Paul William Roberts

"The Vedas see the ultimate Truth behind all ephemeral truths. The Creation leads us to the Creator, to the highest knowledge, which is integrated into one. The Vedas still represent eternal truth in the purest form ever written. And they are what drew me to India in the first place, what kept me there, and what draws me back still. India is the only country that feels like home to me, the only country whose airport tarmac I have ever kissed upon landing."

"In the wake of the warriors came the priests. First the Franciscans, then the Jesuits, then the Dominicans, and lastly the Augustinians. All of these eager missionaries must have been disappointed to find that hardly anyone desired to be converted. But what really made their holy blood boil was finding their old foes, the Muslims and Jews, openly and brazenly practising their religions. A number of ex-Jews had come out to the colony, and although they had professed to be Christians back in Portugal, in Goa they showed a worrying tendency to revert to their old ways. The men of God set about clearing what one Dominican termed this ‘jungle of unbelief ’ with all the ardour of Amazon lumber barons."

"Just like the mullahs who had marched into Goa two hundred years before with the Bahamani sultans, these Catholic clergy were prepared to go to any lengths to spread their faith. Initially they pestered the Portuguese king for special powers, and then they pestered the pope to pester the king on their behalf."

"The first of these special powers arrived in 1540 when the viceroy received authority to ‘destroy all Hindu temples, not leaving a single one in any of the islands, and to confiscate the estates of these temples for the maintenance of the churches which are to be erected in their places.’ A frenzy of activity must have followed. The Italian cleric Father Nicolau Lancilotto, visiting Goa in 1545, reported that ‘there was not a single temple to be seen on the island.’ The island in question was Teeswadi, the main field of operations for the two priestly orders then on the scene. Once the islands of Bardez and Salcete were acquired, each order was able to stake out its own territory – the Franciscans clearing the ‘jungle’ of Bardez, and the Jesuits going to work on Salcete. By the time the Dominicans and the Augustinians arrived a few years later, however, there was not enough room for separate spheres of influence. A glance at the absurd profusion of churches standing cheek by jowl in Old Goa still conveys some idea of the spiritual excesses indulged in by these competing orders during their heyday."

"Children were flogged and slowly dismembered in front of their parents, whose eyelids had been sliced off to make sure they missed nothing. Extremities were amputated carefully, so that a person could remain conscious even when all that remained was a torso and head. Male genitals were removed and burned in front of wives, breasts hacked off and vaginas penetrated by swords while husbands were forced to watch."