India: Morning After

It seemed like just another Christmas dance in Goa's capital city of Pangim. Still dressed in their jungle-green combat uniforms, 300 Indian army officers of the conquering "Black Cat" 17th division shuffled in time to the music. Patiently the 300-man stag line waited to dance with the only women who had been inveigled to attend the dance—three lonely Goan girls. "They don't like us," said an Indian officer. "They don't want jungle green here. They want white skins."

Despite Indian assertions that the Goan people were delighted with their "liberation," Indian troops elsewhere in Goa were received with similar muted enthusiasm. No welcoming arches or banners were strung over the streets, and the few Jai Hind (Hail India) slogans painted on official buildings had mostly been slapped on by the Indians themselves, not by an exuberant citizenry. Fraternization between the Indians and the Goans was almost nonexistent. Armed Indian infantrymen, their weapons slung over their shoulders, went sightseeing on near-deserted streets.

Bootleg Water. Beyond a few shattered buildings, little destruction was evident anywhere, although India had shrilly claimed at the start of hostilities that the Portuguese were under orders to wage a scorched-earth campaign. Only real damage that the Portuguese inflicted was to blow up the main water pipes outside of Pangim. Each guest at Pangim's Mandavi Hotel last week was given a single bucket of rusty well water to shave and bathe, and bootleg water sold at one rupee (14 cents) per pail. Obviously overmatched, and equipped with armored vehicles that were little better than museum pieces, the Portuguese defenders had surrendered quietly, and by last week they were packed off to prisoner-of-war camps, from where they will be repatriated to Portugal. The Indians treated their 2,000-odd prisoners well. At the P.W. barracks at Pondá, the prisoners ran their own camp, cooked their own meals, were only lightly guarded. On Christmas Day, while Bing Crosby records of Adeste Fideles echoed across public squares, they were each given a three-course meal, ten cigarettes, and a tot of wine.

Into the vacuum left by the exit of the Portuguese have swept five boisterous, brawling political parties, each hopeful of attracting Indian favors by horror stories of subjugation under the Portuguese. One political leader, J. M. D'Souza of Goa's National Union Party, claims that the Portuguese civil authorities kept a collection of whipping canes, allowed their prisoners to pick the cane with which they were to be beaten. The Portuguese sometimes administered the beatings themselves, he said, but sometimes they were given by native Goans disguised in black masks against the wrath of their victims.