It is easy to forget, in the linear narrative of the British Raj leading to an independent India, that there were other, albeit much smaller, bits that hung on as colonies of other European countries (let’s not call them “powers”) for some time longer. One of these, the most venerable, dating back almost five centuries to 1510, was Goa. The succinctly titled Goa, 1961 tells the story of India’s forceful expulsion of the Portuguese, focusing in considerable detail on the year it happened.
Goa was by that time something of an outlier. The French, writes Goan author Valmiki Faleiro,
with four small enclaves (Pondicherry and Karaikal on the Tamil coast, Yanam on the Andhra coast and Mahe on the Kerala coast—Chandernagar north of Calcutta had merged with India in June 1949), negotiated with India, secured some guarantees for the people of their possessions and gracefully left after signing a bilateral treaty with India on 28 May 1956. India expected Portugal to follow suit. That did not happen.
The outlines of the story are pretty well-known: on 11 December 1961, the Indian Army moved across the border; the Portuguese were in no position to resist and it was all over in not much more than the blink of an eye.

But of course, there was more to it than that. Faleiro divided the book into three main sections: the lead-up, the actual invasion and a brief section of the aftermath. The middle section is very granular, discussing the invasion and such resistance as there was in considerable detail, almost down the minute and the soldier.
Non-specialists might find lead up more to their taste. Although Faleiro begins the story in the 15th century, it is the period between Independence and invasion that holds the interest. Today, one is perhaps most amazed that it took Nehru left things as long as he did—almost half a generation—whereas at the time, Nehru was painted as an apostate from the pacifism he had been preaching. Less well-known, perhaps, is the attempt in 1948 by the Nizam of Hyderabad—a princely state that put off joining India with a “one-year standstill/status quo agreement”—to purchase Goa from the Portuguese so as to give himself a seaport: “The Portuguese spurned the offer and said it could neither cede nor lease (não alienava nem arrendava)” Goa.
He also discusses how the poor intelligence, which greatly overestimated the state of Portuguese military strength in Goa, led the India Army to invade with a much larger force than necessary, wasting resources.
But Faleiro also included other little tidbits such as the loss by Portugal of the four-acre enclave of São João Batista de Ajudá in Africa just a few months prior to losing Goa. Yes, four-acre: imperialism could be ridiculous, too.
Faleiro focuses on Goa and doesn’t dwell much on the broader significance other than the possibility that the invasion of Goa might have resulted in the 1962 Sino-Indian happening earlier than it otherwise might have.
He leaves many intriguing yet unanswerable “what-ifs” dangling: what if Salazar actually had granted Goa independence (or a referendum on the subject) as Indian pressure ramped up. The parallels to and differences with the now independent East Timor (Timor-Leste) are self-evident: it remained Portuguese until the 1975, just after the Carnation Revolution, and was promptly and forcibly annexed by Indonesia. Nor was Goa the last of the constituent parts of the Estado da Índia to finally be let go: that would be Macau, as late as 1999. The Goans, like the Macanese, retained Portuguese nationality. Their diaspora parallels that of other post-colonial peoples.
Faleiro takes a personal interest in his subject, as well he might. He retains some affection for Manuel António Vassalo e Silva, the last Portuguese Governor of Goa, who seems to have behaved as honorably as possible. Salaza, or his memory, is treated with contempt more intellectual than personal. VK Krishna Menon, the Defence Minister at the time, and the one portrayed as having engineered the invasion, remains an ambiguous figure.
Faleiro does not always perhaps strike the best balance between detail and narrative, but in this detailed and thought-provoking discussion, he makes the story of Goa relevant far beyond Goa and even India itself.
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