By Valmiki Faleiro valmi...@gmail.com While Nehru kept reiterating that India would not use force, his Defence Minister Krishna Menon, with GK Handoo of the Central Reserve Police (which patrolled India's borders -- there was no Border Security Force then), BN Mullik of the Intelligence Bureau and Lieutenant General Brij Mohan Kaul, Chief of Staff at Army HQ (promoted out of turn but would soon quit after the China debacle in 1962), actively planned to take Goa by force behind Nehru's back.
Putnam Welles Hangen, former Chief of Bureau of New York Times who switched to TV and was now with the National Broadcasting Corporation in New Delhi, wrote that the plan was to "send a party of Indian border police into Goa, some of whom would allow themselves to be captured by the Portuguese. The rest were to fall back and give the alarm. Under the pretext of rescuing the captured border guards, a small Indian force would move in and engage the Portuguese. The main body of Indian troops would then quickly overrun Goa...." (The Dirty Game Played By VK Krishna Menon Against Goa, https://portugueseindia.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/the-dirty-game-played-by-v-k-krishna-menon-against-goa/ ) Nehru got wind of Menon's scheming. He summoned Menon and his henchmen and rebuked them for plotting direct action in Goa without his permission. Menon's pressure persisted. Hangen says, "With the help of hand-picked lieutenants like GK Handoo, a top security officer, he [Menon] stepped up subversion against the Portuguese in Goa. The Indian border police under Handoo's direction recruited, trained, and equipped saboteurs, who were slipped across the border into Goa. Fabricated stories about Portuguese 'border provocations' were fed to the Indian press". Prof. Arthur G Rubinoff, regarded as the only pro-India Western author, says in the very opening lines of his book India's Use of Force in Goa, "The right of a nation to protect its national interest by ultimately resorting to armed force if peaceful methods fail to settle a dispute is, in most instances, taken for granted in the practice of international politics" (Rubinoff, 1971, Page 1). But, India had cultivated an image that she firmly stood for settlement of all international disputes by peaceful or non-violent means. This precluded India from using force in Goa. Prof. Rubinoff said, "Allegedly her [India's] continued pleas for other states to employ peaceful methods in the solving of international disputes had exempted India -- more than any other nation -- from the right to use her armed forces" (Rubinoff, 1971, Page 1). When the Dutch used force in Indonesia in 1947, India's delegate told the United Nations, "Can any country be allowed to indulge in aggression of this type and refuse arbitration? ... If any power can act as it chooses in such matters then there is no purpose left for the United Nations. It will have no prestige or authority and [is] bound to fade away" (as quoted by Ross N Berkes and Mohinder S Bedi in The Diplomacy of India: Indian Foreign Policy in the United Nations, Stanford University, 1958, Page 10). The US delegate at the UN Security Council would slam India with the same words on 18 December 1961. Berkes and Bedi noted, "All in all and occasionally much to their own discomfort and reluctance, Indian statesmen and Indian policy have been cast in the role of international moralists..." (Stanford, 1958, Page 45). India had already used force in Kashmir, Travancore, Junagarh and Hyderabad. But, Goa was a different goose: here was a West European nation, Portugal, it had to contend with in the days of the Cold War between the world's two superpower blocs. Wrote Philip Talbot and Sunderlal Poplai, "...[Nehru] is the guiding hand that shapes the policy and there are few to criticize [his] decisions" (New York: Harper & Bros., India and America, 1958, Page 23). "Nehru alone dictated India's foreign policy," said Shridhar Telkar (Bombay: Telkar's Feature Service, 1962, Page 124). Prof. Norman D Palmer of the University of Pennsylvania (and Chairman, Friends of India Committee in the USA) famously wrote, "To the extent that the decisions are made by Nehru himself, it is difficult to determine whether he is acting as Prime Minister or as Party Leader or as Lord High Everything. He wears many hats and sits on many seats, but whatever hat he wears or seat he occupies, he is India's supreme decision-maker" (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, The Indian Political System, 1961, Page 190). For 14 long years, Nehru had made multiple attempts to resolve the 'Goa Case' peacefully and by legal means -- employing, as already seen, diplomacy, Satyagraha, Economic Blockade, informal diplomacy, third party intervention, the United Nations. Nothing moved Salazar. Nehru personally abhorred dictators. But he was on the horns of a dilemma. Would he continue talking to a deaf dictator, or would he take the only option of abandoning his long-professed policy for settling international disputes by non-violent means -- and expose himself to the charge of hypocrisy? Only the 'Lord High Everything' could decide! Salazar exploited Nehru's dilemma, convinced that Nehru would not risk his world reputation -- for so little gain -- by attacking Goa. Salazar knew that it was not possible to defend Goa militarily. What he did not know was that Nehru's pacifism was limited by political compulsions and an upcoming general election. Until then, India had deployed peacekeeping troops in Congo and Gaza, but shied away from sending them to Goa. Jurist, diplomat and Union Minister Mohammadali Carim Chagla questioned that, adding that Goa was "a simple question complicated by politicians who could be trusted to complicate any issue". (Justice Chagla had upheld "the right of Goans to ventilate their domestic grievances freely in British India", in a Bombay High Court verdict of September 1945.) Nehru's detractors at home chorused, "As long as Nehru is Prime Minister of India, Goa is safe for Portugal"z. Jawaharlal Nehru, a Kashmiri Pandit from one of India's richest families that sent clothes for laundry to Paris and could feed India for a month, was educated abroad. He was erudite with a worldview. He meant well for India, "in the cause for which no man in India has sacrificed as much" (words of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, written 3 August 1947). When he passed, "a dream shattered, a song silenced, a flame vanished... the dream of a world without fear and without hunger; the song of an epic that had the echo of the Gita and the fragrance of the rose; the flame that burnt all night, fought darkness, illuminated the way, and one morning attained Nirvana.... Bharat Mata [Mother India] is stricken with grief today; she has lost her favourite prince. Humanity is sad today; it has lost its devotee. Peace is restless today; its protector is no more" (words of another great Indian and Nehru's political adversary, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in the Rajya Sabha on 27 May 1964). António de Oliveira Salazar was the butt of many a joke. His deep faith was often scoffed. He was a devout Catholic, abidingly loyal to the Vatican, more papal than the Pope. Msgr. Lino Lozza, papal delegate at the third conference of International Association of the World Council of Churches, said the Vatican did not approve of the activities of Salazar in Angola and Goa, which he said were "inconsistent with the Gospel". Msgr. Lozza added that "the Roman Catholic Church identifies with the urge of the dependent people for self-determination" (Times of India, 24 November 1961). TAILPIECE: Lieutenant Colonel Vishwas Keshav Bhandare (Veteran), from Cumbarjua/Santa Cruz-Kalapur/Porvorim, is a respected senior friend. A gallant paratrooper with 2 Para Battalion of 50 Indep Para Brigade (of which we will hear more in the Goa Ops -- he was in college in 1961), Lt Col Bhandare was a young Captain in the Rann of Kutch during the 1965 war. Sent on a foot patrol inside then West Pakistan one night with three men to assess enemy disposition, he returned with a heavy machine gun and 50 mm ammunition belt from a Pak tank (if he had a tank driver, he would have returned with the tank as well). The items are displayed at the 2 Para Officers Mess in Agra, together with Lt Gen AAK Niazi's personal handgun seized by the CO, 2 Para, Lt Col (later Maj Gen) KS Pannu in Dacca in 1971. During hostilities, Lt Col Bhandare was ambushed at Jallo Bridge on Ichhogil Canal near Dograi. Tall and athletic, he swiftly bayoneted two of the enemy, while the third fell at his feet and was taken POW. He ended up commanding 6 Bihar at Doklam on the China border (had his recommendations to reorganize defences at Doklam been followed up, India may not have faced the recent situation). He retired in Goa in the mid-1990s. Yesterday, Lt Col Bhandare forwarded a strange coincidence. Only three officers rose above the rank of General in the Indian Army: Field Marshal KM Cariappa, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw and CDS Gen Bipin Rawat. All three died in the Nilgiris and their homage parade was held at the MRC. -- Excerpted from the 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. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Join a discussion on Goa-related issues by posting your comments on this or other issues via email to goa...@goanet.org See archives at http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/ *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-