Book launch - Pamila Gupta: "The Relic State: St Francis Xavier and the Politics of Ritual in Portuguese India"

The Relic State: St Francis Xavier and the Politics of Ritual in Portuguese India Pamila Gupta Published by Manchester University Press 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 in Goa throughout the duration of Portuguese colonial rule in India (1510–1961), and for which the centrepiece was the ‘incorrupt’ corpse of São F..