"Colonialism" versus "liberation"
Goans born post 18 December 1961 and educated on make-believe history
that Goa (used generically to include Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar
Haveli) had been "reeling" under Portuguese "colonialism" may be very
surprised when told by their generational predecessors that, except for
the Governor General and the Chefe do Gabinete, the Secretary General
and all departmental heads, indeed all civilian administrative
personnel, were Goan and men of high integrity, that 99 percent of the
police was Goan, and 100 percent judges were also Goan with no back-logs
in Goan courts, and that Goa was represented in the Portuguese
Parliament in Lisbon. A former Portuguese President, General António
Ramalho Eanes, has recalled recently how in Goa he had served under a
Goan military officer and that it was more like a family than a military
unit (Expresso, Lisbon, 27 January 2007).
Very similar was the position of the French possessions in India.
If the reader wishes to seek documented evidence of the "liberation" of
Pondicherry - indeed the same may be the case in Goa where today the
administrative chief and departmental secretaries, collectors, and a
portion of the mamlatdars, judges and a substantial portion of the
police are non-Goan - he/she is referred to " Imperial Burdens:
Countercolonialism in Former French India" by William F.S. Miles
(Publisher: Lynne Rienner, USA/UK, 1995) where, on pages 46 and 47, "One
former freedom fighter, a defector from the French Indian police,
describes the general post-merger mentality of (anglophone) Indian
discrimination:
"The public have regard for the services I rendered to the nation. But
not the officers of the Indian Bureaucracy who consider themselves to be
the sons of Gods......The Indian bureaucracy are still behaving, even
after 27 years of the British withdrawal, as the Imperial agents, and do
not treat our people with fraternity. The Bureaucracy of the Union
Territory of Pondicherry recruited from all parts of India do not treat
the local people and officials as brothers. There is general complaint
in Pondicherry that these Indian officials look down [on] the people and
local officials and behave themselves as conquerors." (Dadala circa 1974).
Earlier, on page 34 in the same book, the view is expressed of a French
Indian veteran L.S.R. as follows:
"Were there a referendum today you would have at least 50,000
Pondichérians opting to become French.......The Indian regime was more
tyrannical than the French ever were..........So severe were the Indians
that those in the youth movement were the first ones to opt, in 1962,
for French citizenship."
This book is indeed a sound investment for the Goan as well.
John Menezes
