Hopefully this format meets approval of the Editor!
Sorry Roland, I could not agree less. Who are these Pope’s People? We are Catholics maybe, but we are not Pope’s People. We are Indians who happen to be Catholic, in many instances because our ancestors wanted to hang on to their ancestral lands, which could have been confiscated by the greedy invaders from Iberia and elsewhere; sometimes to avoid being roasted alive on a pyre in Velha Goa with somber Gregorian chants by Iberian Dominicans sending them on their way musically. We may have been baptized ourselves, but we preserved our Indian identity by keeping all other social customs, such as caste hierarchies. Furthermore, it was rare for a non-Brahmin to be consecrated a RC priest until the opening of the seminary at Pilar. Rachol remained the Brahmin school. We are much more Modhi’s People, than as you suggest Pope’s People, for Modhi was elected by an electoral majority in India, not by behind the scene wrangling, wheeling and dealing of unelected, often decrepit, Cardinals between the famous black smoke puffs at the Vatican. India has always been a turbulent country with its varied languages and peoples; consider what it would have looked like if it had separated into thirty or so countries as Europe has done. Even after several major wars, Europe is still poised on the brink of war with nuclear backed forces glaring at each other, always staying a hair’s breadth from starting a nuclear war and causing the next (seventh) great extinction! We should be proud of our country, even if short sighted Gujerati politicians take over for a few years, after all all great financial families seem to come from there.……. Perhaps Modhi represents us more than you think. It’s an Indian commonality to claim that our group is not like the others! But so many similarities exist, do they not? A foreign scholar told me a long time ago that the most common characterization of Indians was that one’s group was totally different from all others. That denial on commonality is what defines one as Indian! Regards Antonio Sent from my iPhone
