Dr Teotonio R de Souza's recently released second edition of Medieval Goa, draws an image of the city of Goa around the 17th century. For Europeans and Indian travellers to the colonial outpost of Goa, it must have seemed like a mirage arising out of thin mist, a magnificent city set in an area now called Old Goa, carved out of stone in a layout similar to most European cities of the era but totally bewildering in the midst of what was part rainforest and part coastal plains on the western shores of India, populated by vagrant monkeys and perhaps even the odd renegade tiger.

To the eastern side, Dr Teotonio tells us, lay the hillock of Mary to the west was the hillock of Our Lady of the Rosary. Through the center of the city ran the Rua Direita leading to the square of the Church of the Holy House of Mary. What a fascinating city this must have been where every hue of humanity intermingled; European merchants setting up shops alongside the Rua Direita, auctioneers at the leil?es oiling the skins of their African slaves until they glistened in the sun, the more attractive women from Mozambique stripped naked to attract higher prices, (Boies Penrose, Goa - Rainho do Oriente, 1960) the indigenous Goans selling vegetables and fish, somber clad Jesuit priests making their way up the treacherous hilly terrain to the Cathedral of Bom Jesus, and there in the midst of the city taking its pride of place the Santa Casa de Misericórderia, a charity house. The Casa Misericordia remains one of Portugal's most enduring legacies of Christian charity to the extent that the French physician visiting Goa in 1673, was to write of the Portuguese: "Charity is the whole foundation of this noble and most glorious society."(Charles Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1969). The charity house was often used to house illegitimate children, give shelter to unwed mothers and care for sick and abandoned slaves. (Fatima da Silva Gracias, Health and Hygiene and Goa, 1994) If ever there was a hideous tableau of paradox, then this was it, the very image of Christian charity and principles juxtaposed against the very indignity of slavery in the market place just a few feet away. To be fair, the Jesuits, often voiced their objection to slavery both in Spain and Portugal, incurring expulsions, but for the most part the Catholic Church did very little to confront the marriage of politics and economics which perpetuated this human bondage.

What possessed these Christian Portuguese men to subjugate other human beings through chains and ownership and treat them with untenable cruelty? This was the Empire, who in the same breath wanted to spread Christianity and Salvation to souls who to their minds were heathen and damned. In a rather complex, bizarre and dichotomous relationship with God and their slaves, the Portuguese were hell bent on making sure all of their slaves were baptized once they came onboard their ships or were bought at the auction, whereupon they would take their owner's family name. This curious custom is also common among many mundkars of Goa, who took their bhatkar's family name. Was this shameful practice borrowed from the Portuguese slave trade which branded and reinforced rights over their labour force while at the same time obliterating their past identities?

What is the genesis of our own Goan prejudice against the African black man? The khampri Augustine who in Goan folkloric jokes goes to Panjim but doesn't know what for. How did the African khampri come to be an uncouth, uncivilized, imbecile in our own minds? Was it because, no matter how reprehensible life was as a colonial subject, it couldn't possibly compare to that of being a slave. Historian Fatima da Silva Gracias tells us of slaves in Goa being abandoned when they fell sick, some beaten to death and buried in the backyards.

It must have come as a shock to the humble native Goan, who, until the 16th century would have been living an almost cloistered life in simple agrarian ganvkari communities, to be suddenly sharing close quarters with White Portuguese and Black Africans. It is to their credit that they assimilated and accepted these violent changes, fostered on them, but they didn't come out of it unscathed. Somewhere along the line, we formed our own racial stereotypes and indulged in our own prejudice of black skin, which we carry to this day.