The Rape of Goa
© Prakash John Mascarenhas
Jose Colaço wrote (in his Goan Forum webpage): At the outset, let us reiterate a few points and agree upon them: Goa is now irreversibly a part of India.
I answer: It is not. Let me make this very clear. It is not.
It is not because there has never been any free and legal process by which the EIP has acceded to the Indian Union.
And as I have demonstrated elsewhere, the lapse of time does not extinguish our rights.
The Irish war of independence took off centuries after English conquest and colonization.
More importantly, the Indian Union itself refuses to relinquish its rights over what it calls the Pak-Occupied Kashmir (POK) despite the lapse of more than fifty-four years since its occupation by Pakistan, and zealously acts against any publisher who prints a map showing this territory as either a part of Pakistan or as not being a part of the Indian Union.
But more than this, the claim pressed by the Indian Union that it possesses a natural right over the EIP is nothing more than a monstrous, mendacious lie and imposition. It has no legal or moral basis whatsoever.
To accept this lie, this undoubted evil is to surrender before evil, and to acquiesce in our enslavement.
The Invasion of the EIP was an act of profound cowardice. The Indian Union has no more a natural right over the EIP than it has over Indonesia or Malaysia. If it is so brave and cocky, it should have enforced its 'natural' right over these states. There is no courage in taking on and seizing a small and defenseless country like the EIP.
But I go further than saying merely this. I say that it is the moral duty of the people of the EIP to rise up and to recourse to arms against the invaders. This option is not lost because of the delay. The delay was bad, but all is not lost.
We, the people of the EIP, have only two choices before us: We can either commit Passive Suicide - be overwhelmed in our own land, our own country, or we can rise up and fight, redeem our honour and liberate our country.
Is suicide ever a choice? There is no security in slavery.
We are obliged to fight because it is our moral obligation before God, and because there is no other way before us. We must fight, not because we are not Indians, but because we are not citizens of the Indian Union, and are not subject to it.
We must fight because we are the citizens, the children of a country, our mother, our Patria which has been wronged, which has been unjustly encroached upon. We must fight because only when we do so and redeem ourselves and our country can we honourably think of joining in a greater India that is not restricted to the limits of the present Indian Union, or even the greater extent of British India, but extends to all the East Indies.
We must fight because only when we are free can we join upon our own terms. And we need our own terms to preserve ourselves as a distinct people. We must have the sovereign right to be able to regulate immigrations. We must be able to regulate the process of assimilation. We must, in short, be able to secure our future and preserve ourselves.
But we must also fight because we have been wronged and we have the right to justice. Because, wrong and evil cannot ever be the basis for a relationship, for friendship between equals. A slave is not an equal. And we are a conquered people.
Are we slaves? Many will say no, but I say yes.
Yes! Because we have been seized and appropriated in flagrant violation of all norms of civilized behaviour, of law and of morality. Because we are flaunted as a conquest and as a museum curio. Because we have no legal power whatsoever to secure ourselves and our land from strangers, even if those strangers be from fellow-Indian nations. Because we have no dignity but only the crumbs which our Masters, our Conquerors, throw at us.
Read what the Jindals have the effrontery to publish, and tell me, is this not so? Our country is theirs, they say, regardless of our wishes! We have no choice in the matter.
Read what the Harbans Singhs and the Nitin Singhs, the imperialists and colonialists from the Indian Union, have to say, arrogating to themselves the right to belong to our land, without so much as a 'by your leave.' And why do they need our leave? Are they not conquerors, are we not the conquered?
But the Indian Union's claim is a tissue of lies. It has no moral claim upon us, as it had over Hyderabad, Manavadar, Mangrol, Junagadh, or Jammu-Kashmir. It has recognized the right and security of the borders of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ceylon, Burma and the Maldives. Yet, if they had a natural right to reclaim any lands, it is to these.
They have scrupulously refused to make the leastest effort to procure the evacuation of what they style the Pakistani Occupied Kashmir, not once since 1947, but they have even signed a treaty (Simla) assuring Pakistan that if it will give up its claim to the rest of Jammu-Kashmir, then the Indian Union will recognize the Lines of Control as the international border.
If the Indian Union has a 'natural' right upon the EIP, then she has a much better natural right to Nepal; yet she has never made the leastest effort to absorb that State into herself.
Perhaps this is because they have a soft corner for Nepal, 'the last officially Hindu state in the world.'
And because they know that however impoverished and unhappy the people of Nepal are, they will give the Indian Union bloody hell if they attempt such a mischief with Nepal.
All this demonstrates that the Indian Union's claim upon us is based upon nothing more than mendacious, shameless brigandry.
As the Bible says, there is a time for peace and a time for war. The time for peace is long over, the time for war beckons us. The time for talking is long over, the time for fighting has arrived. We must fight, not to destroy India but to redeem it, by first redeeming ourselves and our India - the Estado da India Portuguesa. We must fight to redeem the entirety of our homeland - the Konkan, Surat, the Dangs, Bombay, Ratnagiri, Sawantwadi, Karwar, Hubli-Dharwad. We must fight to redeem the entire East Indies - the Indian Family of Nations.