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Vasco da
Gama's arrival
"Christianity’s
rapacious evangelical agenda has caused, and will continue to cause,
incalculable damage to humanity’s spirit. Because of its steadfast conviction
that it is “universal” and that it can transplant itself into any culture at
any time and any place, as if it were somehow making things they way they should
be, Christianity fails to recognize the damage it is inflicting upon religion as
a collective human experience when it compromises the integrity of other faiths.
Just as industrialization has caused countless environments across the globe to
erode due to overpopulation, pollution and massive clear-cutting efforts, I
believe that Christianity’s ruthless evangelization efforts that resulted in
the destruction of countless religious traditions has caused a spiritual erosion
of sorts around the world."
- By
Tim Mitchell - Freedom
of Religion, Freedom of Destiny.
The Dum Diversas, issued by Pope Nicholas V in
1452, authorized King Alfonso V of Portugal to reduce any "Saracens
(Muslims) and pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery,
thereby ushering in the West African slave trade.
The Romanus Pontifex,
also issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1455,
sanctioned the seizure of non-Christian lands,
and encouraged the enslavement of non-Christian people in Africa and the
Americas. Specifically, it gave the green light to "invade, search out,
capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other
enemies of Christ wheresoever placed," all for profit, and in the name of
Jesus Christ.
The Inter Caetera,
signed by Pope Alexander VI in 1493, states,
"... we (the Papacy) command you (Spain) ... to instruct the aforesaid
inhabitants and residents and dwellers therein in the Catholic faith, and train
them in good morals." This papal law sanctioned and paved the way for
European colonization and Catholic missions in the New World. These
three edicts opened the floodgates for everything that followed, the raping,
pillaging, kidnapping, genocide and enslavement of millions. They established
the groundwork for the global slave trade of the 15th and 16th centuries, and
the Age of Imperialism.
(source: The
Color of Law On the Pope, Paternalism and Purifying the Savages - By
David A. Love).
Before the Portuguese
arrived, Calicut was reported to be larger than Lisbon, and the people of India,
even though "heathen," were recognized to possess a complex
civilization.
The Christian missionary enterprise in earnest
started with the dogged efforts of Don Henry the Navigator ( 1394-1460), the
third son of the king John I of Portugal. Henry was a militant Christian fired
with a bitter hatred for infidels. He was obsessed with the idea of reaching and
converting Indian, and believed that he had received a command from God for this
purpose. He had at his disposal the immense wealth of the Order of Christ of
which he was the Grand Master. In 1454 Pope Nicholas V
issued a Bull granting to the King of Portugal "the right, total and
absolute, to invade, conquer, and subject all the countries which are under rule
of the enemies of Christ, Saracens or Pagan...."
Issue of suzerainty
 Portugal and Spain towards the end of the 15th
Century were at loggerheads as to who should claim suzerainty and where. The
pope was invited to give a ruling. According to the Treaty of Tordesillas
(signed in June 1494) it was agreed that everything beyond the meridian of
longitude passing 370 leagues west of Cape Verde Islands was to be exploited by
Spain. All the world to the east of the 'Pope's Line' went to Portugal; this
embraced Africa and the entire India Ocean. The
Treaty of Tordesilhas: the insouciant division by the Pope of the
globe into two parts, one for Spain, the other for Portugal and the unilateral,
overnight declaration of ownership over unknown lands and peoples. The
treaty showed Europe's
pathological drive to power, its demented urge to intervene and impose itself on
the lives of others.
To say that the Pope of the Catholic
Church is not responsible for the atrocities committed by the Portuguese is to
fly in the face of facts. The Papal Bull had allocated
the two halves of the world to Spain and Portugal. The kings of
Portugal fitted and sent several naval expeditions to India, and King Dom Manoel
"assumed for himself the title of "The Lord of the Navigation,
Conquest and Commerce of Ethiopia, Persia, and India." Henceforward
Portugal became the base of the missionary enterprise in Asia.
(source:
Asia
and Western Dominance - By K. M.
Panikkar p. 25 -280). Refer to Jesus
Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel.
Refer
to Columbus,
The Indians, and Human Progress
- By Howard Zinn.
Until
Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to the East in 1497-1499, the "West
knew little about India let alone the countries further east. It is not that
there was no awareness of India in the West, meaning thereby mainly Europe.
Marco Polo had come visiting India and there certainly was a lively trade
between north India and central Asia. Indian silk, among other commodities, was
justly famous. So were Indian spices. It was India's misfortune that it should
have been 'discovered' by a Portuguese sailor with criminal intentions.
India's first major contact began when Vasco
da Gama
landed with gunboat and priests. The newcomers were not only merchants but also devout
Christians. They had the pope's mandate to convert heathens in the lands they conquered.
They found that the natives had a flourishing religion of their own. They destroyed their
temples.
 Vasco da Gama came with twenty five ships under
his command, of which ten of them contained "much beautiful artillery, with
plenty of munitions and weapons! During his visit to Calicut he found twenty
trading ships in the harbor. Vasco da Gama plundered them and the 800 odd crew
were taken prisoners''.
Notes
author Richard Hall: "With Calicut at his
mercy ... da Gama told his men to parade the prisoners then hack off their
hands, ears and noses. As the work progressed all the amputated pieces were
piled in a small boat. The Brahmin who had been sent out by the Zamorin as an
emissary was put into the boat amid its new gruesome cargo. He had also been
mutilated in the ordained manner".
As soon as Vasco da Gama was back in Lisbon after
his first successful contact with India, the Groce King of Portugal, Dom Manuel,
adopted a new and pompous title of "The Lord of the conquest navigation and
commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India". Obviously, the safeguard
this lordship and ensure his patent he hurriedly conveyed the news of the
discovery of the "spices and christians" of India to the royal rivals
of Castille and to The Holy See in Rome.
(source: Western
Colonialism in Asia and Christianity - edited by Dr. M.D. David
p. 11). Refer
to Things
They Don't Tell you about Christianity.
For
Cruelty inflicted by Christianity - Watch Constantine's
Sword movie - By Oren Jacoby
The historian Gaspar
Correa is quoted by Hall as to what the Vasco
da Gama did next, thus:
"When all the
Indians had thus been executed (sic), he ordered them to strike upon their teeth
with staves and they knocked them down their throats; as they were put on board,
heaped on top of each other, mixed up with the blood which streamed from them;
and he ordered mats and dry leaves to be spread over them and sails to be set
for the shore and the vessels set on fire... and the small, vessel with the
friar (brahmin) with all the hands and ears, was also sent ashore, without being
fired".
A message from da Gama was
sent to the Zamorin. Written on a palm leaf, it told him he could make a curry
with the human pieces in the boat.
And the atrocities committed by Vasco da Gama and his
men lives in infamy. The story is one of brutality, betrayal and colonial
ambition.
(source: Empires
of the Monsoon: A history of the Indian ocean and its invaders - By Richard
Hall p. 198). 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.
"The fathers of the Church forbade the
Hindus under terrible penalties the use of their own sacred books, and prevented
them from all exercise of their religion. They destroyed their temples, and so
harassed and interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large
numbers, refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and
were liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their
own fashion the gods of their fathers." wrote Sasetti,
who was in India from 1578 to 1588.
(source: Forgotten Empire
(Vijayanagar) - By Robert Sewell p. 211). The Portuguese reign was
devoid of scruples, honor and morality.
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 Books
and
Mexican
Inquisition
Grim Reminders of
European Barbarity
***
Nazi brutality looks like
picnic here
 Hall gives a vivid description of what Vasco da
Gama did next which is too gory even to contemplate. When the Zamorin sent
another Brahmin to Vasco to plead for peace, "he had his lips cut off and
his ears cut off". The ears of a dog were sewn on him instead and the
Brahmin was sent back to Zamorin in that state. The Brahmin -- no doubt a
Namboodiri had brought with him three young boys, two of them his sons and the
other a nephew. They were hanged from the yardarm and their bodies sent ashore.
(source: Where the
missionaries come in - Now, Vasco da Gama's misdeeds -
By M.V. Kamath - Empires of the
Monsoon: The History of the Indian
Ocean and its invaders; by Richard Hall; Harper Collins; pages 575).
(This article has been featured at the end of
this chapter).
Within decades of their occupation of small coastal parts, they had destroyed,
according to their own records, 601 temples in 131 villages--all important Christian
Orders taking part in this pious work. Franciscan friars destroyed 300 Hindu temples in
Bardez, Jesuits 280 in Salsete.
Francis Xavier
had come to India with the firm resolve of uprooting paganism from the soil of
India and planting Christianity in its place. His saying and doings have been
documented in his numerous biographies and cited by every historian of the
Portuguese episode in the history of India.
(source: History
of Hindu-Christian Encounters - By Sita Ram Goel ISBN 9990049173
p. 10). Refer to Jesus
Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel
St. Francis Xavier
whom the Catholic
Church hails as the Patron Saint of the East,
participated in this
meritorious work, wrote back home:
"As soon as I arrived
in any heathen village, when all are baptized, I order all the temples of their false gods
to be destroyed and all the idols to be broken to pieces. I can give you no idea of the
joy I feel in seeing this done."
According to a Christian historian, Dr.
T. R. de Souza:
" At least from 1540 onwards,
and in the island of Goa before that year, all the
Hindu idols had been annihilated or had disappeared, all the temples had been
destroyed and their sites and building material was in most cases utilized to
erect new Christian Churches and chapels. Various viceregal and
Church council decrees banished the Hindu priests from the Portuguese
territories; the public practices of Hindu rites including marriage rites, were
banned; the state took upon itself the task of bringing up Hindu orphan
children; the Hindus were denied certain employments, while the Christians were
preferred; it was ensured that the Hindus would not harass those who became
Christians, and on the contrary, the Hindus were obliged to assemble
periodically in Churches to listen to preaching or to the refutation of their
religion."
"A particularly grave
abuse was practiced in Goa in the form of 'mass baptism' and what
went before it. The practice was begun by the Jesuits and was alter initiated by
the Franciscans also. The
Jesuits staged an annual mass baptism on the Feast of the Conversion
of St. Paul (January 25), and in order to secure as many neophytes as possible,
a few days before the ceremony the Jesuits would go through the streets of the
Hindu quarter in pairs, accompanied by their Negro slaves, whom they would urge
to seize the Hindus. When the blacks caught up a fugitive, they would smear his
lips with a piece of beef, making him an 'untouchable' among his people.
Conversion to Christianity was then his only option."
(source: Western
Colonialism in Asia and Christianity - edited by M. D. David
Bombay
1988. p. 18-19).
Refer to
Why Indians Should Reject St. Thomas And Christianity -
By Koenraad Elst
Even today the archdiocese of Goa boasts: "The glorious chapter of the expansion
of the Catholic Church in the east can be said to have begun after
the European 'discovery' of the sea route to India in 1498. This helped the
coming of the European fathers to these lands, one of them being St. Francis
Xavier, the great Apostle of the East and Patron of the Missions. Goa is
privileged to have been the starting point of his Church work labours and the
place where his sacred remains are preserved. Goa was called the
"Rome of the East" due to the central role it played in the
evangelization of the east."
(source:
Archdiocese
of Goa). Refer
to Things
They Don't Tell you about Christianity. Refer to The
Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple.
Historian Alfredo
Froilano de Mello (1924 - )
describes the performers of Goan inquisition as "nefarious,
fiendish, lustful, corrupt religious orders which pounced on Goa for the purpose
of destroying paganism and introducing the true religion of Christ"
The Goan inquisition is regarded by all
contemporary portrayals as the most violent inquisition ever executed by the
Portuguese Catholic Church. It lasted from 1560 to 1812 though in Europe it
ended by 1774.
(source: Hindu
Holocaust). For more refer to The Goa
Inquisition at the end of the page.
For interesting article on
missionaries - Pleaser refer to The
problem of Christian missionaries - By Koenraad Elst ). 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.
Paulo
Coelho's paean to Francis Xavier
In
a propoganda coup that would leave a Jesuit missionary strategist breathless,
popular author Paulo Coelho has written a
romanticized eulogy of the notorious 16th century Jesuit missionary Francis
Xavier. Coelho is a born-again Catholic who has received a
certificate from the Pope and is a candidate for Opus
Dei.
(source:
Paulo
Coelho's paean to Francis Xavier - hamsa.org).
Francis
Xavier was the pioneer of anti-Brahmanism which was adopted in due course as a
major plank in the missionary propaganda by all Christian denominations. Lord
Minto, Governor General of India from 1807 to 1812, submitted a Note
to his superiors in London when the British Parliament was debating whether
missionaries should be permitted in East India Company’s domain under the
Charter of 1813. He enclosed with his Note some “propaganda material used by
the missionaries” and, referring to one missionary tract in particular, wrote:
“The remainder of this tract seems to aim principally at a general massacre of
the Brahmanas” (M. D. David (ed.), Western
Colonialism in Asia and Christianity, Bombay, 1988, p. 85).
Anti-Brahmanism has become the dominant theme in the speeches and writings of
Indian secularists of all sorts.
For
more refer to hamsa.org.
Refer
to Things
They Don't Tell you about Christianity. For
Cruelty inflicted by Christianity - Watch Constantine's
Sword movie - By Oren Jacoby
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