"In the present chapter it is proposed to review in brief various measures taken by the Portuguese rulers in India with the object of converting the natives to Christianity. The measures fall into two broad categories. Firstly, there were those the object of which was to make it difficult for the natives to continue to retain their old religion. The temples and shrines of the Hindus were destroyed and they were forbidden to erect or maintain new ones even outside the Portuguese territories ; practice of Hindu rites and ceremonies such as the marriage ceremony, the ceremony of wearing the sacred thread, ceremony performed at the birth of a child, was banned ; priests and teachers of the Hindus were banished ; Hindus whose presence was considered as undersirable from the point of view of propagation of Christianity were sent into exile; those who remained were deprived of their means of subsistence and ancestral rights in village communities; they were also subjected to various humiliations, indignities and disabilities; “ orphan ” children of the Hindus were snatched away from their families for being baptised ; and men and women were compelled to listen to the preaching of Christian doctrine..."