Hindu-Catholic Encounters in Goa

The state of Goa on India's southwest coast was once the capital of the Portuguese-Catholic empire in Asia. When Vasco Da Gama arrived in India in 1498, he mistook Hindus for Christians, but Jesuit missionaries soon declared war on the alleged idolatry of the Hindus. Today, Hindus and Catholics assert their own religious identities, but Hindu village gods and Catholic patron saints attract worship from members of both religious communities. Through fresh readings of early Portuguese sources and long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this study traces the history of Hindu-Catholic syncretism in Goa and reveals the complex role of religion at the intersection of colonialism and modernity.

Autorentext

Alexander Henn is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University. He is editor (with Klaus-Peter Köpping) of Rituals in an Unstable World: Contingency, Hybridity, Embodiment.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction

1. Vasco Da Gama's Error: Conquest and Plurality
2. Image Wars: Iconoclasm, Idolatry, and Survival
3. Christian Puranas: Hermeneutic, Similarity, and Violence
4. Ganv: Place, Genealogy, and Bodies
5. Demotic Ritual: Religion and Memory
6. Crossroads of Religions: Shrines and Urban Mobility
   Conclusion. Religion and religions: Syncretism Reconsidered
   Notes
   References
   Index