Vijaya Maria: What the Portuguese did to Goa

Following the conquest of Goa by Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque in 1510, a period of colonisation and atrocities befell on the simple folk of Goa, India’s ‘golden island’, continuing for nearly 450 years. All in the name of conversion and commerce, that has come to be known as the Goa Inquisition.

A historical fiction, Vijaya Maria, tells the saga through the eyes of the Kamat family, a witness to this horror through five generations in 16 th century Goa.

Vijaya Kamat belongs to the island of Diwar, just across the River Mandovi from Ella, which is now called Velha Goa. Her Grandfather Sanfu Kamat died saving the Saptokoteshwar Temple from demolition, her brother-in-law, Pandu Kamat, too was martyred while protecting the temple. Her whole family is forcefully converted and has to bear the tortures of the Inquisition until it is time for them to fight back.

Not much remains of this tortuous aspect of our past as Portuguese, when being driven out of Goa in 1961, burnt many of the records, Vijaya maria attempts to narrate the horrors of the Portuguese Conquest and one of the biggest cover-ups of history.