{"id":76349,"date":"2018-04-10T16:59:47","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T23:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=76349"},"modified":"2018-04-10T17:01:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T00:01:00","slug":"an-extract-from-the-final-chapter-of-the-book-malabar-and-the-portuguese-by-k-m-panikkar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/04\/10\/an-extract-from-the-final-chapter-of-the-book-malabar-and-the-portuguese-by-k-m-panikkar\/","title":{"rendered":"An extract from the final Chapter of the Book ‘ Malabar and the Portuguese’ by K.M. Panikkar"},"content":{"rendered":"

K. M. PANIKKAR<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

“An influential school of history holds that the\u00a0benefits, that India has received from the direct contact\u00a0with Europe, are of such a nature that, in spite of all
\ntheir faults, the Portuguese should be considered as the\u00a0pioneers of civilisation and as the forerunners of the\u00a0British Empire. It may be permitted however, to ques-\u00a0tion the correctness of the point of view, wrongly called\u00a0historical, which thus tries to import retrospective values\u00a0into events of an earlier date.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even accepting that the connection with Europe has been beneficial to India, it is open to doubt whether a century and a half of barbarous outrages, of unscrupulous plunder and of\u00a0barren aggression, is not too great a price to pay for\u00a0the doubtful benefits of having the way opened for\u00a0other European traders. India’s own direct trade was\u00a0ruined, and, in its place, there was established a mono-\u00a0poly by alien races, which had the effect of draining\u00a0the wealth of India into Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Portuguese could not even claim what the Mahommedan Rulers of India could legitimately put forward in their justifica-\u00a0tion, that they had a cultural contribution to make, to\u00a0the life of India, such as we may, even now, see in the\u00a0magnificent architectural monuments at Agra, Delhi,\u00a0Ahmedabad.\u00a0The Portuguese of the 16th and the 17th\u00a0centuries had nothing to teach the people of India\u00a0except improved methods of killing people in war and\u00a0the narrow feeling of bigotry in religion. Surely, these\u00a0were not matters of such importance as to make it\u00a0necessary for Indians to feel grateful towards Vasco\u00a0da Gama or his successors.<\/span><\/p>\n

The relations between Portugal and India were barren of cultural or political results, and there is in that history nothing which any civilised nation can be proud of. A host of imagina-\u00a0tive historians, anxious to sing the glory of their\u00a0fatherland, have pictured to us the heroic story of a\u00a0small nation going forth to conquer India and\u00a0holding it under sway for 150 years, fighting and win-\u00a0ning battles against great hordes and conquering\u00a0heathen worlds for Christ.<\/span><\/p>\n

Europe has accepted as true, for too long a time, the myths and legends of Barroes, Castenheda and Correa. The idea is wholly and absolutely untrue. The Portuguese had mastery\u00a0of the Indian seas; but never had they the mastery of\u00a0any area in India outside the range of their ships’\u00a0guns. The battles they won were more mythical than\u00a0actual; ani the pompous descriptions of Portuguese\u00a0historians should not make us forget that all their\u00a0campaigns were nothing more than indecisive skirmish-\u00a0es against very minor local Chieftains. It is indeed a\u00a0fine picture which writers have drawn for us \u2014 a small\u00a0heroic country draining itself of its best blood in a\u00a0great attempt to conquer and hold India<\/span><\/p>\n

But the picture has not even a background of truth except in\u00a0the vainglorious phraseology of the Portuguese Kings,\u00a0who called their administrative representatives, the\u00a0“Viceroys of India,” and the few square miles of\u00a0territory at Goa, the ” Estado da India. “<\/span><\/p>\n

K. M. PANIKKAR<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

K. M. PANIKKAR “An influential school of history holds that the\u00a0benefits, that India has received from the direct contact\u00a0with Europe, are of such a nature that, in spite of all their faults, the Portuguese should be considered as the\u00a0pioneers of civilisation and as the forerunners of the\u00a0British Empire. It may be permitted however, to ques-\u00a0tion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}