Vasco da Gama: legendary explorer or overrated Person in Our history

Vasco da Gama:
The "legendary" explorer whose stepping foot in Kappad beach, Calicut, Kerala in the 16th century led to the first act of western colonization in India.

This is how he is generally known to people:

Dom Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira, (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈvaʃku ðɐ ˈɣɐmɐ]) (c. 1460s – 23 December 1524) was a Portuguese explorer. He was the first European to reach India by sea, linking Europe and Asia for the first time by ocean route, as well as the Atlantic and the Indian oceans entirely and definitively, and in this way, the West and the Orient. This was accomplished on his first voyage to India (1497 - 1499).
Vasco da Gama is one of the most famous and celebrated explorers from the Age of Discovery.  As much as anyone after Henry the Navigator, he was responsible for  Portugal's success as an early colonising power. Beside the fact of the  first voyage itself, it was his astute mix of politics and war on the  other side of the world that placed Portugal in a prominent position in Indian Ocean trade.  Following da Gama's initial voyage, the Portuguese crown realized that  securing outposts on the eastern coast of Africa would prove vital to  maintaining national trade routes to the Far East.
source:Wikipedia

Sounds like a cool warm guy, who just came to explore the land, eh??
Well, that's wrong.
In 1502,  Gama and his troops were roaming the arabian sea near the calicut coast to catch and rob any ship that came their way. It caught the ship 'Meri' coming from arabia having 380 passengers,including women and children and innumerable wealth's.

When the ship surrendered, De Gama went on board and commanded the  owners and all the principal Moors to come before him, whom he ordered  to produce all their goods on pain of being thrown overboard. They  answered that they had nothing to produce, as all their goods were in  Calicut; on which De Gama ordered one of them to be bound hand and foot  and thrown into the sea. The rest were intimidated by this procedure,  and immediately delivered up every thing belonging to them, which was  very valuable; all of which was committed to the charge of Diego  Hernando Correa, the factor appointed for conducting the trade at  Cochin, by whose directions they were transported into one of the  Portuguese ships. De Gama ordered all the children belonging to the  Moors to be taken on board one of his own ships, and vowed to make them  all friars in the church of our Lady at Belem, which he afterwards did.
All the ordinary merchandize belonging to the Moors was divided  among his own men; and when all the goods were removed, he ordered  Stephen de la Gama to confine the Moors under the hatches, and to set  the ship on fire, to revenge the death of the Portuguese who were slain  in the factory at Calicut. Soon after this was done, the Moors broke  open the hatches, and quenched the fire; on which the admiral ordered  Stephen de Gama to lay them aboard. The Moors, rendered desperate by  this inhuman treatment, defended themselves to the utmost, and even  threw firebrands into our ship to set it on fire. Night coming on,  Stephen had to desist, but was ordered to watch the Moorish ship  carefully that it might not escape during the dark, and the Moors all  night long were heard calling on Mahomet to deliver them out of the  hands of the Christians. When day appeared, the admiral again ordered  Stephen de la Gama to set the ship on fire, which he did accordingly,  after forcing the Moors to retreat into the poop. Some of the Moors  leapt into the sea with hatchets in their hands, and endeavored to swim  to our boats; but all of these were slain in the water by our people,  and those that remained in the ship were all drowned, as the vessel  sunk. Of 300 Moors, of whom thirty were women, not one escaped alive;  and some of our men were hurt.
source:http://historicalleys.blogspot.i...

To add to this, he had supposedly made Christianity compulsory in Malabar, Kerala. Anyone who practiced religions other than Christianity was ordered to be even burnt alive. It's a shame that all these years have turned him into a legend, with ample help from old western historians.

Source:: Internet