View From The Outer Harbour
By: Thalmann Pradeep Pereira
SORROWING LIES LAMBERT
Mr. Lambert Mascarenhas, well known freedom fighter, novelist,
music critic and a former editor of "The Navhind Times" and the "Goa Today",
has written a two-part article entitled "Goa's Passage To Freedom" which has
been published in the Sunday editions of "The Navhind Times" on the 1st and
8th January, 2006.
The self-proclaimed objective of the articles is "to enlighten
the post-Liberation-born Goans of the beatings, arrest, imprisonment of those
many men, women and girls who had the courage to defy the Portuguese authority
in Goa and face their terrorism for just one collectively conceived purpose:
Freedom of Goa".
A nice way to begin the New Year, one must say. Indeed it is
vitally necessary to remind the post-Liberation-born Goans of the sacrifices
made by thousands of freedom-fighters to gift us with our primary freedoms of
thought, speech and expression which we almost take for granted today.
The fighters for Goa's freedom were not confined to Goans
alone. The Portuguese Communists and Socialists were espousing the cause of
Goa's freedom in the course of their day-to-day work among the common folk of
Portugal. They were of the view that the freedom of the Portuguese people from
the yoke of the fascist military dictatorship headed by Dr. Antonio da
Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano, was inseparable from the freedom of the
Goan people from the yoke of Portuguese Colonialism.
The struggle for Goa's freedom was supported by the
progressive thinkers and activists, especially the Communists from the other
Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde. Each
of these countries had strong Communist parties and each of them achieved
their respective freedom from the yoke of Portuguese colonialism through
indigenous armed struggles. And after achieving freedom, each one of them
embarked on the path of socialist development in which the emancipation of the
peasants from the feudal bondage was the key element of economic and political
policy.
Thousands of Satyagrahis from all over India participated in
the peaceful Satyagrahas held on the Goa borders and many of them laid down
their lives as victims of the Portuguese firings. The plaque at the Martyrs'
Memorial at Azad Maidan will testify to the sheer pan-Indian identity of these
Martyrs.
Lambert Mascarenhas has ably narrated the broad flow of events
leading to Goa's Freedom in his articles. He certainly deserves to be
complimented for this. One wishes that he had thought of writing a full-
fledged book on the subject in greater details, with copious references and
footnotes, since he is eminently suited for the job given his first-hand
experiences and his writing skills.
There are however some points made by Lambert Mascarenhas in
one particular paragraph of his articles, with which we wish to join issue. He
writes: " Whatever the composition and strength of the Goan political parties,
they were considered quibbling, trivial by Prime Minister Nehru who wanted to
hear just one voice, not many voices, even if these many voices, had actually
pleaded for just one thing: The Government of India's dispatch of the Indian
Army to liberate Goa. Jawaharlal Nehru did not also understand Goan nature
which the Editor of the Bombay Sentinel the Englishman B.G.Horniman did, when
he stated "three Goans four political parties". Indeed, unity does not come
easy to Goans, because each Goan individual believes he knows better than the
other Goan, is cleverer than the other. Were Jawaharlal Nehru alive he would
have realized that the rest of Indians are no different from the Goans for the
multiplicity of political parties existing in India today."
A close reading of the above paragraph, quoted in full from
the articles in question, throws up some crucial questions. In the first
place, if Lambert Mascarenhas is seriously propounding his crucial observation
that each Goan individual believes that he knows better than the other Goan,
than it would mean shutting out all critical appraisals of each other's
thoughts by fellow Goans. We do not think Lambert the Editor ever adopted such
an approach throughout his journalistic career. Or else, the papers that he
edited would have been no better than Salazar's gazettes. And if really each
Goan
believes what Lambert imputes to him, then where would that leave Lambert
himself with his own views on art, music, culture or the Freedom Struggle?
We are inclined to classify that particular observation of
Lambert about the individualism of Goans as being a manifestation more of the
general frustration which many freedom fighters feel today when they compare
their ideals which led them into the freedom st
