Can we have a St. Xavier Museum in Kolkata?

Subhas Mitra :  31 December 2023

Back Ground:

Kolkata is getting a Street but why not a Museum of St. Xavier too?

Does Abrahamic expansionism walk on two legs? 

I do not know.

But when I first visited an “Amish” village in Tennessee , USA some years back and read their obscured history displayed at the village Museum, I developed an interest in knowing more about the Christianization of America.

“Amish museum” inspire me to have a St.Xavier Museum in Kolkata.

Besides searching online one day I saw a book named “1491…America before Columbus” on display at a Costco outlet and picked it up. The book took me to a different ‘horizon’ about the destruction of “Native civilizations” but the Amish people are not native.

As per Britannica, Amish are original European tribes. Perhaps after the destruction and conversion of DRUID of Ireland, Catholicism was softened.  The Protestant Church took all non-Catholics as Protestants including marginalized Pagans. The Amish originated in 1693–97 as followers of the Mennonite (Protestant) elder Jakob Ammann (1644 –c. 1730) in Switzerland, Alsace, and Germany. With the rise of Protestant power, his followers started migrating to Canada and the USA.

They call Celtic, Saxon etc. ‘English People’.

They maintained social segregation from English (both Catholic and Protestant) and even today refuse to be Christianized just like some Indian tribal community refused to integrate mainstream Vedic society.

These are TWO legs of Abrahamic expansion among Amish people but in India, TWO legs have been ‘Crescent’ and ‘Cross’ because the Crescent came before the Cross.

Who were the missionaries who came to India?

Crescent came with its birth and set feet in 711 AD

Cross came:

• Thomas the Apostle (52 AD- Controversial)
• Jordanus Catalani.( at Surat in around 1320 AD)
• John Marignolli. ( from Japan-China to  Quilon, Kerala, in1348)
• St. Francis Xavier.  ( May 6, 1542 )
• Giacomo Fenicio.(1582 AD)
• Roberto de Nobili.( 20 May 1605)
• A shoemaker, William Carey, the Baptist (1761-1834), came to Srirampur, WB.

All of them were so concerned about Pagan Hindu’s salvation and liberation. (My book INDIA BEYOND NARRATIVES has details.)

How GREAT was St. Xavier, the Spanish Jesuit for India?

He might have been very KIND towards us or else how such a great man became an Education Icon and now in 2023 Kolkata is naming streets after him.

He died on December 3, 1552, in China and was buried on the coast of China. His body was later brought to Goa.

GOA Inquisition:

Kolkata Mayor Janab Firhad Hakim might know more than me but those who do not think so may read about it online as well as many authors like Anant Priolkar, Charles Dellon or modern ones including Shefali Vaidya, a descendent of runaway Goan Hindu.

Satyajit Ray:

Christian vote or political secularism prevented changing the name of Bishop Lefroy Road to Satyajit Ray Road but in  Feb 2016 WB Chief Minister changed the name to ‘Satyajit Ray Sarani’ ending a long demand and objection from the Christian community.

I do not know if this had been done to name the street where St. Xavier Collegiate School stand to be named after St. Xavier. West Bengal had her FIRST elected Anglo-Indian lawmakers in 2011 via TMC.

A museum please:

May I request our Mayor to make a Museum of St. Xavier contribution to this land still known as India?

All apparatus or technic (including the Breast extractor) used for Hindu salvation during the ‘Goa Inquisition’ can be displayed so that the younger generation of India can evaluate him properly.