Your focus on India’s famed wealth as a driver of Western curiosity is reasonable, but not a full explanation. Covetousness alone cannot explain the Portuguese push into the Indian Ocean. We now accept it came from different motivations: the Reconquista mindset, anti-Islamic commercial ambitions, religious ideology, rivalry with Venice and the Luso innovations in navigation. Reducing it to "India’s wealth calling Europe" can lead us into the trap of seeing Asia only as an object of Western desire rather than an active geopolitical arena with its own maritime networks and power blocs.
The argument on Greek polytheism determining belief in griffins and giant ants appears to oversimplify classical thought. Herodotus himself qualified these tales. Greek ancient intellectual culture does not overlook skepticism and early scientific reasoning. To suggest they believed such accounts because they were polytheists seems speculative. There are a number of global perspectives which point to poverty reduction in India, and Europe's challenges. But these two might not be comparable, as a casual visual encounter when you enter India might suggest. India's claims on poverty reduction (notwithstanding the global support of the same) has been met with some skepticism. Critics point out that recent surveys used different "recall periods" and included the market value of government "freebies" in household consumption, which may inflate the appearance of wealth. Then, despite the drop in extreme poverty, many people remain just above the poverty line and are vulnerable to shocks. India faces 35% high levels of child stunting and 3.7% in undernourishment. While absolute poverty has shrunk, wealth inequality has grown; the top 1% of the population now holds roughly 73-77% of the total national wealth. One paradox that some have noted here is that, despite all the claims of improvements, about 800-810 million Indians are currently covered under the government’s free-ration schemes. How? There being ancient Christian communities in Kerala is well established; but the St Thomas legend has also been growing across the centuries. Western travellers seem to be reporting what they were told. Using Marco Polo as proof rather than as a recorder of local traditions confuses testimony with corroboration. Nobody can defend Portugal's textbooks from the Estado Novo times (we're facing trends here too). But to leap from “Salazar censored” to “Vasco da Gama did not discover the sea route to India” is a broad jump. Gama did complete the first recorded direct voyage from Europe to India around the Cape, even if he relied on Asian/African pilots and existing Indian Ocean knowledge. Discovery in writing of the historical kind refers to first documented contact from a particular cultural sphere, not the absurd idea that India was unknown or un-peopled. Finally, it is hard to accept the contrast between “bad Western books” and a few enlightened authors. Global history has been rethinking Eurocentric narratives for decades, and much more can be done. We do not need Anglo-American “validation”, but neither should we adopt counter-myths to compensate for colonial ones On Monday, 22 December 2025 at 17:30:09 UTC+5:30 Pedro Mascarenhas wrote: Frederico Thank you for your reply and for spending your precious time. The focus of my text is on the fame of India's wealth that reached the West and provoked curiosity and covetousness. It is important to emphasize this. As for the griffin and giant ant, these legends were accepted as truths by the ancient Greeks because their religion was polytheistic, which included the Minotaur, a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man. That was the mentality! India lifted between 248 and 302 million people out of poverty in the last decade (approximately 2013-2023/2024), with drastic drops in multidimensional poverty (around 270 million) and extreme poverty, according to recent reports from the World Bank and the Indian government, which cite the impact of social policies, health programs and basic sanitation, significantly transforming living conditions, especially in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Poverty in the EU affects more than 90 million people (in 2024), with high rates in Romania, Bulgaria and Greece, while the Czech Republic and Slovenia have the lowest. Portugal is below the EU average in the risk of poverty/social exclusion (20.1% in 2022), but has a growing rate of working poor, affecting more women, young people and people with lower levels of education, with the cost of living exacerbating the situation, especially in housing. In 2025, Portugal continues to struggle with poverty, with the risk of poverty or social exclusion hovering around 19.7% (2.1 million people). Legend or truth, the case of St. Thomas is not closed. But one thing is certain: The first Westerners who arrived in southern India were surprised when they heard about "Christians of St. Thomas". Marco Polo, while traveling through India in the 13th century, mentioned and acknowledged the existence of the Saint Thomas Christians in southern India, a Christian community that existed long before the arrival of Europeans. I am referring to certain books (not all) about Asia, Africa, and America published in Portugal before 1974 that either distorted the truth or simply omitted it. Salazar's dictatorship did not allow for any other option! It was in primary school that I heard "The Portuguese discovered India" (1), then in high school I read in textbooks that "Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India" (2), and as an adult I learned that in Malindi, Kenya, Gama established relations with the local leader, who then provided the Portuguese with a pilot who knew the way to Calicut, India. Therefore, he did not discover the route to India, but the route to East Africa. (1) No one discovered India, which was already there! (2) Gama did not discover the sea route to India, but to East Africa, and arrived at Kappakadavu near Calicut. Some read books by Winston Spencer Churchill that distort the truth to cover up his Empire. But there are also good old books by authors such as Jean Chesneaux, Richard Lewinsohn, Robert Mortimer Wheeler, etc. I wish everyone Merry Christmas. At this time of year I remember Teotónio de Souza, founder of GRN, who had been hospitalized shortly after Christmas. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/6a778bb8-7874-4508-bc98-bace2ea562d3n%40googlegroups.com.
