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There are over 230 educational institutions if no less in the name of St Francis Xavier, popularly known as St Xavier, across India. Xavier is venerated as ‘Apostle of the Indies.’ I guess, we, the Indians aren’t aware of the truth and hence this.
The history of Portuguese missionary work in the 16th century India has often been described in Catholic writings as a noble and heroic effort to spread Christianity. According to these accounts, this missionary work was led by saintly missionaries whose main aim was to save souls and bring local people into the Christian faith. These missionaries are usually remembered as men of sacrifice, devotion, and compassion who came to India only for religious service.
Among these figures, St Xavier occupies a particularly exalted position. Xavier was a Spanish Jesuit missionary and co-founder of the Society of Jesus, who arrived in Portuguese-controlled Goa in 1542. Canonized later as a saint in the Catholic Church, especially in Goa where his relics remain one of the most celebrated symbols of Portuguese Christian heritage.
However, the image of Xavier that appears from his own letters and missionary records is very different from this saintly portrayal. In his personal correspondence, preserved in works such as ‘The Life and Letters of St Francis Xavier’, he does not appear simply as a humble preacher spreading faith peacefully. Instead, his writings show him a man filled with aggressive missionary zeal, deep contempt for Hindu religion and culture, and a clear readiness to use political power and state support to push conversions. Xavier repeatedly described Hindu temples, idols, rituals, and the native priestly class not as alternate religious expressions, but as devilish falsehoods to be uprooted.
A particularly revealing example appears in his description of Hindu idols preserved in ‘The Life and Letters of St Francis Xavier’ edited by Henry James Coleridge. In it, Xavier writes: ‘And again, whether God was black or white. For as there is so great a variety of colour among men, and the Indians being black themselves, consider their own colour the best, they believe that their gods are black. On this account the great majority of their idols are as black as black can be, and moreover are generally so rubbed over with oil as to smell detestably, and seem to be as dirty as they are ugly and horrible to look at.’
This was not just religious disagreement, but civilisational disgust. A disgust filled with racial hate towards the Hindus for merely existing with their centuries-old culture.
Xavier’s hatred toward Brahmins was even more explicit. Xavier repeatedly identified Brahmins as the principal obstacle in the path of Christianisation because they preserved temple worship, sustained ritual continuity, and maintained the spiritual confidence of the local Hindu population. He referred to them as a wicked, unholy race, full of lies and deceit and further wrote: ‘We have in these parts a class of men among the pagans who are called Brahmins. They keep up the worship of the gods, the superstitious rites of religion, frequenting the temples and taking care of the idols. They are as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found… They are liars and cheats to the very backbone… Their whole study is, how to deceive most cunningly the simplicity and ignorance of the people… If it were not for the Brahmins, we should have all the heathens embracing our faith.’
In Xavier’s own words, Brahmins were not merely ideological opponents — they were to him the barriers preventing total collapse of Hindu society into missionary control. And here we have people abusing Brahmins and shouting Brahminical patriarchy day and night. Pals, if it were not for the Brahmins, there wouldn’t have been a Hindu society in place.
Then, according to the History of Christianity in India, published by the United Theological Seminary, Bangalore (1982), Xavier personally encouraged and supervised idol-breaking campaigns among newly converted populations. The record notes: ‘When the boys informed him that someone had made an idol, he went with them and had it broken into a thousand pieces. In spite of all his advice, if someone persisted in making idols, he would have them punished by the patangatis or banished to another village. One day when he heard that idols had been worshipped in the house of a Christian, he ordered the hut to be burned down as a warning to others’.
This alone demolishes the sanitised missionary image built around him. But the campaign did not stop in Goa. Later, Xavier mounted the same iconoclastic campaign on the Malabar Coast. According to the same History of Christianity in India: ‘When the whole village was baptised, Xavier would get them to pull down their village temple and break into small pieces the idols it contained.’
This was done at a time when the Tiruvadi Raja of Quilon had given him 2000 fanams for the construction of churches. The local fishing communities were in no position to resist these actions because Portuguese armed support was always at hand to assist the missionary enterprise. Conversion was not occurring in some vacuum of peaceful theological persuasion; it operated under the looming shadow of colonial power, maritime military presence, and dependence. And Xavier did not merely record these acts as administrative details: he rejoiced in them.
On February 8, 1545, writing to the Society of Jesus, Xavier stated: ‘Following the baptisms, the new Christians return to their homes and come back with their wives and families to be in their turn prepared for baptism. After all had been baptised, I order that the temples of the false Gods be pulled down and idols broken. I know not how to describe in words the joy I feel before the spectacle of pulling down and destroying the idols by the very people who formerly worshipped them.’
There is no ambiguity here. This is a first-hand confession of delight in temple destruction, joy in idol-smashing, and satisfaction in watching uprooted natives dismantle their own sacred world under missionary command.
These events must also be placed in the wider climate of 16th-century Portuguese colonialism and Counter-Reformation fanaticism, where non-Christian religions were not seen as traditions to coexist with, but errors to be erased. Xavier’s letters repeatedly reveal missionary zeal fused with cultural superiority, racial contempt, and a demand for state-assisted suppression of native practices.
Another striking proof of Xavier’s missionary mindset appears in his letter written to the King of Portugal on 16 May 1545, where he openly demanded the establishment of the Holy Inquisition in India. In the letter, Xavier wrote: ‘The second necessity for the Christians is that your Majesty establish the Holy Inquisition, because there are many who live according to the Jewish law, and according to the Mahomedan sect, without any fear of God or shame of the world. And since there are many spread all over the fortresses, there is the need of the Holy Inquisition and of many preachers. Your Majesty should provide such necessary things for your loyal and faithful subjects in India.’ (Joseph Wicki, Documenta Indica, Vol. IV, Rome, 1956).
This appeal is highly significant because it proves that Xavier did not believe missionary preaching alone was sufficient for conversion. In his view, the spread of Christianity had to be supported by a formal machinery of surveillance, fear, and punishment. The Holy Inquisition was not a spiritual school of persuasion; it was one of the harshest judicial instruments of the Catholic Church, created to detect religious nonconformity, interrogate suspected offenders, and impose severe penalties upon those who continued older beliefs. Xavier’s demand for such an institution in India clearly reveals his preference for coercive enforcement over peaceful coexistence.
Although political complications between the Portuguese Crown and the Papacy delayed its immediate establishment, Jesuit missionaries continued to press the same demand until the Goa Inquisition was formally instituted in 1560. Thus, Xavier’s letter was not an isolated personal opinion but an early and foundational call for the creation of a state-backed system that would place the religious life of Indians under direct Christian scrutiny and control. Whether it is still under control in some other sense or not is something I leave to you.
