Photographs of the said period
showing crowds as welcoming the Indian troops do not obviously reflect the
ground reality at the time. This period also saw the establishment of an
administration which was placed under the control of a hand-picked civil servant,
albeit unofficially, who was attached to the government of Goa by the name of
Handoo who orchestrated public demonstrations of support for the invasion, the
persecution of identified individuals (and any other upstanding individual
belonging to the earlier administration) such as that of the Advocate General
of Goa Dr. Jose Quadros, a Goan by birth, who was pulled out of his house in
the late evening, by a mob of fifty odd people at the height of the curfew and
paraded in his underclothes through the City streets of Panjim accompanied by
fist blows and forced to shout “Jai Hind” while being watched impassively by
the police.
The elimination of the High Court of
Goa(Tribunal de Relacao de Goa) whose Chief Justice, Dr. Ismael Gracias another
Goan, was forced to migrate to Portugal, where he was given a new posting. The
same Handoo personally threatened several Goans including the Secretary General
of Goa(a position equivalent to that of the Chief Secretary) Dr. Abel Colaco of
having him court-martialed merely because he had given shelter on humane and
humanitarian grounds to the wife of the last Governor General of Goa, Brigadier
Vassalo e Silva, after her husband had been interned by the Indian Military and
as she had to abandon the Palacio do Cabo(Cabo Raj Nivas now) for obvious
reasons and had nowhere to go.
This same individual was responsible
for many more actions which ended up terrorizing not only the Civil servants
but also the population of Goa, specially the catholics, which was also exposed
to the taunts and misbehavior from organized groups composed of rabble from the
majority community. Such rabble, which hardly understood a word of Portuguese,
was instigated and encouraged to carry out attacks multiple times on the
printing presses of the Portuguese language newspaper “Heraldo”(not to be
mistaken with the “O Heraldo”) due to the criticism leveled by the said
newspaper at the goings-on at that time and which met with disfavour of the
martial administration causing destruction of the machinery and physical harm
to its editor, Mr. Alvaro de Santa Rita Vas, who ultimately was forced to shut
down the newspaper on April 15th 1962 and flee to Portugal.
Such actions were definitely
responsible for the fact that a great section of goans were effectively
silenced, and thus protests were nipped in the bud. In contrast however, many
tears were shed in private, not so much for the going of the Portuguese but for
the substitution of new chains in place of the old. Except for a few brave
individuals such as late Dr. A.A. Bruto da Costa, who despite his early
blindness, wrote a protest letter accusing late Jawaharlal Nehru of betraying
and trampling upon the very principles enunciated by him along with Mr. Chou En
Lai of China and termed as “Panch Shila”, two of which were non aggression and
peaceful co-existence amongst nations.
The bitter irony for the Goans is
that most of the things bandied about, many times falsely, against the
Portuguese regime was that which had taken place during the dictatorial period
and which was also applicable to Continental Portugal itself. It was not
something meant only for the colonies as is projected in the history books and
in the propaganda. One of the benefits of the so-called liberation, we were
informed and are still being informed by “opinion makers”, is that Goa was now
part of a democracy and that people were free to speak their
mind....
A few weeks prior to the invasion,
thousands of Goans left for Portugal due to the fear of what might befall Goa
and themselves post annexation. That this exodus continued even after 19th
December 1961 and the route for such exodus was via Karachi, Pakistan where the
Portuguese Government had organized flights to ferry Goans and other citizens
from the erstwhile “Estado da India” free of cost, was sufficient evidence that
the so-called Liberation of Goa did not result in giving goans a sense of
freedom, satisfaction and fulfillment. This exodus is continuing even today and
is evidenced by the fact that thousands upon thousands of goans are migrating
to Canada, Australia, new Zealand, The U.K. Portugal etc (Should it not be
said, with greater reason, that goans are now protesting with their feet?).
This should have been an eye opener for India and a sufficient motive to call
for an introspection regarding the causes for such migration involving disposal
of their immovable properties and other assets and choosing a foreign country
to settle in and abandoning their ‘liberated’ Goa.
The so-called freedom fighters some
of whom, excluding the few that had the courage to admit that Goa during the
Portuguese days was a better place than the Goa of today, and by such admission
brought a modicum of dignity upon themselves in the eyes of many Goans, could
only carry-out acts of vandalism at various times, such as the blasting of the
statue of General Manuel Antonio de Sousa, a Goan gaocar of Mapusa, which had
been erected by the Portuguese at the entrance of the City, the blasting of the
statue of the great Portuguese poet Luis de Camoes, which stood at Old Goa, the
breaking of “Azulejos”(blue tiles) set up on private homes of residents in
Fontainhas Panjim, only because they bore the street names of the area in
Portuguese, all with the blessings not only of the Military Government earlier
as well as of the subsequent governments under D.B. Bandodkar, S. Kakodkar and
others.
To their eternal shame, these freedom
fighters expected and got a prize for their efforts, by way of pensions and
their ranks kept increasing year after year by addition of persons who had
nothing to do with any kind of struggle and were further swollen by rogues who
happened to be in prison for crimes unrelated to anything remotely related to
Portuguese colonialism. These people were generally rejected by the people of Goa
in the elections. Proof enough of the level of esteem that the general public
had for them.
Curiously nobody talks or writes
about the fact that the dictatorial regime in Portugal came to an end a short
13 years later on 25th April 1974 and soon thereafter all the Portuguese
colonies not only attained independence but democracy was ushered-in in
Portugal. This is conveniently not mentioned. It is also not mentioned as to
why the Government of India under Nehru and Krishna Menon did not accord the people
of the erstwhile “Estado da India”, the right to self determination enshrined
in the United Nations Charter and owed to any colony which, according to the
Charter of the United Nations to which India was a signatory, was a country not
self administered being a colony and which, for that reason, had the right of
deciding whether it wanted to merge with a neighbouring country, whether it
wanted to be associated with it or whether it wanted to be independent. Such
choice could be decided only by a Referendum. All this was
forgotten....Democracy indeed!
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