''The Goa Inquisition, Being a Quatercentenary Commemoration Study of the Inquisition in India'' is a book published by Mumbai University Press and authored by

Anant Priolkar Anant Kakba Priolkar was an Indian polemicist, author and political activist. Born in 1895, he started writing while he was in school and his writing stopped only with his death. He was also elected as the President of the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi ...

. It is a narrative of the

Goan Inquisition The Goa Inquisition ( pt, Inquisição de Goa) was an extension of the Portuguese Inquisition in Portuguese India. Its objective was to enforce Catholic Orthodoxy and allegiance to the Apostolic See of Rome (Pontifex). The inquisition primaril ...

organised by the Portuguese rulers of

Goa Goa () is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is located between the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north and Karnataka to the ...

Details

The book is divided into two parts. Part I, titled "The Goa Inquisition", is divided into ten chapters. The first two chapters detail the

Spanish Inquisition The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition ( es, Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition ( es, Inquisición española), was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand ...

and

Portuguese Inquisition The Portuguese Inquisition (Portuguese: ''Inquisição Portuguesa''), officially known as the General Council of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Portugal, was formally established in Portugal in 1536 at the request of its king, John III. ...

in Europe providing background material and context that would lead to the inquisition in India. A fictional story of

unrequited love Unrequited love or one-sided love is love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such by the beloved. The beloved may not be aware of the admirer's deep and pure affection, or may consciously reject it. The Merriam Webster Online Dic ...

is used as the basis for the

anti-Semitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

Tomas de Torquemada Tomas may refer to: People * Tomás (given name), a Spanish, Portuguese, and Gaelic given name * Tomas (given name), a Swedish, Dutch, and Lithuanian given name * Tomáš, a Czech and Slovak given name * Tomas (surname), a French and Croatian surna ...

. The book also makes the origin of the Portuguese Inquisition based on the love of King

Manuel I of Portugal Manuel I (; 31 May 146913 December 1521), known as the Fortunate ( pt, O Venturoso), was King of Portugal from 1495 to 1521. A member of the House of Aviz, Manuel was Duke of Beja and Viseu prior to succeeding his cousin, John II of Portugal, a ...

for Princess Isabella of Aragon, instead of politics. (The arrival of Jews to Portugal after their expulsion from Spain was a security threat to the Kingdom of Portugal, because Sephardic Jews had an established reputation in Iberia for joining forces with

Moors The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a distinct or ...

to overthrow Christian rulers.) Chapter 3 begins with the advent of the Inquisition in India, with a discussion of the French spy Dellon's account of the inquisition in Chapter 4. The successive chapters describe the wars that led to the establishment of Portuguese rule in

, and the fictional massacre of

Hindus Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

during the

Portuguese conquest of Goa The Portuguese conquest of Goa occurred when the governor Afonso de Albuquerque captured the city in 1510 from the Adil Shahis. Goa became the capital of the Portuguese State of India which included possessions such as Fort Manuel, the territ ...

in 1510. (Only the Bijapur Muslims were killed during the conquest, by both the Portuguese led by

Afonso de Albuquerque Afonso de Albuquerque, 1st Duke of Goa (; – 16 December 1515) was a Portuguese general, admiral, and statesman. He served as viceroy of Portuguese India from 1509 to 1515, during which he expanded Portuguese influence across the Indian Ocean ...

and the local Hindus led by

Timoji Timoji (also referred to as Timoja or Timmayya) was a privateer who served the Vijayanagara Empire and the Portuguese Empire during the first decade of the 16th century. He claimed to have been born in Goa and to have escaped the city after its co ...

.) Successive chapters in Part I also describe the forced conversion of

to Christianity by the Goa Inquisition. Thus the book completely contradicts contemporary historical accounts of voluntary conversions of entire villages in Goa by the various religious orders ( Dominicans,

Jesuits The Society of Jesus ( la, Societas Iesu; abbreviation: SJ), also known as the Jesuits (; la, Iesuitæ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

and

Franciscans , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

), but the book doesn't provide any contemporary basis for its version of history. The book details the organization and procedures of the Inquisition and the

anti-Hindu Anti-Hindu sentiment, also known as Hinduphobia, is a negative perception, sentiment or actions against the practitioners of Hinduism. Examples of anti-Hindu sentiments According to the religious dialogue activist P. N. Benjamin, som ...

laws that were passed in Goa during the inquisition banning Hindu religious ceremonies and customs from being continued by converted Hindus, as well as reducing the status of Hindus to second-class citizens by banning them from public gatherings and so on. The book also discusses the various methods of torture used by the Inquisition, such as burning by sulphur, water-torture, rape, the use of pulleys to stretch victims and the "strappado" method of torture. The investigation of Agostino Borromeo from the University of La Sapienza in Roma into the Vatican archives and the subsequent 783-page report has revealed that this part of Priolkar's book is completely baseless. Part II discusses the accounts of the Inquisition given by Dellon and Buchanan in two separate chapters. Priolkar cites Buchanan as an authoritative source, although Buchanan's work was a Protestant polemic written in the 19th century that denounced Catholicism in Goa and it did not use any historical records.

Editions

Priolkar, A.K 1961, "The Goa Inquisition, Being a Quatercentenary Commemoration Study of the Inquisition in India", Bombay University.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goa Inquisition, The 1961 non-fiction books Books about India History books about Hinduism History books about Christianity Indian non-fiction books Voice of India books History of Catholicism in Asia History of Goa Portuguese Inquisition Portuguese India Books about antisemitism Early Modern Christian anti-Judaism Anti-Hindu sentiment Jewish Indian history Jewish Portuguese history Jewish Spanish history 20th-century Indian books Antisemitism in Asia Books about Catholicism Anti-Islam sentiment in India