------------------------------------------------------- Goanet recommends, and is proud to be associated with, 'Domnic's Goa' - A nostalgic romp through a bygone era. This book is the perfect gift for any Goan, or anyone wanting to understand Goa. Distributed locally by Broadway, near Caculo Island, Panjim & internationally by OtherIndiaBookStore.Com. For trade enquiries contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- Fred, that just proves that all of you miss the point. Deliberately or not, I do not know.
That just proves that it is difficult for you all to understand. Or maybe you are simply refusing to understand. It is like all these years (12 +) you have been missing the point completely. I have never been on the side of colonialism or dictatorship. On the contrary!!! For that matter, please note that it will be extremely rare to find any Portuguese in Portugal today that supports colonialism or dictatorship. They themselves got rid of that on the 25 April 1974 - The April revolution. Late, yes. But they did it! It wasn't easy. But they did it! All ex-Portuguese territories were then given the right to self-determination, freedom of choice, liberation/independence. Yes, it was only in 1975 but it did happen. On the other side, Goans were not given what they really deserved in 1961. With the pretence of "liberation" (which we now know it was a conquest) Goa was not given the right of choice. What you call liberation was, as you put it, "technically" (I prefer the term **in reality** or **de facto**) an act of conquest. This has been my point since 1995 when I joined this forum. We have been conquered yet again in 1961. We were not allowed to choose our destiny in 1961. There were petitions for it, there were demands for it. But the plebiscite was refused. I wonder why! If Nehru was so sure that all Goans wanted to be part of India why did he not allow a plebiscite immediately after 1961? And as a consequence of that anti-democratic decision of denying us the right of choice, we will never ever know what were the people of Goa's wishes immediately after 1961. For me, and I believe for many of those who had the time to reflect on this, this is nothing else but an insult to Goa and to Goans! How you can call it a liberation is beyond my comprehension. These were Nehru's words after the failure of the planned satyagraha campaign of August 15, 1955. Someone asked Nehru in parliament -"What if the Goans are against the merger of Goa into the Indian Union?" Nehru replied -"We are for such merger! We desire, we demand it; and we represent the will of four hundred million people . The Goans are a bare seven hundred thousand, and therefore our will, the will of the majority must prevail. Therefore the Goan position, the Portuguese position is wrong and untenable.". So this was what democracy was all about for Nehru even though in 1955 Goa was part of a completely different political entity with no relation whatsoever to the Indian Union as political new entity since 1947. (Lawrence, 1963). On September 6, 1955, in reply to an interpellation in the Upper House of the Indian Parliament, Nehru was making an astoundingly frank declaration on behalf of his government to the effect that "we are not prepared to tolerate the presence of the Portuguese in Goa, even if the Goans want them to be there!". (Lawrence, 1963). On Nehru's mind, there was never even a possibility to allow self determination to Goans even though the Charter of the United Nations granted us that right. I am not saying for sure that we would have chosen that route. I honestly do not know. Nobody knows. But we should have been given that right. And for the simple reason that we were not granted that right (despite United Nations resolutions) I, personally, cannot call it a liberation. This has been my point. Nothing else. That does not make me a colonialist, does it? Best regards Paulo Colaco Dias -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Frederick [FN] Noronha * ???????? ???????? Sent: 14 June 2007 20:12 To: Goa's premiere mailing list, estb. 1994! Subject: Re: [Goanet] Flags, Colonialism and Sleeping in a History Paulo, Earlier you had asked me the same or a similar question. I told you there were three Colacos ... and you didn't like my answer. So that debate too went off at a tangent :-) FN On 14/06/07, Paulo Colaco Dias <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sunith, who are the "pro-colonialism" voices on this forum? No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.16/849 - Release Date: 14/06/2007 12:44