Word: goa
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...like poison gas, can blow back in the faces of those who use it. Last week India's Prime Minister Nehru decided that India had been soul-forced enough for the time being. Reliance on soul force, or satyagraha, had resulted in 22 deaths on the border of Goa, but it had neither led the Portuguese to give up their tiny 400-year-old colony, nor bestirred the Goans to do anything about their own liberation...
What happened near Banda was repeated with variations at five other points around Goa's 184-mile border with India. From the Indian town of Castle Rock, 185 satyagrahis began marching into a railroad tunnel, intending to come out within a few yards of the border, but soldiers awaiting them fired down the tunnel, killing six. At the day's end 22 satyagrahis had been killed, and scores wounded...
...addresses open-air meetings. But this time it was Communists who harangued them. In Calcutta and in Patna the picture was similar. With suspicious spontaneity the rioters, in many cases led by Communists, denounced the Nehru government for not backing the satyagrahis and demanded that troops be sent into Goa...
Nehru Fights Back. In the New Delhi Parliament, while mobs paraded outside, Nehru declared the Portuguese action in Goa "brutal and uncivilized," but added: "We will not be forced or hustled into what we consider wrong action . . . The Portuguese are deliberately trying to provoke us." At a specially summoned meeting of the parliamentary parties, he denounced the riots, accused opposition parties, especially the Communists, of organizing the riots deliberately to discredit him. Next day in Parliament he apologized to all foreign missions and foreign firms who had suffered, offered full compensation...
...Nehru. The influential Times of India attacked him for "vacillation, contradiction and appeasement." The Bombay Free Press Journal accused the premier of "obliquely encouraging the satyagrahis with vague, irresponsible statements that satyagraha will solve the problems of Goan freedom." Many influential Indians, itching for a little direct action in Goa, were asking, "What do we spend $400 million a year on an army for?" But Nehru clung stubbornly to what he called his "basic policy of peaceful approach." He cautiously added: "Of course there may be variations...