My response to "J. Colaco < jc>" <[email protected]> of Goanet 26 Aug 2013:
JC 2: Was Goa a participant in that Constituent Assembly? If not, why is that argument being placed here? SB Response: (a) You did not specify that you deplore the mention and use of The Hindu Caste System wrt Christianity only in Goa. (b) The decisions of the Constituent Assembly affect Goan dalit Christians as well. JC 4: So, I assume that you have reported this alleged act to the Police. SBR: I have no locus standi here, since the paraphernalia of the maand did not belong to me or to my family. Moreover, it was not even a case of theft since the credulous old lady of the house willingly handed over the things on being told by the Rev. Father that they are the handiwork of the devil. In Ambaulim too the modus operandi must have been similar; to the best of my knowledge and belief, there was no forcible iconoclastic activity similar to that of the sixteenth century padres. JC 6: How do you know for sure that it [the desecration of the Cuncolim temple 400 years ago] occurred? Hey, have you not heard that in Dec 1961, Portugal had amassed battalions of soldiers in Goa and had set about massacring thousands of innocent Goans. SBR: I am sure that the event occurred because Fr. Thomas Stephens wrote about it in a letter to his brother on 24th October 1683; the incident had occurred on 25th July the same year i.e. barely 3 months earlier. Fr. Stephens, a Jesuit himself, was a confrere of the “martyrs” at Rachol. The letter is reproduced in full in his Christian Puranna (1907) edited by Joseph L. Saldanha (p. XXXI). This is the relevant excerpt: <<......... With these, two other Brahmins and a boy of the same caste and descended from the very people of Cuncolim, whom however the inhabitants did not spare on account of their great hatred for the Fathers. Another boy of excellent character and tried virtue, named Alphonsus, fell in with the enemy, and because he would not give up the breviary of Fr. Peter Berno, the tendons of his hands and knees were cut. .................. Fr. Peter Berno, a Lombard from near Lago Maggiore, proved himself such a strenuous and zealous soldier of Christ, that it was believed of him that within a few months he would leave but few pagans in his parish. Not long before, he had accompanied the Portuguese army and was the first to set fire to the Cuncolim temple. He had also slain a cow upon the altar of the idol so as to clear the place of the superstitious people. He was therefore hated by the infidels, as was seen from the horrible treatment of his body; for they plucked one of his eyes, cut off the whole of his skull and committed other acts of atrocity which I am loath to recount. ........>> Your facebook forward about December 1961 is just some rubbish meant to hide the truth. Can you deny (1) that Salazar had ordered a scorched earth policy in Goa, the destruction of buildings of non-military Portuguese heritage, (2) that preparations for this had in fact been made with barrels of petrol being transported to the Palacio do Idalcao, (3) that the Governor Vassalo e Silva did not carry out these orders, (4) that upon repatriation to Portugal, he was accordingly court-martialled and exiled, (5) that he returned and regained his military rank only in 1974, upon the fall of the Salazar regime? Sebastian Borges
