Contesting Sacred Space in the Estado da India: Asserting Cultural Dominance over Religious Sites in Goa

Abstract

During the process of conquest and subjugation, Portuguese colonial enclaves in India saw assertions of religious dominance that conform to a model developed by researchers of the Antagonistic Tolerance Project, which studies, comparatively across cultures and historic eras, sacred sites that are shared and contested by different religious communities.  At Goa, the Portuguese conquered a Muslim-ruled city of mainly Hindu inhabitants and rebuilt it, creating an imperial European Christian capital for their Asian colonies. There, Roman Catholic missionary orders established churches and shrines on sites previously occupied by Muslim mosques and Hindu temples (which had themselves often been constructed over pre-existing sacred spaces). Portuguese authorities in Goa, after a period of tolerance while the colonizers consolidated their gains, attempted to eliminate all non-Christian religious sites within the colonized territory.  In India the Portuguese employed specific methods to establish cultural dominance. This article interprets these methods within a comparative cross-cultural model.