INDIA: END OF AN IMAGE, FRIDAY DEC 29, 1961 brought to you by A. Lyndon Perreira

What are the basic elements of our policy in regard to Goa? First, there must be peaceful methods. This is essential unless we give up the roots of all our policies and all our behavior . . . We rule out nonpeaceful methods entirely. —Jawaharlal Nehru, 1955

Last week, after years of advocating a policy of nonviolence and lecturing the world—especially the U.S.—about its aggressiveness. India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru went, as he piously put it, "contrary to my grain.'' On Nehru's orders, Indian forces invaded the tiny, 451-year-old Portuguese colony of Goa on India's west coast. In a three-pronged attack, crack Sikh and Dogra troops of the Indian army's 17th Division, abetted by gunfire and air force jets, overran Goa and the Portuguese enclaves of Diu and Damao in a naked act of aggression that forever tarnished Nehru's self-burnished image as an apostle of peace.

Hot and Cool. India's attack followed weeks of jingoistic dissemblance by Nehru in New Delhi's Lok Sabha (Lower House). Prodded by Defense Minister V. K. Krishna Menon and faced with elections in February (see box), Nehru aimed a barrage of inflated and inflammatory charges at the Portuguese. He claimed that Portuguese naval vessels had attacked an Indian fishing boat and an Indian merchant ship, and that well-armed Portuguese troops were "massing menacingly" along the 180-mile Indo-Goan border. Portugal's colonial authorities, Nehru said, were brutally oppressing the Goan people, most of whom were Hindus who eagerly desired to be reunited with India.

Actually, many Goans were cool to the idea of union. Goa was in far better economic condition than India, and was developing huge and profitable iron and manganese deposits in north Goa. Goan businessmen were more fearful of India's confiscatory taxes and stifling bureaucracy than they were of the petty restrictions of the Portuguese colonial authorities. Union would also end Goa's virtually duty-free status and the sight of peasant women buying Chanel No. 5 and field hands carrying transistor radios. Goan Christians, who account for 40% of Goa's 700,000 population, wondered about their rights among India's 304 million Hindus.

Nehru dismissed such reservations. In answer to Portuguese "provocations," he bivouacked 30,000 troops across the Goan frontier. Both the U.S. and the U.N. rushed to head off the impending conflict. In an ironic reversal of roles, Nehru, who savors the part of international peacemaker, found himself on the opposite side of the table. U.S. Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith four times tried to talk Nehru out of taking military action; Nehru was not listening. Replying to U.N. Acting Secretary-General U. Thant's appeal that India and Portugal negotiate their differences, Nehru said: "It is hardly possible to negotiate with a government that takes its stand on 16th century concepts of colonial conquest by force."

Protective Invasion. The war lasted only 36 hours. As zero hour approached, the Indian field commander told his troops that they were going into Goa "not as conquerors, but as protectors." Over the colony swept Indian air force jets drop ping thousands of leaflets that said: "The defense forces who are now with you are for your own protection. It is their task to defend the honor of the motherland, from which you have been separated for too long."*

As Indian jets streaked overhead, Christian Goans went to pray at the shrine of Goa's patron saint, St. Francis Xavier. Civil-authorities fled from the capital city of Pangim, leaving behind an untended bonfire of Portuguese documents in the inner courtyard of the governor general's palace. Carrying their guests' laundry, the entire staff of the Mandavi Hotel lit out for the hills. Two cars pulled up in front of the Banco Ultramarino; their riders raced into the bank and came out with armloads of Portuguese currency. Drunk on stolen liquor, the few members of the Portuguese constabulary left behind in the city pranced up and down the main street playfully breaking windows.

Pangim's Hindus, none of whom had dared protest against the Portuguese in the past, suddenly materialized on the streets. As the first Indian troops entered into the city, the Hindus began to chant: "Jai Hind, Jawaharlal Nehru, Ki jai" (Hail India, victory to Nehru). The Indian troops found a dozen prisoners in Pangim's jail. "What are you in for?" an Indian officer asked one of the prisoners. "Forgery," answered the prisoner. "Promise not to do it again?" asked the officer. "Oh, yes, sahib," said the prisoner. He was freed.

Mourning at Christmas. Scores of Portuguese evacuees, carrying babies, bottles, diapers, waited for hours in Pangim airport to be airlifted to Portugal via Pakistan. On the runway, work crews labored to fill in bomb and rocket craters. Lisbon meanwhile was virtually in mourning; the gay profusion of colored Christmas lights that usually blaze over Lisbon's shopping streets were nowhere in evidence. Even the U.S. embassy had placed a curtain in front of its Christmas display in the ground-floor window of the U.S. Information Office. Cinemas and theaters shut down as tens of thousands of Portuguese marched in a silent parade from Lisbon's city hall to the cathedral, escorting the relics of St. Francis Xavier.

As the Indian troops spread out over Goa, Portugal's Governor General Vassalo e Silva made one last show of bravado, announced: "We will fight to the end." But Silva's ill-equipped, 3,000-man army, which Nehru had said was "massing menacingly," had other ideas. Only real show of Portuguese resistance was put up by the 1,783-ton sloop Afonso de Albuquerque. Steaming out of Marmagão harbor, the little frigate exchanged fire with an Indian cruiser and two destroyers for 45 minutes. Her captain badly wounded, the crippled ship was finally beached. Less than two days after Indian troops crossed the frontier, the Portuguese surrendered. The night after the surrender in Pangim, a happy Sikh infantryman lay in a drunken sleep outside the governor general's palace, two champagne bottles at his side. Both sides killed more bottles than they did men. Best estimates of casualties: 40 killed and wounded for both Portuguese and Indians.

Gunboat Diplomacy. Even before hostilities ended, India had publicly begun to justify its action before the world. It had a case against the Portuguese, who ran an incompetent petty tyranny in Goa and, unlike Britain and France, stubbornly clung to a hopeless anachronism in refusing to get out of India. By claiming weakly that Goa was not a colony but an "overseas province," Portugal did indeed (as India's U.N. Delegate C. S. Jha put it) stand "against the tide of history."

For all that, India had not nearly exhausted the peaceful possibilities of expelling the Portuguese by negotiation or diplomatic pressure. When it took action, it embarked on a simple, 19th century war of naked self-interest; the entire operation smacked of gunboat diplomacy. On that basis, it was understandable: the 19th century was, in retrospect, not such a bad century, and even gunboat diplomacy had its virtues. What made the whole enterprise so offensive was India's past relentless posture of ethical superiority and its present hypocritical attempts to justify the invasion on moral grounds. India, argued Krishna Menon, was really defending itself because "colonialism is permanent aggression.'' Forgetting his manufactured threat of a potent Portuguese defending army, Nehru said: "The justification of this action is that it lasted only 36 hours.''* Added Krishna Menon: "If there was a strong government in Goa, why did it not resist?"

Means to an End. This same line was piped by Indian Delegate Jha as the U.N. Security Council met in response to Portugal's call for the U.N. to "denounce and rectify this lawless action of the Indian government." Said Jha bluntly: "This is a question of getting rid of the last vestiges of colonialism in India. Charter or no Charter, Security Council or no Security Council, that is our basic faith, which we cannot afford to give up at any cost." With breathtaking, topsy-turvy logic, Jha indicted Portugal as the aggressor. "It is not India that has engaged in provocation," he said. "It is Portugal that has done so. There can be no question of aggression against your own frontier; there can be no question of aggression against your own people.''

Scorning this argument, U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson strongly stated the West's case. "What is at stake is not colonialism,'' he said. "It is a bold violation of the most basic principles of the United Nations Charter. Prime Minister Nehru has often said that no right end can be served by a wrong means. The Indian tradition of nonviolence has inspired the whole world. But this act of force with which we are confronted mocks the faith of India's frequent declarations of exalted principles."

Jointly the U.S. sponsored a resolution with Britain. France and Turkey ordering an immediate ceasefire. The motion was defeated by Russia's 99th Security Council veto. Actually, neither Adlai Stevenson nor the rest of the world should have been shocked at India's resort to force. To a large extent, Indian nonviolence is a wistful fiction of Western liberals. Since 1947, India has been consistently embroiled in territorial disputes within its own borders. It fought a bloody war over Kashmir with Pakistan that was tacitly approved by Mahatma Gandhi, took "police action'' against Hyderabad when the Nizam of that state tried to prolong its independence, has for years been fighting in Nagaland against hostile Naga forces who desire independence. As Menon put it last week with disarming candor: "We have never abjured violence against any country when it's to our interest."

The Lost Argument. India's victory was hailed by the Afro-Asians and the Communists. From Russia, Nikita Khrushchev cabled Nehru his approval. Momentarily abandoning its border feud with India. Red China announced its "resolute support." No word of protest was heard in India. Draped in a cloak of injured innocence, the Indian press charged that Britain in Suez behaved far worse than India; conveniently forgotten was the fact that Britain bowed to a U.N. cease fire and withdrew from the territory it had taken. The Times of India voiced the surprise of Indian diplomats that the Portuguese authorities in Macao and Africa had interned 30,000 Indian passport holders, "because this is the kind of step usually taken against enemy aliens on the outbreak of war; India is not at war with Portugal.''

But India faces more serious problems than reconciling its propaganda with demonstrable facts. Now that military action has been taken against the Portuguese, Nehru will find it difficult to explain his refusal to resist and repel Red China's border incursions. Gone is Nehru's argument that he will "negotiate and negotiate and negotiate to the bitter end" the Sino-Indian frontier disputes. Continued backing-down will lay Nehru open to the charge that he has double standards of courage.

Another emergent problem may involve Pakistan and the Kashmir dispute. By indicating that a refusal to negotiate is an excuse for military action, Nehru has handed the Pakistanis a perfect argument to resolve the Kashmir problem; like Portugal's Salazar, Nehru has refused to confer on Pakistan's right to the mountainous northern Indian province. But most importantly, Nehru and India will find it now impossible to preach nonviolence and compromise at any cost to the rest of the world.

* The Indians were thus echoing countless ''irredentist" leaders of the past, demanding the return "home" of neighboring territories (Trieste, the Sudetenland). In fact, India was even echoing the conquerors of India. Said Richard Colley, Marquis Wellesley and India's governor general at the end of the 18th century: "No greater blessing can be conferred on the native inhabitants of India than the extension of British authority."

*To which the New York Daily News replied: "A bank robber might just as well argue that the loot was justly his because he took it in a hurry without killing anybody and made a fast getaway."