The Inquisition, a beating stick? DEVIL's ADVOCATE/Frederick Noronha
There's no point getting defensive about the realities of the past. But what happens if these 'realities' are not quite accurate, and, in fact, based on a whole lot of myth? Goans have long debated the Inquisition. Once again, a debate broke out in cyberspace about this very aspect of Goa's past, and, as usual, brought up a whole lot of defensive responses, and accusations. I've long wondered over the identity and ideology of a small set of people who have shaped the globe's understanding of the Goa Inquisition. Recently, because of such recurrent debates, one ran into more critical views[1] that challenges our traditional understanding of the Inquisition. This only made one more puzzled. About Anant Kakba Priolkar, it is a bit of a puzzle to understand the man and his ideas. It was he who played the most important role -- at least in the sub-continent -- in shaping our understanding of the Inquisition. Priolkar wrote around the 1960s, quite some time ago, and often in Marathi. I wish I had been more fluent in that language! Priolkar's book "The Goa Inquisition: The Terrible Tribunal for the East" was published in 1961, and printed at the Bombay University Press (Fort, Bombay). It was reprinted in Goa this year. In between, the Hindutva-oriented Delhi-based Voice of India press also published a second impression in 1991. To look at the VoI's ideology, google for a list of books published by it, or check the Geocities page here [2] Historian Dr Teotonio R de Souza writes: A.K. Priolkar was a Bombay-based Goan Saraswat Brahmin who produced literary output as linguist and historian in the 1960s. His research served to buttress pro-Marathi and pro-Hindu interests. he emphasized the excesses of [the] Inquisition and the cultural backwardness of Goan Christians and their Conkani 'dialect'. He reserved to Marathi the distinction of being the true literary and cultural language of Goa.... I wish to classify this type of writings as "Priolkar-Angle literature". [3] One may not agree with some of the categorisations above, but there's hint enough about the interest-groups who give current-day fuel to the Inquisition flames. (The Angle being referred to is Prabhakar Angle, another writer who didn't mince his words and spoke out his feelings on a number of issues, from economics to culture and inter-community relations.) In his book, Priolkar relies heavily on the accounts of Buchanan and Dellon, the latter who was caught up in the Inquisition. Who were these persons, really? Dig a little and one finds that Claudius Buchanan (1766-1815) was "a Scottish theologian, an ordained minister of the Church of England, and an extremely 'low church' missionary for the Church Missionary Society." [4] Nothing wrong with that, of course, as every man has the right to hold his religious preferences. But for more interesting insights, you need to go here [5]. Keep reading around these pages, as it's not easy to capture the essence of a book in a few cut-and-paste paragraphs here. Buchanan apparently had a problem with anything that didn't fit in with his own views on religion. We learn, among other things, that Buchanan "resorted to a simple juxtaposition to demonstrate the superiority of rational Christian life to a morally repugnant Hindu culture. Christianity and Hinduism were [to him] inverse reflections of one another, but Christianity had demonstrated its effects and the civilizing power to overcome all the crimes and superstitions that tormented India." His "encounters" while touring India are interesting too. He meets native Syrian Christian communities along southwestern India's coast, who trace their lineage to a legendary first-century visit by Jesus' own apostle, Thomas. Buchanan wanted to see the Syrian branch transplanted on the Church of England. He visits Roman Catholic populations in the south, and is shocked to find priests "better acquainted with the Veda of Brahma than with the Gospel of Christ". His encounter with the Inquisition is described from page 91 onwards of the book Was Hinduism invented? [5] by Brian Kemble Pennington. As Priolkar mentions, he visited Goa at the time when British troops were stationed here. (Or, in Priolkar's words, "The forts in the harbour of Goa, were then occupied by British troops [two King's regiments, and two regiments of Native infrantry] to prevent its falling into the hands of the French.") Author Brian Kemble Pennington says Buchanan's "resulting account of Catholicism in India included not only clerical abuse, empty ritual, moral laxity, and papal tyranny, but even a hint of human sacrifice." Interestingly, Buchanan was "not less indignant at the Inquisition of Goa, than I had been with the temple of Juggernaut" (sic) These are fine individuals through whose eyes we rely on to understand our past (or to play political games in the present). David Higgs (in 'The Inquisition in Late Eighteenth-Century Goa', in Goa; Continuity and Change, edited by Narendra K. Wagle and George Coehlo (sic), University of Toronto 1995) gives us another perspective when he acknowledges the role Priolkar's 1961 study played in shaping the debate. Higgs writes: "Priolkar drew heavily on secondary sources in his sketch on the Goan Inquisition, especially on a late seventeenth-century Frenchman, Gabriel Dellon, arrested in Goa, whose case was made famous by the denunciatory account of his experiences published after his return from France." He calls Dellon's version an "exuberant account of his misfortunes." Likewise, Higgs points out, Priolkar also used the "over-imaginative account of a British clergyman, C. Buchanan, who wanted to think that what he was not allowed to see in Old Goa in 1808 was what Dellon inveighed at more than a century earlier." I see no reason why current day debates/battles in Goa should be fought through the biases of North European colonisers versus Southern European ones. The long-time (and often unfair to the latter) Christianity-versus-Judaism bitterness. The Protestant-versus-Catholicism tug-of-war and more. And Hindutva's post-1925 attempts to score points against The Other at any cost whatsoever. Both Buchanan and Dellon get quoted copiously in Priolkar's work. In the book 'Histories of heresy in early modern Europe' [6], author John Christian Laursen writes: From the moment it appeared, Dellon's work aroused great interest by reason both of its content and of the discursive and exotic nature of the narrative.... Jansenists and Gallicians found here an illustration of the brutality and hypocrisy of the judicial processes of the Holy Office. Pro-Protestant and anti-Spanish Frenchmen who abominated the Inquisition -- whether Spanish or Roman -- for a variety of political and religious reasons were also avid readers of Dellon's work. Accused of pro-Calvinism, but above all identified with the Gallican policy championed by Louis XIV, to whose court Dellon had been admitted, the text was subject to a variety of interpretations and underwent significant alterations in the course of the author's revisions. So, who's taking up this strong language of polemic and using it for today's purposes? When you come across counter-views that challenge past perspectives and claims on the Inquisition, it's time for a re-think. More so when we have ample documentation [8] about the Black Legend created (for instance, by the Dutch about the Spaniards, their rivals) in centuries past, due to colonial and religious rivalries. [1] See, 'The Inquisition: Another Point of View' http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-June/178915.html [2] http://www.geocities.com/voi_publishers/ [3] http://bit.ly/De5PJ [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudius_Buchanan [5] http://tinyurl.com/lvtxj6 [6] http://bit.ly/tQfjf [7] http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-June/178915.html [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend First published in Herald, Goa.