Notebook: the Issue of Goa
Plastrik, Stanley & Mehta, Asoka
TELEGRAM: Asoka Mehta Praja—Socialist Party, India December 19, 1961 DISMAYED GOA ACTION PLEASE ADVISE POSITION YOUR PARTY ON THESE EVENTS. Camp: Calcutta guese authorities...
...literally tens of millions of your people have gone through another pre...
...Portugal began aligning with Pakistan and made Goa a hostile base against us...
...Given what we know of the world to...
...The explanation must lie in the realm of national politics, particularly the February general elections...
...We do not want to snap the cultural ties...
...I submit that this is the wrong reason for removing peace from the highest place on the list of priorities, even temporarily...
...We desire the same friendship with them now that we have established with Britain and France...
...nothing, indeed, to be obtained in Kashmir itself, which would warrant the possibility of war between India and Pak istan...
...I fear that you fail to see that the Americans, among others,—I refer not to Americans of the reactionary right looking for any chance to slander India and its supporters, but to those of democratic and socialist persuasion— were utterly unprepared for the unilateral liquidation of the Goan enclaves...
...After the British and the French left from India, we naturally wanted peaceful transfer of power by the Portuguese also...
...You were surprised by this...
...The core of the campaign and the warmth of welcome from the people show that the Portuguese had no supporters among the Goans...
...Even the former French possessions are today administered democratically but as a distinct administrative unit...
...Colonialism and its remnants in the world are indeed very large issues and none of us doubts that no nation can feel itself secure as long as foreign domination alienates part of its people from the rest...
...Then was the time to complete the national revolution by mopping up Goa, along with French Pondicherry, with the approval and participation of the people...
...Further, your country has just completed a gigantic electoral experience which, from all that I know of it, has been conducted with complete democracy amidst the freest exchange of opinions and views...
...They also started intimidating Thank you for your cable of 19th our people on the border areas...
...But this also is not the issue...
...I find it difficult to understand what the dismay is about...
...We cannot acquiesce in colonial possessions anywhere, least of all on our own soil...
...Then how did it get there...
...Either a popular revolution inside Goa or an authorization by the Security Council to march unless Portugal agreed to negotiate...
...day, what socialist and democrat can have anything but the highest praise for Indian democracy...
...India could wait no longer, not because of some specific or new Portuguese repression or action—this would again have been a matter for the Security Council to explore—but because something inside India had changed...
...For instance, in 1947 at the time independence came and was accompanied by a strong, popular nationalist upheaval...
...Political control, however, we cannot accept...
...Thus we shall be able to cooperate in finding the solutions we all search for...
...For fourteen years we sought to achieve amicable settlement...
...These are people who, like myself, asked the ques tion: what was gained, what was lost...
...It may have been painful then, but the world would have understood that this is just, that this is revolutionary nationalism...
...She could no longer take Goa by force, but had to wait—ought to have waited — for either of two developments...
...But the Goan action still is a disturbing one...
...You have expressed elsewhere your view that their reaction to India's seizure of Goa is "disturbing, disheartening and irritating...
...Goa itself has already faded away as an immediate concern, but there will be a multitude of new and larger "Goas...
...TELEGRAM: Asoka Mehta Praja—Socialist Party, India December 19, 1961 DISMAYED GOA ACTION PLEASE ADVISE POSITION YOUR PARTY ON THESE EVENTS...
...If India takes Goa today, Khrushchev can use that as a pretext for taking Berlin tomorrow, with consequences all too familiar...
...The editorial then goes on to suggest certain ways of preparing world opinion...
...A number of my colleagues carry the scars of those days on their bodies today...
...We have no quarrel with the Portuguese people or their Government...
...Not only for India's sake, but for the world's sake, India could not afford to take matters into her own hands...
...But this is not how you pose the question in your letter...
...Has not India the far greater problem of China —there we have naked and open aggression, as your party has been saying for years now—to face over the next years...
...If we continue to examine them both in the light of their immediate and concrete political implications and in the light of our common democratic beliefs, we shall keep open the lines of communication between democratic socialists everywhere in spite of our disagreements...
...I believe you will agree that no steps, such as summoning Portugal before the Security Council of the UN, were taken...
...Dear friend and comrade Asoka Mehta: Your letter saddens me not because I doubt your country's right to repossess Goa, nor the perfidy of Portuguese colonialism, but because it indicates how difficult you and your associates find it to look beyond India's just grievances...
...We would like them to be regularized...
...Apparently, India did not place Goa high on its list of national problems demanding resolution...
...inst...
...cious experience of democratic life...
...The people of these three possessions-600,000 of them—are part of our own people and they do not want and cannot be allowed to be outside our Republic...
...Ought not the status quo to prevail in those areas of the world which, under present circumstances, do not lend themselves to any satisfactory solution except by the use of force and violence which, in turn, may bring us to the brink we all dread...
...There were frequent unrests in the possessions and the people were brutally suppressed...
...We have a cultural agreement with France, we would welcome a similar agreement with Portugal...
...If the civilized world will not help to change our iniquitous status quo, iniquitous not in subjective terms but in terms of commonly accepted canons: the evolving of international order of decolonialization—even after fourteen years, we cannot remain supinely indifferent...
...the second India did not try to secure...
...I read, for example, in your party's election program of the need to "vacate" the occupation of parts of Kashmir by forces considered hostile to India...
...I have stated candidly some of my immediate responses to your letter...
...But why...
...There is, of course, much more that can and will be said on both sides...
...We accept your assurances that the former Portuguese enclaves will be administered in a spirit of local rule with particular care to special problems...
...These are not "false friends" of India, but people who have always placed your nation's welfare among the highest of personal and political priorities...
...It would seem to me that there is nothing to be obtained in reawakening the problem of Kashmir...
...Goa, Diu and Daman were three Portuguese possessions in India...
...The balance ought to be kept straight...
...why should the socialists take the lead in such matters...
...In my opinion, the real issue is whether any nation, feeling itself threatened, should be en titled to preemptive warfare and unilateral action before any action has been suggested to the United Nations or the Security Council...
...You say that India felt threatened because Portugal began to align itself with Pakistan, posing the danger of Goa's use as a hostile base...
...Meanwhile, India became a responsible member of the United Nations, and one of the foremost to insist upon the indivisibility of peace—correctly so...
...What means shall be employed to bring this to an end...
...In 1956 there was a mass movement in which many satyagrahis were killed...
...The ease with which Goa was overrun at least throws some doubts on the contention that a real and immediate threat existed...
...The PortuIndia, in our opinion, after having shown patience for fourteen years was fully justified in taking military action against the Portuguese authorities in India...
...As a socialist I have always felt that we must rely on our friends to keep the larger issues in mind...
...All reasonable pleas for settlement were ignored...
...When I first heard of India's attack upon Goa, my immediate thought was: why now...
...This, it seems to me, is one of the larger issues we shall have to keep in mind: how shall we assure the success of democratic India in the long struggle with China...
...In the October 29, 1961 issue of Janata, a publication of your party, I read the following as part of an editorial on "Liberation of Goa": Before this step was taken, however [i.e., military action as an extreme measure — SP], world public opinion has to be prepared for it...
...Trouble was brewing afresh in Goa...
...Camp: Calcutta guese authorities considerably fortified December 22, 1961 their positions to suppress popular upDear Plastrik: surge...
...It would be wrong for the critics of India's Goa action to blow this up beyond all proportion...
...So will be the Portuguese enclaves...
...Why, indeed, hadn't they done it sooner...
...This is particularly true in the case of India, struggling to preserve its national unity against so many disintegrative forces within and hostile forces without...
...Sensitive to abrupt shifts in world conditions, fearful of anything smacking of violence and yet another danger of war, doubtful about any course of action that further tends to undermine the shaky remnants of UN prestige, their reaction was predictable...
...What does this signify...
...The first did not happen...
...But it is the future that is troubling...
...I am saddened because you appear to place a question of national defense before the question of peace or of collective security...
...DISSENT, at least should recognize that non-violence and peace cannot be allowed to become synonyms for status quo...
...Our action was not an expression of power politics or of our armed might, but the assertion of the freedom of our people which has to be respected...
...Relations between India and Pakistan are delicate and easily disturbed...
...Certainly I shall not join those who, imputing to India a doctrine of non-violence and absolute morality which she could never realistically hold, have been so quick and loud to condemn...
Vol. 9 • April 1962 • No. 2
