My first interest in this topic started with the many Inquisition posts on Goanet, mostly by Goan Catholics. But as a history buff, most of what I read were pontificating opinions with very little hard data - nature of crimes, number of victims, quotes of contemporary writers, etc etc. So clearly I was missing something.
Some may remember, several years ago my repeated requests on Goanet requesting postings of "hard facts" on the Goa-Inquisition. I also wrote privately to these posters. There was one response. Few of the opinon-makers suggested possible sources, where I may have better luck with actual data. This confirmed my suspicion that there was a fair amount of hot-air on this topic on Goanet. Santosh, the only person who responded to up my posts was doing so without reading any books other than web-browsing, a source which I also use. To me the web's multiple articles/ perspectives is one useful tool - no different than going to a library. But what surprised me was Santosh did not have and had not read even Pirolkar's book, though he referred to him extensively. I find his recent statement interesting. He insists Pirolkar is a historian, after most likely still not reading his book, nor what others have described as Pirolkar's works, interest and occupation. So suddenly Santosh's purist / scientific mindset is out of the window. Fr. Monetiro's recent post was a platitudinous dissertation on History and the Inquisition without a solitary factual iota; of what most likely he was (or should have been) taught in a scientific / non-biased manner, during his years of priesthood training in Goa. Goanet moderators are certainly not known to block posts related to Goa. If facts are not known, then factual and opinionated statements made by the likes of Alfredo De Mello (in Memoirs of Goa) should be condemned, instead of he being showered with praises from the Goa elite. We cannot blame the Hindutva blogs after Goan Catholics have provided them the fodder. So Indians (Catholics and Hindus) are left with reading the blogs from the Hindutva sources whose writings are culled from Western and Goan writers, which as Fred Noronha has shown have for a minimum an ax to grind, and most likely have little hard data to base their opinions on. So can the Goan experts provide some hard facts instead of going AWOL (absent without leave)? Clearly individuals like Sapna and others are thirsting for information on Goa's Inquisition and have only "the Rough Guide" to go by. Intellectual platitudes can only go so far. If manpower is needed, a young dynamic student / seminarian can work on the project under the guidance of a professor.:=)) That is how it is done in other academic fields. Regards, GL --------------------- Frederick [FN] Noronha How should the current-day Goan position himself/herself vis a vis the rivalries of the past (which have, in significant measure, lead to the building of the Black Legend about Portuguese Goa, the Inquisition in Goa, etc) I would not see things in terms of Them (the Dutch, the Protestants, the Jews, the Hindutva lobby) versus Us (the Catholics or 'Portuguese side' of the story). At best we are only the section that gets hit as part of the collateral damage of these myths in today's world. The challenge is to build a post-colonial understanding that doesn't get caught up in mere side-taking, but in building an independent perspective (to whatever extent this is possible) that is both accurate and not caught up in the colonial (and other) rivalries of the past.
