Over the last few days, Goa is upset with the statements made by Subhash Velingkar about St Francis Xavier and his revered reference to as “Goencho Saib”. All and sundry know what has been said, and what he threatens to expose through his ‘Goa Files’. The question really is whether Subhash and his rant deserved all the reaction and the attention that followed. Subhash and the Hindu Raksha Maha Aghadi, definitely in connivance with the RSS, know very well that Goans and most importantly Catholics, are very impulsive, naive and get carried away very easily at anything and everything. It is pertinent to note that if SFX carried out any of his religious duties in his time - even though they included conversions - with any malice, and to harass the very people he loved and worked with and for, he and the Portuguese would not have saved all the documents of the inquisition and other events. They would have destroyed them, just as how the present-day governments declare files missing. The missionaries of those days would not have emphasized the need for education, development through building sustainable infrastructure and the betterment of civil society as a whole. It is a fact that all that was done, was in context with the theological, sociological and economic thinking of the time, and therefore, stupid for a progressive and developing society to justify or condemn it centuries later.
