Indian Muslims: Who Are They c9.s5: Christian Missionaries
Indian Muslims: Who Are They c9.s5
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Christian Missionaries
c9.s5.1
The arrival of Christian missionaries also helped check Muslim proselytization. Vasco da Gama landed in India in 1498. In 1510 the Portuguese captured Goa, in 1531 Diu, and in 1534 Daman. In the triumphal entry into Goa, the clergymen were at the head of the procession.³⁸ Muslim proselytizing activity not only received a check but a challenge at the hands of these Christian missionaries.
c9.s5.2
It is exceedingly interesting to note that the agencies of conversion to the Semetic religions, Islam and Christianity, were, the same - inter-communal marriages, force and enslavement, and missionary endeavour. Portuguese missionary activity was well organised and quite effective. In Goa, Albuquerque encouraged his soldiers to marry in the families of Turkish officers.³⁹ To promote mixed marriages, Portuguese with Indian wives as well as neoconverts, were treated as a privileged class for appointment to petty offices.⁴⁰ Force was also openly used for obtaining converts.⁴¹ In 1560, the year the Inquisition was set up, 13,092 Hindus were forcibly converted. In 1578, the missionaries pulled down 350 temples and converted 100,000 people.⁴² Similar, and in some cases worse, treatment was meted out to Muhammadans. Consequently by 1583 Goa had by and large become Christian, while Salsette had a Christian population of 8,000. After Goa, Cochin was the next Mission Centre. By 1570 there were more than twenty-five Christian stations in Travancore and about 15,000 converts. In 1600 Mission Centres in Travancore had risen to fifty. Converts on the Fishery Coast alone are estimated from 90,000 to 130,000.⁴³ Christian Missions made successful efforts in converting low caste people. Appreciative of the attitude of the Indian people, Henrique advised Loyola: It is better in India to baptize all those of one caste than different individuals taken from various castes.⁴⁴
c9.s5.3
In times of famine they bought children, and even .men and women, and sold them at high prices, but Portuguese under pain of severe punishments, are forbidden to sell heathen slaves to Muslims, since heathens are converted more easily to Christianity under Portuguese and to Islam under Muslim ownership.⁴⁵
c9.s5.4
The capture of Goa by the Portuguese was facilitated by Hindu cooperation. Some Hindu chiefs of Goa invited Albuquerque to help them relieve the Hindu population from the fanatical oppression of Adil Shahs governor at Goa.⁴⁶ In the Vijayanagar empire relations were generally good between Hindus and Christians, who were united if for no other reason, by the common hostility to Muslim.⁴⁷ All this facilitated Christian missionary activity in the South. In the North, the Mughal Emperor Akbar invited Portuguese missions and permitted Jesuit Fathers to convert people to Christianity. They had their Mission Centres in as important places as Lahore, Delhi, and Agra.⁴⁸
c9.s5.5
It hardly need be asserted that wherever the Portuguese went, the Muslim proselytizing endeavour received a severe blow. Muslim numbers even were depleted. Barbosa gives a graphic account of Rander in Gujarat with its rich Muslim merchants, their high style of living, and their richly decorated mansions. Danvers narrates its destruction by the Portuguese. Muslim trade and population were so adversely affected by arrival of the Portuguese that Barbosa laconically comments: Now (the Muslims that) there are do not live independently.⁴⁹ What Barbosa says about Malabar, may be said about India as a whole. Barbosa contends that the coming of Portuguese alone prevented Malabar from becoming a. Moorish state.⁵⁰ It may as well be said that the coming of European nations and the establishment of British rule prevented India from becoming a Muslim land.