by Valmiki Faleiro valmi...@gmail.com The last phase of Goa's anti-colonial movement started on 15 August 1954. It was India's Independence Day, but there was another reason.
Thirty-five volunteers of the United Front of Goans led by Francisco Mascarenhas, JM D'Souza and Vaman Desai captured Dadra on 22 July 1954 while a week later, those of the Goan People's Party led by George Vaz and Divakar Kakodkar, Azad Gomantak Dal led by Prabhakar Sinari, and RSS activists began occupying Nagar Haveli and fully occupied it by 2 August 1954. Of the five policemen defending Dadra, two -- deputy chief Aniceto do Rosário and constable António Fernandes, both Brown -- died. Nagar Haveli was defended by Capt. Virgílio Fidalgo, a White, with 150 policemen, all of whom fled south and surrendered to Indian Special Reserve Police at Udva on 11 August 1954. No casualties were reported by the militant Goan freedom fighters, who Portugal claimed were mixed with Indian Army regulars from the Maratha Light Infantry. It was Portugal's first loss of territory in India. Elated at the success, Gandhian Goan freedom fighters in Bombay announced the launch of the Satyagraha movement from 15 August 1954. Arrangements were made to stage an impressive march on Goa with help of Indian volunteers mobilised by opposition parties like the Praja Socialist Party. Two days before the event, Nehru declared that he would not permit Indian participation in the march (if he did, he feared that Pakistan would send 'satyagrahis' into Jammu & Kashmir). Nehru also said that only unarmed Goans would be allowed to cross the border into Goa. Disappointed but not defeated, Peter Alvares, a prominent Goan member of the Praja Socialist Party assembled three modest satyagrahi batches of about 15 volunteers each, all Goan, that marched from Siroda to Tiracol, from Banda to Patradevi and from Majali to Polem on 15 August 1954. The leader of each group carried the Indian tricolour. Alfred Afonso led the group that entered the Tiracol fort. The Portuguese garrison in charge, José António Álvares, a Goan from Chinchinim, ordered his men to abandon the fort and run away. He was tried and sentenced to three and half years' imprisonment. Afonso planted the Indian flag that flew even the next day. Mark Fernandes led the second group from Banda to Patradevi. Anthony D'Souza led the third group from Majali-Karwar to the Polem border post. All were arrested. One died. Forty six were sentenced to imprisonment, with terms ranging from one to eight years. Only Anthony D'Souza got 20 years rigorous imprisonment. He was a seminarian, who had set out to become a Catholic priest, but went to Kashi to study the Vedas. He did not become a Hindu priest either. He became a freedom fighter. And then became a minister -- not in a church -- but in the Goa Cabinet (1967-70). On 18 February 1955, Bala Raya Mapari of Assonora, belonging to the Azad Gomantak Dal, was tortured to death by police in the lock-up of the Mapusa police station. He became the first martyr of the last phase of the freedom struggle which had started the previous year. Meanwhile, in Portugal, through most of the 1950s, various democratic, socialist, and communist leaders, youth organisations and university students pleaded for freedom in Goa. They urged Salazar to negotiate with India and quit Goa. Since the press was censored, they did this through illicit pamphlets. Dozens of such leaders were hunted down by the PIDE, tried for "conspiracy against the security of the state through illicit and secret association" and jailed. Bombay's Free Goa lamented that "strangely enough the Indian information services and in consequence, the Indian press remain silent about these important facts which closely concern India.... they [also] keep mum about events which are favourable to India and deserve to be known by the Indian public as well as in foreign countries" (Democrats in Portugal are Jailed For Pleading for Goa´s Freedom, edition of 25 July 1957). In New Delhi, an 'All-Party Parliamentary Committee for Goa' was formed on 5 May 1955 to mobilise opinion in India in support of freeing Goa from colonial rule. Many satyagrahis and Indian opposition Members of Parliament entered Goa in small groups. Satyagrahis were sent back and, in a most embarrassing situation for India, the parliamentarians were arrested and jailed. Among the prominent Indian leaders detained at Aguada Jail were Madhu Limaye of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia's Socialist Party, Jagannathrao Joshi of the Jana Sangh (forerunner of today's ruling BJP), Rajaram Patil of the Communist Party of India, Nanasaheb Goray and Shirubhau Limaye of the Praja Socialist Party, and Tridib Kumar Chaudhary from Calcutta who was an MP of the Revolutionary Socialist (Marxist-Leninist) Party. (They were released on amnesty in early 1957.) Goan hospitality is legendary, even in the adversity of a prison. At Aguada, Goan political detainees entertained the state guests from India with English news from the Aguada Radio. The 'radio' was hosted by college student Suresh Kanekar who, to the chagrin of his family (his father was the Postmaster at Mapusa), interrupted studies in Poona to join the freedom movement, was jailed, but eventually resumed his studies and capped them with a PhD in the US, where he is settled. He sat by a kitchen window of his block and loudly read to the Indian leaders in the opposite block an extemporaneous English translation of news from the local Portuguese-language newspapers. Cellmates who knew English stood listening, so any lurking soldier saw that the lad was reading to them, though Indian leaders in the opposite block were all ears. "My cellmates were very kind to me in getting to me all the newspapers I needed, and there were plenty of them. Ernesto Costa Frias was particularly helpful. On his own initiative, he would collect the various newspapers and make sure that I got them well ahead of the broadcast, so that I had time to read the newspapers and determine what to select for transmission and what to ignore. Gradually I learnt that Madhu [Limaye] was not interested in how many people were killed in Algeria or Cyprus or Egypt, but rather in the significant diplomatic and political happenings around the world, and I selected my news accordingly" (Kanekar, Goa's Liberation and Thereafter: Chronicles of a Fragmented Life, Goa,1556, 2011, Page 66). The Congress Party seemed to be losing ground to the opposition parties. Nehru, who had earlier banned Indian participation, now began to be supportive of the Satyagraha movement. By 25 July 1955, trains stopped running between Goa and India. On 8 August 1955, India closed the Portuguese Legation in New Delhi. Nehru said he was taking this "drastic action to prove that the Congress Party was as against the Portuguese rule as any other group in India". Not happy and clamouring for effective action, dock workers in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras refused to handle any ship of any line that had anything to do with Portuguese Goa. Indian textile mill and railway workers struck work. All in support of the big day: 15 August 1955. The Goa Vimochan Sahayak Samiti was formed under the presidentship of Bal Gangadhar (Lokmanya) Tilak's grandson, Jayantrao Tilak, editor of Pune's daily Kesari on 14 May 1955, to launch a 'final march' on Goa on 15 August 1955. But, before that, at a smaller Satyagraha at Kiranpani-Pernem on 25 June 1955, police beat Amirchand Gupta to death. Undaunted, Indian opposition parties like Praja Socialist Party, Kisan Mazdoor Sabha, Hindu Mahasabha and Communist Party of India mobilised some 4,000 volunteers for the 15 August 1955 march on Goa. The Portuguese invited some 40 international journalists to witness the event. Among them were three American journalists, Arthur Bonner of CBS, John Hlavacek of UPA (ex-NBC) and Homer Alexander Jack, an American Unitarian clergyman, writer and civil rights activist. On 14 August 1955, police shot dead Krishna Shet and Yeshwant Shirodkar, both members of the Azad Gomantak Dal, at Pomburpa. What happened the next day is something we shall see next week. -- Excerpted from 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.