Book conversations: Revenge of the Naked Princess

Based on his grandmother's tale related to him during his childhood, Pereira weaves a bizarre tale of religious intolerance and revenge.  It begins well with a vivid description of the raid of the tribal palace in Yehoor Hills, a remote jungle area in coastal Maharashtra.  The Portuguese, having made Goa their base of religious and political activities, are looking for fresh converts to their religion.  At the behest of their king, who wants to expand trade routes across the region, the military and religious leaders head off on a quest of finding, subduing and converting the heathen masses.  

Aiding them in this particular venture, is a recent native convert, who betrays the very kingdom and its people that had provided for his welfare in the past.  There are gory descriptions of torture - rape, body parts being dismembered, people being threatened, persecuted and killed - only to encourage them into accepting the 'religion of peace'.  While the military leader is direct in his approach of torture, the Father in charge of showing the tribal people the light, is more docile, but equally fanatical and bigoted in his mindset.  So much so, that when the dead princess of the kingdom comes back as a spirit to avenge her rape and death, he sides with the devil himself to annihilate her spirit! 

Up until the death of the princess and the brutal conversion of the tribal people, the story is engaging.  However, when the revenge bit starts, it meanders along, with the princess' spirit vacillating between seeking revenge and pardoning the perpetrators.  The revenge itself, one can't help feeling, is inadequate given the heinousness of the crime committed, and moreover, unsuccessful!  The princess is impaled on a huge spiky cactus by the Bishop and the spirit of her spirit (!) is condemned to a bottomless pit.  

The gods sitting on Cloud 1777333999 - no, its not a phone number - hug each other and vow that the princess would return to seek her revenge!  What was she doing until now?!?  Is this an attempt at keeping the options open for a sequel?  As though getting your head round things such as supplicating lions, human bodied 'spirits', sexual romps, a wheel-less flying chariot driven by lions, gods joining hands on clouds, and pagan exorcism rituals was not enough!  

If however, you are into fantasy, able to suspend disbelief, and willing to accept the workings of the writer's fervid imagination, you may well enjoy the tale.

The narrative is punctuated (or not!) by several grammatical and spelling errors.  There is generous use of the 'f-word', which makes one wonder if the sixteenth century Portuguese were aware of the word, or had an equivalent of it in their language.  There are also plenty of annoying compound phrases, such as 'subjects-of-conversion', 'one-day-humans' and 'fighting-colonel-turned-fighting-brigadier', which mar the narrative.

Having said that, the real winner in this work is the theme on which it is based.  It must have taken a lot of guts and gumption on the part of Pereira - himself a Christian - to write a story on the brutal nature of conversions in sixteenth century India.  In today's pseudo-secular environment, when every wrong doing of those not of the majority faith of the land - whether in the past or the present - is brushed under the carpet, here is a story that exposes the hypocrisy, bigotry, and fundamental nature of early Christian evangelism.  

As this issue has been overlooked for so long, it continues even today, though the means of achieving it has changed from brutal force and persecution to covert influence and temporal allurements.  Full credit to Pereira for bringing this issue out into the public domain, at the risk of inviting wrath from the upholders of proselytism and conversions. 

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