8. Nehru's unflinching view on Goa
Valmiki Faleiro
8. Nehru's unflinching view on Goa
Nehru told a gathering in Bombay on 4 June 1956 (abridged): "If the people of Goa wish to retain their separate identity, I am not going to bring them by force or compulsion or coercion into the Indian Union ... My national interest involves the removal of the Portuguese from Goa, not coercion [to] bring about the union of Goa with India ... I want to make it perfectly clear that I have no desire to coerce Goa to join India ... Goa's individuality should remain and whenever the time comes for any changes, internal or other, it will be for the people of Goa acting freely to decide upon them." Goans were thrilled to hear that.
Nehru's consistent and unwavering assertions clearly comprised of two distinct parts:
1. Portugal as a colonial occupier needed to be removed from Goa, Daman and Diu; and,
2. Goans would be allowed to "establish their own future" and "acting freely [without] force or compulsion or coercion" decide the question of joining India (i.e. self-determination).
Liberating the territories of the Portuguese yoke was one thing. An overwhelming number of Goans would readily welcome it. But, annexing the territories without consulting the affected people was quite another. Goans would not cheer being liberated without knowing the nature of the replacement regime. The unilateral Constitution (Twelfth Amendment) Act annexing the liberated territories to the Republic of India on 27 March 1962 was a complete reversal of the Prime Minister’s steadfast assurances right from 1954 – and was certainly not in line with the principles of self-determination.
A plebiscite ('Opinion Poll') was held five years later, 16 January 1967 – the first and only such ever held in India. It asked whether Goans want to continue as a centrally administered Union Territory or be merged with Maharashtra. There was no other choice. Self-determination was enshrined in the UN Charter of 20 June 1945 and in its General Assembly Resolutions, No. 637 (VIII) of 16 December 1952 on self-determination and No. 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960 on de-colonisation, to which India was a party. The Opinion Poll verdict went against merger with Maharashtra, 55:44. India declared the controversy of Goa's integration as closed forever. The principle of self-determination was shoved under the carpet.
It must be said, though, that a large section of Goans – Hindu and Catholic – favoured Goa’s integration with India, but as Nehru said on 4 June 1956 in Bombay, “… when the time comes”. To sense the mood, Goan MPs to the Portuguese parliament, Cónego Castilho Noronha and Sócrates da Costa, invited 22 Goans to a private meet on 10 July 1955. Eighteen attended while Rauraji Deshprabhu of Pernem, Dr. Jaime Rangel of Bastora, Vasantrao Dempo of Santa Cruz and Dr. António Dias of Margao did not. At this meet, Adv. AX Gomes Pereira and Dr. Álvaro de Loyola Furtado favoured integration with India. Dr. António Colaço affirmed that “the majority of Goans are in favour of integration with India”, though personally he was not for immediate integration but after a reasonable period when the atmosphere was less oppressive and the issue could be discussed openly (Filipa Sousa Lopes, 2017, Pages 233-34).
Nehru, meanwhile in 1956, continued with diplomacy. He had said before (referring to the Goa Question): "We deal with national and international issues and we have often to be very patient. It is this reputation we have built in the world ... [that] we do not act in haste, we give mature consideration to problems. Because we try to function as a mature nation and have not taken hasty decisions or hasty actions. Therefore, the world pays attention to what we say."
Portuguese opposition leaders Cunha Leal, Quintão Meireles and Nuno Rodrigues dos Santos as well as African writers and poets like Agostinho Neto, Hermínio Marvão, Ângelo Veloso, Cecília Alves and Hernâni Cidade urged Salazar to enter into negotiations with India and find a peaceful solution to Goa.
Portugal steadfastly refused to talk and refused to vacate the last vestige of European colonialism in India. Salazar, at first, condescendingly declared that Goa was the "light of the West in the Orient". The maximum he was willing to go reflected in his 1956 suggestion: invoke the principle of self-determination, and let the people decide by plebiscite whether they want to continue with Portugal or join India. He quickly withdrew from the idea when – per Gen. Francisco Costa Gomes, Portugal’s Undersecretary of War who as a Lieutenant Colonel visited Goa in December 1960 and recommended a reduction of troops because Goa could not be defended militarily against India, and was the second post revolution President of Portugal (1974-76, after Gen. António de Spinola) – Salazar was told that not more than ten percent of Goans would vote for continuance of the Portuguese in Goa.
The idea of a plebiscite or referendum in Goa was first proposed by Marcello Mathias, Portugal’s ambassador to France (and later Foreign Minister, 1959-61). Salazar’s Council of Ministers rejected it because it would set a bad precedent for Angola and Mozambique. Filipa Sousa Lopes tells us that Salazar regarded a referendum as "an abandonment" of Goa (Lopes, 2017, Page 253). Marcello Mathias still felt that it was “better to abandon with honor than to abandon beaten, crushed, with dead, wounded and prisoners in the hands of the Indian Union. And if we win the referendum while not having guarantees that the Indian Union will respect this result, our position will be much stronger internationally”.
Salazar never countenanced another option: that Portugal withdraws and Goa remains an autonomous region – as Nehru had implicitly said in Bombay on 4 June 1956. Journalist and liberal, Luis de Menezes Braganza, was the first to propose autonomy for Goa – in 1910, when Portugal became a Republic. He quit the Council of Government in protest of the 1930 Colonial Act and again demanded autonomy for Goa. The agitation for autonomy intensified after 1946 as Goans led by the redoubtable scientist Dr. Froilano de Melo, later an MP in the Portugal parliament, clamoured for autonomy. In 1947, Portugal asked some leading Goans what they wanted. Twenty-three sent back a memo demanding autonomy. Salazar effected a few reforms in 1954 but these were far from the local call for autonomy. (Dr. Froilano de Melo took self exile in Brazil after Salazar refused to heed his pleas for autonomy for Goa.)
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ADV. ANTÓNIO BRUTO DA COSTA
António Anastácio Bruto da Costa (1902-1984) was a leading – and fearless – advocate from Margao. He defended in court the likes of alleged ‘terrorist’ Srinivas Dharma Acharya who was tortured by Portuguese police (and whose son, Parashuram, head pujari at the Partagal Matha in Canacona, arrested on suspicion of helping Azad Gomantak Dal activists who killed a policeman, was tortured and killed by police on 19 September 1956).
Six foot plus, with an athletic build and a booming voice, Costa vented against Portuguese colonialism as well as Indian nationalism. He was for an independent Goa. Nationalists favouring integration with India denounced him as a fifth columnist, Portugal loyalists berated him as a traitor, and PIDE secret reports labelled him as “an active element against the Portuguese regime”. (PIDE is acronym for Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, the Portuguese secret police. More on PIDE another day.)
Goa had a notoriously corrupt governor, Cdr. Fernando de Quintanilha Mendonça e Dias. Not a tanga (anna) left the state treasury without an underhand percentage paid to the governor. Even that was small change for him. Three chartered seaplanes of Belgium's Sabena Airways ferrying bribes of the Goan mine owner cartel for the governor – mostly in gold – landed one fine day in Goa, two in the River Mandovi near his office, one in the Dona Paula Bay near his residence. Offloaded in canoes, the gold was stored at the riverfront Customs House (free of duties, of course!) for onward smuggling into India.
Costa stood for probity, civil liberties, and complete autonomy for Goa as a quasi-sovereign nation aligned to a Portuguese Commonwealth. His essays on the trilogy were blacked out by the censors.
The Portuguese Minister for Overseas, Commodore Manuel Maria Sarmento Rodrigues, was due to visit Goa 20 April to 12 May 1952, the first such minister to do so. He came on the inaugural run of the Lisbon-Timor passenger ship, Índia (the same ocean liner that nine years later, in December 1961, would be hastily converted into an evacuee ship). Governor Quintanilha Dias did his best to prevent his long-standing critic Costa from meeting the visiting minister. Together with Dr. António Colaço of Margao, Costa was granted an appointment for 3 May 1952 by the visiting minister himself.
Costa and Colaço convened a meeting in Margao on 29 March 1952 preparatory to the visit of the Overseas Minister. A memorandum calling for civil liberties and complete autonomy was signed by 74 prominent citizens, both Hindu and Catholic. This was called The Group of Margao. The memorandum was handed over to the visiting minister on 3 May 1952.
The governor, Cdr. Quintanilha Dias, eavesdropped into the conversation hiding behind a partition screen. The fearless Costa also spoke of the governor’s misdemeanour in Goa. When Costa and Colaço rose to seek leave of the visiting minister, Quintanilha quickly left the room and waited outside the door.
The governor raised his hand first. Costa’s spectacles fell to the floor. With a serious eye problem, eyeglasses were imperative to Costa. (He was later prevented from seeking medical help in Bombay that might have saved his sight.)
Blinded by fury, Costa twice punched and floored the Portuguese naval commander, and, pinning him down with a bended knee, reduced this supine governor of the once mighty Estado Português da Índia to a punching bag. Two younger Portuguese men who tried to intervene were tossed to the wooden wall paneling with a single sweep of the Goan advocate’s arm.
The day he socked the daylights out of the governor, Costa’s only daughter was born in Margao. She was named Maria de Luz, Mary of Light, Luzinha (a small light) to us … but an emblem of enduring, dazzling daylights. When Teófilo Duarte later took over as the Overseas Minister, Governor Quintanilha Dias recommended that Costa be exiled to Angola. Lisbon ignored the plea and replaced Quintanilha the same year.
(An aside: Portugal always called its colony in India a ‘state’ – Estado Português da Índia or the Portuguese State of India – not because of Lisbon, nor Goa, but because of the Vatican. The Vatican had bestowed a perpetual honorific, ‘Patriarch of the East Indies’, on its archbishop in Goa … and, according to a dear Portuguese friend, Antonio Palinha Machado, it was quite unthinkable to have a Patriarch perched in a mere colony!)
Costa met Salazar a couple of times in Lisbon, requesting him to restore civil liberties, repeal the offensive Acto Colonial and grant autonomy for Goa aligned to a Portuguese Commonwealth. He even drafted a Constitution for the State of Goa, on lines of the Government of India Act of 1935, mandating universal adult franchise (less than 4% Goans were entitled to vote those days). Autonomy entailed amending the Portuguese Constitution, and Salazar would have none of it. On the Colonial Act, the fearless advocate told Salazar, "Your Excellency made us objects of possession." Salazar disclosed that he himself had drafted the law. “In that case,” Costa retorted, “the offence is even more serious!” Salazar turned red, but kept mum.
Only once, addressing his National Assembly on 30 November 1954, Salazar spoke of making Goa a sovereign state with the same international guarantees as any World State. He was possibly kite flying. Nothing more was heard of it.
-- Excerpted from revised text of the book, Patriotism In Action: Goans in India’s Defence Services by Valmiki Faleiro, first published in 2010 by ‘Goa,1556’ (ISBN: 978-93-80739-06-9). Revised edition awaits publication.