>From a pimple Goa has become an infected boil where even garlic with its >antibacterial properties cannot heal it. How beautiful is the word merciful when Goan women were raped by the indian army. Finally Thumboo saw the sunset in Goa because the hill in Verem was destroyed by the merciless builders. BC
Believe it or not, from the very moment the British established Singapore as a separate Crown Colony in 1946, it has remained in focus in discussions and debates about the future of Goa. At that very beginning of the era of decolonisation in Asia, the Portuguese dictator Salazar found a lot to like in what was happening in the British-ruled port city ? its new Legislative Council included only six (later nine) elected seats out of twenty-five, and only British subjects were eligible to vote. Meanwhile the colonial system remained dominant. Salazar figured this an excellent model for the four-centuries-old Estado da India Portuguesa. Even after the Council yielded to a fully-elected Assembly, and the UK Parliament passed the 1958 State of Singapore Act accepting the establishment of an independent state, Salazar still looked for a Singapore-type solution to the increasingly thorny Goa crisis, as Nehru and Krishna Menon grew progressively restive about the last colonial "pimple disfiguring the face of India". The Portuguese dangled promise of a NATO port at Mormugao to their allies, and it finally took a Russian veto to stymie the US/UK-led United Nations resolution demanding withdrawal of Indian troops after their mercifully bloodless takeover in 1961. In the immediate aftermath of Indian annexation, the Goan freedom fighter (he famously got into a fistfight with the colonial Governor General) Ant?nio Anast?sio Bruto da Costa led a group demanding "Goan Goa" with "full sovereignty" to be achieved via "natural right to a plebiscite." This "third force" also looked to Singapore as a model of what might be possible in Goa.
