''The Goa Inquisition, Being a Quatercentenary Commemoration Study of the Inquisition in India'' is a book published by Bombay University Press and authored by Anant Priolkar. It is a narrative of the

Goa Inquisition The Goa Inquisition (, ) was an extension of the Portuguese Inquisition in Portuguese India. Its objective was to enforce Catholic orthodoxy and allegiance to the Apostolic See of the Pontifex. The inquisition primarily focused on the New Chr ...

organised by the rulers of

Portuguese Goa The State of India, also known as the Portuguese State of India or Portuguese India, was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded seven years after the discovery of the sea route to the Indian subcontinent by Vasco da Gama, a subject of the ...

Details

Part I

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 () was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile and lasted until 1834. It began toward the end of ...

and

Portuguese Inquisition The Portuguese Inquisition (Portuguese language, Portuguese: ''Inquisição Portuguesa''), officially known as the General Council of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Portugal, was formally established in Kingdom of Portugal, Portugal in 15 ...

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 affection, or may consciously reject it knowing that the admirer admires them. Me ...

is used as the basis for the

anti-Semitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

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 * Tomàs, a Catalan given name and surname * ...

. 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 (), 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, as monarch. Manu ...

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 is an Endonym and exonym, exonym used in European languages to designate the Muslims, Muslim populations of North Africa (the Maghreb) and the Iberian Peninsula (particularly al-Andalus) during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a s ...

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

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 bound by the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north, and Karnataka to the ...

, and the alleged massacre of

Hindus Hindus (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37 Historically, the term has also be ...

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 Sultanate of Bijapur. Old Goa became the capital of Portuguese India, which included territories such as Fort Manuel of Cochin, ...

in 1510. However, various sources claim that only 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, statesman and ''conquistador''. He served as viceroy of Portuguese India from 1509 to 1515, during which he expanded Portuguese influence across ...

and the local Hindus led by

Timoji Timoji was a privateer and pirate who served the Vijayanagara Empire and the Portuguese Empire, in the first decade of the 16th century. He claimed to have been born in Velha Goa and escaped the city in 1496, during the conquest by the Adil S ...

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

to Christianity by the Goa Inquisition. Délio de Mendonça claims that the book completely contradicts contemporary historical accounts of voluntary conversions of entire villages in Goa by the various religious orders (

Dominicans Dominicans () also known as Quisqueyans () are an ethnic group, ethno-nationality, national people, a people of shared ancestry and culture, who have ancestral roots in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican ethnic group was born out of a fusio ...

Jesuits The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

and

Franciscans The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor being the largest conte ...

), 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 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 study of Agostino Borromeo from the University of La Sapienza in Roma into the Vatican archives and the subsequent 783-page report denies the allegations made in the book.

Part II

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.

Reception

The book has received criticism from some scholars and commentators who argue that it presents a selective and exaggerated account of the historical

. In a 2020 opinion column published in ''oHeraldo'', the author noted that Priolkar’s work relied heavily on 19th-century European sources, particularly those influenced by anti-Catholic and anti-Portuguese sentiment, and did not adequately consider primary sources or local historical records. The article contends that the book has contributed to misconceptions about the extent and nature of the Inquisition in Goa. It further argues that works such as Priolkar's are sometimes used to foster communal or political narratives, rather than to foster historical understanding.

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 India Books about Catholicism Anti-Islam sentiment in India