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Headline: India: Catholic, Islamic Monuments At Risk.
Source: ANSA News Service (Italy) http://www.ansa.it/- English Media Service
[The only charitable explanation I can think of offering for the excerpt below is that the translation from the original must be seriously defective.]
Quote: Since [Portugal] lacked the military power necessary to rule its empire, it promoted mixed marriages. That is why today Goa residents have Portuguese blood, Iberian names and the majority of them are still Christians despite the massive immigration of Hindus promoted by New Delhi after Goa became part of India in the 1960s.
Full text:
(ANSA) - NEW DELHI, October 21 - Two Indian monuments, the museum in old Goa and Taj Mahal, which belong to the cultural heritage of the whole humankind showed on Thursday their weakness of which the specialists engaged in their protection have been warning.
A fire broke out last night and destroyed three rooms of the museum in Goa, central India.
Goa, today a small Indian state between Maharashtra and Karnataka, used to be a Portuguese colony for almost five centuries.
Since the small Iberian country lacked the military power necessary to rule its empire, which also included Brazil and Mozambique, it promoted mixed marriages. That is why today Goa residents have Portuguese blood, Iberian names and the majority of them are still Christians despite the massive immigration of Hindus promoted by New Delhi after Goa became part of India in the 1960s.
Goa's old city, a few kilometres from Panaji, the state's capital city, resembles Latin Europe very much with its big churches and monasteries built from the XVI century, when the Portuguese arrived, onwards.
The city also holds the relics of Francesco Saverio, considered to be the evangelist of Asia, which are exposed every ten years. Goa is rich in artworks of European inspiration which make the old city part of the humankind cultural heritage.
The fire in the museum was caused by a short circuit which set ablaze the wooden ceiling made more than a century ago, Padre Savoi told Indian news agencies. After two hours of work the firemen managed to put out the fire before sunrise, the agencies reported.
Only the objects preserved in the three rooms were destroyed, fire brigade sources said adding that the relics of Francesco Saverio remained intact.
In the meantime, examinations were ordered to check the leaning of one of the four minarets of Taj Mahal, one of the most grandiose monuments of Islamic culture, in the northern city of Agra in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, visited by thousands of tourists every year.
The leaning has probably been caused by the dry river bed of Yamuna which flows a dozen of meters away.
Unless there is an immediate intervention the minaret might collapse, according to Ram Nath, one of the archaeologists who examined the monument.
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