From: "Bosco D'Mello" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <goanet@goanet.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2005 7:50 AM
Subject: [Goanet] Re: World Goa Day in Melbourne ignites Cultural Heritage
ofYore
That would be February 4, 1987 ?? Would you know the dates (locations) of the
Konkani agitation of 1986 and the violence that ensued ??
Thanks - Bosco
Bosco,
I will volunteer a bit from memory, and off-hand:
The *Konkani agitation* truly began from the KPA- (Konkani Porjecho Avaz)
-organized
public meeting at Azad Maidan, opp. Goa Police HQ, Panjim, on the evening of
Dec 18, 1986. In what appears to be a non-premeditated but spontaneous act, some
speakers, no doubt spurred on by then student leaders present at the venue,
issued a
call for an indefinite Goa *Bandh* from that midnight (the following day, Dec
19, 1986,
marked the Silver Jubilee of Operation Vijay, observed locally as *Goa
Liberation Day.*)
The dispersing crowds marauded the decorative lighting put up on the Police HQ
bldg
and a few other public buildings in Panjim.
By nightfall, the protest action began ... by placing stones, tree trunks, etc.
on major
roads. Next morning saw Churchill Alemao march to Rajendra Prasad stadium in
Margao,
which resulted in the so-called *Flag Incident* (local Courts acquitted Alemao
and others
of the State charge of dishonour of the national flag.) By noon, Alemao, in a
Maruti Gypsy
van, was all over Salcete villages, exhorting village youth to cut off road
communication, etc.
Widespread road blockades (even of internal village roads) were then evident
all over Salcete,
Mormugao, Tiswadi and parts of Bardez.
The *agitation* took, what one can call a violent, turn in the afternoon hours
of Dec. 20,
when at Gogol-Margao, an apparently overenthusiastic Asst. Sub-Inspector of
police
from Margao Town police station (Narayan Yetle), leading a despatch of armed CRPF
(Central Reserve Police Force) constables, shot dead a young *Other Backward Class*
Goan lad, Floriano Vaz, since celebrated (and now largely forgotten) as
*Goencho Poilo Martir.*
This single incident fuelled passions and, within a few days, a petty teashop
fight at
Mandur, near Neura/Pilar in Tiswadi, ended in the slaughter of six men from
Agasaim,
in the paddies between Mandur (incidentally, Goa's Charlie Chaplain, Jacinto Vaz's
native village) and Agasaim, through which the Konkan Railway line runs today.
All transportation routes from and to Goa -- whether by land, air or sea --
were cut off.
Goa was on the throes of a very sombre pro- and anti- Konakni showdown.
That's when Goa's rep. in the Union Government, Eduardo Faleiro, came in and
held wide
discussions with all and sundry (remember the Goa Chief Minister at the time was
Pratapsing Rane.) The police were hemmed in, Central forces withdrawn and Goa
regained
its sanity. In early-Feb 1987, the Language Bill was adopted by the State
Legislative
Assembly ... whatever its merits ... but not before the Congress *High Command*
(read
that as the central Party leadership in Delhi) kept a Central party *Observer*
stayed put in
Goa, until passage of the Language Bill ... seldom has a Central partyman
attended a
Goa Legislative Assemby proceeding!
If I must add, even then there were voices of dissent that Konkani ONLY in the
Devanagari
script had been officially recognized. The masses who fought for the language,
a few even
with their lives were marginalized. Would you say betrayed?
VF
