Goa, 1961

Title: Goa, 1961 – The Complete Story of Nationalism and Integration
Author: Valmiki Faleiro
Publisher: Vintage Penguin, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9780670097920
Pages: 391

Great Britain was not the only colonial power that had possessions in India. Even after 1947, the French and the Portuguese continued to hold on to their colonies of Pondicherry and Goa respectively, along with its hinterlands. However, with the achievement of India’s freedom and strengthening of popular freedom movements in these provinces, the writing on the wall was very clear and distinct – colonialism has to go. France addressed this issue and gracefully left India with a treaty in 1956 and India looked eagerly to Portugal to follow suit. However, being less well developed on international etiquette and civilizational maturity, Portugal held on to its Goan estate with a fierceness that originated from stubbornness and autocracy at home. The Portuguese dictator Salazar reiterated his intention to keep Goa under Portuguese rule. Peaceful agitations continued but its prospects of success dwindled each day as Salazar ratcheted up the oppression machinery. Finally, on Dec 18, 1961, Indian armed forces rushed into Goa in a ‘police action’ and subjugated it within 36 hours. The demoralized and ill-equipped Portuguese forces didn’t even put up a decent fight before surrendering. The outcome was rather low key with 22 dead on the Indian side, 17 on the Portuguese side and over 3000 Portuguese prisoners of war. This book is a review of the situation in 1961, with events leading up to it and the consequences of India deliberately veering off its much professed ideal of peace and nonviolence. Valmiki Faleiro is a journalist and prolific writer. He was once the Mayor of Margao city.

The first part of the book describes how Portugal alienated ordinary Goans with its highhanded policies. The locally anointed Catholic priests were against the white clergy from the very beginning. To add to the discrimination, Goa was downgraded from a province of Portugal in 1930 to a mere colony. From the status of citizens of Portugal, Goans were overnight reduced into its ‘subjects’. Civil servants in Goa were replaced with whites to ‘renationalize Goa’. With Salazar’s dictatorial rule of 36 years in Portugal starting from 1932, all political parties in Goa were banned and public get-togethers of any sort discouraged. Even wedding invitations were mandated to carry the seal of the censor. Goans had to suffer racial slurs pronounced by white Portuguese administrators and politicians, such as the remark by one of them that ‘the Goans are for our race what the woodworm is to the wood’. Twentieth century Goa was of no economic or strategic significance to Portugal. Salazar declared in 1954 that maintaining Goa required an annual burden of 7 million escudos. But still, Goa was an emotion, a remnant of Portugal’s glorious nautical history. Portugal also entertained the Hyderabad Nizam’s interests to merge with Pakistan. He had requested one year’s time for accession to India after independence. In the meantime, he offered to buy Goa and thus have a seaport accessible to his landlocked state. His plan was to become a part of Pakistan as its third wing! Nizam’s hopes were dashed in 1948 in another police action staged by Sardar Patel and Hyderabad was annexed to India. This strengthened the apprehensions of Delhi that allowing the Portuguese to stay on in Goa would be a thorn in the nation’s flesh.

The book summarizes the confused and ambivalent attitude of the Congress party towards Goa. While the party was spearheading the freedom struggle against the British, the Goa National Congress (GNC) was doing the same against Portugal in Goa. There were numerous such organisations practicing both violent and nonviolent means. But in 1934, the Congress dissociated its links to GNC citing Goa as an alien land! The GNC then shifted its office from Goa to Mumbai, but the Congress was unimpressed. After independence too, the Nehru government was always reluctant to take the plunge in evicting the Portuguese. In 1954, freedom fighters liberated the Portuguese territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. This intensified the Goan agitation but Nehru still demurred to intervene because ‘it will be construed as India’s interference in the internal affairs of Portugal’ (p.40). Nehru was forever conscious of his personal reputation even at the cost of national interest. He extended the principle of nonviolence, which can at best be regarded as only an aspiration in foreign policy, to absurd limits. The repressive Goan police shot at unarmed satyagrahis on Aug 15, 1955, in which 22 were killed. Nehru came under immense pressure to intervene militarily, but he reiterated in various fora that India will not send in troops. The book indicates that the decision to send troops was also influenced by pressure from external agents. In the Non-Aligned Movement summit held in Sep 1961, Nehru was criticized by the newly created African states to act strong. Several delegates told to his face ‘to act and not just talk’. Besides, things were not going well in the internal politics and economic spheres and a general election was scheduled for Feb 1962. Nehru finally decided to attack and annex Goa in Dec 1961.

Faleiro discusses about how oppressive was the Portuguese regime, particularly after assumption of the prime minister’s office by Salazar. Goa was historically, geographically, ethnically, culturally, linguistically and legally one with India. During British rule, it was commercially integrated to India. Goans were granted free entry to India while Indians were restricted to enter Goa. Tens of thousands of Goans were employed and permanently domiciled in different parts of India. Numerous Goans worked in India’s military and some of them had reached its top positions too. The living standards of colonial Goa were dismal with no opportunities for higher education and decent employment locally. This lack of facilities prompted upwardly mobile Goans to emigrate out of it. As a result, the proportion of Christians in the total population plummeted. They were 64 per cent in 1850. This came down to 38 per cent in 1961 and further slid to 25 per cent in 2011.

As mentioned earlier, Nehru was dilly-dallying on the use of military to liberate Goa. This book explains the alternate actions which he took to bring Portugal to accept his claim of Goa. But as was his industrial, economic and military policies back home, this too was a disaster. India declared an economic blockade of Goa in 1953, preventing all material export from India. But Goa imported all commodities from overseas, including vegetables and cotton yarn from Pakistan. To meet the extra monetary demand due to increased freight, mining and export of the plentiful iron and manganese ores were boosted many fold. Nehru’s administration faced this unexpected challenge with dismay and indecision. Instead of crippling the Goan economy, the blockade resulted in an economic boom. Consumer goods were heavily controlled in Nehruvian socialist economy and as a result, large scale smuggling of these articles occurred across the porous borders of Goa. The ineffective blockade was finally lifted in April 1961, but smuggling continued unabated. India’s decision to take the so-called ‘police action’ was also affected by Portuguese weakness which was established by events in Africa. The French gave freedom to Dahomey (Benin) in 1960. There was a 4-acre micro-territory of Portugal called Sao Joao Batista de Ajuda inside this country which they refused to relinquish to Benin. Having run out of patience, Benin’s forces occupied the territory in July 1961 and served as a model for Nehru to imitate.

The book dedicates a considerable space for elaborating the military activities of Dec 18-19, 1961 in which the Portuguese forces sued for peace and surrendered within 36 hours after the first shot was fired. They were ill-equipped and demoralized. The Portuguese had estimated that even if they deployed its entire military, it would not have held on for more than five days! However, India’s intelligence units failed to make a realistic estimate of Portugal’s defence capability in Goa and as a result erred on the side of caution. The result was like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. Portugal was hugely outmatched in infantry, artillery and navy. There were 17 Indian warships against Portugal’s single ship and they had no air power to defend Goa. One good thing was that the Portuguese surrendered without shedding much blood on both sides even though Salazar had ordered them to fight to the last man and destroy the magnificent buildings of Old Goa. The PoWs were court-martialed in Portugal after their release from India and awarded prison sentences. Some elements had portrayed the Goan Catholic community as pro-Portuguese, un-Indian and antinational. The author takes great pains to debunk this falsehood citing the active participation of the community in the struggle against Portugal. The elite of both Hindus and Christians and the business class supported the Portuguese rule but that was not extended to the ordinary people. The book also includes a note on the crimes committed by a few Indian soldiers on the civilians of Goa as if they were a conquered people. These were extremely isolated events which were quickly acted upon. In fact, the attack included the participation of several Goan officers to convince the locals that the invaders are actually one with them.

The book narrates several goof ups of Nehru but claims that India rose to become ‘a world leader against colonialism after 1947’. It also gives credit to defence minister V K Krishna Menon in planning the Goan offensive, sometimes compelling a reluctant Nehru to fall in line. It also hints that the Chinese attack on Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh hardly a year later was an indirect consequence to India’s 1961 operation in Goa. What is noteworthy in the book is its repeated emphasis on the participation of Goan Christians in the liberation effort. Describing several incidents of protests involving and avoiding violence, the author establishes the truth that Goa’s liberation involved people of both Christian and Hindu faiths in substantial measure. The book also includes a list of 209 Catholic freedom fighters as an annexure. This book provides a good reading experience of a chapter in Indian history which is usually rolled up in one sentence or as a footnote in mainstream rendering of history as it is thought to be an aberration on India’s policy of peace, non-intervention and nonviolence. But Goa is the one episode in which India behaved – as John F Kennedy quipped – ‘like what a normal state would do, instead of sermonizing to the world lofty and impractical homilies’. The author is a Goan and he has included some anecdotes gleaned from local circles.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Remnants of a Separation

 

Title: Remnants of a Separation – A History of the Partition through Material History
Author: Aanchal Malhotra
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2017 (First)
ISBN: 9789352770120
Pages: 385

Before I begin: This is my 700th book review here. The journey which started about sixteen years ago still runs smoothly and happily.

The partition of India into two independent countries in 1947 was sordid to begin with but it turned into a disastrous nightmare with each passing week. An estimated one million people were killed, numerous women were raped or abducted and many tens of thousands were forcibly converted to Islam. Several millions had no choice but to migrate to the other side of the border with whatever little they could carry, mostly in their hands. In several instances, they had only a few minutes to prepare for cutting all roots from their native land. This book is about the reminiscences of those people who migrated in 1947. They were lucky to have escaped with their life, but not so fortunate as to be free of first-hand experiences of the carnage that was played out, especially in Punjab. This book does not simply compile the recollections of these octogenarians but makes them relive their past life based on the few material things they could bring along and has assumed a large sentimental value such as a piece of cloth, a utensil, an ornament or a souvenir connected to a prized association. The book carries the memories from a generation receding into the past to a generation advancing into the future, both with great speed. Aanchal Malhotra is an artist and oral historian working with memory and material culture. She is the co-founder of the ‘Museum of Material Memory’, a digital repository of material culture from the Indian subcontinent, tracing family histories and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and objects of antiquity. The author is a descendant of migrants on both sides of the family. This is her dissertation thesis for the degree of MFA (Master of Fine Arts).

This book is organized as a collection of conversations with individuals who witnessed and experienced the unforgettable moments in the subcontinent’s history and its partition. Author’s engagement with the most senior members of a family (the partition is already 76 years old), persuade their great-grandchildren to view them in a new light and as a source of inspiration and encouragement. After all, not everyone goes through the tough times as brought down by cataclysmic events related to the partition of a country that was an organic whole for most of recorded history. The importance of material memory is focused on in this book. Not content with learning the individual experiences, Malhotra prompts her subjects to show her any item of interest that they had brought along in the exodus and still holds dear. These small articles of personal attachment suddenly get transformed into a tangible link to the painful past. We also see that younger family members, who had viewed these items with nothing better than indifference, if at all, quickly find them cherishable and priceless. In a sense, it brings out the links to the past as well as strengthens the ties to the future. The author’s remark on memory loss caused by aging is arresting: “memory begins to fade little by little. First the edges soften, eroding away the most recent years and then slowly age gnaws its way till it reaches even the seemingly impenetrable, the nucleus of our lives – our oldest and dearest memories”.

 One similarity that runs through all the people’s experiences in the early stages is the disbelief and skepticism on the viability of partition itself. The sheer fact that a nation can be divided and its people separated did not cross the minds of common people who went about their normal lives while Muslim politicians openly demanded partition. There were indeed a few ‘nationalist’ Muslim leaders high up in the Congress hierarchy who opposed it but their ratio could be expressed in ppm (parts per million) rather than percentages. The author here gives some leeway to the guilty party and gives the nuance that both political sides wanted partition. She had to travel to Pakistan and interview the people who left India that probably made her adopt this ambivalent argument that is designed not to irritate anybody, but at the cost of truth. Lack of clarity on borders made the situation troublesome as Hindu pockets in Pakistan and Muslim pockets in India near the prospective border did not know to which country they would be annexed to by Cyril Radcliffe, the arbiter of the fate of millions. This book suggests that Radcliffe faltered in some cases and succumbed to favours by conceding to the needs of the elite few over the needs of many, much against the mapmaker’s better judgement.

The author claims that one cannot attribute the events that unraveled in 1947 to a single cause or community and hence the notion of singular responsibility is thereby absent (p.33). This is plain wrong and the result of unwillingness to see the elephant in the room. It was the Muslim side which demanded partition right from the partition of Bengal in 1905, also largely on religious lines. The Bengal division was later reversed, but as the Muslim League grew stronger and stronger with each passing year on the base of concessions by the Congress, it could finally run its writ in 1947. The demand for Pakistan was ignored at first and later resisted, but the League then intensified their claim and resorted to horrible violence such as the Direct Action Day of Calcutta in 1946. Pakistan was born with both pre-natal and post-natal bloodshed. Even then, 35 million Muslims chose to stay back in India. The author’s quest to balance the narrative is obviously woven to please their descendants. Malhotra then notes that ‘it is not religion; it is human nature and quest for power that drives madness of violence’. This is so absurd that it is not even wrong. It is what you can call a secularization of bigotry. The violence was aided and abetted by the tenets of a particular religion. When it flared beyond control, others also imitated their methods to pay them back in the same coin. This reluctance to face the intense religious zeal of interlocutors that went in in the creation of Pakistan is exemplified by an incident narrated in the book. Azra, a 90-year old matriarch in Lahore, had migrated from Jalandhar in Indian Punjab. She recalls that she had actively participated in public processions in Jalandhar shouting Hamara dil mein Quran hai (we hold the Quran in our hearts) and Hamein Pakistan chahiye (we want our Pakistan). At this point, our author incredulously ejaculates ‘but did you actually believe them?’ (p.65). She evidently did, but our author was not willing to accept that the old woman sitting in front of her was a fanatic of the first order! This is a classic instance of the typical liberal hare standing stunned motionless against the headlights of fanaticism. We also read about people who so loved the land to which they belonged that they were ready to convert for the simple privilege of being allowed to stay there. Bhoptiyan village in Lahore district was a Sikh majority one. All the Sikhs converted to Islam to remain there. The author also suggests a division of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 as a workable solution to the Kashmir problem which is embarrassingly naïve.

Even though the author has interviewed 19 people from both sides of the border and presented their cases with a heart-warming clarity, she has clearly missed the communal wood for the individual trees. We see that the people who had gone over to Pakistan do not flinch when asked whether they wanted to undo partition. They don’t. One of them says that there is indeed ‘a difference’ between Hindus and Muslims. The author is unnerved by this candid assertion and mumbles farak kya hai (what’s the difference) to which the kind Pakistani replies that ‘even though we considered ourselves equal to the Hindus in every way, there was no denying the inherent differences’ (p.180). Another boasts that ‘it was not money or material prosperity that brought me here to Pakistan but inspiration. I was inspired by the idea of this land and aspired to become something for it’. On the other hand, this book narrates an incident in which a person who had gone to Pakistan coming back a few years later and establishing a Muslim shrine in Samana, Punjab at which place people of all religions pray. Another lady claims to have come from a generation who professes to be secular and open to pluralism and multiculturalism. These facets are seen in action in India alone, while in Pakistan the minorities are either killed off or converted. One only needs to look at the percentages of minority population in both countries in 1947 and compare it to the numbers at present. The author also claims that when she read Jinnah’s Pakistan Address of March 1940, she ‘could not understand the vehemence, perhaps due to my own naivety’ (p.181). Bigotry is incomprehensible to the liberal mind. The unfortunate part is that since she does not understand it she assumes it to be absent.

Aged people are the subject matter of the book, but it is touching and the way the young generation treats the old is just lovely. The insight that has gone into the author’s occasional philosophical remarks such as ‘life is not easy, but it is never supposed to be’ is truly great. Even people who are not in any way connected to the partition would find this book appealing as it provides a pathway to the hearts and minds of their grandparents and to reevaluate them on the face of challenges they had encountered and overcome. A particular thing to note is that the book is biased towards stories of the rich, influential people like zamindars with large havelis, topmost bureaucrats or people who could afford a year-long world tour in 1947. Anyway, the book presents a rich and fulfilling reading experience.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star