The Goa Inquisition: How Portugal Exported Religious Control to the Shores of India

History · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Established in 1560, the Goa Inquisition was a judicial institution designed to enforce Catholic orthodoxy across Portuguese India. While it initially targeted Jewish converts suspected of secret practices, its reach expanded to suppress Hinduism, Islam, and non-Catholic Christian traditions, leaving a complex legacy of religious transformation and colonial power.

The Goa Inquisition was an extension of the Portuguese Holy Office, formally established on March 2, 1560, in the former residence of Yūsuf ʿĀdil Shah. Its origins were deeply rooted in the Iberian Peninsula, where King Manuel I had forced the conversion of Jews and Muslims in 1497. Many of these 'New Christians' fled to Goa to escape persecution, only to find that the Inquisition followed them. By 1532, emigration from Portugal had become a capital offense, and by 1546, missionary Francis Xavier was formally requesting an Inquisition in the Indies to combat what he termed the Mosaic Law and the Moorish sect.

The tribunal’s authority was vast, covering all Portuguese territories in the East Indies. While its primary focus was on New Christians suspected of practicing Judaism in secret, it soon broadened its scope to include local Hindus, Muslims, and Indigenous Christians. The Inquisition utilized public sentencing ceremonies known as autos-da-fé to enforce compliance. Between 1562 and 1623, twenty-seven such events were held, with 3,800 people sentenced. From 1600 to 1773, over 4,000 more were sentenced, including 57 executions and 64 symbolic executions in effigy.

The impact on the local population was profound. Beyond trials and executions, the Inquisition sought to eradicate local culture by banning the use of Konkani and Sanskrit, and by destroying books that deviated from Catholic doctrine. Although the institution was suspended between 1774 and 1778, it remained active until its final abolition in 1812. Because Portuguese officials destroyed the majority of the records upon the Inquisition's closure, the full scale of the prosecutions remains difficult to quantify, though trial records up to 1774 suggest that more than 13,000 individuals were investigated.

The Inquisition was not merely a religious endeavor but a tool of colonial administration. By criminalizing rituals and festivals associated with Hinduism and Islam, the Portuguese authorities aimed to secure absolute religious control over their first Asian territorial possession. This systematic pressure led to a significant decline in the non-Christian population of Goa, fundamentally altering the region's social and religious landscape for centuries to come.

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