भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

The end of the Sixteenth Century and After 923. After having so far reviewed Indian History from the standpoint of the Hindu nation, we shall now take up some connected events of the sixteenth century and thereafter. Swarm of European Pirates Invade India 924. The first of the European nations to invade India was Portugal. It was Vasco De Gama, the Portuguese navigator, who first rounded the Cape of Good Hope and discovered a straight sea-route to India. He was, however, guided by one of the captains of the Indian mercantile morine. who plied to and fro between the Indian and the African coasts. In A.D. 1498, he first landed in the port of Calikat on the Western coast of India, professing purely commercial interests, which subsequently served to be a very fine pretext for the other Portuguese and European nationals, who followed suit, to camouflage their secret territorial ambitions in India. Accordingly, immediately after two years in A.D. 1500, came Padro Alvaira’s Cabral, another Portuguese admiral with thirteen warships fitted with guns and weapons under his command. Seeing that the Muslim traders had already established themselves well in Cochin, he went there first to undermine their preponderance in inter-continental trade. Since the beginning, the Portuguese had cherished inveterate enmity towards the Muslims as a result of the horrible religio-political aggression of the latter on Spain and Portugal as has already been referred to in Paras 539 to 546. Later in A.D. 1509, Albuquerque was made the Governor of the Portuguese possessions in India. It was he who conquered Goa and the surrounding territory from the Muslim Sultans of Vijapur in A.D. 1510. It was he again who encouraged his Portuguese compatriots to marry, even with force and deceit, if necessary, Hindu girls in order to ensure the permanent Portuguese settlements in India. About this time, the Portuguese priesthood claimed that it was their supreme religious duty to proselytize the Hindus even with force and made their king issue a royal order to that effect. It is under this royal sanction that the Portuguese in Goa perpetrated the indescribable atrocities, rapes and various other outrages on the Hindus—men and women—there as are mentioned in Paras 539 to 546 of this book.