The Goan Question:
© Prakash J. Mascarenhas, Bombay, India.
The Indian Union's Natural Right On Us
In all matters we must strive that we not be, as the beasts, mastered by our passions, but that we master our passions by reason, morality and law.
The Indian Union claims that the State of Portuguese India are its natural parts, unnaturally alienated and which ought to have been returned to her, failing which, she took them herself.
She tacitly claims that enclaves cannot exist or be permitted to exist, and that states must be territorially contiguous.
She took and she holds the EIP on the basis of these claims.
It is my purpose in this essay to evaluate these claims.
In my essay, Does Goa Belong To India? and in my pages New-India, 1, 2, 3 & 4, I have shown, satisfactorily I hope, that India is not a nation but a family of nations.
The Indian Union is the only state in all of India or the East Indies that actually calls itself usually by the sole appellation of India. This would entitle it, in the normal order, to make and press certain claims and rights, as against the other states of India or the East Indies.
It can claim to be constituted, not as a state of just one or more of the many nations of India, but as the Œcumenical State of All India and of All Indians.
However, for doing so, she has a fatal Constitutional Defect: She is not, in reality or practice, Expressly organized as an Œcumenical State of All India, but is infact merely the successor-state of so much of British India as the English deigned to leave it. So much and no more.
In practice, too, the Indian Union has faithfully restrained itself to within this course ever since its Independence from England: it has solemnly promised not to question or threaten the States carved out of her on unjust grounds, but also has scrupulously adhered to this in spirit, words and deeds.
The Constitutional Indian Union of today, as a state, is the creation of the British Parliament acting in 1946-47 in the first instance. However, India is a real entity that has long predated both the legal myth of Britain and even the birth of England, and as such, it did not, in reality, come into being in 1947.
In 1937, with the express and tacit consent of the main political party of British India, the "Indian National Congress," England carved out and erected what is today Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Myanmar (Burma) into separate states, on the specious ground that because the larger part of their populations were Buddhists, they had to be separate 'nations' distinct from India.
In 1947, by the weary consent of the same "Indian National Congress," England carved out Pakistan on the specious ground that because the larger part of its population was Muslim, they had to be a separate 'nation' distinct from India.
Again, British India had numerous 'Princely States' or sub-sovereign monarchies embedded in her territory. Some of these, the majority, were directly or indirectly, the (remains of) ancient states and monarchies, or at least, were not entirely the creation of the English. A small minority of these states, however, and these entirely minor states, were purely of English creation.
Overtime, these states had become subordinated to British India, but with Independence, England informed them that they had returned to full sovereignity.
In the light of International law, the Indian Union, as the Constitutional and Legal Successor-State of British India and moreover as being, not a pure creation of England but in a real and historic continuity with the India of some three millenia or more, could have claimed a sole and exclusive right of Pre-Eminence, Super-Ordination and to Over-Awe these princely states and also against the States carved out on a purely unjust basis from her.
Moreover, not only could she have claimed these rights, she could also had claimed the fullest moral and legal right to act against these States by re-incorporating into herself their territories, even by a recouse to main force, to violence, and without the necessity of any reference to the peoples of these territories.
However, while the Indian Union could have claimed these moral and legal rights, she not only failed to use them, but she actually assured these States carved out of her that it was not her intention to question their territorial integrities and that she would not do anything against them.
Again, while the Indian Union could have exercised these rights against these States, it did not have any such right, in law, against any other Indian State that has not had this relationship with her as these States did.
The Indian Union could have had the moral as against the purely legal, right; a right to merely exhort and beseech and awaken these other Indian States and their populace to the fact that the East Indies ought to be constituted into a single political entity, and to propose herself as the nucleus of that State-To-Be, but this only if she had been Expressly organized as the Œcumenical State of All India.
Moreover, concerning the European-Administered Enclaves embedded on her coasts, the Indian Union did not have and does not have a right to absorb or incorporate their territories without reference to their peoples.
Merely because they are enclaves does not negate the reality of their distinct identity and right to a place in the Community of States.
However, the Indian Union could have had so much of a right that under just apprehension, it or any state in the world, may act to pre-empt any threat to itself by a possible misuse of some neighbouring territory.
Such a right is not an extension of its 'natural' right, which, I demonstrated in the earlier part of this article, the Indian Union possessed, but the natural right of one and all states to act to preserve themselves and their security.
(Obviously, unnatural states, such as those carved out of India, would not possess such natural rights.)
Again, however, in acting so, the pre-empting state does not have the right to incorporate within itself, with or without reference to its people, such a territory, but it merely has the obligation in International law of acting as a Trustee and putting its people in short order, in the full and sovereign possession of their territory as a State.
It is only when, having attained to full freedom and sovereignity as a State, can its people freely consider any Sovereign option - such as to merge themselves into another state.
Can the Indian Union claim to have merely had recourse to its right of pre-emption on the grounds of just apprehension?
It is claimed that Portugal, under Dr. Salazar, was considering leasing part or the entire EIP to either the USA or to NATO (of which Portugal had become a member) for use as military bases against the Soviet Union and its principal ally, the Indian Union.
In his early days at the helm of Portugal's government, and while he was still struggling to get a grip on Portugal's then wildly unstable economy, England sought to persuade him to sell the EIP (as Denmark had, in 1914, sold the Nicobar Archipelago) to British India. He refused. And Dr. Salazar had always refused to consider any form of alienation of the EIP from Portugal, on ground of Principle, whether by sale or by independence. Given this fact, it is extremely unbelievable that he would have been willing to consider the suit of either the USA or of NATO for the lease of the EIP, whether in part or in entirety.
But even before these rumours began to circulate, we have two astounding events and facts - which entirely and absolutely negate the right of the Indian Union to act on them, by pretension of pre-emption and which show them to be, in reality, to be merely of her invention; Firstly, the consistent demand made by the Indian Union on both France and Portugal to evacuate and cede it the maritime enclaves they held, right from the time of her independence, and secondly, the invasion of the interior Portuguese enclaves of Dadra & Nagar-Avelim by terrorists sponsored by the Indian Union, and who proceeded to pretend to constitute a Provisional Government of these territories, which Mock-Administration then proceeded to, without any reference to the territories' citizens, accede and incorporate them into the Indian Union. By this robbery, the Indian Union exposed itself as a deliberate and wilful abettor and accomplice in this crime.
Therefore given these incontrovertible facts, then, we can entirely and absolutely discount these 'Rumours' and any claim by the Indian Union that it acted in the legitimate exercise of its right to pre-empt a threat to its security.
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