The Relic State

This book is a study of the complex nature of colonial and missionary power in Portuguese India. Written as a historical ethnography, it explores the evolving shape of a series of Catholic festivals that took place throughout the duration of Portuguese colonial rule in Goa (15101961), and for which the centrepiece was the 'incorrupt' corpse of So Francisco Xavier (150652), a Spanish Basque Jesuit missionary-turned-saint. Using distinct genres of source materials produced over the long duree of Portuguese colonialism, the book documents the historical and visual transformation of Xaviers corporeal ritualisation in death through six events staged at critical junctures between 1554 and 1961. Xaviers very mutability as a religious, political and cultural symbol in Portuguese India will also suggest his continuing role as a symbol of Goas shared past (for both Catholics and Hindus) and in shaping Goas culturally distinct representation within the larger Indian nation-state. -- .