The first volume in this series "Armed Forces of the Indian Union" has already been published, and is entitled "Operation Polo The Police action against Hyderabad, 1948." This, the second book in the series, describes the operations undertaken in 1961 to liberate Goa and the other Portuguese colonies in India from foreign yoke.
The period beginning from the close of the Second World War has witnessed a turning point in the histories of many Asian and African people who had been living under the rule of the Western powers. One by one the colonial regimes have disappeared and gone down in to the limbo of the past. Some of these powers, notably Britain, saw the signs of the time and conferred independence on the subject races by negotiation and peaceful means; others like Portugal refused to see that their days as colonisers had ended, and that, irrespective of the number of years or centuries they had ruled over their empires, they had to quit. The French were expelled from Indo-China and Algeria by force of arms; so were the Dutch from Indonesia. The Portuguese were expelled from Goa but they are still retaining their other colonial possessions in Asia and Africa.
India got her independence on 15th August, 1947. But her freedom could not be considered complete while some foreign pockets still continued to exist on her soil, both on the eastern and the western coast. The French in Pondicherry on the eastern coast were realistic and made a politically sagacious gesture in ceding their colony by agreement. But the Portuguese Government continued to challenge the logic of history and world evolution by expressing its determination to have their hold on what was recognised by all as purely Indian territories inhabited by Indians. It simply refused to discuss the transfer of their settlements in India to the Republic of India. Even international opinion failed to move the Portuguese Government. India had all along been anxious for a peaceful settlement, had maintained a Legation in Lisbon up to 1953, and had also made unceasing efforts through the United Nations to that end. All her peaceful overtures, however, failed to evoke a response from the Portuguese.
Although the Government of India stuck to her policy of settlement by negotiation, the tension among the people began to mount as a result of the Portuguese resort to force against peaceful Satyagrahis in 1955 and later. Finally, when in 1961 the Portuguese fired from Anjidiv island at Indian coastal steamers and fishing boats, the tension came to a head and India decided to liberate the territories by force. As Shri Krishna Menon stated: "We waited for years, we argued and gave opportunities for a settlement", but were finally "forced to adopt means which were not of our choice".
In the following pages is an account of the operations of the army, navy and air force which resulted in extinction of the Portuguese pockets on the sub-continent, which Shri Nehru, the then Prime Minister, had once described as "ugly warts on the beautiful face of India."
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