Children were flogged and slowly dismembered in front of their parents, whose eyelids had been sliced off to make sure they missed nothing. Extremiti… - Paul William Roberts

The Vedas see the ultimate Truth behind all ephemeral truths. The Creation leads us to the Creator, to the highest knowledge, which is integrated into one. The Vedas still represent eternal truth in the purest form ever written. And they are what drew me to India in the first place, what kept me there, and what draws me back still. India is the only country that feels like home to me, the only country whose airport tarmac I have ever kissed upon landing.

Just like the mullahs who had marched into Goa two hundred years before with the Bahamani sultans, these Catholic clergy were prepared to go to any lengths to spread their faith. Initially they pestered the Portuguese king for special powers, and then they pestered the pope to pester the king on their behalf.

The first of these special powers arrived in 1540 when the viceroy received authority to ‘destroy all Hindu temples, not leaving a single one in any of the islands, and to confiscate the estates of these temples for the maintenance of the churches which are to be erected in their places.’ A frenzy of activity must have followed. The Italian cleric Father Nicolau Lancilotto, visiting Goa in 1545, reported that ‘there was not a single temple to be seen on the island.’ The island in question was Teeswadi, the main field of operations for the two priestly orders then on the scene. Once the islands of Bardez and Salcete were acquired, each order was able to stake out its own territory – the Franciscans clearing the ‘jungle’ of Bardez, and the Jesuits going to work on Salcete. By the time the Dominicans and the Augustinians arrived a few years later, however, there was not enough room for separate spheres of influence. A glance at the absurd profusion of churches standing cheek by jowl in Old Goa still conveys some idea of the spiritual excesses indulged in by these competing orders during their heyday.