FREEDOM FIGHTER By: Bennet Paes Having passed through the portals of three Universities, and yet failing to get past the freshman’s mark, I stumbled into a selective band of Goans on the Indian side of the border. They prided themselves being called Freedom Fighters, (FF’s). That was way back in Bombay, in the 50’s. By and large the FF’s looked a dejected lot, just as I was, myself. And that may be just one reason for having to call ourselves ‘hail-fellows-well-met’. However, in a short while I discovered that the most compelling reason why they were on the wrong side of the border, was their hatred for a foreign rule in our motherland or rather, the fear of the Portuguese masters themselves. Mine too was fear, but it was of an angry father who felt the pinch of converting Escudos for six long years, without seeing a single academic title on either side of his son’s name. >From the days of Mahatma Gandhi’s tryst with freedom, one prerequisite to be a >‘Freedom Fighter’ came to be accepted as a short adventure in an Indian jail. >Critics then called it a picnic in prison. And may be rightly so. In today’s >India, too, people get into a jail one day, bailed out the next and >everything goes hunky-dory thereafter. On the other hand, Portuguese jails were far removed from the romance of a Presley’s ‘Jailhouse Rock’. They were exactly what lawbreakers deserved to be in. Discipline was what they exacted out of an erring ‘rocker’, and the stick did the trick. However, their aversion to the so-called freedom-fighters roused them to raise that stick even higher. It’s because they branded them as terrorists – the very label that India now puts on Pakistanis marauding across the Kashmiri border, but which label Pakistan itself brushes off as ‘freedom fighters’. Amazing how pots and kettles can change colours with changing situations. Incidentally, some of the freedom loving buddies in Bombay were already known to me while in Goa. They were also known for tampering with the strict law and order of the Portuguese regime. However, in most cases they found themselves behind bars for offences unrelated to freedom or sometimes mistaken for it. For example, one of them, sloshed with local ‘feni’ one evening, passed by the Margao ‘quartel’ (police quarters) shouting out: “Jakin, Jakin”. In a drunken state he was only calling out to his wife to show him the way home. Instead, the officer guarding the post showed him the way to a cell right behind. Reason - he thought the man was shouting “Jaihind, Jaihind”, a slogan popular with the freedom-fighters of those days. Later the man was drained off the hooch, and beaten up to an extent that propelled him right on the other side of the border. Nevertheless, having been influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s struggle for freedom, a path hugely accentuated by his courtship with prison-cells, the local machos also developed an appetite for freedom of sorts. But what was under suspicion was their determination to fight for it. They tried to emulate the great Mahatma in so far as his sit-in’s were concerned. But his fasts- unto-death dreaded them as death itself. Particularly, the group that I came to be associated with, was hardly of the type that would deny itself a morsel for any cause on earth, freedom included. Gandhi’s struggle for freeing a colonized nation did have a bearing on the 300-year old British struggle to coalesce that very nation. But ‘satyagraha’ was a different kettle of fish for the Portuguese. Such non-violent ploys to dislodge them from a 450-year hold on their “Estado da India Portuguesa” were in sharp contrast to those deployed by them to retain their supremacy on. They had used the sword – not a sit-in, to ward off persistent rebellions by domestic dynasties in the past. The same tactics continued, even while dealing with non-violent dissenters. Although much credit goes to those Goans who put their lives on the block in their pursuit of freedom, the others merely rode on the back of Nehru’s “Operation Vijay” that eventually earned for them a place on the roll-of-honour, supposedly dedicated only to Goa’s men of mettle. I was, neither this side, nor that side of the border when the 80,000-strong Indian onslaught reversed the history of Goa for good. But, from far away Kuwait I said to myself: oh, how I missed watching the grand spectacle from the sidelines, and then declaring myself a Freedom Fighter! ----------------------------------
