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Sangath, www.sangath.com, is looking to build a centre for services, training and research and seeks to buy approx 1500 to 2000 sq mtrs land betweeen Mapusa and Bambolim and surrounding rural areas. Please contact: [email protected] or [email protected] or ph+91-9881499458 http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-July/180028.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- On Mon, 8/3/09, J. Colaco < jc> <[email protected]> wrote: > > Priolkar IMHO was not an unbiased story teller. He could > have told the whole story ....but intentionally or otherwise, did not. > > Anybody who believes that Priolkar was unbiased - is > invited to provide the evidence that he was equitable in his > publications. > This is an unfair request. The burden of proving that Priolkar was biased is on his accusers. The defendant (or anyone else on his behalf) never has to prove his innocence. I guess the complaint about the whole story here means that Priolkar should have written about Sati in a book about the Inquisition for political balance, despite the fact that the two issues have no historical connection. This would be a valid criticism if his book was an opinion editorial on unjust religious practices. But the book was a scholarly review on a specific historical subject - the Goan Inquisition. Of course, he could have written a separate book on the inhuman Hindu practice of Sati, in which he would then have no reason to say anything about the inquisition. One could fault him for not doing the latter, but to claim that his account of the inquisition is tainted and biased just because he did not mention Sati in it is ludicrous. Moreover, Buchanan has written at length about Sati and other horrible Hindu rituals. I see no more reason to disbelieve these eye-witness accounts than those of his experiences with the inquisitor in Goa. Having quoted from Buchanan's "Christian Researches in India", Priolkar was most definitely aware of these descriptions of Hindu atrocities. Indeed, as I have said earlier, this singular fact does more than anything else to explode the bogus smears against him. It is clear to me that he was able to set aside whatever religious feelings, sympathies and prejudices he might have had to cite an important historical document, which he was duty bound to do as a historian. As far as I am concerned, the most important questions from a scholarly perspective are the following: 1. Does Priolkar accurately state the facts that he has learned about the inquisition from the sources that he cites? 2. Does he cite all the sources that were available to him? 3. Does he selectively quote from certain sources, and leave out other materials and sources? 3. Does he embellish or exaggerate anything for political, communal or nationalistic purposes? 4. Have the facts that he cites been shown by other unbiased researchers to be inaccurate based on independent research? 5. Are his sources shown to be unreliable by other unbiased researchers based on sound independent research? In the next couple of weeks I will have answers to these questions because I will have completed a thorough reading and review of the newly published edition of Priolkar's book. Cheers, Santosh
