The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c7.s8.77

c7.s8.77

In Gemelli’s time the natives at Goa “lived apart and without any public practice of their religion,” while all the monasteries throughout India were subsidised by the State.¹ Linschotten says that the people of India had liberty of religion, but with these rather large exceptions, that they were not allowed to burn their dead nor to perform marriage ceremonies or other diabolical superstitions (over which the Bishop had supervision,) for fear that scandal might be caused to the converts; so also Musalmáns and Jews might not publicly exercise their religion in the towns under pain of death, but outside the towns might do so.² Dellon says that although the King allowed liberty of conscience, yet the Holy Office interpreted this to mean that heathens might live in their religion but would be punished if caught in the exercise of it.³ Finally after all these Christian writers, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, the Musalmán historian Kháfi Khán may be quoted, who after praising the Portuguese system of government, called it an act of great tyranny that if one of their subjects should die leaving young children only they were considered wards of the State and brought up as Christians, whether they were Syeds or Bráhmans.⁴ And in a recently published work by a Hindu⁵ it is stated that the Portuguese utterly disregarded difference of caste, and exacted the same service from Bráhmans as from Kolis. Several Prabhus were employed in high positions under the Portuguese Government, and even these could only perform their religious duties secretly and by night, while some were forcibly converted to Christianity, whose descendants are still to be found in Sálsette and Bassein.