Fr. Chico Monteiro was neither pro-Portuguese nor anti-Indian. He was principally: pro-principle. The principle pertaining to ones solemn right to existence and survival in ones place of birth.
If politics has the unilateral might to discolor or undo that legitimate right, then, Fr. Chico as a conscientious objector was merely exercising his right and established his legitimate right by forever sacrificing his freedom. POSTSCRIPT: Fr. Chico Monteiro did not perish in a maximum security jail in Patiala where he was contained in solitary confinement for the better part of a year. He died in 1990, in a parish in Alto Porvorim for aged/retired priests overshadowed by a Supreme Court edict (circa 1965), wherein, he was permitted to live in Goa but not leave. Dom Martin _________ Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 03:09:48 +0530 From: "Frederick Noronha (FN)" <1. [EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Goanet] Re: Re: Heinous crimes, Freedom Fighters & Missing Something . To: goanet@goanet.org Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain Floriano Lobo wrote: > I can prove to you that at least one person who had been lodged in > Aguada jail for mis-appropriating the neighbour's property came out to > declared himself a freeeeeeeeeeeeeedom fighter. That's fine. I don't doubt that. Freedom fighters have themselves been saying that (some) people who don't deserve the label have been included in their ranks. The case of the RSS members being packed in by the recent BJP government is a case in point too. That's political. But what I see as questionable is the attempt to by crypto-colonialists to support Portuguese rule by delegitimising ideas of freedom or pouring scorn on the entire class of freedom fighters (as if there was no idealism among them). This is what some are aiming at. > This is just that you know that when I say 'most' it remains 'most and does > not become 'all' . Most? You are citing one case and then moving to "most". Is there some reason or evidence to make such a statement. Is it just your feeling? Could you cite some numbers? Or is this just an opposition politician shooting from the hip (as Manohar Parrikar also tends to do these days... and even did while he was in power!) > BTW if I was tht General Candeth at the time of Goa's so called liberation > (which is not), I would have set up a judicial bench to identify criminals > from freedom fighters before I threw open the prison gates. That would be > the responsibility of the liberating forces. This has not happened and > therefore I consider that Goa was not liberated but INVADED. If you, > however, ever get a hangover over this statement of mine, please let me > know. Then, in that case we shall have to refer to the order of the > SUPREME COURT OF INDIA may have stated just what I have stated re the > liberation of Goa. I think you are getting carried away by your rhetoric. The intent of the Goa-was-invaded-because-the-Supreme-Court-said-so argument is clear the moment one looks where it is coming from. It is the Lusostalgic class that has either never reconciled themselves to a perceived (and possibly real) loss of colonial priviledge, or it comes from those bleeding hearts who live thousands of kilometres away from Goa and need some rationale to explain why they are so far from that spot of earth they claim to love so much. Also the Goa-was-invaded-because-the-Supreme-Court-said-so argument has been repeated ad nauseam and needs to be challenged. (Just like the Goa-missed-two-Five-Year-Plans-and-hence-deserves-more-aid rubbish.) Don't mix legal phraseology with the terminology of political science. In the famous "Chico" Monteiro case (where a Catholic priest opted for Portuguese citizenship after 1961 and then sought the right to stay on in Goa, without any regulation by the government) the issue was neatly framed, should we say, by a Queen's Counsel Edward Gardner, Q.C., who was interestingly made available by the Salazar regime to the priest. In the 20th century global context of decolonisation -- specially in Asia and Africa -- a large number of colonial powers simply accepted that the sun had indeed set on their empires, and went home. But the Portuguese were an exception. Gardner QC and the battery of lawyers for Fr Monteiro -- A. Bruto Da Costa, M. Bruto Da Costa, P.C. Bhartari, A.K. Varma and J.B. Dadachanji -- sought to make the case that the "Occupying Power" is bound by certain articles of the Geneva Convention! Quite a twist to what could have been a not-so-unhappy ending of the sojourn of the first European colonial power in Asia of this millennium. Are the words being cited properly? The Supreme Court of India uses the word "annexation" in a legalistic sense, shorn of the connotations it would have in say Political Science. It also said in the 'Chico' Monteiro case: "In the Hague Regulations to which the Geneva Conventions were supplementary the definition of "occupation" shows that a territory is considered as occupied when it finds itself in fact placed under the authority of a hostile army. This means that occupation is by military authorities i.e. belligerent occupation." If you want to know how legal and technical the arguments were, just read this (the judges quoting the Queen's Counsel): "He concedes that the war of liberation of Goa and the annexation were lawful but he contends that annexation does not deprive protected persons of the protection." Or, "Annexation may sometimes be peaceful, as for example, Texas and Hawaiian Islands were peacefully annexed by the United States, or after war, as the annexation of South Africa and Orange Free State by Britain." [Thanks to the Internet, the ruling is available online at http://tinyurl.com/zunvu See it for yourself.] By taking words out of context, a handful seem to be keen to start a quarrel where none exists. It is odd to see someone like Floriano accept this logic. Had he won a seat, I am sure he would have been more than willing to swear to uphold the "soverignity and integrity" of India, and stand by a parliamentary system that is more suited to the needs of the mercantile classes of seventeenth century Britain than the commonman (and woman) of today's South Asia. I am definitely no great fan of the Indian state, and believe it has a long, long way to go before it can become even remotely democratic (as in, serving the needs of the average citizen). But, on the other hand, supporting moribund colonialism is not my cup of tea either. As far as the post-1961 record of Goa is concerned, it very consoling to blame New Delhi for everything that has gone wrong. Without, of course, looking at the local contributions to the problems or whether Goa would have been better off as some banana republic killing its own citizens as they fight over their unsorted conflicts and contradictions (like a Nepal, a Haiti, or even a casino-and-triad dominated Macau). FN PS: I'm no lawyer, and have no specialist domain in this field. But it's time someone called this bluff... if we repeat it often enough, we just might get around to believing it
