Vijaya Maria: What Portuguese did to Goa

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Following the conquest of Goa by Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque in 1510, a period of colonisation and atrocities befell on the simple folk of Goa, India's 'golden island', continuing for nearly 450 years. All in the name of conversion and commerce, that has come to be known as the Goa Inquisition. A historical fiction, Vijaya Maria, tells the saga through the eyes of the Kamat family, a witness to this horror through five generations in 16th Century Goa.

Vijaya Kamat belongs to the island of Diwar, just across the River Mandovi from Ella, which is now called Velha Goa. Her Grandfather Santu Kamat died saving the Saptokoteshwar Temple from demolition, her brother-in-law, Pandu Kamat, too was martyred while protecting the temple. Her whole family is forcefully converted and has to bear the tortures of the Inquisition until it is time for them to fight back.

Not much remains of this tortuous aspect of our past as Portuguese, when being driven out of Goa in 1961, burnt many of the records. Vijaya Maria attempts to narrate the horrors of the Portuguese Conquest and one of the biggest cover-ups of history.

Asheesh Santram was born in an illustrious Christian family of Educationists in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh. His early education was in his own family run School, Wilsonia College. Later, he went to Bishop Cotton School, Shimla. He graduated from St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and did his Masters in English Literature from Lucknow University. After doing MBA from the University of Hull in the United Kingdom and working short stints with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Radisson Hotel - New Delhi, he returned to Moradabad in 1997 to join the Wilsonia Group of Educational Institutions that manages Schools and a Degree College of which he is now Co-Director, while appointed as Principal at Wilsonia College, an I.S.C-affiliated Institution.

He published a collection of Poems entitled Sonnets about Nothing in 2014. This is his first Novel.

He completed his Ph.D. in Literature in 2019 and continues to live in Moradabad with his sister, wife and their children.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages