Essay on the Life on the Poverty of Portuguese Civilization

The atrocious barbarities perpetrated by the Portuguese in the course of their trade activities in the Eastern lands indicate more than their religious fanaticism, a comparatively low level of civilization and culture. The civilization they met with in the East was far superior to theirs. It was with knowledge and conviction that Whiteway said that the Papal Bull “divided three-fourths of the globe between the half-savage Spaniards and half-savage Portuguese”.

The universal tolerance and consideration showed by the Malabar princes towards foreigners and other religionists were in clear contrast with the Savage traits exhibited by the Portuguese in their commercial and religious dealings in south India. Poverty of civilization cannot be better illustrated than in the way Barros, the official historian of the Portuguese, has done in justifying their diabolic actions. The fact that the commerce was contaminated by the deadly poison of insatiable cupidity and barbarous bigotry needs no further elaboration than this justification of the cruelest insult of humanity.

A comparative study of the levels of civilization attained by the people of South India and the Portuguese clearly indicates that in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Europeans were a less civilized and uncultured lot; in attainments of minds and spirit they were no match to the honest, hospitable and simple folk they encountered in peninsular India.

In the words of Whiteway, “Civilization in that part of the Western Coast of India first touched at by the Portuguese, had reached a high level. It was not a very progressive civilization, but it ensured personal security, it admitted the toleration of hostile creeds and it allowed great freedom in mercantile transactions.”

Foreign travellers who visited South India before and after da Gama, have invariably put on record their appreciation of the high cultural standard of the people of this land. The Hindu rulers of Malabar, they point out, abstained from all oppression and paid every consideration to the prejudices and customs of the Muslims, Jews and other religionists. The Zamorins of Calicut were rulers with Catholic outlook and great sense of justice.

Their tolerance even went to the extent of encouraging conversion of Hindu fisher-folk to Islam; it was, of course, with a view to building up a navy combining the experience of the Arabs and virility of the converts. The author of the Tuhfat-ul-Mujahideen observes that, even though Muslims were a small minority, in deference to them Friday was respected throughout Malabar, a death-sentence on a Muslim was never carried out without their consent, and converts to their faith were not molested.

Even in conveniences in life, in industry, science and technology, India was far ahead of Europeans in the Gama epoch it was only after the consummation of the Industrial Revolution that the Western nations pushed India and other countries of the east behind. In fact when the Portuguese first came to Calicut the goods they brought for sale in the market there were so cheap and unattractive that they could not find any buyers for them; the gifts that Gama presented to the Zamorin, the lord of Malabar were worthless tinsel which even a petty chieftain would have considered below his dignity to send to a king. Western industrial products in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not to speak of earlier ones, were primitive and shoddy that even the English trading company found it difficult to market them here.

With reference to the English East India Company K.M. Panikkar said: “the Company’s affairs did not progress very satisfactorily, for nothing was available in England to sell in exchange.” It has been recorded that the first ship sent out by the East India Company was laden with English woollens and ironware which no o~ would take on one any terms in India.

The barbarous acts of piracy and cruelty committed by Gama and other Western traders in Indian Ocean and coastal land, can be explained by two plain and powerful factors present in their civilization; one is their backwardness in industrial technology and other their low state of civilization.

Year-long toil and great risk of life involved in navigating the seas proved futile when the goods they brought could attract no buyer in the eastern markets; the consequent frustration of feeling was a sufficient cause for making the white trader a barbarous pirate.

As Brian Gardner pointed out, unable to sell any of the stuff he brought the captain of the first ship of the East India Company resorted to piracy and returned home with a “profit.” Inferiority of their goods to Indian goods clearly indicated a low state of their industry and technology.

The superb fineness of Indian textiles, to be sure, symbolized the superiority of Indian material civilization to European civilization; the mad rush for these fabrics in Western capitals almost served to ruin the indigenous industry there so much so that France and England were forced to pass a series of laws for the protection of the native producers.

Another intrinsic cause for the cruelty and bestial behaviour of the Portuguese on the Malabar coast the Indian Ocean was certainly their half savage nature. Vandalism, the most characteristic behavioural pattern of barbarians which accompanied the Portu­guese whereever they went, is a clear manifestation of a very low level of culture attained by them. Piracy, robbery, and plunder were part of their state activity which in the eyes of Hindu Kings was contemptuous, irreligious sins.

The superiority of Indian culture stands out markedly when it is juxtaposed with the Portuguese. Pyrard de Laval was a witness to the barbarity of the Portuguese and “the high grade of civilization to which Calicut had attained.” He has many things to say about the virtues of this civilized people on the Malabar Coast and the vices of the white intruders. “

There is no place in all India” he writes, “where contentment is more universal than at Calicut, both on account of the fertility and beauty of the. Country and of the intercourse with the men of all religious who live there in free exercise of their own religion”.

This is practically an attestation of what Abdur-Razak wrote 165 years before. Cupidity and plunder were foreign to the Malabar princes who believed that state craft is the operation in good faith of a sacred trust. This goes counter to the Portuguese faith. Abdur-Razak who visited Calicut in 1442 writes that “Security and Justice are so firmly established in this city that the wealthiest merchants bring thither from maritime countries considerable cargoes, which they unload, and unhesitatingly send to the markets and the bazaars, without thinking in the meantime of any necessity of checking the accounts or keeping watch over the goods.

The officers of the custom-house take upon themselves the charge of looking after the merchandize, over which they keep watch night and day….. But in Calicut every ship, whatever place it may come from or where so ever it may be bound, when it puts into this port is treated like other vessels and has no trouble of any kind to put up with”. The system of Cartaz and the wanton destruction of the ships and the life they carry after confiscation of cargoes distinguish Portuguese life style.

In the treatment of the prisoners of war Indian princes showed greatest consideration and humanity while the Portuguese “killed with the most horrible tortures or enslaved all prisoners whom they could not hold to ransom. They even flung the dead bodies of their captives on the shore and watched them to extort a ransom from anyone who showed any interest in the corpse”. This again is an indicator of the high level of Indian culture and the low level of the Portuguese culture.

Whiteway draws the contrast between the two in brilliant colours. The following extract will prove conclusively that the Portuguese had no claim to the benefits of civilization. He says, “There are traces that the better side of the Indian nature struck the more savage Portuguese with astonishment.

Two pictures may not be given from one voyage of Martim Correa up the coast in 1521, of which it is said, as it was of many others, that it was an unnecessary expedition, as the people they robbed were but poor people who followed the sea nor did evil to any one.

Landing at one place, Correa marched up the country with 25 men till he came to large country-house with courtyards and gardens, and many poor, both men and women, sitting round. Seeing the Portuguese, a man accosted them courteously, who was the almoner of a wealthy Mahomedan gentleman who lived there retired from the world and who spent his money in alms giving.

Presently the owner himself came out and treated them with hospitality. When a friendly understanding had been arrived at; Correa had the curiosity and the naivety to ask him why he gave alms and what satisfaction he could get from it.

A little later, among the captives Correa took, was an old man past work, who offered £3 for his liberty, and asked that as he had no friend he might be allowed to fetch the money himself. Correa, more in jest than earnest, gave him his liberty and made him swear on his sacred cord, for he was a Brahmin, to bring the money back.

A few days later, to the astonishment of the Portuguese, the old Brahmin returned with half the money and eight fowls in lieu of the rest-all that he had been able to scrape together. To the credit of the Portuguese they refused to take anything from him.” The old Brahmin of this story represents the glory of Indian culture, and Correa symbolizes the shame of Portuguese civilization.