Report On The Resolutions
© 2003, A.D., P.J. Mascarenhas, Goa Livre Organisation
Dom Romeo da Silva, Secretary of the Goan Association of Kenya and delegate from British East Africa, commented as follows on the following Resolutions:
<<RESOLUTION N.o 2: — The integrity of the Goan people dates back to four and a half centuries and by far outranks in length of time, the cohesive character of the areas that form the Indian Union.
We have been, by and large, living through the centuries in a state of communion with the outside world and at the same time in a state of relative isolation from India. No doubt political as well as geographical reasons have contributed to this phenomenon. Geographically there has been the Western Ghats ringing Goa in a semi-circle from North to South as though Nature, as though Destiny itself had ordained that the people living in that haven of peace and harmony should develop their own culture and conventions and traditions integrally and within themselves. Our people, Hindu, Muslim and Christians have in contrast to the population of India lived through the centuries in a state of peace and harmony and it is against this back-ground that this Resolution should be appreciated.>>
<<RESOLUTION N.o 4: — I have only in the recent past, in August of this year to be specific, paid a visit to Goa and accordingly am in a position to endorse the contents of this Resolution. There appears to be a sly attempt by the Indian Union Government, a strategic move as it were, to liquidate the Goan problem by liquidating GOA ITSELF. They have done something similar in the past — I refer to Hyderabad — and succeeded very well indeed by all the canons of villany. It seems clear that the intention of the Indian Union Government is to carve up Goa by its integration into one or other of the neighbouring Indian Union provinces of Maharashtra and Mysore to accomplish the dismemberment of Goa and the submergence of the Goan Image below the ocean of Indian anonymity.>>
<<RESOLUTION N.o 5: — Seeking to consolidate the fait accompli, the Indian Union Government is now staging elections in Goa. No doubt they also se in the coming spectacle of Goans going to the polls, an useful instrument of propaganda which could invest the elections with an aura of peace, volition and democracy and with the largest suggestion of sanction by Goans for the merger of their country with the Indian Union, thus following the precedents of Stalin and Hitler. Coercion, they seemingly reckon, is a handy instrument of Government, if skilfully handled. After all the Anschluss a la Hitler did seem to pay off — to their way of thinking.
Having seen for myself the conditions prevailing in Goa, I am in a position to assert that Goans are aware of the element of duress which is the overriding feature of the elections. The Indian Union Government should have sought a mandate from the people for the act of merger of Goa with the Indian Union. Then, only then could they probably have gone forward with the elections to the legislative assembly. The Goan people have not sold their birthright. If the Indian Union's presumption is that the Machiavellian stratagem will escape the observation of their contemporaries, of history and of their victim, the Goan people, that Government — the Government of the Indian Union is wittingly inviting the censure of all fair-minded people for an act which ranks in its essence with an ordinary act of highway robbery, of piracy on the high seas, with hijacking pure and simple in any of its infinite variations. In their right to self-determination, Goans are passing on to future generations of their people a demand which these people will make with the same spirit of indignation which present day Indian historians reserve for events which have sullied India's name in history, events of which the Black Hole of Calcutta is but one. Ladies and Gentlemen, I am sure this Resolution keynotes the fundamental of the Goa affair.>>