>From the Magazine | The World End of an Image _SUBSCRIBE TO TIME_ Posted Friday, Dec. 29, 1961 What are the basic elements of our policy in regard to Goa? First, there must be peaceful methods. This is essential unless we give up the roots of all our policies and all our behavior . . . We rule out nonpeaceful methods entirely. âJawaharlal Nehru, 1955 Last week, after years of advocating a policy of nonviolence and lecturing the worldâespecially the U.S.âabout its aggressiveness. India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru went, as he piously put it, "contrary to my grain.'' On Nehru's orders, Indian forces invaded the tiny, 451-year-old Portuguese colony of Goa on India's west coast. In a three-pronged attack, crack Sikh and Dogra troops of the Indian army's 17th Division, abetted by gunfire and air force jets, overran Goa and the Portuguese enclaves of Diu and Damao in a naked act of aggression that forever tarnished Nehru's self-burnished image as an apostle of peace. Hot and Cool. India's attack followed weeks of jingoistic dissemblance by Nehru in New Delhi's Lok Sabha (Lower House). Prodded by Defense Minister V. K. Krishna Menon and faced with elections in February (see box), Nehru aimed a barrage of inflated and inflammatory charges at the Portuguese. He claimed that Portuguese naval vessels had attacked an Indian fishing boat and an Indian merchant ship, and that well-armed Portuguese troops were "massing menacingly" along the 180-mile Indo-Goan border. Portugal's colonial authorities, Nehru said, were brutally oppressing the Goan people, most of whom were Hindus who eagerly desired to be reunited with India. Actually, many Goans were cool to the idea of union. Goa was in far better economic condition than India, and was developing huge and profitable iron and manganese deposits in north Goa. Goan businessmen were more fearful of India's confiscatory taxes and stifling bureaucracy than they were of the petty restrictions of the Portuguese colonial authorities. Union would also end Goa's virtually duty-free status and the sight of peasant women buying Chanel No. 5 and field hands carrying transistor radios. Goan Christians, who account for 40% of Goa's 700,000 population, wondered about their rights among India's 304 million Hindus. Nehru dismissed such reservations. In answer to Portuguese "provocations, " he bivouacked 30,000 troops across the Goan frontier. Both the U.S. and the U.N. rushed to head off the impending conflict. In an ironic reversal of roles, Nehru, who savors the part of international peacemaker, found himself on the opposite side of the table. U.S. Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith four times tried to talk Nehru out of taking military action; Nehru was not listening. Replying to U.N. Acting Secretary-General U. Thant's appeal that India and Portugal negotiate their differences, Nehru said: "It is hardly possible to negotiate with a government that takes its stand on 16th century concepts of colonial conquest by force."
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