Contra Nitin Singh
Prakash J. Mascarenhas, Bombay, India. See TGF. Although the letters or posts of Harbans and Nitin Singh were not addressed to me personally, nevertheless I found them to be extremely provocative, insulting and deliberately offensive to all Goans. I have therefore taken them personally and respond to them.
Dr. Nitin Singh> (Gabriel wrote "and though it is said a policeman put a pistol to Lohia's head, he returned back to where he came from unharmed") I am sure the Portuguese were not foolish enough to �harm� a man of Dr. Lohia�s stature as they were well aware of India�s might.
Response> Yes, the Portuguese were shitting in their pants at the thought about what the people of British India, still trying to free themselves from the powerful Brits in 1946, (18th June 1946), would do to them otherwise! You are a genius!
And it is only the power-mad, the arrogant and the insolent who talk about their power, in the way that you have done. That remark is evidence of your collective attitude towards us: We are Conquerors, you are the conquered.
Dr. Nitin Singh> Why do you dismiss the possibility that somebody could have joined the Indian armed forces with a burning desire to lead the "liberation army" into Goa? I assure you that there is & always had been abundance of patriotism (towards India) among the Goans. Not everyone lets economic or vocational reasons dictate their actions. I would place Air vice Marshall Erlic Pinto right next to Dr. T.B. Cunha as one of the top freedom fighters/liberators of Goa!
Response> OK, let me understand this: Goans have been joining the British Indian Army since about the late 1890s because they wanted to lead His Britannic Majesty's "liberation army" into Goa? Which is also why they fought in Iraq and other places during World Wars 1 & 2 etc.? That is brilliant, just too brilliant, Dr. Genius! And while at it, please can you tell me what did the Goans who served or are presently serving in the British, Portuguese, French, Canadian, Australian, US, Pakistani, Saudi etc. armies joined them for? To liberate Timbuktoo?
And what about the Nepalese? Have they too been joining the British Indian, the Indian Union's and British Armies, because of a burning desire to lead these armies into Nepal and liberate it?
Goans have been recruiting in the Portuguese armies that fought in Africa, the Sundas, the Americas. against the Dutch in Ceylon, Malabar, Goa, Vengurla, etc., against the Turks, Arabs, Persians and the English in the Persian Gulf, and in Europe for Portuguese independence against the French during the Napoleonic Wars, for nearly all of the 451 years of Portuguese rule over Goa. Goans also occasionally recruited in the armies of the various princely states of Peninsular India, largely as mercenaries.
The Irish fought in the twenties against England for independence, but with World War II, many Irish joined the British Forces and fought against Germany, etc. Was it that they were repudiating Irish independence and wanted England to retake their country?
You call these vermin, traitorous citizens of the EIP, these collaborators and enthusiastic participants in the occupation of the EIP, 'heroes.' We have always called these vermin traitors. I have learnt from my mother and my father to call these, not heroes, but Quislings. My mother still curses them, this swine Pinto and that prostitute Laura.
I have grown up to be able to examine things better, and I concur in her judgement. These were criminals, traitors, quislings. They deserve only the hangman's noose!
Let me make this clear: We are Indians. But we are not members of the Indian Union. We have not acceded to that State. Furthermore, India is not yet, to this date united into a single states - the largest states are the Indian Union, the former British India, and Indonesia, the former Dutch India.
You keep on flaunting Pinto. Neither Pinto nor the minority of Goans who enlisted in the British Indian Army and later in the Army of the Indian Union are legal delegates, in any manner of speaking, of Portuguese India. They represented only themselves.
No number of Portuguese Indians serving - largely to earn a living - in the Indian Army can be used as a justification for the acts of terrorism and robbery committed against Portuguese India, and they cannot be used as a substitute for a legal Plebiscite held under Portugal or neutral powers.
Dr. Nitin Singh> (Gabriel wrote: As you can seen, by preventing foodstuff and other goods from entering Goa, India wanted Goans to starve.) Isn�t it surprising that when the US imposes an economic sanction against Cuba it is termed as an act against communism and Fidel Castro, while when the Indian govt. does the same, they are �starving Goans�?!?
Response> The actions of the USA against a Communist dictatorship in Cuba cannot be compared with the Indian Union's actions against the EIP. The underlying causes were entirely different. The Indian Union wanted Portugal to evacuate and gift it the EIP, without, of course, taking the consent of the EIP's citizens.
Dr. Nitin Singh> Even if the Goans were �on par� with the Portuguese, why do I come across this - sorop mhunncho nhoi dhaktto ani paklo mhunncho nhoi amcho.
Response> If we despised the Portuguese, we have learnt to despise you more. And just as much as the Portuguese were nhoi amcho, so are you.
Dr. Nitin Singh> "I am a Punjabi who was born and brought up in Goa, my school and college education was in Goa, I married a Goan catholic girl and lived nearly 30 years in Goa before I left the country. I always say proudly that my dad is a Punjabi (though they have lived in Goa for 40 years now and are "Goanized") but I am a Goan (by birth, by marriage and by my "Goan" mindset)."
Response> A lot of people have married "Goan" women - that does not make them Goan. And that has no relation to the question whether Portuguese India is a part of the Indian Union, or is actually only illegally and criminally occupied by it.
Why do you flaunt your "Goan" wife like a trophy in our faces? You are not one of us, and you cannot become one of us, however much you try. A stranger could live among us, join us, care for what we care, feel as we do, make our sorrows and joys his sorrows and his joys, and we would know in our heart of hearts that even if he were a Punjabi, he is nevertheless now ours, even if he did not marry a Goan, which he does not need to. But you, having married a Goan, still contemn us and our sentiments, sympathize with those who have wronged us, and who flaunt their crime shameless and triumphantly in our faces, and you ask why we do not accept you?
Your mindset is not Goan, on the contrary it is the same mindset as that all other of your compatriots entertain towards us: The mindset of Conquerors. The same which the Jindals exhibit: Our land is yours by natural right regardless of us!
I suggest you go to Assam or Manipur and settle down there and tell them that all of you are now Assamese: you settlers from Punjab, Bengal, etc.
Anyway, following your own principles, you are not anymore a "Goan" (which you never were) but are now become a Bahamian, aren't you? Or are you a hypocrite, who wishes to apply his principles only selectively?
You say that by being born in Goa you have become a Goan. Therefore, by the same logic, the children of the German troopers born in Poland, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, etc., etc., during Nazi Germany's occupation of those countries, are citizens of those countries, by birthright?
Again, what is this nonsense about "Portuguese Goan"? Were there any other type of Goan? Dutch, French, English, Spanish? Are you in your senses? When a territory was shared, for example, Cameroons by the English and the French, it was called British Cameroons and French Cameroons. Were there any other Goas besides the Portuguese?
This is that same nonsense like where an idiot in Bombay has started a restaurant with the hideously idiotic name of Goa Portuguesa!
Dr. Nitin Singh> You seem to be very nostalgic of the Portuguese rule in Goa, this despite the fact that of the 450 odd years that they ruled Goa, 252 years were marred by the inquisition! This brings to mind a psychiatric condition called �Stockholm Syndrome� wherein the victim starts sympathizing and falls in love with his kidnapper!
Response> Wherever did you get this fantastic notion that Goa had 252 years of the Inquisition? The Inquisition, in practice did not last a hundred years, being subverted first by the proto-Protestant Marquis de Pombal, who set out to persecute Christians throughout the Portuguese empire. Then came the Hispano-Lusitanian Union, the Dutch Invasions and Conquests of Portuguese possessions (Ceylon, Calicut, Vengurla, South Africa, Taiwan, Malaya, Ambon, etc., etc.) and the Lusitanian Secession from Spain, with Lisbon and Rome not on talking terms for a long time subsequently. Then, following a series of anti-clerical governments, came the Napoleonic Wars, the Portuguese Civil War between the Isabelists and the Miguelists, with the Church supporting, on principle, the latter. Then came the Freemasonic Revolution of 1910, only recovered to a small extent under Dr. Salazar in 1938. Thus within a hundred years of the Conquest, the rigors of the Inquisition were mitigated by circumstances, and in fact, the Hindus began to return to the Velhas Conquistas.
I would suggest that you look up the issue of the Padroado-Propaganda conflict, also called the "Goan Schism," when for more than three hundred years Rome and Lisbon were at cross-purposes. How could the Inquisition function in such a milieu?
Stockholm Syndrome? I see it in the Dalits, victims of Hinduism for over three thousand years, and still brown-nosing their persecutors! We Goan Christians never suffered the Syndrome: We always despised, disliked and strove to be rid of the Portuguese, the pakhle! This is our history, any one can check it up!
Dr. Nitin Singh> Take an example close at hand, a few miscreants in the Indian army indulged in lootings and rapes during �Operation Vijay� (which by the way was an absolutely shameful and deplorable act) and look how TGF doesn�t miss a single opportunity to take potshots at the entire Indian army! THIS is the human tendency of GENERALIZATION!
Response> Despite all the bitterness in our hearts, we still do not either hate or love the Indian Army or the Indian Union, no more than we hate or love Portugal and the Portuguese Army. We want that the wrong done be reversed, that restitution be made, that the Indian Union hand over to the EIP criminals and traitors, and compensate the EIP. And most importantly, we want that the Indian Union officially and formally admit to its wrongdoing.
On the same matter, Harbans Singh wrote:
My Answer: Put your money where your mouth is, and furnish open evidence that there was any attempt, even cursory, by the Indian Union's forces to bring its culprits to book. Can you do that? I am dying to see the evidence. If you can produce even a shred of evidence, you will prove that you are not entirely a dishonest man.
The lot of you are a bunch of hypocrites. Can you show me any instances where your personnel have been salutarily punished for crimes, whether in Nagalim, Eelam, Kashmir or the EIP?
Dr. Nitin Singh> And finally we come to the word �GOANESE�... The catholic encyclopedia, the Christian Chitpavans webpage at http://www.chitpavans.com/christianchitpavans.html, the official newsletter of the �Casa de Macau� (Vancouver), etc. uses the word goanese.
Response> The name Goanese was fashioned by the Protestant English to insult the Catholic Goans. It was forced down our throats, the same way as the name "Roman Catholics" (see the Catholic Encyclopedia on this subject), while we, still following the Portuguese, call ourselves Christians (Kristanv). Thus it was forced as the official designation for Goans in English employ in British India, and came to pass into official use by many, including the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Goans object to the appellation on the simple grounds that it is an idiotic word:. It uses a double suffix - an and -ese. The people of Tonga and not Tonganese, but Tongans. And so on. The English thought that they were being clever to use this form, but it only showed that they were idiots. And so it is with whoever uses it.
When someone calls me Goanese, I understand that it his intention to insult me, and I reserve my right to respond in a way that I see as fit.
Dr. Nitin Singh> Your Bombay lawyer�s note also talks about the same �harmony�, what I�m trying to point out (unsuccessfully!) is the way this �harmony� came into being. You consistently keep turning a blind eye to that.
Response> Is that more or less objectionable than the way that the Aryans and their descendants pacified and Stockholmized the aborigine people down to our days, exceeding the 451 years of the Portuguese by at least six times?
Dr. Nitin Singh> Yet, the capital of the Portuguese Orient lacked basic infrastructure. "There was no public water supply, making the people use infected pools and equally contaminated wells at the base of the cliffs. There was a complete absence of any system of collecting rubbish or even of meeting the most rudimentary civic rules governing its disposal. Largos, squares, main roads and the river bank itself rivaled each other in terms of filth," says the author, Walter Rosso.
Response> It would make more sense to us Goans for you to sit down and quote from the Emperor Babar and his account of your lands, the Punjab and Delhi, the utter barbarism, the lack of civic infrastructures, etc. as compared to his native Afghanistan, as he went about conquering North India, wouldn't it?