Word: nehru
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Jawaharlal Nehru...
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...
...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...
...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...
...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...