Goa's trail of many liberations Teotonio R. de Souza teodeso...@gmail.com Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Lisboa
Om... Asatoma Sadgamaya Tamasoma Jyotirgamaya Mrutyorma Amritamgamaya Om... Lead me from the untruth to truth. Lead me from darkness to light. Lead me from death to immortality. (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad -- I.iii.28) The task of a politician is to negotiate ways and means of governance, particularly in situations where conflicting interests are difficult to reconcile. Politics is concerned primarily with the challenges of the present. The political strategies choose those elements or aspects of the past that appear most suitable to their aims, ignoring, minimizing or combating those facets that seem undesirable for the political objectives. The task of a historian is very different, but not less difficult than that of a politician. It demands viewing the past with equanimity and handling the evidence as a judge, not as an advocate. All this requires distancing from the present-day political and ideological pressures. Unfortunately, historians too are normal citizens and can succumb to their needs of the present and fall in line with the political choices. When such compromises lead to blatant manipulation of historical evidence, it is almost tantamount to historical prostitution, violating the professional rules of historical research. Called to speak at an event like this, when we are gathered to commemorate, somewhat in anticipation, the Golden Jubilee of Goa's liberation from a colonial regime that lasted nearly four and half centuries, it is but natural that the expectations of the audience will demand that I present my balance of this long period which many of us have witnessed at different levels and with different consequences to personal or family interests. I will certainly do that, but am very conscious that my balance remains as relative as anyone else's, depending obviously upon the quantity and the quality of information and analysis that each one brings to it. Emotional assessments based largely on hearsay may be dismissed. I am presenting my viewpoint based upon nearly thirty-five years of dedicated search for historical evidence related to Goa's recent and more distant past. Those interested can find my findings published in books, articles and online. I wish to avail of this precious short time and unique opportunity to formulate some questions that I consider relevant if we wish to advance further and understand better our collective past. These considerations have epistemological implications and require questioning the meaning of 'liberation' for us, as individuals and as community. Fundamental for this questioning are the concepts of time and space, issues of culture and identity. These in turn will require answers to questions like: What is Goa and who are Goans? Who are the autochtonous inhabitants in Goa (as gavDe and kuNbi are often referred)? How many decades or centuries are needed for an immigrant to be accepted as bhitorle or 'niz Goenkar'? Who determines these time limits and conditions of acceptance? Obviously, most answers boil down to social, political and economic constructions imposed by changing dominant groups over time that is less chronological than mythical. Evidence grows scantier as we proceed backwards, and much of it was fabricated by the concerned and interested groups. For those unable to have access to reading or writing, the production of myths and folklore, rituals and magic, were the means of justifying, imposing and perpetuating some social structures. That is how we have the fabrication of Parashurama myth and the caste system, and we know how strong is unfortunately their cultural power and grip. It is in this perspective of changing dominant groups that made use of Goa's strategic coastal location in western India that I have written recently about the many strangers who made Goa their home. We need to have sufficient emotional freedom and capacity to study Goa's past as a very long history of older bhaile trying to keep out of privileged niches the new or more recent bhaile. It is an ongoing struggle for appropriating and preserving natural and other economic and social gains through shifting cultures and politics. A good pointer towards the kind of research that we need, is a recent publication of a Goan from Aldona, and settled in Switzerland, Bernardo Elvino de Souza. The book entitled 'The Last Prabhu', seeks to trace the origins of Goan population through genetic genealogy, or through DNA analysis and comparison of haplotypes. The archeological and documentary evidence for genealogical studies has severe time limitations. The genetic ancestry can be traced back to the earliest diasporas of humanity. History of humanity is a history of diasporas motivated by large-scale environmental changes, natural disasters, famines, wars, etc. That marks the long history of human struggle to free itself from the natural conditioning. My own DNA ancestry on paternal side is identified as belonging to clade J2 of Y haplogroup, originating from Northeastern Africa some 80,000 years back, and sought life-solutions passing through Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan into the Indian subcontinent. Many of us gathered here continue this historic journey! The emergence of this clade J2 from M89 with marker M172 corresponds to the development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. From recent analysis of India's phylogeography of the major Y-chromosomal haplogroups by Sanghamitra Sahoo et al in a joint study of 4 international institutions, Goa's population fits in well with general West Indian pattern of phylogenetic distribution. My ancestry links with that of Bernardo some 90 generations ago. For unknown reasons my ancestors settled in Moira and were integrated in its fifth vangoD of ganvkars, while their cousins, Bernardo's ancestors settled in Aldona as 4th of the 12 vangoD of the so-called Comunidade Fraternal, to distinguish it from the Communidade de Boa Esperança, made of five vangoD of kulachari of Chardo and Sudra castes. Goa was important as a strategic port of call, an intermediate stop, where ships picked up supplies, fuel, etc., a sort of entrepôt for storage of goods in transit and distribution centre. It needed obviously an administrative set-up to ensure efficient and smooth running services, to earn the confidence of all parties and to make all feel safe and at home. That is what Goa had been under several pre-Portuguese rulers. Under the Kadambas and Vijayanagara, Gove is mentioned as the capital of the Banavasi and other neighbouring regions, extending beyond Ghats into the Deccan. Under the Portuguese rule it gained in scale, such as was required by the administrative headquarter and colonial capital of the Estado da India, that extended from East Africa till the Far East. After pointing to the long and distant past that has left its imprint upon the identity of the bulk of Goa's inhabitants and many of those influences can be found encapsulated in the regional culture and in the Konkani language, it is but natural that the recent past needs our special attention because it has influenced and continues to influence more visibly the ongoing cultural and political developments. If Goa could attain the statehood in the Indian Union, it is solely because of the impact of the Portuguese colonial regime over the past four and half centuries. This includes paradoxically what the Portuguese succeeded in doing, but also what they failed to achieve. The major success of the Portuguese consisted in converting nearly a third of the population to Christianity of the Western brand. It does not mean that the Hindu majority remained immune to the Western influences. I have dealt with it elsewhere in my writings. [Cf. p. 382 of http://bit.ly/pLJAj4 ] The major failure of the Portuguese was their inability to stamp out the Konkani language and its cultural components. It is the combination of these two factors that marks the uniqueness of the Goan identity, which we need to nurture as the gain of our freedom. The capital city of Goa captured by the Portuguese was located at Elá, where they developed their capital that came to be known as Velha Goa when the capital was shifted to Panjim which was named Nova Goa. The Muslims preferred to conduct their trade from Ela, two miles away from the earlier Hindu-dominated port city. Ibn Batuta, who took part in the capture of Goa for the nawab of Honawar, already mentions two cities, one Hindu and the other Muslim. This makes us reflect about the non-integration of conflicting social interests in colonial Goa. It was the central argument of my doctoral dissertation entitled originally Goa in the seventeenth century: A socio-economic history [1979]. In several on my later essays I have extended the analysis to the later period and right up to the end of the colonial rule. It cannot be forgotten that the life of a maritime trading port is vitally dependent upon the supply lines, not just by sea, but also from the hinterland. Most of the studies of the colonial cities, including Goa, either touch the issue of this land dependence very superficially, or ignore it altogether as of little consequence. Very little serious attention has been paid for instance to various cases of local rebellions in Goa as manifestations of the native dissatisfaction with the colonial policies. The murder of half a dozen of Jesuits in Cuncolim in 1583 was one such early and serious case. It has been presented generally as Hindu reaction to the Jesuit conversion drive in Salcete. As I pointed out in my research, Cuncolim was one of the rare villages that lived on more than agriculture of subsistence. It had its own petty industry, including gun-manufacturing capacity. In the letters of Afonso de Albuquerque one reads that guns of good quality were manufactured in Cuncolim, and he finds them comparable to those the Portuguese brought from Bohemia. The anger of local elite that murdered the Jesuits was provoked by the destruction of their local temple that was located at crossroads of trade routes that linked Goa with the hinterland through the ghat passes. The trade fairs held during the temple feasts were vital for their economic activity. I have also analysed elsewhere how the Portuguese had been sufficiently content with their maritime trade during most of the 16th century, and did not interfere with the agriculture-based economy of the local inhabitants. This situation changed from the beginning of the seventeenth century. The arrival of the Dutch and the Englishmen led to the building of the new fortifications at the entrance of the Mandovi river, but resulted simultaneously in an increasingly frequent investment by the casados in the rural lands, violating the assurances given to the village communities in the Foral of Afonso Mexia in 1526. During this process the religious parish priests posed themselves as protectors of the native interests against the intrusion of the White casados or settlers. In reality the religious orders were themselves upset in their unrivalled White domination of the rural areas until then. In addition to the violation of the exclusive land proprietary rights of the Goan natives in their village communities, there were complaints about coconuts being taken forcibly by the captains of the Aguada and Reis Magos forts that defended the bay entry to the capital city. The natives were paid only one-third of the market price. The native labour was also regularly recruited for digging trenches of the Tivy fortifications and to watch the coast line against any enemy intruders. The village communities were made to pay 36,000 xerafins to cover the cost. A representation of the village communities of Salcete province to the king in 1643 discloses how the Viceroy Pero da Silva had ordered galleons to be built in Goa and the contractors were allowed to cut down jackfruit trees and other fruit bearing trees for timber without paying just compensation to the native owners. The note makes it a point to suggest sabotage by stating that the galleons caught fire and were burnt when they entered the bay. As a net result of the violent conversion drive, the arrests and punishments of the Inquisition, and the repeated forced levies from the village communities to cover the war costs against the neighbouring rulers, a sizable number of Goan inhabitants, both Hindus and Christians had moved out of Goa and settled down in various regions of the Konkan and beyond in the Indian subcontinent. It would be ultimately their pressure that was responsible to ending the Portuguese colonial rule in Goa in 1961. The Portuguese dictatorship of Salazar aggravated the situation during nearly 50 years of the so-called Estado Novo. But I wish that my hearers should be cautious and seek more information before condemning the excesses of the Portuguese dictatorship in Goa. We certainly need to disapprove any excesses anywhere, but I can only inform my hearers that the excesses of PVDE / PIDE /DGS in Portugal reached nearly 1000 arrests per year, and many of them suffered physical and mental tortures. Agente Monteiro who earlier tortured the freedom fighters in Goa had moved out to Portugal and was involved in the murder of the General Humberto Dalgado who challenged the dictat of Salazar. Goa did not have a delegation of PIDE, as some African colonies had, but it had a Military Tribunal that judged the cases against State security and could condemn to even eight years of exile and fifteen years of suspension of political rights. The number of such cases was relatively limited, and even the total number of those judged and condemned to various forms of penalties did not exceed much beyond a thousand known cases. But not very differently from the Inquisition during two and half centuries, with a record of about 16 thousand arrests and a relatively small number of death penalties, in a small enclave and limited population of Goa, the methods used were sufficient to cause havoc and disrupt and destroy families. The Indian military intervention is often mentioned by those unhappy with the Liberation as a foreign invasion, but they forget that Goa Liberation Council created in Bombay in 1954 was a civic organization representing nearly 100,000 Goan expatriates eking out their living in Bombay. The leadership of the Goa Liberation Council was largely with the Catholics, including the Archbishop-Cardinal of Bombay, a Goan by origin. More interesting still is the fact that the Operation Vijay, as the military action to occupy Goa was named, was under operational command of 9 high ranking Goan officers, including one Hindu. All of them were chosen for their familiarity with Portuguese language, besides their acknowledged military experience in various branches of India's armed forces.(1) Let me also present to you the frank assessment of the Portuguese Major General Pezarat Correia, who led one of the expeditionary batallions that was sent from Portugal to Goa in 1954 at the height of tension created by the satyagraha movement. He later served in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau, before taking part in the Army Revolt of 25 April that ended the Salazar regime, wrote in a recent publication of the Liga dos Combatentes no Ultramar [Revisitar Goa, Damão e Diu, Lisboa, Liga dos Combatentes, 2010: pp. 215-216, 218]: "The citizens of Goa, Daman and Diu were not incorporated in the Portuguese Armed Forces... There was just one company of infantry in Panjim and that was meant for mere protocolar functions. Let us acknowledge honestly that Goans, and people of Daman and Diu, did not in reality benefit from the statute of Portuguese nationals, with rights and duties of Portuguese citizens, including the duty of performing military service. They were subjected to foreign occupation, and as such, the duty of defending them militarily. The territory belonged to the occupying power. If they were or not Indian citizens, that was a different issue which they had to decide. But Portugal, when it did not permit a different solution that was not invasion, even that right of option was denied to them." The Portuguese major general admits that the Portuguese were just as much an occupying power, as may have been the others who preceded them or followed them. Ironically, the representatives of Portuguese colonial State occupying Goa, as Major General Pezarat Correia wrote, were repatriated after six months of stay as POWs, and they were treated as strangers both in Goa and in their home country on arrival. Quite a few prominent freedom-fighters who even braved exile in the prisons of Lisbon and Luanda regretted some of the post-liberations developments they saw. Some of them have left their feelings on record, others preferred to remain silent and distance themselves from the politics and even from the land for which they fought and risked their future. I shall not mention here those who misread the freedom-struggle and exploit it to claim undue benefits on the ground of family linkage with freedom-fighters. Such abuses do not take away the merit of those who stood up for the political rights of Goans to decide their future. Postcolonial regrets and disillusionment result from the misunderstanding of the concept of freedom. Freedom is a ground or base for growing in responsibility and skills that are required for the development of the people. The colonial regime had no interest in permitting or facilitating such a process. We have it since Goans elected their own representatives for Panchayats in 1962 and for the Assembly in 1963. The Opinion Poll represented the high point of the democratic achievement. Portugal itself had to wait for free and fair elections till 1974. Unfortunately, the democratic politics is messy and freedom is always subject to abuse. Freedom is not a magic wand that changes all for the best overnight. It is not very different from our individual growth into adulthood. Freedom can be misused, but it is important nonetheless for a healthy growth. Let us remember with gratitude on this occasion all those who stood up for the cause of Goa´s Freedom, be they known protagonists, be they unknown and forgotten freedom-fighters. May their example inspire us, each within one's means, to be worthy of the freedom we have gained to make Goa a better place and to be collectively worthy of presenting ourselves as Goans. Unfortunately, the democratic politics is messy and freedom is always subject to abuse. It is not very different from our individual growth into adulthood. Freedom can be misused, but it is important nonetheless for a healthy growth. Let us remember with gratitude on this occasion all hose who stood up for the cause of Goa´s Freedom, be they known protagonists, be they unknown and forgotten freedom-fighters. May their example inspire us, each within one's means, to be worthy of the freedom we have gained to make Goa a better place and to be collectively worthy of presenting ourselves as Goans. To conclude, my message to the Global Goan Convention may be viewed as my latest addition to my past reflections upon the uniqueness of Goan Identity: A partnership of Hindu majority and Catholic minority. The freedom struggle has seen this partnership in action (the happy ratio of Hindus and Catholics made prisoners and deported by the colonial regime). The acknowledgement of this Hindu-Christian camaraderie is patent in the unanimous decision to place the ashes of T.B. Cunha at the monument for the Freedom Fighters at the Azad Maidan. Now we need to face the ongoing post-liberation challenges with the same spirit. ---------------------- 1 Valmiki Faleiro, Patriotism in Action: Goans in India's Defense Services, Panaji, Goa 1556, 2010: 1. Air V/Mshl Erlic Wilmot Pinto was AOC-in-C, Operational Command for overall conduct of IAF's ops in 1961 from the Pinto do Rosario family of Porvorim-Soccoro; 2. Gp Capt Trevor Joseph Fernandes, then a young Flt Lt, was tasked to fly a Hunter of 7 SQN from Sambra on the morning of Dec 18, to disable the powerful transmitter of Radio Goa (Emissora de Goa) at Bambolim. He did the job with a surgeon's precision at 0710 hours, just 10 minutes after the programme Alvorada Musical had begun. Hailed from Siolim; 3. Lt Col Louis Fonseca led a column of AMX light battle tanks of the 8 Armoured Regiment into Goa during Op Vijay. Hailed from Badem, Salvador do Mundo; 4. Lt Col Paul Baylon Fernandes headed a motorized column of the 17 Infantry Division ('Black Cats'). Amongst his tasks was to take charge of the Portuguese Governor's fleet of limousines. Hails from Sarzora. 5. Cdr Joseph G Rodrigues accompanied the naval force to Goa on the INS Rajput. Saw action with the Headland Battery at Sada, above the port. Hailed from Piedade-Divar. 6. Maj Cezar PF Lobo entered Goa on Dec 18, 1961 and after Gen Vassalo e Silva sued for truce the following day, Maj Lobo was immediately ordered by Gen Candeth to take charge and look after the VIP POW and his 200 men at Alpalqueiros hill-Vasco; 7. Wg Cdr Vishwanath Balakrishna Sawardekar also participated in Op Vijay, but his specific role is not available. Hailed from the well-known family of Sanvordem.; 8. Lt Cdr John Eric Gomes was on the frigate INS Cauvery that engaged and disabled the Portuguese frigate then in Goa, the Afonso de Albuquerque. Hails from Borda-Margao; 9. Lt Avelino Jose Luis de Figueiredo Melo was on the antisubmarine frigate INS Kirpan, the first to enter Goan waters on 15 Dec 1961. Hailed from Saligao.