DURING the first half of the sixteenth century the Indian peninsula experienced the intrusion of two vigorous foreign elements. In 1510 the Island of Goa was occupied by the Portuguese, under Albuquerque, and in a short time the Portuguese power The Portugues was established on part of the adjoining mainland guess and and at several points upon the coast. The dominion the of the Portuguese was marked by two main characteristics. They secured at an early date an almost undisputed control of the Indian seas. And they adopted a frankly proselytising policy, employing both force and persuasion to obtain the conversion of the neighbouring peoples to Christianity. Sixteen years after the occupation of Goa by the Portuguese, the north of India was invaded by an army from Afghanistan and Central Asia, manned by foreigners and led by the Turk, Blbur, who founded the dynasty known as that of the Moguls. The invaders, though professing the same religion as that of the dominant Muslim powers which they supplanted, differed from the bulk of the Indian population in tradition, in manners and in complexion almost as much as did the Portuguese.l They were not long in recognising that it was out of the question to contemplate the substitution of Islam for Hinduism throughout their dominions in Northern India, and as soon as a Mogul conquest became consolidated under the celebrated Akbar (1556-1605) a prominent problem of Mogul politics was to secure the elimination or equipoise of the racial, cultural and religious differences between the Muslims and the Hindu inhabitants of the country.
The society of Jesuits had a double mission which comprehended on the one hand an unrelenting struggle against the forces of reformation of Europe and on the other an absorbing anxiety for the establishment of the true faith in the non-christian countries.
In this book, however, no effort is made to rewrite general history with the help of this information, and nothing further is attempted than to give in outline an account of the Jesuit connection with the Mogul Empire.