Death In Colonial Goa: An interview with historical novelist Richard Zimler

Guardian of the Dawn, from the Sephardic Cycle, Richard Zimler’s series of historical novels comes out in India for the first time this year. Zimler speaks to TARA SAHGAL about the anger and injustice that inspired the book.

What inspired the Sephardic Cycle?
I wrote The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon after accidentally discovering that there’d been a riot in Lisbon in 1506 in which 2,000 Jews who’d been forced to convert to Christianity were murdered and burnt in the main square. I’ve lived in Portugal since 1990, and none of my Portuguese friends knew anything about that massacre. Their ignorance shocked me. It’s very important to give voice to the ‘losers’ in history. After all, the ‘winners’ don’t need novelists to tell their story; they have propagandists doing that for them. I invented Berekiah Zarco because I wanted a central character who had suffered and lost family members in the massacre. Later, I decided to write about branches and generations of his family to create a parallel universe for the reader. For instance, the narrator of Guardian of the Dawn is Berekiah’s great grandson, Tiago Zarco.

Tell us about the real-life narratives from India that informs Guardian of the Dawn?
To write realistically about how the Inquisition persecuted people like Tiago, I read about people who were imprisoned, tortured and burnt alive in a public ceremony called an auto-da-fé. The most helpful book for learning the details of how the Inquisition persecuted Indians for 250 years was written by a Frenchman Charles Dellon who was arrested by the Inquisition in the 17th century. In his memoir, An Account of the Inquisition In Goa he discusses the miserable food, the filthy conditions of the prisons, how he was tortured, and how he was freed. Another thing I learned was that to many Indians, the idea of the Inquisition was beyond their understanding. Torture a woman for simply doing a puja? Burn a man for refusing to pray to Jesus? In Guardian of the Dawn, Phanishwar, a Jain snake-dancer, becomes desperate not just because he is being tortured but also because he can’t figure out the rules of this terrible machine of death into which he has fallen. He and Tiago share a cell, and come to love each other.

Guardian of the Dawn traces Tiago Zarco’s transformation from innocent bystander to the perpetrator of terrible crimes. Is there always a ‘cause’ for evil?
What I’ve discovered is that unstable and undemocratic situations bring out the worst in people. In places where people do not trust their governments, or where the court system is corrupt, people try to create justice for themselves, and they often use violence. In the case of Guardian, the Catholic priests who developed the Inquisition to gain power and wealth could never have done so in a democratic country.

What would you like Indian readers to take away from Guardian?
I wrote this book as my vengeance against the power-hungry Catholic priests who tortured and murdered Indians under their rule, who almost succeeded in wiping out all traces of Hinduism from Goa. We should never forget that they made a fortune since they confiscated all the property belonging to the converted Hindu and Jewish prisoners. When I see the golden candlesticks in Catholic churches, I try to remember that all that wealth was made, in part, by murdering Indians in Goa. What I find horrible is that the Portuguese still speak of Goa as if it was the exotic, friendly capital of the spice trade. I also find it unforgivable that the Catholic missionary who petitioned the Pope and Portuguese king to impose the Inquistion on Goa, Francis Xavier, was later canonised. As far as I know, he’s still the patron saint of Catholic missionaries. Sainthood for a man who made it possible for the priests of Goa to torture and burn former Hindus up to 1812? Excuse me for being
blunt, but I find it disgusting