By Valmiki Faleiro
valmi...@gmail.com
India hosted a conference ("seminar") on colonialism at the
Constitution Club in New Delhi between 20 and 23 October
1961. The conference was seen as an exercise by India to
mobilise world opinion for armed action in Goa.
The idea of the conference idea was put forth to Nehru by Dr.
Pundalik D. Gaitonde, the Goan surgeon who studied medicine
and surgery in Goa and Bombay, then super-specialised under
Dr. António Egas Moniz, the 1949 Nobel laureate, at the
University of Lisbon in Portugal.
[A nationalist at heart, Dr. Gaitonde married an Azorean
(Portuguese) musician, Edila de Andrade. Hailing from
coastal Palolem-Canacona in Goa he spent his honeymoon in
beachside Peniche -- as "homage to sacrifice". Fort Peniche
jail held Goan freedom fighters Tristao de Braganca Cunha,
Adv. Fanchu Loyola, Dr. Rama Hegde, Laxmikant Bhembre and
Purushottam Kakodkar (in the order of their exile). They
hosted a celebration in honour of the couple. Back in Goa in
1948 as the Surgeon-Director of Hospital (Asilo) dos Milagres
in Mapusa, Dr. Gaitonde refused to toast the colonial
masters in 1954 and was himself exiled to Portugal. Released
in 1955, he settled in New Delhi and founded the cancer
department at Irwin Hospital where he worked as Senior
Surgeon. Committed to a Goa free from colonial rule, he was
one of the two Goans -- the other being Dr. António Colaço
of Margao -- nominated to the Lok Sabha, see The Gazette of
India (Extraordinary) No. 230 of 20 June 1962.]
Prominent international champions of freedom, leaders of
subjugated African colonies and representatives of other
nations like Burma, Ceylon, Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iraq,
Morocco, Nigeria, Sudan, UAE and Yugoslavia were invited to
the four-day New Delhi conference. Its official sponsor was
the Indian Council for Africa, which had catalogued
Portuguese repression in Africa.
The invitee, British Labour leader Anthony
Wedgewood Benn, urged that a resolution be adopted
declaring Portuguese colonialism a threat to peace
and calling upon Portugal to begin negotiations for
self-determination within a specified time. Benn
said Goa was the key to freedom of all territories
under the subjugation of Portugal.
Dr. Gaitonde called for direct action against the
Portuguese occupation in Goa and cited the example of São
João Batista de Ajudá in Dahomey (now Benin). Dr.Gaitonde
urged African and Asian countries to severe diplomatic and
trade ties with Portugal.
Angolan leader J Ferreira Viana said India's
failure to liberate Goa had retarded liberations
all across the world. What had begun as a
condemnation of Portuguese colonialism turned into
an attack on India's policy on Goa.
The Africans told Nehru they "did not understand metaphysics
[Nehru's pet branch of philosophy] or pious resolutions, for
they were involved in a bloody struggle with the Portuguese.
What the Africans wanted from India was more positive action
... the Portuguese Empire in Africa would collapse once Goa
fell" (Prof. Arthur Rubinoff, 1971, Page 82).
Kenneth Kaunda (Northern Rhodesia), Mgilo Sivai (Tanganyika),
Mbiyu Koinange (Pan-African Freedom Movement), Abdel
Karim-el-Khatib (Morocco), Thomas Khanja (Congo), Augustine
Sinando (Southern Rhodesia), J.Savimbi (Angola), Alfredo
Pereira (Portuguese Guinea), Marcelino dos Santos and Adelino
Gwande (Mozambique), Berta de Menezes Bragança and João
Cabral (Goa) in one voice urged Nehru to use force in Goa.
At the end of the four-day conference, Nehru
declared at a mammoth public meeting at Chowpatty
beach in Bombay on 24 October 1961, "We have to
think afresh now because of the happenings in Goa,
particularly in the last few months, cases of
torture have come to our notice and the terror that
is spread there by the Portuguese. When I say
afresh, I mean that we have been forced into
thinking afresh by the Portuguese to adopt other
means to solve this problem. When and how we do it
cannot be forecast now. But I have no doubt that
we will do it, that Goa will soon be free" (PN
Khera, Operation Vijay, 1974, Page 31).
The die was cast.
"On 24 October 1961, while the formal appreciation and [war]
plan were being prepared, the Prime Minister who was in
Bombay en route to the USA sent for the GOC-in-C [Lieutenant
General JN Chaudhuri, GOC-in-C Southern Command] and asked
him for his estimate of the time it would take to occupy Goa,
Daman and Diu. General Chaudhuri gave a figure of three days
in the event of Portuguese resistance and a considerably
shorter period in the event of no resistance or of qualified
resistance" records Major General VK Singh in History of the
Corps of Signals, Volume III, Chapter 3 - The Liberation of
Goa (1961).
"On 28 October 1961, while both were returning to Poona after
the Armoured Corps Conference in Ahmednagar, Lieutenant
General B.M. Kaul, the Chief of General Staff and
[Lieutenant] General Chaudhuri discussed the appreciation and
outline plan. It was tentatively agreed that HQ 17 Infantry
Division with one or two brigades and 50 (Independent)
Parachute Brigade would be made available for the operations
against Goa. These formations would come from Western and
Eastern Commands. For operations against Daman and Diu,
troops from within Southern Command would be used" (Major
General VK Singh in History of the Corps of Signals, Volume
III, Chapter 3, based on the 4 May 1962 report on 'Operation
Vijay' by Lieutenant General JN Chaudhuri, History Division,
Ministry of Defence, File No. SEC/11/182/H).
Acting on the 7 October 1961 instructions of Army
HQ, Lieutenant General JN Chaudhuri submitted his
'Appreciation of Situation' (war plan) to Army HQ
on 10 November 1961. Its full text is reproduced
by Shrikant Y.Ramani in his book, Operation
Vijay: The Ultimate Solution (Ramani, 2008, Pages
55 to 83).
The previous day, 9 November 1961, in a speech over national
radio, Salazar reaffirmed his policy of maintaining the
multi-continental unity of the Portuguese nation, confirming,
in his words, that "the rearguard is to be defended, just
like the front in Africa or India" (Filipa Sousa Lopes,
University of Porto, 2017, Page 344).
--
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/
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
