Dates:
Born: April 7, 1506 in the Castle of Xavier near Sanguesa, in Navarre, Spain
Died: December 2, 1552 on the Island of Sancian
Canonized by Pope Gregory XV: March 12, 1622
Biography:
A Jesuit priest who joined the Society of Jesus after personally meeting Ignatius of Loyola and was in fact one of that group's founding members, Francis Xavier was charged with the task of doing missionary work with Christians in the East.
Xavier's first stop was Goa, India, where in 1542 he baptized a large number of lower caste Indians - Christianity was very appealing to the lower castes, especially at the time period. He was not, however, successful in achieving much with the higher castes.
After that, Xavier moved on to Malacca in Malaya, where he met a Japanese nobleman and decided to take his missionary work to Japan. He arrived there in 1549 and spent two years successfully establishing Christianity as a new and growing religion. After that, he intended to take his work to the Chinese mainland, but he died before that could be accomplished.
Introduction
In every age since Christ charged the Apostles to go and preach to all nations there have been saintly and heroic men who have journeyed to far lands in order to bring new peoples into the Christian fold. Among those who laboured most zealously was the Jesuit, Francis Xavier, named by Pius X as official patron of foreign missions and of all work for spreading the faith. The first great missionary to the Orient in modern times, Xavier planted Christianity in western and southern India, in the then uncharted islands of the Indian Ocean, and in Japan. He died, four hundred years ago, while making a valiant effort to reach the people of China.
Xavier was born in 1506. It was fourteen years after Columbus' first voyage, and Spain was stirring with a ferment that was to result in ever greater achievements as the century advanced. His birthplace was the castle of Xavier, near Pampeluna, not far from the present French border. The family was highly placed, the mother being the heiress of the houses of Azpilqueta and Xavier, and the father, Don Juan de Jasso, councillor to the King of Navarre. Francis was the youngest of a large family, and special attention was given to his education. Since he had a taste for study, he was sent at seventeen to the University of Paris, to enter the College of St. Barbara. In 1530 he received the degree of Master of Arts, and afterwards taught Aristotelian philosophy in the university. Before receiving his degree he had come under the influence of a compatriot and fellow student, Ignatius Loyola, a former soldier who was fifteen years his senior. Filled with a compelling desire to save souls, Loyola had drawn around him a little band of seven earnest men who, in 1534, formed themselves into the Society of Jesus, dedicated to the service of God. Francis was a member of this group.
With his companions he was ordained to the priesthood three years later in Venice, and shared in all the labours and vicissitudes of the young organization. It was in 1540 that the King of Portugal, John III, had his ambassador at the Vatican ask the Pope for Jesuit missionaries to spread the faith in his new Indian possessions. Loyola promptly appointed Francis to join Simon Rodriguez, another of the original seven, then in Portugal; together they should undertake this work. On reaching Lisbon at the end of June, Xavier went immediately to Rodriguez, and the two priests, while waiting through the fall and winter for plans to mature, were lodged in a hospital where they helped care for the sick; they also catechized and taught in the hospital and in the city, and their Sundays and holidays were often spent hearing confessions at court. King John came to have so high a regard for them that he decided to keep Rodriguez at Lisbon and was for a time uncertain whether or not to let Xavier go. But at last he delivered to Xavier four briefs from Pope Paul III, in which he was constituted papal nuncio and recommended to the princes of the East.
In the spring Xavier, with two assistants, Brother Paul of Camerino, an Italian, and Francis Mancias, a Portuguese layman, joined an expedition bound for Goa, on the west coast of India. They sailed on April 7, 1541, Xavier's thirty-fifth birthday. There were five ships in the fleet, and the missionaries sailed on that of the admiral, which also carried Don Martin de Sousa, newly appointed governor of India. Xavier had declined to take a servant, saying that as long as he had the use of his hands and feet he could wait on himself. When told it would be unbecoming for a papal nuncio and scion of a noble Spanish house to cook his own food and wash his own linen on deck, he replied that he could cause no scandal so long as he did no evil. He took all on board under his spiritual care. He catechized the sailors, said Mass, and preached on deck every Sunday; he also had to settle quarrels and check disorders. When scurvy broke out on all the ships, he helped tend the sick. It took five months to round the Cape of Good Hope and reach Mozambique, where they wintered and rested for six months. Finally, on May 6, 1542, they landed at Goa, after a voyage of thirteen months, twice the usual period of time required.
Following quickly on the great voyages of discovery and exploration made by Magellan and Da Gama, the Portuguese had established themselves at Goa thirty years earlier. The Christian population had churches, clergy, and a bishop, but many of the Portuguese were ruled by ambition, avarice, and debauchery. They ignored the tenets and Sacraments of the Church and tended to shock and alienate the pagans by their behaviour. There were a few preachers but no priests beyond the walls of Goa. Don Martin, the new governor, was a good man and tried to help Xavier in every way. To meet this challenging situation Xavier decided that he must begin by instructing the Portuguese themselves in the principles of faith, and give much of his time to the teaching of children. His mornings were usually spent in tending and comforting the distressed in hospital and prison; after that, he walked through the streets ringing a bell to summon the children and servants to Catechism. As they gathered about him, he led them into the church and taught them the prayers, the Creed, and the rules of Christian conduct. On Sunday he said Mass for the lepers, preached to the Portuguese, then to the Indians, and finished the day by visiting in private homes.
By the gentleness of his words and behaviour and his deep concern for souls, Francis won the people's respect. One of his most troublesome problems was the concubinage openly practiced by Europeans of all ranks with the native women. Xavier tried to meet the situation by methods that were not only moral, but sensible, humane, and tactful. To help simple people, he set Catholic doctrines to rhyme, to fit popular tunes, and these songs were sung everywhere, in fields and workshops, in streets and homes.
Xavier soon learned that along the Pearl Fishery Coast, which extends from Cape Comorin on the southern tip of India to the island of Manaar, off Ceylon, there was a low-caste people called Paravas, many of whom had been baptized ten years before, merely to please the Portuguese, who had helped them against their Mohammedan enemies, but who for lack of all teaching still kept their ancient superstitions. Accompanied by several native clerics from the seminary at Goa, he set sail for Cape Comorin in October, 1542. First he set himself to learn the language of the Paravas; he instructed those who had already been baptized, then preached to those still unsaved, and so great was the multitude he baptized that at times he was almost too weary to move his arms. With the high-caste Brahmins his efforts were unavailing, and at the end of a year he had made only one convert. But the common people accepted him and his message; he made himself one with them; his food was the same as that of the poorest, rice and water; he slept on the ground in a native hut. In his letters he reveals how intense the joy that this labour gave him was.
After fifteen months with the Paravas he returned to Goa to recruit help. The year following he was again working among them, with the help of Mancias, two native priests, and a lay catechist. In his letters from here we see how his work was made even more difficult by the unethical behaviour of the Portuguese traders and settlers, who had not only been exploiting the poor people but also at times arousing the antagonism of the Indian rulers. He writes of one settler who stole a slave owned by the Rajah of nearby Travancore. "This act of injustice shuts me out from the Rajah, who is otherwise well disposed.... Would the Portuguese be pleased if, when one of the natives happened to quarrel with one of them, he were to take that Portuguese by force, put him in chains, and carry him off up country? Certainly not. The Indians must have the same feelings...." Xavier extended his activities up into Travancore, where he founded forty-five churches, and was hailed as the "Great Father." Village after village received him; he baptized the inhabitants and destroyed their temples and idols. As elsewhere, he enlisted the children and used them as helpers to the catechists, to teach others what they had just learned themselves. The Brahmin and Mohammedan authorities opposed Xavier with violence; time and again his hut was burned down over his head, and once he saved his life only by hiding among the branches of a large tree. His difficulties were increased too when the Christians of Comorin and Tuticorin were set upon by heathen tribes to the east, who robbed, massacred, and carried them into slavery. Xavier went to their relief and is said to have held off the raiders once by facing them alone, crucifix in hand. Again he was handicapped by the misdeeds of the Portuguese, whose local commandant was suspected of having secret dealings with the heathen.
Twice while in Travancore Xavier was credited with the miracle of bringing the dead to life. The miracles were probably one reason for his being invited to visit the island of Manaar, between Ceylon and the mainland. He could not himself leave Travancore at that time, but he sent a missionary to whom many came for instruction and baptism. The ruler of Jafanatapam in northern Ceylon, hearing of these successes, and fearing they might lead to a Portuguese conquest of Manaar, sent over an army that slew six hundred converts who, when questioned, bravely confessed Christ. Don Martin de Sousa gave orders for an expedition to avenge the massacre and depose its perpetrator in favour of a dethroned elder brother. Xavier went thither to join it, but the officers were diverted from their objective and Xavier made instead a journey of devotion to the shrine of St. Thomas at Mylapore, near Madras.
Many incidents are told of Xavier's conversion of notorious European sinners during these travels. From Cochin in Travancore, early in 1545, he sent a long letter to King John with an account of his mission. He speaks boldly of the harm these adventurers were doing to the cause, and the danger that heathen who had been gathered into the Church might fall away,-"scandalized and terrified by the many grievous injuries and wrongs which they suffer, especially from your Highness' own servants.... For there is danger that when our Lord God calls your Highness to His judgment that your Highness may hear angry words from him: 'Why did you not punish those who were your subjects and owned your authority, and were enemies of Me in India?'" In another letter he is more explicit about the wickedness of the European colonists: "People scarcely hesitate to believe that it cannot be wrong to do what can be done so easily.... I never cease wondering at the number of novel inflexions which, in this new language of avarice, have been added to the usual forms in the conjugation of that ill-omened verb 'to rob.’" Plain speaking could not go much farther. Xavier's dedication to his task was complete; he ended one letter to the king with the words, "As I expect to die in these Indian regions and never to see your Highness again in this life, I beg you, my lord, to help me with your prayers, that we may meet again in the next world, where we shall certainly have more rest than here."
Christian impositions on India
India too has had its share of Christian iconoclasm. After the Portuguese settlement, hundreds of temples in and around the Portuguese-held territories were demolished, often to be replaced with Catholic churches. "Saint" Francis Xavier described with glee the joy he felt when he saw the Hindu idols smashed and temples demolished.
Most sixteenth and seventeenth century churches in India contain the rubble of demolished Hindu temples. The French-held pockets witnessed some instances of Catholic fanaticism as well. Under British rule, Hindu places of worship in the population centres were generally left alone (some exceptions notwithstanding), but the tribal areas became the scene of culture murder by Catholic and Protestant missionaries. There are recent instances of desecration of tribal village shrines and sacred groves by Christians, assaults on Hindu processions both in the tribal belts and in the south, and attempts to turn the Vivekananda Rock Memorial at Kanyakumari into a Virgin Mary shrine.
In South India, the myth of St. Thomas provided the background for a few instances of temple destruction at places falsely associated with his life and alleged martyrdom, especially the St. Thomas Church replacing the Mylapore Shiva Temple in Madras. In this case, the campaign is still continuing: till today, Christian writers continue to claim historical validity for the long-refuted story of the apostle Thomas coming to India and getting killed by jealous Brahmins. The story is parallel to that of Jesus getting killed by the Jews, and it has indeed served as an argument in an elaborate Christian doctrine of anti-Brahminism which resembles Christian anti-Semitism to the detail.
The Goa Inquisition
"At least from 1540 onwards, and in the island of Goa before that year, all the Hindu idols had been annihilated or had disappeared, all the temples had been destroyed and their sites and building material was in most cases utilized to erect new Christian Churches and chapels. Various viceregal and Church council decrees banished the Hindu priests from the Portuguese territories; the public practices of Hindu rites including marriage rites, were banned; the state took upon itself the task of bringing up Hindu orphan children; the Hindus were denied certain employments, while the Christians were preferred; it was ensured that the Hindus would not harass those who became Christians, and on the contrary, the Hindus were obliged to assemble periodically in Churches to listen to preaching or to the refutation of their religion.\"
"A particularly grave abuse was practiced in Goa in the form of \'mass baptism\' and what went before it. The practice was begun by the Jesuits and was later initiated by the Franciscans also. The Jesuits staged an annual mass baptism on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25), and in order to secure as many neophytes as possible, a few days before the ceremony the Jesuits would go through the streets of the Hindu quarter in pairs, accompanied by their Negro slaves, whom they would urge to seize the Hindus. When the blacks caught up a fugitive, they would smear his/her lips with a piece of beef, making him/her an \'untouchable\' among his/her people. Conversion to Christianity was then his/her only option.\"
The Goan inquisition is regarded by all contemporary portrayals as the most violent inquisition ever executed by the Portuguese Catholic Church. It lasted from 1560 to 1812. The inquisition was set as a tribunal, headed by a judge, sent to Goa from Portugal and was assisted by two judicial henchmen. The judge was answerable to no one except to Lisbon and handed down punishments as he saw fit. The Inquisition Laws filled 230 pages and the palace where the Inquisition was conducted was known as the Big House and the Inquisition proceedings were always conducted behind closed shutters and closed doors. The screams of agony of the culprits (men, women, and children) could be heard in the streets, in the stillness of the night, as they were brutally interrogated, flogged, and slowly dismembered in front of their relatives. Eyelids were sliced off and extremities were amputated carefully, a person could remain conscious even though the only thing that remained was his torso and head.
Diago de Boarda, a priest and his advisor Vicar General, Miguel Vazz had made a 41 point plan for torturing Hindus. Under this plan Viceroy Antano de Noronha issued in 1566, an order applicable to the entire are entire area under Portuguese rule. "I hereby order that in any area owned by my master, the king, nobody should construct a Hindu temple and such temples already constructed should not be repaired without my permission. If this order is transgressed, such temples shall be, destroyed and the goods in them shall be used to meet expenses of holy deeds, as punishment of such transgression." In 1567 the campaign of destroying temples in Bardez met with success. At the end of it 300 Hindu temples were destroyed. Enacting laws, prohibition was laid from December 4, 1567 on rituals of Hindu marriages, sacred thread wearing and cremation. All the persons above 15 years of age were compelled to listen to Christian preaching, failing which they were punished.
"The fathers of the Church forbade the Hindus under terrible penalties the use of their own sacred books, and prevented them from all exercise of their religion. They destroyed their temples, and so harassed and interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large numbers, refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and were liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their own fashion the gods of their fathers.\" wrote Sasetti, who was in India from 1578 to 1588.
An order was issued in June 1684 eliminating Konkani language and making it compulsory to speak Portuguese language. The law provided for dealing toughly with anyone using the local language. Following that law all the symbols of non-Christian sects were destroyed and the books written in local languages were burnt.
The Archbishop living on the banks of the Ethora had said during one of his lecture series, \"The post of Inquiry Commission in Goa is regarded as holy.\" The women who opposed the assistants of the commission were put behind the bars and were used by them to satisfy their animal instincts. Then they were burnt alive as opponents of the established tenets of the Catholic Church.
The victims of such inhuman laws of the Inquiry Commission included a French traveller named Delone. He was an eye witness to the atrocities, cruelty and reign of terror unleashed by priests. He published a book in 1687 describing the lot of helpless victims. While he was in jail he had heard the cries of tortured people beaten with instruments having sharp teeth. All these details are noted in Delone\'s book.
So harsh and notorious was the inquisition in Goa, that word of its brutality and horrors reached Lisbon but nothing was done to stop this notoriety and escalating barbarity and it continued for two hundred more years. No body knows the exact number of Goans subjected to these diabolical tortures, but perhaps it runs into hundreds of thousands, may be even more. The abominations of inquisitions continued until a brief respite was given in 1774 but four years later, the inquisition was introduced again and it continued un-interruptedly until 1812. At that point in time, in the year of 1812, the British put pressure on the Portuguese to put an end to the terror of Inquisition and the presence of British troops in Goa enforced the British desire. Also the Portuguese power at this time was declining and they could not fight the British. The palace of the Grand Inquisitor, the Big House, was demolished and no trace of it remains today, which might remind someone of inquisitions and the horrors inside this Big House that their great saint Francis Xavier had commenced.
Dr. Trasta Breganka Kunha, a Catholic citizen of Goa writes, "Inspite of all the mutilations and concealment of history, it remains an undoubted fact that religious conversion of Goans is due to methods of force adopted by the Portuguese to establish their rule. As a result of this violence the character of our people was destroyed. The propagation of Christian sect in Goa came about not by religious preaching but through the methods of violence and pressure. If any evidence is needed for this fact, we can obtain it through law books, orders and reports of the local rulers of that time and also from the most dependable documents of the Christian sect.
The Impact of His Evangelization in the Building up of the Church in India -- A Critical Analysis
I want for now to pass over Xavier’s general background, coming to Paris, joining the group that would eventually become the Society of Jesus, and deal specifically with his coming to “India”. I also want to mention that there are some commentators, Schurhammer, Brodrick, and Costelloe among them, who suggest that at the time of Xavier there were two kinds of Jesuits, viz., those who prayed, “Lord, send me to the Indies”, and those who prayed, “Lord, send me to anywhere but the Indies”. Xavier seemed to be in neither camp, however, prepared to go wherever and whenever Ignatius needed him, once Ignatius succeeded in convincing Xavier that the Carthusians were not for him. Xavier was serving as Ignatius’s private secretary and went to Portugal and then to Goa on a day’s notice.
For those who know his history with the Portuguese and with Goa, it is astounding that the people of Goa have taken him so much as their patron for the past hundreds of years. To say that Francis despised all but a very few of the Portuguese administrators, not just in Goa but elsewhere, is perhaps the understatement of his history. Neither the Moslems whom he also disliked enormously, nor the Brahmins for whom he eventually developed a bit of a grudging respect, treated him so badly in his estimation as did the Portuguese officials. He once said of them that their motto and goal was, “I plunder; thou plunderest.” He also said that the Portuguese in India “...are the disgrace of their nation, murky renegades, prepared to sell out to the devil for a fanam.” A fanam was the price of one plump chicken!
Portuguese Jesuits did not fare too much better in Xavier’s estimation, especially those in Goa, and especially around the destruction of Xavier’s plan for St. Paul’s College which was to be a training ground for indigenous clergy, “Asians for Asia”. Indigenous students were soon jumping the walls of the college when it began to cater to and be filled with the sons of Portuguese officials and other Europeans in Goa, often rushed to ordination with disastrous results. Goodier tells us that when he was in Goa Xavier used to hide himself in the gardens at St. Paul’s hoping for some respite for his weariness of body, mind, and spirit.
Xavier’s mission method was simple. He lived and worked in whatever hospital or poor house for incurables he could find as the earliest members of the company had done. He also had a little bell which he rang and did a kind of Pied Piper thing by using the equivalent of today’s rap artistry to teach prayers and the creed. He would ask the children to teach these to their parents as well. When he found someone who would say they believed the articles of the creed, their catechumenate was over and he baptized them. He usually then sent his converts out to destroy every Hindu image they could find and rejoiced when they did so.
Xavier was especially happy to be able to baptize dying babies, believing that he gave them a better life after death in doing so. He agonized over those who did not know Christ and vacillated between asking for help of Jesuits from the least intellectually capable among them to the most learned who were “wasting their time” in Europe in university discourses with all these souls in Asia needing them! Brodrick says he eventually changed his mind about wanting Jesuits who were strong of body but weak of mind.
Xavier wore a cassock that was almost falling off him. That would not change until Japan. But no matter where he went in Asia he laboriously translated prayers into the local language, and attempted to speak it no matter how badly in order to “go in their door that they may come out ours”. No matter how legendary his skills as a linguist are purported to be, Schurhammer and Brodrick assure us he was anything but. Yet again, no matter what he was about both Schurhammer and Brodrick are convinced that Francis saw himself as “blazing the trail...while others would build the highway for God.”
A contemporary Jesuit scholar does, however, suggest that Xavier offers the first instance of “dialogue” when he did enter into discussion with a Brahmin who helped him to understand that they, too, worship one God but keep this secret and make it available only to their special initiates, “lest the revenues of idolatry dry up”. Xavier was happy with their monogamy as well. The Brahmin wanted Xavier to baptize him but to keep it secret which the saint would not do.
Francis returned as often as he could to the locations in India where he had originally ministered. Both Schurhammer and Brodrick are anxious to quash the idea that Xavier would set up a project but then leave it to others to carry it out. He did return as often as he could. But while he travelled extensively he did not approve of those whom he appointed to the mission stations which he had originally established doing so. He wanted them to stay put. He believed that the people needed their on-going presence among them if for no other reason than to keep the Portuguese political appointees in their place.
His orders to these Jesuits were clear: educate the children, the boys in particular, by teaching them their prayers and catechism; provide whatever other education is possible especially with the hopes of producing an indigenous clergy; baptize all babies in danger of death so that they might have eternal life; feel free to baptize without any real ceremony; have the men pray in the morning and the women at night; care for these converts and not allow the venality and greed of their Portuguese overlords to destroy them.
Both Fathers Schurhammer and Brodrick traveled to the actual places Francis visited during his time in India and elsewhere. Brodrick concludes that the tragedy of Francis’ time in India is that he never came to know the real India, the country where “God is its entire adventure”. He also reminds his readers that Tagore wrote “...the West did not send its heart to conquer the men [sic] of the East but only its machine.” Francis surely brought his heart to the country but the machine was there before him!
Francis arrived in Cochin without incident it would seem to discover that he had been appointed provincial of the Jesuits two years earlier by Ignatius thus making India the third Jesuit province. He immediately wrote to Ignatius telling him of his blunder in appointing Antonia Gomes to be rector of St. Paul’s. The man had also wreaked havoc in Cochin as well. Their letters passed each other and it would be seven months after Xavier was in his grave that Ignatius’ letter telling Francis to come to Rome by way of Portugal and prepare to stay in India reached Goa.
Conclusion
Self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism were at the heart of Francis’ efforts. He did build up the church in India and Asia in terms of numbers and attempts at accommodation. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius were the principles that guided his life. He carved out a path and left it to others to build the “highway of God”, which in fact we are still building in Asia and indeed elsewhere. I turn now to just how the principles that guided his life might guide ours in our contemporary mission ad intra and ad extra. Obviously, the destruction of Hindu temples and imagery, and the conviction that “We are right, pagans are wrong”, will not be among my recommendations.
Xavier embraced and adapted to a changing world and did not flee from it. The discoveries of the Portuguese and Spanish were opening vistas that had not happened for the five hundred years preceding Xavier. He sought to understand the potential in the change and use it, thus the printing press in Goa, probably the first in operation there. The man was also full of joy, which we are told is an infallible sign of the presence of God. Antonio talks of a silly hat which Xavier found just before their trek to Kyoto and how Xavier used to juggle with it and put it onto his head in all kinds of rakish ways to the delight of his companion bearers! Are we secure enough ever to be downright silly?
And Francis failed. I have mentioned Archbishop Goodier’s report on these failures from our present hindsight, and the article is well worth reviewing. But I see in Xavier a relentless quest for truth, a daring, single-minded loving approach to life, a person who learned to listen, and to act on what he learned from that listening. Lowney tells us that Francis acted without a script. Are we doing the same when we come to others, including our own people with our pre-packaged programmes, thinking that we know what they need no matter what it is that they themselves need and want?
And what of those in our own country who come to do “mission” work with their script in hand, determining that it is their way that is right and true and good and if others do not embrace that “only way”, they are today’s infidels? I think Francis himself learned to be more generous than that.
It is Francis’s self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism that ought to be our models for contemporary mission and ministry. And above all, it is in the reminder that true love speaks best in deeds not words that we need to keep to the forefront of whatever we are about. Our witness is in this. Our goal is human inter-dependence, the animation and empowerment of all peoples. Anything less betrays our God, his Christ, and Francis Xavier.
Bibliography
Schurammer, George. Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times, Vol. II, Rome, 1977
Schurammer, George. Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times, Vol. IV, Rome, 1982
Soares, Aloysius. The Catholic Church In India, A Historical Sketch, Manager, Government Press and Book Depot, Nagpur, India. 1964.
Wicki, J. The Portuguese Padroado in India in the 16th century and St.Francis Xavier, in H.C.perumalil & E.R.Hambye (ed.)\
History of Christianity in India Vol II
Francis Xavier, Claretian Publications, Bangalore, 1998.
On the Bombay Coast and Deccan
The Apostle of the Indies
Christian India
The Jesuits in India
Henry James Coleridge, ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, 2d Ed., 2 Vols., (London: Burns & Oates, 1890), Vol. I, pp. 151-163; reprinted in William H. McNeil and Mitsuko Iriye, eds., Modern Asia and Africa, Readings in World History Vol. 9, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971)
The story of the founding of the Society of Jesus is told in more detail in the life of , which follows.
The Indian Express, true to its current negationist editorial policy, continues to publish sentimentalized and misleading articles about this missionary and his Lutheran counterpart Bartholomeus Ziegenbalg, and about Portuguese churches built on temple sites, in its Monday features page "Tamil Nadu Notes". These missionaries and others are presented as lovers of and contributors to Tamil learning and culture, when in fact they came to India with the sole intention of destroying both. Prof. Maria Lazar, the author of the Ziegenbalg piece, has also done an article on Hindu craftsmen who manufacture images of Christian saints, and sententiously comments that this is a much needed example of religious tolerance today. Hindu craftsmen doing this kind of work are not unusual in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and real religious tolerance will be seen in South India when Christian craftsmen start making images of Hindu deities with the same dedication and respect. C I.S.
The phenomenon of Christian violence against Hindus in South India, generally ignored by Western India-watchers, is briefly mentioned by Susan Bayly in her (otherwise anti-Hindu) article: "History and the Fundamentalists: India after the Ayodhya Crisis", in Bulletin of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, April 1993. The problem has hardly been documented by Hindu organizations, with their usual slothfulness in gathering and providing information. One of the few exceptions is Thanulinga Nadar: Unrest at Kanyakumari, Hindu Munnani, Kanyakumari 1982.
In Roman days and long afterwards, "India" was practically synonymous with "Asia", from Ethiopia to Japan. Columbus expected to reach Zipangu (Chinese Ribenguo, "land of the sun's origin", i.e. Japan), and when he thought he got there, he called the inhabitants "Indians".
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