FREEDOM-FIGHTERS, ACADEMICS AND GOA’S DECOLONIZATION
By
DALE LUIS MENEZES
If 15 August, 1947 is considered as a momentous day in the history of the
Indian nation, 19 December, 1961 can be considered to be the Goan equivalent of
the ‘Indian Independence’ whereby it is largely agreed upon that ‘Liberation’
from Portuguese colonial rule was achieved after 450 years. The corpus of
perceptions handed down to us regarding Operation Vijay launched by the Indian
State is often viewed through a (almost sacral) veneer of nationalist history,
wherein vivid images of Goan freedom-fighters being brutally assaulted and
tortured by the Portuguese police and military shape and define this discourse
through art, literature, poetry and songs. But one cannot deny the fact that
this particular slice of history and the role of freedom-fighters in it have
not been critically assessed. Happily for us, due to a wonderful memoir by
Suresh Kanekar, we can shift our thinking in this direction.
Suresh Kanekar is the father of the best-selling novelist Amita
Kanekar, though Suresh Kanekar is a well-known academic himself, having few
books and numerous research papers to his credit. He has also previously
authored a novel called Of Mangoes and Monsoons.
Suresh Kanekar’s memoir Goa’s Liberation and Thereafter: Chronicles of
a Fragmented Life is roughly divided into two phases: one, where as a very
young student he enters, head-on into the freedom struggle and gets
incarcerated for five years in Aguada and then again for a few more months; and
in the second phase, he describes his life as a student of Psychology in Poona,
in the US and finally in the Bombay University as a faculty member. Though the
latter part of the book is interesting as it chronicles Suresh Kanekar’s
battles with an inefficient and lackadaisical administration and also gives a
glimpse of his cantankerous and enfant terrible side, I shall however largely
dwell on the former part of the book as it is more relevant to Goan history.
Suresh Kanekar describes his cavalier days as a student, first in Goa
and later in Poona. He was a happy-go-lucky person who decided to join the
freedom struggle after the arrest of Pundalik Gaitonde. But young Suresh
Kanekar was not fired by any patriotism or nationalism and joining “the Goa
freedom movement was a matter of escapism at worst and romanticism at best,
with hardly any idealism or patriotism involved. Conceivably, in my case,
patriotism was the first refuge of the scoundrel. I became seriously committed
to the freedom movement only after I was arrested and put behind bars,” Suresh
Kanekar discloses. Suresh Kanekar does not try to fit his account in the
established moulds of hagiographies about the Goan freedom struggle and thus,
his book can be useful to look beyond the nationalist paradigms of history.
One can find a very detailed and vivid description of Suresh Kanekar’s
arrest, interrogation and the final incarceration in Aguada – where he was
imprisoned for five years. What will strike the reader is that nowhere in the
account stories of physical brutalities against the political prisoners are
present. Life in the jail “was uneventful after the preliminary hearings. We
had settled down to a routine of cooking, eating, cleaning, and so on,” he
says. In fact, one can find Suresh Kanekar having a pleasant and civil time
with the Portuguese guards in the Aguada prison. When the prisoners had any
complaints they would write petitions to the authorities and generally they
were given a patient listening. Even when they did not wish to stand to the
Portuguese flag as a mark of respect and homage, the prisoners after
non-violent disobedience and a few petitions achieved their goal and, “one fine
morning the sergeant or corporal on duty came to our hall and told us the
commander-in-chief had determined that we should no longer be forced to stand
for the flag. I practically danced with relief and joy.”
Finally when Suresh Kanekar completed his term of imprisonment and was
released, this is what he had to say, “I never saw Aguada again, although I had
and have wonderful memories of the place. I had been sentenced to five years of
rigorous imprisonment and I had been behind bars for five years and twenty-five
days. Those five years were the best five years of my life till then. They
changed me into a much better person than I was before imprisonment.”
Suresh Kanekar narrates a particular incident about Mohan Virginkar,
the then vice-president of the National Congress (Goa). He was supposed to
offer satyagraha in April 1955, but failed to appear at the site after he
developed cold-feet. “[B]ut unfortunately for him his name was announced on the
All India Radio along with the names of other satyagrahis who had genuinely
offered satyagraha on the specified day. The next day he was arrested and put
behind bars. When he was sentenced, he fainted in court. He was in Aguada
briefly, and then was transferred to Margaon where female freedom fighters were
imprisoned. There he was close to his wealthy and influential family,” reports
Suresh Kanekar.
What one can observe in the autobiography is that Suresh Kanekar
narrates anecdotes and incidents about people who were, generally, elites. One
gets a sense that most of Suresh Kanekar’s interaction in prison was with this
group of people who were upper-caste. All the petitioning and protests inside
the jail were conceived and lead by these people. And within this group of
upper-caste freedom-fighters, in Suresh Kanekar’s memoir, there are more Hindu
names than Catholic ones. Thus, one needs to ask some questions: who were the
ones who fought and as a consequence went to jail for Goa’s Liberation? Why did
they fight for Goa’s Liberation? Why weren’t other sections of Goan society
actively involved in the freedom movement (satyagraha or armed rebellion)?
These other sections do not find any worthwhile mention in the memoir. We must
remember that Suresh Kanekar was in the Aguada prison for five years and Aguada
was not a large prison; it seems that everybody knew ev
erybody.
One of the most memorable and high points of the book is definitely
Suresh Kanekar being witness to the formal surrender of Goa to the Indian Army
between Vassalo e Silva and Dhillon, despite it being a virtual war zone. Thus,
it needs to be quoted at some length, “We went back to where the surrender was
to take place right out in the open. Dhillon was sitting in a jeep, while Nanda
arranged to have the few cars including ours that were there placed in a
semi-circle, with the headlights converging at where the governor-general would
be surrendering to Dhillon. At about 8:45 pm, Vassalo e Silva was brought to
the spot along with his adjutant or chief of staff, probably named Andrade, and
made to wait while adjustments were being made to the cars and the lighting.
Nanda had found a photographer to take the picture of the ceremony, but the
photographer did not have a flash for his camera. Nanda instructed the
photographer that he was to take the photograph at the signal that
Nanda would give him [which did not happen, as a result we do not have picture
of that fateful moment]…At Nanda’s orders, Vassalo e Silva stepped forward,
saluted Dhillon (…) [Dhillon did not salute back], and handed over the
instrument of surrender to Dhillon, after which Dhillon went back to sit in his
vehicle and Vassalo e Silva returned with his adjutant to the place of his
confinement. Neither Dhillon nor Vassalo e Silva had uttered a single word
during the brief ceremony.”
I have come across, generally in cyberspace, many discussions about the
Indian Army’s action in Goa. Many point out that excesses that accompany
military actions were not witnessed in Goa. Although this is true to a large
extent, Suresh Kanekar however recounts “a horrible event” in Margão. A young
Catholic woman was crossing the railway tracks where some Indian jawans were
loading or offloading material in train wagons. Not far from here, a group of
men were playing cricket, one of them being a friend of the author and the
source of this information. The group of men playing cricket suspected
something foul and found the woman raped. This matter was hushed up and the
perpetrators were eventually taken into custody and quickly moved out of Goa.
On 19 December, ironically the day of Goa’s Liberation, when Suresh Kanekar and
two of his friends were moving to Vasco they had the company of two captains in
their car. Suresh Kanekar recounts, “One of them said these [i.
e. Goans] are our people or else we would have had some fun.”
Although interesting and well-written, Suresh Kanekar only narrates
events of history of which he was a part. Since there is not much written about
the freedom-fighters or writings of the freedom-fighters, it would have been
better if Suresh Kanekar had engaged much more rigorously with this history and
situate his experiences within it thereby providing his reader with critical
historical insights. Thus, a young reader like me knows what happened, but does
not know what these momentous events meant for Suresh Kanekar and a lot of
other people he talks about. But all said and done, this book is a fresh
insight into Goa’s freedom struggle and one should not miss it.
Comments/feedback @ www.daleluismenezes.blogspot.com
END OF ARTICLE
Goa’s Liberation and Thereafter: Chronicles of a Fragmented Life by Suresh
Kanekar (Saligão, Goa: Goa1556), 2011; pp. vi+270, Rs. 295/- [ISBN:
9789380739304]
(A version of this article appeared on Gomantak Times, dt: May 14, 2013).
http://daleluismenezes.blogspot.in/2013/05/freedom-fighters-academics-and-goas.html
Find my writings @ www.daleluismenezes.blogspot.com
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Push thought to extremes
-Louis Althusser
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