A Goan Apologia
Message 12429 on Goancauses
From: "Prax Maskaren" <prakashjm45@y...>
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 9:33 pm
Subject: Re: Reserved For Saffron
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your reply. Thanks also to Mr. Gomes and Mr. Soares for
their posts on this subject.
Let me restate my problem for you.
I belong to a particular country. Let us call this
hypothetically "Lusitanica". Now, another country, another ethnic
group, another people, let us call this hypothetically "Omicronia"
invades my country by main force. My country is overthrown. Its land
is occupied. The invader declares that my country is now part of
their country.
I have a problem. A huge problem. I cannot and will not agree with
this, acknowledge that this is legal and moral or that I am obliged
to tender my loyalty to the robbers, the invaders who afflict my
country.
The invaders claim or pretend that Lusitanica was once part of a
state that also covered part of what is now Omicronia. They point out
that there are strong ethnic similarities between the peoples of
Lusitanica and Omicronia. None of that cuts any ice with me.
Hitler seized the German government. Bad, but since I am not German,
it does not concern me directly. Then he invades Austria. Let us
assume: I am an Austrian citizen. Because I am Austrian, I am German
by ethnicity. Therefore, Hitler and Germany have a divine right to
invade and absorb Austria, my country and my people, with or without
the consent of the Austrians. Right? Wrong. Dead Wrong.
Switzerland is 75% German. Belgium is made up two ethnic groups - the
Dutch in the north and the French in the south. Therefore, if France
and the Netherland agree to invade and divide Belgium among
themselves, they are justified. Right? Wrong.
Iraq is Arab. Kuwait is Arab. Therefore, Saddam Hussain has a right
to invade and annex Kuwait, right? Wrong.
What is India's rights against Goa?
India says that Goa is ethnically an extension of India. True. Just
as true that Sudentenland was an extension of Germany. Or that Kuwait
of the Arab inhabitated territories that also include Iraq. So? What
is that supposed to mean? Does that give anybody any rights?
Goa did not secede from India. Goa was not taken away from India.
Let us get this point straight and let us get it right.
There is China. It was always China, whatever dynasty ruled. Four or
five hundred years ago, Europeans sailed in and forced the Chinese
emperors to cede or lease enclaves. At the end of world war 2,
Japan's enclaves, seized from Russia, and those of Germany, were
returned to China. That left the British and Portuguese enclaves.
Both England and Portugal returned those enclaves. But the point is,
they were taken from China and returned to China.
Goa was not, I repeat, not taken from India. At that time, there was
no political India. There were many kingdoms, sultanates, empires,
etc. There was the Empire of Vijayanagar, the Sultanate of Delhi, the
Sultanates of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda, etc.
The Goans had been conquered by the Sultanate of Bijapur. Vijayanagar
liberated them. Then Bijapur again conquered. This time, Vijayanagar
said, "Look, we are all tied up fighting for our own survival against
these sultanates. Here are the Portuguese; they hate the Muslims, and
will take any opportunity to hurt their interests. And they have the
power and ability to liberate you. Go to them." So the Goans turned
to Portugal, who liberated Goa in November 1510.
Since then, Goans have been lusitanized. Our culture was impacted and
we have changed, developed.
But even otherwise, India is NOT a nation. There are many nations in
India. There are the Marathi, the Gujarati, the Bhojpuri, the
Maithili, the Santhals, etc. Modern India was invented and given its
present territorial shape by the English, who invaded, tricked, or
whatever, various petty kingdoms, empires, etc., to absorb their
territories into one behemoth state or Empire that has now become the
Indian Union, subtracting Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the
Maldives.
But even this is not the whole picture. The name "Indian" is
confusing, misleading and wrong. After all, true India is an
extensive stretch: It goes from Timor in the east, to Baluchistan in
the west, from Baltitstan, Kashmir, and the Philipines, the
northernmost parts to Ceylon, the Maldives, the Sunda Archipelago, at
its southernmost.
Political accidents made two great agglomerations of this India.
There was the British East Indies which is now the Indian Union. And
there was the Dutch East Indies which is now Indonesia. Ever wondered
what is Indonesia? What does that name mean? It means "Indian
islands"! Yup. That is true. It is a Greek compound word, made up of
Indos and nisos, India and island.
Look around the globe, and you will find other, similar names:
Micronesia - Small Islands, Melanesia - Island of the Black People,
Polynesia - Very many islands. Etc. You get the picture.
The name Indonesia was invented in 1945.
In 1937, the Indian political parties were consulted and agreed to
the British plan to hive off the Buddhist dominated provinces of
Upper and Lower Burmas and of Ceylon into separate entities - or to
give them their then technical British names - separate Dominions.
Later, the British Dominion of British East Indies was again
partitioned, in 1947, to create India and Pakistan. Later Ceylon was
partitioned to make the Maldive Islands a separate dominion - for
strategic, naval reasons, and Pakistan broke up into Pakistan and
Bangladesh.
India has thus lost, between 1937 and 1947, nearly fifty percent or
more of the territory of the British East Indian Empire or Dominion
as it existed since near about 1857.
India has never, ever claimed that it has a right to these
territories.
Therefore, what can be its right to Goa? None.
Yes, none. That is right. Because, legally and morally, it had and
has none, even if it did not permit or reconcile to the loss of
Burma, Ceylon, Pakistan, etc.
Nepal was founded long after Goa, as a separate state, following the
collapse of the Mughal Empire. The former Mughal vassal state of
Gorkha invaded east and west to found the modern Gurkha empire, named
Nepal after the larger and most prosperous kingdom of Newar which it
overran with great brutality.
India has never claimed that it had or has a right over Nepal. What
can its right over Goa be? Zero.
Bhutan was founded long after Goa, between 1910 and 1920 by one
Chieftain invading and annexing neighbouring chieftainates and
founding the modern Kingdom of Bhutan. These territories had been
vassals both of the Mughals and of Tibet, itself, at that time,
vassal to China.
India has never claimed that it had or has a right over Bhutan. What
can be its rights over Goa? Zero.
India claims that the Goans were not free. True. India claimed it
wanted to help the Goans. Did the Goans ask it for help? Was there
any genuinely representative group or organization of Goans, whether
Goa-based, or even in exile in British India or latter in the Indian
Union that sought such help?
The clear answer is: No!
Let us get this clear, very clear. Goa was organized by the
Portuguese as a constitutional state, the Estado da India Portuguesa,
which was constitutionally a Portuguese dependency. As such, its
constitution recognized its people as its citizens, its constituents.
A Goan remained so even when he emigrated, unless he formally
repudiated citizenship in the prescribed manner. Otherwise, the EIP
worked on the understanding that he remained a constituent of the
EIP, owing it his loyalties. And that is also Goan social tradition.
And this continued for generations, even when these expatriates did
not step in Goa for generations, or only came for an occasional
vacation.
Taking this Constitutional Data of the EIP, Goa had a overwhelming
Christian majority, 80% or more, which was dispersed worldwide, but
retained citizenship and right in the EIP, even thought it may be
that during certain periods, the Hindus may have been a physical
majority in Goa. And that Christian majority never ever consented or
connived at India's campaign against the EIP.
There was, it is true, a minority, a very small and insignificant
minority of Christian Goans who were indoctrinated in the ideology of
PanIndianism and who propagandized for that. And the vast majority of
the Hindu minority was also pro-Indian.
India had no business, in morality or law, to intervene or interfere
in the EIP. Its meddling was not sought, not cooperated with, despite
every effort to gain that cooperation, going so far as to impose a
blockade on the EIP. And it was never connived at, by the majority of
Goan citizens, expatriate or patriate.
India's interference was hypocritical, given its own tom-toming of
the Panca-sila.
India made pious talk of interference to aid and assist the Goans to
attain to democracy. That was lies.
India made pious talk of interference to aid and assist Goans to be
rid of the Portuguese, although the Goans never solicited that aid,
and never sought to be rid of the Portuguese. Therefore, India
gratuitously imposed itself and its wishes against the direct and
explicit will of the Goans who refused to be part of or party to the
anti-Portuguese campaign, whatever their own discontent with the
Portuguese may have been.
India made pious promises that Goans alone would determine the fate
of Goa, by legal and democratic methods. Nehru was very, very
explicit about that.
Nehru and India were doing Goa and Goans no favours by their
promises. It was and is our right.
But once the invasion had succeeded, India and Nehru conveniently
ignored their own pious promises and announced that Goa had
automatically become a part of India even without the Goans having
any say in that matter, by might of arms. That was and is robbery.
That was and is terrorism. And it will remain robbery and terrorism
until it is ended.
In 1974, the scum and vermin of Portuguese society overthrew the
government and these robber-scum agreed with India that Goa became a
part of India since its robbery - its occupation. That agreement has
no value for Goans - who alone have the right to decide Goa's
future.
Let me be very specific. It is all those who were Goan citizens who
remain Goan citizens. The old law holds. Therefore, even if we have
not been resident in the EIP since generations, we remain citizens,
retain citizenship. And it is only a full and free plebiscite that
can decide Goa's future.
No plebiscite in the presence of India can be full and free.
No plebiscite under India's auspices can be full and free.
No plebiscite under India's rules and regulations can be full and
free.
No plebiscite can be full and free when held under duress and without
time for the Goans to consider, reflect and think out their choices
and decisions and their ramifications; without a time for self-
education.
The only legitimate procedure is for India to admit that it is in the
illegal occupation of Goa, that all its actions in the interim are
illegal, invalid, null and void, and for Portugal to resume the
dominion of Goa, to rule Goa under democratic Goan rulers for ten
years or more, (excluding all quislings and collaborators from
participation in the interim Goan government), to detoxify, educate
and to prepare Goa for its tryst with maturity, with its decision
whether it wishes to be ruled by Portugal, or to be independent, or
to be an associate state of Portugal or any other option freely
entered into.
Let us now turn from these considerations to a consideration of our
present plight.
We are ruled, technically, by Goans. However, there is a caveat. The
ground situation has been deliberately modified. Expatriate Goans
have been robbed of their rights as legal citizens. And that part of
the Christian majority still resident has been systematically
excluded from power and positions, even from jobs.
Indians are permitted to flood in and to swamp Goa. Our demography is
brutalized; we are overwhelmed.
Under the Indian constitution, we have no remedy.
The Indian State has given concessions to particular peoples:
Kashmir, Nagaland, Mizoram; where these peoples can regulate the
entry of outsiders. Kashmir had a distinct Constitution and
character; its own Prime Minister, Flag, National Anthem, Supreme
Court, etc. All that has been actively and purposely subverted. India
cannot and will not tolerate federalism, like in Germany or Australia
or Canada. It must be only a uniformed, brainless, zombized state
where the provinces are supermunicipalities.
Nagaland and Mizoram have reached their present rights by fighting
brutally, physically for them.
The lesson? If you want "special" rights, fight savagely or resign to
being absorbed into the brain-numbing mass of dumbed-down India.
You talk of the USSR. You have your facts wrong. In history,
superstates are a liability, not an asset. It crushes diversity,
freedom of expression. The Central Governments are always jealous to
prevent the loss of even one small and insignificant ethnic group and
its territory. That loss, if achieved, becomes an intolerable
humiliation. There is a mindless obsession with size.
But the history of mankind shows that it is not the Superstates that
dominated the world, but the microstates.
The Greeks were politically insignificant, but by sheer activity,
enthusiasm and zeal, they dominated an entire sphere around the
Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
Macedonia was a small country to the north of the Greeks, but it came
to dominate them and it spearheaded successfully the resistance to
the Persian Empire, then the world's largest, against its attempt to
encroach on Greece proper.
Alexander, King of Macedonia, did not arise suddenly. He built on the
Greek and Macedonian traditions of struggle against the Persians and
of the long and desperate hope and project of overthrowing their
Empire and freeing the Greek states (or colonies) of Asia Minor that
the Persians enslaved.
Rome began as a small community, and grew and grew. It overthrew
large states and even the Cartagenian Empire founded by Phoenician
colonists in Africa.
Islam was founded by Mu'Ahmad with a small band of dedicated
followers, as against the then regional superpowers of Ethiopia and
Iran. Without hindsight, the prospect of Islam overthrowing and
establishing its own empire over Arabia, Chaldea, Assyria, Syria, the
Palestine, Iran, etc., would have been laughable, from the strategic
or practical viewpoint. Yet that is exactly what Islam achieved.
India's history is the history of small but determined community of
invading ethnic groups from the North-West overcoming sophisticated
and large empires - the Aryans, the Persians, the Kushans, the Huns,
the Turks, the Mongols, the Arabs, etc.
Even the Portuguese and English conform to that tradition. How
significant is the Portuguese or English population of those times as
compared to India's?
Superstates do not assure collective protection. They insure against
individual development, cultivate centralism, discourage
nonconformity and adaptation to threats from the margins, and impose
inappropriate ideas and solutions from the Center. And the worst
thing is, when things come to a crunch, those parts farther away from
the focus of intrusions do not appreciate making sacrifices to
protect those remote areas and pay taxes for that purpose and
invariably tend to compromise by surrendering those border areas to
the intruders as a means of buying peace, the wishes and interests of
the peoples of those areas be damned!
Microstates assure individual developments, adaptation to local and
particular situations and to threats from the margins. Microstates
jealously guard their own rights and interests, the rights and
interests of their own people. Microstates tend to be proactive when
faced with threats and to go on the counter-offensive to neutralize
the intrusion efforts.
Actually, Indians have learnt the wrong lessons from their history.
Invaders succeeded, not because India was divided, but because
inappropriate structures of authority forbade local innovations to
meet new circumstances. When HQ in Rajgir or Patliputra or where-ever
imposes one particular method of meeting the crisis, the locals know
another. But the locals are not permitted to act on locally acquired
wisdom. That would be insubordination, rebellion, a thing that is,
from the Central viewpoint, as bad, if not worse, than the invasion
itself, and requiring to be brutally put in their place. And that
brutal putdown generates dissatisfaction and a real incentive for the
locals to seek the invader's protection, to aid and assit the
invaders to push forward their program.
Don't bet on the United States of Europe so soon. No superpower was
ever put together by bureaucrats scheming to meld their countries
into a supercountry, without taking their peoples into confidence and
gaining their enthusiasm. And no center is ever wise enought to know
what the parts need, especially those further away. The EU can be
invented by cannibalizing the present wealth of the individual states
of Europe to bribe one and all to connive in the project, but that is
not the foundation that will yield success.
Goa's war for self-survival was not won in 1962, with the Language
Referendum. Quite on the contrary. The enemy has lain low and has
worked long and hard, patiently and out of sight, subverting Goan
demography and now their work is paying off. We are under threat as
never before. 1962 was nothing compared to the peril we are in today.
The BJP came to power by engineering defections, by buying MLAs. And
it has been preparing for the pre-eminence of Marathi. That is what
Parricar stands for, what his program is about.
Lastly, to sum up: We can, if we want, fight things out with India
and within India, and force India to compromise, to give
us "privileges" and "special rights", as India gave those sops to
Nagaland and Mizoram. But we have no moral and legal need to.
Let us get our facts straight: You are a Hindu Goan, I am a Christian
Goan. The vast majority of the Hindu Goans want India. The vast
majority of the Christian Goans don't. And we, the Christian Goans
are the vast majority of Goa's citizenship, under Goan (i.e. EIP)
Constitutional Law.
India has invaded and occupies our country. We are insulted, wronged,
humiliated, robbed of our rights and imposed upon. We have the moral
and legal right to fight against this, to achieve a negation of this.
There is, therefore, no moral or legal necessity for Goans to
acquiesce in the Occupation. To acquiesce and to connive and to
tolerate and to, de facto, consider and act as if it is or has become
legitimate, is immoral. It is destructive of all values and
principles. It is self-demeaning. It is embracing and legitimizing
wrong-doing. Therefore, Goans not only do not have to do this, they
have a strict moral obligation to NOT do this.
Again, India is not a nation. It is many nations. India is a
political accident; the agglomeration of many conquests by the same
conqueror - England. And it is eminently founded upon false
principles. This results in a constitutional, systemic corruption -
an utter inability to behave and act as normal communities of peoples
do.
As a corrupt entity, its corruption is inbuilt and foundational.
Indian corruption is the very basis on which India claimed and gained
its independence - on the basis of incontrovertible false principles.
Therefore, India is irreformable. The only way to reform India is to
totally destroy the present system, built as it is on falsehood.
Goans cannot reform the system if they wanted to, however desperately
they may want to. We can either conform to the system, as insisted by
the Indian Center, or we can be punished as rebels, insubordinates
who need to be put in their places. And the System always looks for
its Bandodcars and Ranes and Parricars - those favourable to its
program of Indianization and De-Goanization of Goa.
Goans have no benefits to look forward to, in the fruitless effort to
effect a reform of the Indian system. We owe India nothing. India has
no rights upon us, no right to our affections, our loyalties. Our
only relationship to India is that of Perpetrator and Victim. It is
totally not in our interests to make any efforts to reform India. We
do not wish to see a better India; we wish to see ourselves rid of
India.
And you, as a Hindu, and every Hindu Goan, has a clear choice: You
can come along with us, or you can continue your efforts to destroy
us, the Goan Christians, and to eliminate us and to have Goa absorbed
by India. The choice is yours. And the rewards. One day, we will be
strong enough to hit back, and believe me, hit back we will, with
calm, cunning, intelligence and planning: striking deep and hard
blows all over India and punishing and chastising it as it deserves.
And we will come calling for all the traitors - Christians and
Hindus, and we will pay you back. Believe me.
I think that this is enough for now. You may unsubscribe as you
wished, or you can demonstrate yourself a patriot and join us. The
choice is yours.
P. Joao Mascarenhas
P.S. We Goans are Konkani, and not "Konknni", which latter are a
glorified form of Marathi, Ganthi apes. We say "Bore koru", not "Bare
karu". We are not interested in a Marathified, Sanskritised
perversion of Konkani. We will stick to our own Konkani idiom.
Message 12430 on Goancauses
From: "Prax Maskaren" <prakashjm45@y...>
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 9:35 pm
Subject: Re: Reserved For Saffron
Dear Dean,
I see your difficulties and frustrations with the current situation
in Goa, and our inabilities to affect things. However, I think that
your suggestion - that we keep aside the pursuit of liberation in
order to concentrate on reforming the Occuptional Dispensation - the
Occupational "Governmental" System is wrong, misguided and plays into
the hands of the Occupation.
The present system of Corruption has been deliberately cultivated and
fostered by a proactive process of elimination of "inappropriate"
persons, largely Goan Christians unfavourable to Indian Rule and by
the grooming of "appropriate" persons, largely Goan Hindus who are
amenable to Indian, Hindu rule.
Again, there was, before the Occupation, especially in the large
expatriate community in the Indian Union, Goan Christians who had
been successfully indoctrinated in "Pan-Indianism" - the doctrine
that Goa has no right to exist by itself and that it should be
absorbed (or be "re-absorbed", as they pretend) into the Indian
Union. These people - men such as Lamberto Mascarenhas, Erhlich
Pinto, Jose Martins - are traitors, disconnected from the traditions
of Goan society, parasites grafted onto the Indian culture of anarchy
and of the Hindu culture. These persons were convenient catspaws to
give the figleaf of a Goan Christian approval to India's program of
aggression against its inoffensive neighbour - the EIP or Goa.
But the program of cultivating these quisling "cultivars" has never
ceased, but is only intensified, so that the number of these traitors
is multiplied - men such as Floriano Lobo, advocates of submission
and acquiescence in the face of the wrong inflicted upon us. It is
these, and only these, traitors who are "permitted" to emerge in the
politics of the Goan Occupational Dispensation.
Given these incontrovertible and basic facts, it is both a
distraction to put the Liberation Movement on hold while we take up
the futile and unachievable task of reforming these "politicos" -
really frontmen, pimps and giggolos for the Rape of Goa by their
Indian masters, and simultaneously a step that will seriously retard
and weaken the Liberation Movement.
Granted that we are not able today to field a force to liberate Goa,
I advocate that we relentless stick to the task of propagandising and
propagandising continuously and ceaselessly against the Occupation
and against the Indians, wakening and adding up the Goans who are
willing to stand up and be counted as patriots and nationalists.
This is what Bernardo Colaco and Agnelo Gomes, and also Francisco
Monteiro are doing, to which I add my modest contributions, and it is
this that we can do for the moment; so join us and untiringly work
away at it, for it is these minor sacrifices that will get our people
to finally wake up and to stand up to the truth, so that one day we
can face down the Occupation and throw it out of our beloved land,
and then get to work to purge Goa of the Indian poisons and restore
it to the beautiful mother we remember it to be.
The long and patient work being done by the first three, whom I
happily own as my mentors in the patriotic struggle, has indeed begun
to yield fruit: Evident from the increasing number of Goans who are
taking up for Goa against India.
Do not allow yourself to be discouraged and disheartened. More than
anything else, do not succumb to the temptation to give up this
campaign and to devote oneself to the work of reforming Goan
politics, as the Invaders fondly desire us to distract ourselves
over. For if you do, you would separate yourself from us and join
yourself, willy-nilly, with those who are against us, those who make
a compromise with the Indians. Those who are not for us are against
us.
Therefore, keep up the good work and do not be distracted by
unimportant things. Let the "politicos" do what they are programmed
to do; we will do what is our work, which is to awaken our people,
not distract them with the Indian's Indianist program.
God speed us in this task.
Yours sincerely,
P. Joao Mascarenhas
Message 12432 on Goancauses
From: "Agnelo Gomes" <AAssoc4994@a...>
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 11:17 pm
Subject: Re: [goancauses] Reserved For Saffron
Dear Prakash,
Very good response, worth reading the article, demonstrated deep knowledge in history related to Goa and rest of the world enclaves.
I'm Proud as always to call myself the Goan, and never an Indian.
Those who call themselves first Indian then Goan they're traitors.
Agnelo Gomes
Goan Freedom Fighter