Portugal Held Goa for 451 Years. India's Army, Navy and Air Force Ended It in About 40 Hours, After a Court Case, a Blockade and a Veto at the UN

Goa became part of India on 19 December 1961, when Portuguese forces in Goa, Daman and Diu surrendered to an Indian Army, Navy and Air Force operation that had begun the day before. Portuguese rule there dated from 1510, and Bharat Rakshak’s navy history puts the fighting at about 40 hours from start to finish.

The road to those 40 hours took fourteen years. It ran through refused negotiations, mass marches, a firing on the border, a blockade and a ruling by the International Court of Justice. The UN Security Council met on the night of 18 December, voted on two drafts and adopted neither.

A port taken in 1510 that stayed Portuguese after 1947

The Portuguese had reached Calicut in 1498. The Government of Goa’s history page says they defeated the Bijapur rulers in 1510, with help from a local ally named Timayya, and set up a permanent settlement at Velha Goa, now called Old Goa. After independence in 1947, the same page says, Portugal refused to negotiate the transfer of its Indian enclaves.

The refusal was not new. A review in the Asian Review of Books of Valmiki Faleiro’s Goa, 1961 says the Nizam of Hyderabad tried to buy Goa in 1948 to get a seaport, and Portugal answered that it could neither cede nor lease it. The same review says France left its Indian enclaves after a 1956 treaty with India, and India expected Portugal to follow.

India had by then folded the princely states into the Union and sent troops into Kashmir in 1947. Faleiro’s reviewer finds it striking that Nehru took “almost half a generation” to act on Goa.

Lohia at Margao, then a decade of marches

The Week names Tristão de Bragança Cunha among the Goans who led the early resistance. On 18 June 1946 the socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia addressed a large meeting at Margao and courted arrest, according to the Goa government’s list of milestones. The Press Information Bureau’s New India Samachar calls it the first satyagraha for Goa’s independence. Satyagraha is the Gandhian method of non-violent civil disobedience, and historians still argue over how much it did to end British rule.

In 1954 the pressure moved to the enclaves. The Dadra and Nagar Haveli administration says about 170 years of Portuguese rule there ended on 2 August 1954, brought about by volunteers from Goan parties working with local people. An administrator and an advisor ran it afterwards, and a local council, the Varistha Panchayat, was set up to involve residents. That council voted unanimously on 12 June 1961 to join India, and the administration says Parliament’s Dadra and Nagar Haveli Act of 1961 then made it part of the Union.

The biggest march was on 15 August 1955. The Global Nonviolent Action Database says Nehru announced two days earlier that Indians would not be allowed to cross into Goa, and Indian police turned back thousands. Of about 3,000 who tried to enter, it says 1,711 got across. It records 22 marchers killed and 225 wounded that day. The government’s New India Samachar says 31 satyagrahis were killed in the whole Goa Mukti Vimochan Samiti satyagraha, which covers a longer span.

Legations closed, a border shut

Diplomacy had already failed. John Menezes writes in Scroll.in that India closed its legation in Lisbon on 11 June 1953. On 6 August 1955 the Portuguese legation in Delhi was ordered shut, and Portuguese interests passed to the Brazilian embassy. From 1 September 1955 a blockade of diplomatic, economic, postal, telegraph and travel links took effect. Shipping and road services to Goa had already stopped on 1 August 1954, and the Poona to Goa train through Londa stopped a year later.

The Hague gave Portugal part of its case and India the rest

Portugal took the dispute to the International Court of Justice. The case, Right of Passage over Indian Territory, was about Portuguese access across Indian land to its two enclaves of Dadra and Nagar-Aveli, access that India refused in 1954.

In its judgment of 12 April 1960 the Court found, by 11 votes to 4, that Portugal had in 1954 a right of passage for private persons, civil officials and goods, subject to Indian regulation and control. By 8 votes to 7 it found Portugal had no such right for armed forces, armed police, arms and ammunition. By 9 votes to 6 it held that India had not acted contrary to its obligations over passage for the first category. The ICJ’s summary adds that the Dadra disturbances of July 1954 had created tension, and that India’s refusal of passage fell within its power of regulation. The question before the Court was passage to two enclaves, not the status of Goa.

About 40 hours in December 1961

By 11 December, Indian forces stood at Belgaum for Goa, Vapi for Daman and Una for Diu, according to Bharat Rakshak’s navy history. The Navy had begun Operation Chutney on 1 December, a patrol in which the frigates INS Betwa and INS Beas watched the Goan coast from about 13 kilometres out. The Navy’s task force also had the carrier INS Vikrant. The Army’s 17 Infantry Division and 50 Parachute Brigade were the ground force, with D-day set for 18 December.

The air force struck Dabolim, Goa’s airfield. Bharat Rakshak’s overview, adapted from P. N. Khera’s official history, says 12 Canberra bombers of No. 35 Squadron dropped about 63,000 pounds of bombs on the runway, sparing the terminal and the aircraft on the apron. Six Hunters rocketed the wireless station at Bambolim at about 7.15 a.m. The Portuguese crews took off from the damaged runway at nightfall and flew to Portugal. At Diu, four Vampires sank a Portuguese patrol boat leaving harbour.

At sea, Portugal’s only available warship was the Afonso de Albuquerque, anchored in Mormugao Bay. The other three frigates assigned to Goa had sailed for Portugal earlier. The Navy history says Betwa was ordered to capture her and opened fire at 12.15 p.m. with her 4.5-inch guns. The Portuguese ship surrendered and beached off the Dona Paula jetty.

Sailors from INS Trishul landed on Anjadip Island, off Karwar, under covering fire from INS Mysore. The first phase finished at 2.25 p.m. on 18 December. Seven Indian sailors were killed and two officers and seventeen sailors wounded.

Numbers nobody agrees on

The US State Department’s historians estimate about 30,000 Indian troops crossed at midnight on 17 and 18 December. The Portuguese side was far smaller. Bharat Rakshak’s air history says about 3,306 troops of European origin laid down their arms. Correio da Manhã and the Museu do Aljube in Lisbon both say 3,500. The newspaper puts the Indian force at 45,000 and the museum at 40,000. Faleiro’s reviewer says poor Indian intelligence overestimated Portuguese strength, so India sent far more than it needed.

The death toll is just as loose. The Week gives 22 Indians and 30 Portuguese killed. Correio da Manhã counts 25 Portuguese military dead. We could not open a primary tally.

Salazar’s order, and the governor who did not follow it

Prime Minister Oliveira Salazar’s instructions were to hold. Correio da Manhã quotes a message that reached Goa on 14 December: “Não prevejo possibilidade de tréguas nem prisioneiros portugueses”. It means he foresaw no possibility of truces or Portuguese prisoners. The Museu do Aljube says he considered only “victorious or dead soldiers and sailors”.

Governor General Vassalo e Silva had ordered military families evacuated by boat on 12 December, Correio da Manhã reports. The Aljube museum says he disobeyed Salazar’s order and spared the lives of many of his men. Some Portuguese units did fight, the newspaper says, at Anjadip, Aguada and Diu.

Accounts of the surrender differ. Bharat Rakshak says operations ended at 6 p.m. on 19 December and the surrender papers were signed at 7.30 p.m., and its air history says the governor signed. The Aljube museum says he did not sign an unconditional surrender. Major General K. P. Candeth took over as military governor on 20 December, the Goa government records.

Two drafts, one veto

Portugal asked for an urgent Security Council meeting, held on 18 December. Its representative, Mr. Garin, called the Indian action unprovoked aggression. India’s representative, C. S. Jha, said Goa, Daman and Diu were part of India, that the issue was colonialism, and cited General Assembly resolution 1514. The Soviet delegate said the matter was domestic to India. Adlai Stevenson of the United States said the use of force violated Article 2(4) of the Charter, and the draft he submitted, per the State Department’s note, called for a cease-fire, Indian withdrawal and renewed negotiations.

The Council then voted on two drafts, and the record of meeting 988 shows the result. The first, S/5032, was sponsored by Ceylon, Liberia and the United Arab Republic and would have rejected Portugal’s complaint. It got 4 votes in favour and 7 against and failed. The second, S/5033, was sponsored by France, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States and called on India to withdraw. It got 7 votes to 4, and the Soviet Union’s negative vote, a permanent member’s veto, blocked it. The meeting rose at 12.50 a.m. on 19 December.

Union territory, a poll, statehood and a treaty

Goa, Daman and Diu became a centrally administered union territory. The Constitution (Twelfth Amendment) Act, dated 27 March 1962, lists it in the First Schedule and is deemed to have taken effect from 20 December 1961.

On 16 January 1967 Goa held what the state calls the country’s first opinion poll, on whether to merge with Maharashtra. The Goa government says the vote went against merger, and Goa stayed a union territory. On 4 February 1987 the Legislative Assembly passed a bill making Konkani the official language, and on 30 May 1987 Goa became the 25th state.

Portugal’s recognition came by treaty. Y. B. Chavan and Mário Soares signed it in New Delhi on 31 December 1974. Article I says Portugal “recognises the full sovereignty of India over these territories”, meaning Goa, Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Article II resumed diplomatic relations at once. It came into force on 3 June 1975, when the instruments of ratification were exchanged at Lisbon.