It was a lazy Sunday, some 30 years ago, when I travelled to Loutolim to meet Bonifacio Miranda, whom I found lounging on the balcao of his ancestral house. He had come to Goa, on a holiday from Portugal.
I was keen to see him as he was one of the players in the events leading to Operation Vijay in December, 1961. From him, I learnt that there was besides him, Leo Lawrence another Goan on the Portuguese delegation to the Security Council on the issue of Indian intervention, in what was then Portuguese “Estado da India”. Leo Lawrence hailed from Velim and is the uncle of activist/columnist, Engineer Jose Lourenco. Bonifacio is the uncle of Carmen Miranda another activist.
I also gathered that there were two Goans on the Indian delegation being, Leofred Gouveia Pinto from Margao, (whose sister was married to late Dr Jack de Sequeira) and Joao Cabral from Nagoa, Salcete, (whose son Nilesh is currently the Power Minister in Goa). From the talk, I could gather that the Goan delegates were ornamental and had no active role in the debate that followed.
The complaint lodged by Portugal came to be discussed at the 987th and 988th Meeting on December 18, 1961. Two resolutions were placed before the Council.
The first one moved by USA, UK and France read:
1. Calls for immediate cessation of hostilities;
2. Calls upon the Government of India to withdraw its forces to positions prevailing before December 17, 1964;
3. Urges the parties to work out a permanent solution of their differences by peaceful means in accordance with the principles embodied in the Charter;
4. Requests the Secretary General to provide the assistance as may be appropriate.
The second resolution was moved by Ceylon, United Arab Republic (now United Arab Emirates) and Liberia, read:
1. Decides to reject the Portuguese complaint of aggression against India;
2. Calls upon Portugal to terminate hostile action and cooperate with India in the liquidation of her colonial possessions in India.
The first resolution was supported by USA, UK, France, Chile, Ecuador, Turkey and China (Nationalist) and was opposed by Soviet Union, Ceylon and UAR. But it could not be carried due to exercise of veto by the Soviet Union. The same voting pattern followed in the second resolution.
Leo Lawrence was by far the most academically qualified of the four Goans with an MA first class in literature in 1941 and an LLB two years later from Bombay University. After the fiasco at the United Nations, Leo Lawrence was quite active, internationally in pursuing the cause of Goa and authored a book “Nehru seizes Goa” published from New York in 1963. The sale of the book, I understand was earlier proscribed in India.
Nehru certainly at that time enjoyed a reputation as a world statesman, something no other Indian leader has come close to, since. India was looked upon as a champion of peace and non alignment, in a bi-polar world. Why then did Nehru choose to give up the policy of non-violence and take over Goa by military force?
Reports of the time show that Kennedy sent a message to Nehru “The US would like to see the Goa question resolved and within the ambit of the UN if possible, otherwise your nation looks belligerent.” Nevertheless, despite the US advice, Nehru went ahead with the Operation Vijay following which Kennedy is said to have told the Indian Ambassador “You spent the last fifteen years preaching morality to us and then you go ahead and act the way any normal country would behave………… People are saying the preacher has been caught coming out of the brothel.”
It was an era when the Cold War was raging with each block trying to out-manoeuvre the other. USA was the leader of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Europe. And also the leader of South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) head quartered in Manila, which was looking for a base in the Indian Ocean.
Was it true that the Americans had surveyed Goa and identified the stretch of seaside from Betul to Cabo de Rama as the site of a naval base and were in the process of negotiating a deal with Portugal? Was it true that Nikita Khrushchev unnerved by the news instigated Nehru to take over Goa? Obviously, one can understand the fears of Nehru that if the base did materialise, there was no scope for Indian Army action. Was the army action precipitated by this fear? Perhaps, but the answers will never be known.
The flipside of the Goa action was that India now lost the moral right, to preach non-violence. And the Chinese said bye-bye to ‘1” took full advantage of India renouncing non-violence as a means to settle territorial disputes and came rolling down the Himalayas in October 1962. And, in a brief scuffle, captured large tracts of Indian territory in NEFA (now Arunachal) and annexed Aksai Chin a part of Jammu and Kashmir admeasuring an area of 37,244 sq.kms, ten times the size of Goa.
But the greatest shock to India was given by the Soviet Union which refused to support India and merely advised both parties to maintain peace. The Times of India dated October 26 thus headlined “India Dismayed Over Soviet Backing To China.” Brigadier JP Dalvi the highest ranking Indian Officer captured by China, in his monumental work The Himalayan Blunder grieves ‘the most humiliating moment of my seven month capture was when a Chinese Major informed him’, “now we have decided to go back as we do not want to settle the border problem by force. We have proved you are no match for China”.
(Radharao F.Gracias is a senior trial Court Advocate, a former MLA, and political activist)
