48. The Army Commander and COAS Visit Vassalo e Silva Valmiki Faleiro
Lieutenant General (later General and Chief of Army Staff) JN Chaudhuri GOC-in-C Southern Command, together with AOC-in-C Air Vice Mshl EW Pinto and BN Mullik of the IB, took a helicopter from Belgaum to Goa the following day, 20 December 1961. Lt Gen Chaudhuri visited Major General Vassalo e Silva at Vasco da Gama at 2 pm. Born into an aristocratic Bengali zamindar family that produced several great names in law, medicine and literature, Lt Gen Chaudhuri was a grandnephew of the first non-European Nobel laureate in literature, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and was trained at the UK's Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He was a batch mate of latter day Pakistan President, Gen Ayub Khan. Gen. Carlos de Azeredo, then a Captain, was with Maj Gen Vassalo e Silva and was the official interpreter. In his book 'Trabalhos e dias de um soldado do império (Work and days of a soldier of the empire)' he says, "General Chaudhuri entered the cell alone and cordially greeted Vassalo. Vassalo wanted to stand up to compliment [salute] the Indian, but the latter rested his hand on his shoulder and did not let him. He [Lt Gen JN Chaudhuri] pulled up a chair and sat down. He had words of praise for the Portuguese forces." Colonel CA de Morais says that Lt Gen Chaudhuri congratulated Maj Gen Vassalo e Silva for the combats in Mapusa, Bicholim, Diu and Daman. "Despite the scarce means the Portuguese [forces] had reacted well against the action by the Indian troops." The GOC-in-C said that he had ordered POWs from Diu to be evacuated to Goa. Lt Gen Chaudhuri "ended the meeting saying that if he [Maj Gen Vassalo e Silva] wanted anything he could request the Indian camp commander [Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Earl William ('Bill') Carvalho, the first camp commander]" (Morais, A Queda da Índia Portuguesa, 2nd edition 1995, Page 151). Lt Gen Chaudhuri told Vassalo e Silva that his wife, Fernanda Pereira Monteiro e Silva, was well and safe and that Government of India would soon be sending her to Lisbon. Lieutenant General Jayanto Nath Chaudhuri, OBE, then drove to Panjim in an army jeep, accompanied by Air Vice Mshl Ehrlich Pinto and BN Mullik. On the way, the trio encountered a duo of White men happily motoring along, oblivious of what was happening around. The White duo was stopped and quizzed. They told the Indian military officers that they were German and not Portuguese -- and felt quite safe at the hands of the Indian jawan. Hearing that, Air Vice Mshl Pinto pulled out two bullets from his personal weapon and, showing them to the two Germans, said, "These bullets are illiterate. Can they recognise your nationality?" Lt Gen Chaudhuri burst into laughter. He then politely told the Germans that they would be better off home and remain indoors until the situation settled down. The Germans made an about turn and vanished [this episode is borrowed from Major General VK Singh's History of the Corps of Signals, Volume III, Chapter 3.] Lt Gen Chaudhuri and his companions then visited hospitals in Panjim and assured the wounded POWs that no harm would come to them. He ordered due medical attention and supplies be given to them. The party then returned to Dabolim and helicoptered back to Belgaum. Later, Chief of Army Staff, General Pran Nath Thapar visited Maj Gen Vassalo e Silva at the POW camp in Vasco da Gama. Gen Thapar was younger brother of Dr. Daya Ram Thapar, IMS, Director General Armed Forces Medical Services, father of famed TV anchor/journalist Karan Thapar who was married to a Colaço from Margao, uncle of historian Romila Thapar and journo Romesh Thapar, and granduncle of tiger conservationist Valmik Thapar. The son of a Diwan at Lahore in pre-Partition India, Gen Thapar was a product of UK's Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and later of the Imperial Defence College, London. The meeting was warm and cordial. Vassalo e Silva was soon shifted to a better house in the woods at the Alpha POW Camp at Ponda (he remained at Alpalqueiros, Vasco da Gama, less than ten days). Indian Major Cezar PF Lobo, a pilot with the Air Observation Post of the Artillery Regiment, a Goan from Aldona fluent in the Portuguese language, was tasked to take charge and look after the VIP POW. Major General KP Candeth was appointed Military Governor, with RCVP Noronha, ICS/IAS, as Chief Civic Administrator and GK Handoo, IPS, as Special Advisor. Brigadier Donald Viegas of Curtorim, then a Colonel at Army HQ, was sent to Goa on 21 December 1961 to assist the Military Governor. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Baylon Fernandes of Sarzora and Lieutenant Commander John Eric Gomes of Margao b(both part of Op Vijay) were retained to assist in the takeover of the Goa administration. Major Gerson RA de Souza of Moira served as aide to the Military Governor. RCVP Noronha, or Ronald Carlton Vivian Piedade Noronha or 'Ron'/'RP' to his friends, was born 1916 in Hyderabad of Goan parents, educated at Loyola College-Madras and at the London School of Economics, topped the ICS exam, was twice Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh, 1963-68 and 1972-74 when he retired, was honoured with the Padma Bhushan the following year, and the apex training academy for senior civil officers in Madhya Pradesh was named after him. He wrote an autobiography titled, 'A Tale Told By An Idiot' before passing away in 1982. [Editor's note: Members of Noronha's family, his daughter Anjali Noronha, added: "Two villages -- one that he settled in in erstwhile Bastar district, where he opted to serve as collector now in Narayanpur district of Chhattisgarh, called Noronha Palli and another near Bhopal, where he lived post retirement called Noronha Sankal -- were named after him.] (After Goa transited from military to civilian rule in June 1962, Alban Couto, a Goan from Carona, Aldona and a 1953-batch IAS officer, was deputed to Goa as secretary to the Lieutenant Governor T. Shivshankar and as the first Development Commissioner, 1962-65. Couto was later Director, Industrial Development Division with the British Commonwealth Secretariat in London and brought the CHOGM retreat to Goa in 1983. He served Goa again twice, in 1991 and 1999. Couto's wife, Padma Shri Maria Aurora Figueiredo Couto native of Borda, Margao, was a writer-author and college lecturer in New Delhi.) Handoo, responsible for 'faulty intelligence' that resulted in avoidable loss to the nation, was Nehru's trouble-shooter in Goa. After Op Vijay when Indian Army officers cornered Handoo's moles (cross-border Goan smugglers masquerading as 'freedom fighters' who fed false info to Handoo's intelligence apparatus) and asked where were the Portuguese tanks, the moles promptly produced photographic evidence... the photos showed water tanks! This was disclosed by Lt Gen JN Chaudhuri, GOC-in-C Southern Command, during a talk at the National Defence Academy. Major General Anil Raikar from Siolim, a veteran of the Sikh LI Regiment, was then a cadet at the NDA. As Special Advisor placed between the Military Governor and the Chief Civic Administrator, Handoo became the author of mis-governance in Goa. A Goan freedom fighter was critical of Handoo (Kanekar, 2011, Pages 157-58). If Portuguese jail guards at Aguada had a dog named 'Nehru', a neighbour of this author in Margao named his post-1961 pup 'Handoo'. Interestingly, the same Portuguese jail guards had another dog named 'Salazar' (Kanekar, 2011, Page 73). Poor dogs! An immediate fallout of 'His White Majesty' GK Handoo’s attitude (POWs called him Eminência Parda or 'Grey Eminence') was that many Goans deputed to Goa sought repatriation to the parent cadre. RCVP Noronha lasted only a few months in Goa. Some Goa-based officers opted to join the union government service, as for instance Eng. Vitorino Pinto who went from Goa PWD to CPWD. Some Goans called Handoo Senhor Andoo in their accented manner -- reminiscent of Jyoti Sarmalkar's language agitation speech feature, of Konkani-speaking Goan grandmothers aping their English-speaking grandchildren when spoon feeding them, "baba, aan-do" (baby, open your mouth). Both andoo varieties meant the same thing in the vernacular: testicles. The erstwhile governor, Vassalo e Silva's wife was treated rather shabbily and physically evicted by Indian troops from the official residence at Cabo, Dona Paula. She roamed the streets of Panjim as if lost. Former Chief Secretary Abel Colaço rescued and sheltered her at his own official residence in Panjim. He was summoned to the Secretariat and threatened with sedition by GK Handoo, who then said, "I can have you shot." This incident rocked the Lok Sabha. Nehru said that Colaço's act was chivalrous, the gesture of a gentleman towards a dame in distress. Fernanda Monteiro e Silva was flown out of Dabolim to Bombay by IAF's Fg Offr Srinivasan in a Devon HW518 on 29 December 1961 en route to Lisbon. The husband's return would follow only five months later. Portuguese non-combatants in Goa were also taken to Bombay by 29 December 1961 and repatriated to Portugal. -- 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. Photos [not included in this plaintext version]: 1. Right to Left: COAS Gen PN Thapar with Maj Gen Vassalo e Silva and an unidentified Portuguese officer, seated at table, with Lt Col RB Nanda, CO 4 Sikh LI (in hat) standing behind Maj Gen Vassalo e Silva (courtesy: Sikh LI Regimental Centre and Col Harjeet Singh, Veteran, ex 2 Sikh LI) 2. Lt Gen (later Gen & COAS) JN Chaudhuri GOC-in-C Southern Command entering Panjim in a military jeep (source: unknown) 3. Major General (later Lieutenant General and Army Commander) KP Candeth, appointed Military Governor of Goa, Daman & Diu (courtesy: The Illustrated Weekly of India, edition LXXXIII.7 dated 18 February 1962) 4. RCVP Noronha, ICS (with specs), appointed Chief Civic Administrator (courtesy: The Illustrated Weekly of India, edition LXXXIII.7 dated 18 February 1962) 5. GK Handoo, IPS (with striped tie, snow-white hair), appointed Special Advisor to the Military Governor (courtesy: The Illustrated Weekly of India, edition LXXXIII.7 dated 18 February 1962)