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2008 International Goan Convention
Toronto, Canada
http://www.2008goanconvention.com
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Portugal not doing enough: Governments of both countries
should sort out the evacuee property issue
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By Mario Cabral e Sa
Gomantak Times July 15, 2008
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone +91-832-2280028 or 2280695
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Dr Luis Amado, Portugal's minister of external affairs, a
very articulate diplomat, was in Goa earlier this week. To my
regret, I could not make it to the reception in his honour by
Consul General Paulo Neves Pocinho. Had I, I would have
stolen some minutes for a brief conversation.
No, I did not intend talking to him on the issue of
Portuguese passports to Goans (also those from Daman and Diu)
wishing to avail of the Salazarian post-Goa, Daman and Diu's
merger into the Union of India decree conferring Portuguese
citizenship rights on their inhabitants born before 1961.
Surely, those Goans' sudden love for ex-Estado da India's
'Patria' and clamour for Portuguese passports is but an
undisguised attempt to infiltrate the European Union job
market for low-end positions which have no native takers.
Most of those 'patriotas' know nothing about Portugal,a nd do
not intend to live in Portugal. Many of them are ready to
beg, borrow, bribe and cheat to achieve their ends. The
consulate has discovered frauds and fiddles and cannot get to
the bottom of it because there are three (or more) Portuguese
entities which have a say in the matter. It is a
well-organized and ramified racket.
However, a problem that remains untackled, and, to
the best of my information, Portugal has done
nothing about it at a diplomatic level, is that of
evacuee properties.
Talking about the problems, as reported in the media, with
Home Minister Ravi Naik and chief secretary J P Singh, was
futile. It had to be discussed at the Delhi level.
Most of those who left Goa after December 1961 did not leave
any worthwhile property behind, or left only after disposing
it off, in some cases by questionable means, but in many
others losing it to 'friends' who cheated them.
One such property in south Goa, a huge one, was lost to a
wily politician, a minister now, who had the relevant pages
of the Portuguese records of rights torn off the register and
got them in his name through a false sworn affidavit.
The heirs of the Portuguese family Ferreira Martins, whose
property in Altinho Panjim had been wrongly declared evacuee,
went to court and won the case. But the democratic
government of Goa resorted to unfair means and 'acquired' it.
It is now an official building, ironically the official
residence of the chief minister of Goa.
This kind of confiscatory urge of the local government also
had to be tackled at Delhi. By hook or crook is no civilized
behaviour. Since resort to courts proved infructuous in the
Ferreira Martins' case, heirs of another family known to us
who had migrated to Portugal before 1961, tried to retrieve
their rights through written pleas, and, on their failure,
influence.
A former literary-minded Governor of Goa and a scholar of
some merit offered his good offices. The quid pro quo was, to
all appearances, unfair but pardonable and affordable to the
family. Accordingly, he and his wife were invited to Portugal
and feted sumptuously. He had written a mediocre poem which
he though merited the Nobel Prize, and wanted it translated
into Portuguese. No publisher was interested in that literary
marvel. So the deal feel through. And the money spent by the
family was a sheer waste.
The history of legislation on evacuee property is
bleak and revanchist. In India, the confiscatory
law was imposed with all its ferocity at the time
of the country's partition in 1947, and, earlier,
during the two world wars.
Sad tales abound on both sides of the border and with the
emergence of Bangladesh in 1971, on our borders with that
country as well. The Portuguese retaliated most insanely and
confiscated properties of Indian-origin Portuguese citizens
(mainly ethnic coastal Gujaratis) born in the Portuguese
colony of Mozambique. They had vast trading, real estate and
industrial interests. Idi Amin also did it to Indians at the
peak of his tryanical rule.
It is time -- isn't it -- to review individual cases of the
innocent victims of a conflict which was not at all of their
making. Mario Soares, the former socialist Portuguese
minister of external affairs (later President of Portugal)
and Y.B. Chavan, the then Indian minister of external
affairs, signed an account in 1974 with retrospective effect
validating Goa's merger in India.
The Indo-Portuguese accord solved many mutual problems of
both the countries. One of them, vital to 23 per cent of
Goa's population, concerned the Goa archdiocese. Only after
it was signed did the Vatican recognise Goa, Daman and Diu's
new political status. Till then, the archdiocese was governed
by the Vatican's nuncio to Delhi, and bishop Francisco Xavier
da Piedade Rebello was an "apostolic administrator".
Patriarch Dom Jose Alvernaz continued to be the archbishop,
but quietly left Goa for his native Azores and eventually
resigned. It is time Portugal also reminded India that
whereas BNU had the decency to return to the State Bank of
India the gold pledged by Goan borrowers, delinking this
issue from teh question of its confiscated properties in Goa,
which have been transferred to the SBI. The reciprocation by
the SBI is long overdue.
One fails to understand how it escaped the mind of the
foreign ministers of India and Portugal (and the officials
who helped draft the accord) to address the problem of
evacuee property. It is an issue that Dr Amado should treat
as a priority issue.
I believe Portugal is planning to build a hotel in Goa (we
already have world class hotels and, frankly, would be happy
to not have any more; because those already there are already
straining our limited carrying capacity); also charter
flights to Goa (we have too many charter flights for our
small Dabolim airport) and regular flights by TAP, their
national carrier. Whether TAP will be able to sustain itself
is a question that its marketing staff must have addressed.
But yes, the more the merrier ....
But how about doing first things first? [Gomantak Times]
* * *
Online links to Mario Cabral e Sa:
On Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Cabral_e_Sa
NYT link
http://movies.nytimes.com/person/659566/Mario-Cabral-E-Sa
IMDb
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0127703/
Books by
http://www.bookfinder.com/author/mario-cabral-e-sa/
