Does Goa Belong to India?
Prakash John Mascarenhas, Bombay, India.
An Examination of the Arguments for and against.
Part I : Background
The territories called Goa comprising of the 10 provinces (provincias or concelhos) of Pernem, Bicholim, Satarim, Bardez, Ilhas, Shasti, Ponda, Quepem, Sanguem and Canacona, is part of the State of Portuguese India � the Estado da India Portuguesa, or E.I.P. , a State which also included the provinces of the Two Damans, the province of Diu, the provinces of Dadra & Nagar-Haveli and the province of the Anjedive Islands.
This State was gradually encroached upon by the Indian Union and finally on 18th and 19th Dec., 1961, the main territory � the ten contiguous provinces were occupied.
According to the United Nations� Declarations against Colonialism, Portugal was required to ascertain the desire of its dependency - the E.I.P. � for self-determination or the status quo, etc.
This is also the requirement of the Divine, Natural and Moral Law.
However, the then de facto Supremo of Portugal, Dr. Salazar was a White-Supremacist � the heresy of John Calvin and Jansenius. For this reason, he refused the citizens of the E.I.P. their rights to self-determination.
The Indian Union was led by Jawaharlal Nehru, a pro-Moscow Communist sympathiser. At this time, International Communism was convulsed by a civil war between the post-Stalinist Moscow and the Maoist Beijing. A great controversy arose over the issue of using force to evict the Europeans from their remaining enclaves, with Moscow taunting the Chinese for failing to do so. To underline the Chinese reluctance to follow this course, and to mock them, Moscow instigated Nehru to act against the Portuguese enclaves.
When Nehru occupied the E.I.P., he too, imitating the conquistador attitude of the Portuguese, refused the E.I.P its right to self-determination by referendum and blasely annexed it, more principally because, he had gone in, not because its peoples wanted him to, but because Moscow wanted it, and also because he knew that the peoples of the E.I.P. while desirous of being rid of Portugal, nevertheless, did not want Nehru either.
Therefore, the Indian Unions title to the E.I.P is merely that of an occupying power. �Possession is nine-tenth of the Law.�
Part II : Is the E.I.P. a Natural Part of India?
The answer is both yes and no.
Portuguese India, together with the other parts or European dependencies of the East Indias and the various territories that managed to avoid dependency, constitutes a greater reality that is called India or even more precisely the East Indies.
This includes the English, Dutch, French and Spanish East Indies.
Nevertheless, the East Indies, whether as a whole or as separate European dependencies, do not constitute a single nation or nations. Rather, the East Indies is composed of very many component nations, of various and heterogenous origins, and is in itself a family of nations, as Europe and the Hans, etc., are.
The E.I.P., as a distinct and homogenous state has the right to self-determination, belonging, in the mean time, legally and constitutionally, to Portugal.
The Indian Union, on the other hand, claims that is has a natural right to occupy the E.I.P. regardless of its peoples desires.
Is this so?
Parts of the English East Indies were artifically alienated and today constitute the separate polities of Burma, Ceylon, the Maldives, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia. The Indian Union refuses to claim its �NATURAL RIGHT� to question and re-absorb these territories and instead SCRUPULOUSLY recognises their independence as �nation-states� (they are nothing of the sort.)
A part of territory claimed by the Indian Union has been in occupation of Pakistan since 1947, which India calls the Pak Occupied Kashmir (POK). Pakistan has annexed a part of this territory, transfered a part to the Chinese Empire, and propped up the rest as a puppet-state of Free Kashmir (although there are no ethnic Kashmirians in that territory.)
But the Indian Union STEADFASTLY refuses to exercise its �NATURAL RIGHT� and take any concrete step to recover it, but rather has time and again stated its willingness to legitimise them as Pakistanian territory in exchange for it dropping its desire for the rest of the of the former Dogra Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Indian Union went so far as to, following the �Kargil War of 1999,� and its capture of, what by its own definitions, Indian citizens from the POK while they were fighting for Pakistan, treat them, not as traitors, but as Prisoners-of-War and �repatriated� them to Pakistan.
Is one to assume form this that the Indian Union now recognises the POK as an integral part of Pakistan, despite its loud protestations to the contrary?
Not even the Oppositon parties in Parliament protest this act, an act, that in normal societies, can only be recognised as constitutiong collaboration with the enemy and treason, on the part of the Bajpai government.
Yet despite all this, despite the Indian Union�s steadfast refusal to question the Partitions of 1937 and 1947 and despite its refusal to enforce its rights on those whom it pretends are its citizens in the POK, we are to accept its right to occupy the E.I.P regardless of her peoples' rights and aspirations, as of divine right!
Therefore, we are obliged to conclude that the E.I.P. is not a legal and constitutiona part of the Indian Union, that it is illegally and immorally occupied, and that, just as the Indian Union, claims that its rigtht to the POK does not lapse despite the passgae of 53+ years, so its occupation of the E.I.P. is not legitimised by the passage of 39 years.
We demand a return of the status quo ante � the restoration of the E.I.P. to Portugal, as a trustee, under an interim administration, pending a referendum, and that only citizens of the E.I.P. upto its occupation by the Indian Union and their natural increase, regardless of their place of residence, be permitted to vote; and that the citizens of the Indian Union and the E.I.P. who were part of this crime be identified, arrested disenfranchised and tried for their parts; and finally, that the Indian Union compensate the E.I.P. for its naked and unprovoked aggression and occupation against the E.I.P.
Part III : But What IS �Goa�?
The name Goa belongs to a specific place � the former city, now the ruins called Old Goa, that was the first territory conquered by Portugal, and which was made the headquarters of the neightbouring territories as they were gradually annexed.
In like manner were the names of the cities of Bombay and Madras applied to vast territories annexed to them.
Therefore, the name �Goa� for the 10 contiguous provinces is a misnomer. Instead, they are part of the nation and national homeland or ETHNOCHORE of the KONKAN.
Ethnochore from the Greek words ethnos n: people of the same race or nationality who share a distinctive culture and from kho 
ros, place, country, particular spot. (Sources http://www.dictionary.com)
The Ethnochore of the Konkan begins in the north at the Narmada and ends in the south at the Gangaweli, with the Sahyadri (Western Ghauts) and the Arabian Sea as its eastern and western boundaries.
Following the invasion of Maharashtra by Allaudin Khilji, the Marattas under their Yadava emperor Bhimdev fled from Devgiri (Deonagar) and settled in the North Konkan, at Mahikawati (Mahim in North Bombay) which was made their new capital, till it was conquered by the Arab Sultanate of Gujarath and later the Portuguese, who gifted it to England as dowry.
Subsequently, also, during the expansion of the Emperor Shivaji�s Hindawi Swarajya, the Marattas overran the North and Central Konkan, dispossessing the the Portuguese. To please their new masters, the local Konkani people adopted Marathi as their language, producing that queer admixture of Konkani and Marathi called the East Indian dialect.
Finally, during the rule of England, their open tolerance policy attracted more marathi people to work in their factories, wharehouses and workshops.
In this manner, the Marathi people came to dominate the North & Central Konkan. Today, they behave as if the Konkan belongs to them, and we, the Konkanian people, are legally, strangers in our own land! The Law states that the Marathi are the Bhoomiputras and Sthaniya Lok, not we!
We, the Konkanians, are reduced to enclaves � the South, in Goa and bordering it (thank God for the Portuguese! Or even that would have been assimilated!) and the Dangs, besides the �East Indians� and the other Konkanian peoples in Bombay � Mangaloreans, Gaud Saraswats, Goans, Navaiyats, etc.
Given the overwhelming arrogance and insolence of the Marathi imperialists and colonialists in the Konkan, it is high time for the Konkanian people to rise up and fight to liberate their motherland from these impudent interlopers!
We must demand and fight for a single Konkan Pradesh from the Gangaweli to the Narmada, including Karwar, Sawantwadi, Malwan, Kudal, Ratnagiri, Raigad, Thana, Bombay, and the Far North � upto the Narmada and including the Dangs.
A Konkan Pradesh where the Konkani language is given its rightful place of maibhas and primacy and where the Konkanian people are recognised as the true Sthaniya Lok and Bhoomiputras.
Nothing is impossible for justice, only cowardice and diffidence makes it so.
Jai Konkan!