Talk:Christianity in Goa/Archive 1

Archive 1

History

I am very well aware of Goan history.The cases of conversion which was not forceful are were very rare. Morover not all converts were baptized,some were just boycotted by their Hindu kinsmen coz they were touched or interacted with the Portuguese.The truth should not be hidden at any cost.I am not at all biased.

Nijgoykar (talk) 08:43, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Everyone is biased, because everyone holds an opinion! Everyone subscribes to one particular point of view or the other. The onus is on the individual to keep an open mind, in spite of his particular opinion on a topic. My personal belief is that the Portuguese deliberately created circumstances which induced many Hindus to become Christians. As such, they increased taxes, destroyed temples, banned open practice of Hindu ceremonies and rewarded those who converted. They didn't exactly force people to convert. They pressurised them, which is not exactly the same thing as "force". The instances of conversion which can be called "force" in my opinion, are the conversions of Hindu orphans, imprisonment of people and offering release on condition of conversion, and the ultimatum which was given to certain Brahmin families believed to be stumbling blocks in the way of conversions, in which they were told to either leave Goa within a so-and-so period or convert. Failing to do either would have meant that they would lose their lands and be imprisoned as "enemies of the sovereign", maybe even sentenced to slave labour on the Portuguese ships. Joyson Noel ^{Holla at me!} 08:57, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Contemporary records disprove the entire weird arguments above. Brahmins have always been less than 10% of any Indian community, and they'll do anything for money and power. All these 'forced conversion' narratives created by Bamonns began only during the last century when it became clear that the Portuguese Republic wouldn't be able to hold onto Goa forever. The remaining 90%+ Goans (Chardos, etc.) in the Velhas Conquistas ditched Hinduism voluntarily because they didn't believe in it after seeing how the Portuguese lived. Read the letter of Luís Fróis where he describes how a group of 200 well-dressed and fully-armed Chardos in Bardez approached him in August 1560 requesting to convert. These Chardos outnumbered the Portuguese and could have easily killed them instead.

Walking groups

I must say that, when I arrived in Goa and took a pedicab to my lodging on Sunday morning, along a main road that included 5-6 Catholic churches, we passed pedestrian hordes walking en masse to one local Catholic church after the other. At some point on the road, we saw pedestrian crowds walking to their church services in the direction we were driving; then, at the church, we began to see pedestrian crowds walking toward their church services (at the church we had already passed) but walking opposite the direction we were driving. Then we began seeing crowds walking in both directions until the only crowd we saw was walking forward to THEIR church services in the same direction we were then driving, and their church was for us beyond the church we had already passed. We observed this Sunday early morning phenomenon for 5-6 churches until we arrived at our lodging. Most churchgoers in Goa seemed to walk to mass at the Catholic church. MaynardClark (talk) 18:35, 12 September 2019 (UTC)