It was he who taught Europe how to conquer and how to hold the East.” Many Europeans still look upon him as “one of the chief saviour of our modern civilisation. The Indian records are generally silent on him. After da Gama’s arrival, the Portuguese destroyed the Arab navigation and eliminated their trade. Before Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the European route to India, the Arab merchants enjoyed a monopoly of trade in the Indian Ocean. In the Arab records, he is clearly a villain, for good reasons. In a survey done in Portugal in the 1980s, on the most admired person in Portuguese history, Vasco da Gama topped the list, getting nearly 60 per cent of the votes. The Portuguese records praise him to the sky. Different records and data speak very differently about him. Given the mist surrounding da Gama, it is quite likely that he will go on living these many lives. The other lives have been constructed for him by historians from different parts of the world. One was his individual life as he lived it, about which we know very little. Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese sailor who came to India in 1498, lived many lives. SALIL MISRA attempts to analyse the Portuguese sailor who also evoked contrasting and extraordinary responses
Vasco da Gama’s unprecedented feat of navigating from Lisbon in Portugal to Calicut in India, connecting Europe with Asia through sea route, was an event that came to have momentous, long-term consequences for the modern world.
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