well as their descendants – who were now suspected of practising their ancestral religion in secret. In Goa, the Inquisition also turned its attention to Indian converts from Hinduism or Islam who were thought to have returned to their original ways. In addition, the Inquisition prosecuted non-converts who broke prohibitions against the observance of Hindu or Muslim rites or interfered with Portuguese attempts to convert non-Christians to Catholicism. While its ostensible aim was to preserve the Catholic faith, the Inquisition was used against Indian Catholics and Hindus as an instrument of social control, as well as a method of confiscating victims' property and enriching the Inquisitors.
I wonder why there is no such outrage over St Francis Xavier.
There are a large number of St Xaviers Colleges and School, from where merrily many of us, including those out here, passed out having had a robust education. And yet none have been discomfited over his connection with the Goa Inquisition.
When he died, he was first buried on a beach of Shangchuan Island. In 2006, on the 500th anniversary of his birth, the Xavier Tomb Monument and Chapel on the island, in ruins after years of neglect under communist rule in China was restored with the support from the alumni of Wah Yan College, a Jesuit high school in Hong Kong. His incorrupt body was taken from the island in February 1553 and was temporarily buried in St. Paul's church in Malacca on 22 March 1553. An open grave in the church now marks the place of Xavier's burial. A rich merchant, Diogo Pereira came back from Goa, removed the corpse shortly after 15 April 1553, and moved it to his house. On 11 December 1553, Xavier's body was shipped to Goa. The body is now in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa, where it was placed in a glass container encased in a silver casket on 2 December 1637.
Why is there no outrage over the initiator of the Goa Inquisition being in India, even if such people do not accept that he was a great religious leader? Would it not be correct of such minded people to insist that his body be sent back to where he initially died and be nowhere on the territory of India?
Why this double standard of flamed outrage over a sailship NRP Sagres visiting Goa to commemorate the circumnavigation of the earth by the Portuguese to include India and mark the advent in the Orient to include India and the remains of St Xaviers being in India when he was the architect of the Goa Inquisition?
The reason, as I see it, is that such moves would be merely cosmetic and without any cogent gains except to assuage the egos of a certain section of Indian. I wish they could vent their ire on issues that genuine affect the country - namely the scams and ensure that the country is cleansed! That will be doing greater service than cosmetic outrage.
If freedom fighter of Goa are outraged, then why are the upholders of India's Independence not outraged in hanging on to a colonial past by being a member of the Commonwealth as also hosting personage from our horrifying (if that is the word such people are hunting for) colonial past.
So you can imagine.
