Dadra And Nagar Haveli: How The Portuguese Were Defeated

They realised that the Portuguese were better prepared to defend Daman than Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

If reinforcements from Daman were to reach Silvassa, there was no chance of defeating the Portuguese.

They decided that cutting Daman's communication lines would have to be their top priority before attacking Silvassa.

A fascinating excerpt from Neelesh Kulkarni's new book, Uprising-The Liberation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

IMAGE: Participants in the freedom movement in Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Photographs: Kind courtesy Neelesh Kulkarni

The bangle seller slipped into Dadra without any difficulty. The border guards inspected his wares and waved him through, finding nothing suspicious.

It was, after all, the month of Shravan, and it was customary for young women to buy bangles during this season.

The cry of 'Bangdi laiylo, bangdi!' (bangles, get bangles!) echoed through the streets in all the villages and towns and you would often see men with their colourful wares, seated on the ground with women gathered around them.

Wakankar was dressed like any of the other bangle sellers. He had been making his way through the villages, pretending to do business while taking note of the roads, the police posts, telephone lines, power lines, and so on.

He ventured out only during the hours when the womenfolk were too busy to look at the bangles on offer. However, on the third day, his luck ran out.

As he reached a village near the town of Pipariya, an elderly woman sitting on the porch of her house noticed him and asked to see his goods. Reluctantly, he obliged.

Liking what she saw, she called out to her daughters and daughter-in-law, asking them to choose some bangles for themselves.

As he sat on the mud-floored courtyard of the hut surrounded by the women of the house, with the bangles spread out before him, Wakankar panicked.

Not only was he unable to answer the questions they put to him, but when he had to hold the arm of the daughter-in-law of the house, his hand began to shake.

As he slipped a bangle onto her wrist, it slipped, fell and broke into pieces. The other women started giggling, and the old lady realised something was wrong. 'Whoever you are, you're surely not a bangle seller,' she said and threatened to call the menfolk.

His cover blown, Wakankar ran from the place with his bag full of bangles, exiting Nagar Haveli as fast as his legs could carry him. His career as a spy was over before it had begun.

The incense-stick sellers were luckier because their preparation was more thorough. When Gujar and Kajrekar entered Nagar Haveli as sales representatives of a Pune-based company, they carried samples, bills and challan books bearing invoices for shopkeepers.

A relative of Gujar owned a unit that had been manufacturing and supplying incense sticks to shops in Dadra and Nagar Haveli for several years, so their story was believable.

They patrolled the area for two days on the first trip, returning twice for further reconnaissance.

Each time, the effort was to gauge the attitude of the local population towards their rulers. Finding enough evidence of dissatisfaction, they concluded that there would be little resistance if anyone did attempt to throw out the Portuguese.

More importantly, they completed the task Wakankar had abandoned and noted the location of the remaining police posts, the numbers deployed and the available weapons.

Kajrekar and Gujar made detailed sketches of entry and exit points to the various towns and villages and identified places to take cover near police stations.

They marked choke points near highways from where access to Silvassa could be shut down. They also identified the phone lines which could be cut to disrupt communication to and from the capital city.

What remained now was to gather information regarding the town of Silvassa itself, where the central garrison, as well as the offices of the administrator, Captain Fidaldo, and Lieutenant Falcao, the police chief, were located.

Security was high in this area, so an unshakeable cover was required. It came from an unlikely source: Lalita Phadke.

Lalita had been born into a typical Chittapavan Brahmin family in 1925 and had inherited the extremely fair complexion of her clan.

A successful singer in the Marathi film industry, she had gradually eased out of playback singing after marrying Phadke in 1949, though she continued to sing with her husband at concerts.

She now came up with the idea of entering Silvassa in the guise of a college student and photographing police posts and other vital installations.

Dressed in a skirt and blouse, her hair tied in two braids and mangalsutra tucked away, she could pass for a girl out on a picnic with a fancy new camera.

Although she would be well out of her comfort zone, Lalita was determined to make the plan work. She knew it was the group's best chance to learn more about the town.

And she did succeed -- with one near miss. She went about town, snapping photos of the rivers, churches, temples and people.

While photographing the town square, she also snapped a few pictures of the Silvassa police post.

The guard on duty noticed this and rushed over, but seeing a harmless-looking college girl, he merely warned her off and attempted to confiscate the camera.

Knowing the game would be up if she handed it over, she flew into a rage and tossed the camera on the road.

In a shrill and tearful voice, she screamed at the guard, accusing him of misbehaving and taking advantage of a lone young woman.

The guard recoiled, panicked by the unexpected verbal assault. Visibly embarrassed, he picked up the camera and, handing it back to her, advised her to leave before his seniors noticed her.

Now, the team not only had maps and topographical details of the areas surrounding Silvassa, they also had photographs of the police post.

They still needed information on how many policemen the city housed, how they were armed and the points of entry least likely to be guarded. So they decided to send out volunteers masquerading as beggars.

Shantaram Vaidya and two old friends of Kajrekar, Pilajirao Jadhavrao and Vishnupant Bhopale, volunteered to beg in the main square of Silvassa.

The two-storey building in the main square of Silvassa was known as the office of the chief of police, but was effectively the district's headquarters as it also housed the administrator's office.

It was a majestic building with a mud-tiled sloping roof in the front and a flat roof in the rear.

There were two staircases that went up to the first floor, converging from opposite sides onto a landing leading to a wide verandah and the main offices as well as the record room and the treasury.

The armoury, the police station and the jail were on the ground floor. From a post right opposite the building flew the Portuguese national flag.

At the back of the building was an open courtyard enclosed by a fifteen foot-high wall with a sturdy wooden door embedded in it, which was kept locked most of the time.

On the first floor, a verandah ran along the front and the back, approachable from the offices or a narrow staircase from the rear courtyard.

The terrace on top of the structure could be reached via a small staircase leading up from the hall in the main building, or a rusty fire escape that ran along the outer wall of the building.

The main road from Dadra passed through Lavachha, past the Pipariya bridge over the Daman Ganga, and ended at Khanvel.

Another road from Naroli joined this road to form the town square. A few small shops and the homes of Fidaldo, Falcao and other officials clustered around this square, and a path led away from it to the homes of prominent citizens and the church.

The rest of the population of about 10,000 lived on either side of the main road.

It was in the town square, right opposite the police chief's office, that Vaidya and Jadhavrao sat down to beg, while Bhopale hung around as backup.

The Portuguese had strict rules about begging on the streets. Beggars were routinely rounded up and soundly thrashed.

On the first day, these beggars too were chased away after a stern warning. When they reappeared on the second day, they were beaten with lathis.

On the third day, Vaidya and Jadhavrao achieved their objective -- they were arrested and hauled off to jail.

They expected to be detained for a day, thrashed and let off, by which time they would have got the information they needed. However, things did not work out that way.

IMAGE: Daman, Dadra and Nagar Haveli during the Portuguese occupation. Photograph: Kind courtesy Comissao de cartographia/Wikimedia Commons

The Portuguese had realised that these were not ordinary beggars. They kept the two men handcuffed at all times and they were interrogated, beaten and threatened.

Who were they? Why were they pretending to be beggars? What were their true intentions? Frustrated by their refusal to part with any information, the Portuguese officers beat them mercilessly.

Three days passed. When the police could not extract anything meaningful from them, Falcao ordered that they be transferred to Goa.

Luckily, a policeman friendly to the cause informed Vaidya and Jadhavrao about this in time for them to think of a way out.

They knew that escape was vital and immediate, but it was impossible to attempt as long as their hands and feet were tied.

The only time they were untied was in the morning, when they used the toilet. Even then, the handcuffs were not taken off; the two men were shackled together with a single pair of cuffs.

Realising that this was the only chance they would ever get, on the fourth day of their detention, Vaidya and Jadhavrao scaled the toilet wall and escaped.

Bhopale, who had been informed of the plan by the friendly policeman, was waiting for them behind the police station.

The guard, meanwhile, waited outside the toilet in vain; it would be a few minutes before he discovered their escape.

Their options were limited -- they could either run into the jungle chained together or enter the town and find someone who could get their handcuffs off. Either plan was risky.

If they ran handcuffed, they would be able to get further away from the police post before the Portuguese discovered their escape, but any casual observer would know they were escaped prisoners.

If they waited in town to get the handcuffs removed, they would be within Portuguese territory, and vulnerable. Without wasting any more time, they decided to go with the second option.

Breaking the handcuffs entailed finding an ironsmith, and Bhopale went looking for one. However, as he could not explain why he wanted his services, the man refused to accompany him.

Bhopale had no patience for this. A seasoned wrestler, he placed the ironsmith in a chokehold and dragged him to the place where Jadhavrao and Vaidya were hiding.

Two strokes with a hammer and chisel and the cuffs were off. They tied up and gagged the ironsmith, and fled to the jungle.

As they ran, they heard a cry go up -- their escape had been discovered! All three raced towards the undergrowth as a Portuguese sergeant in khaki shorts, accompanied by three policemen with rifles, emerged from the police station and ran towards them, waving a revolver.

He fired at the fleeing men and a bullet grazed Vaidya's back, but he ran on, paying no heed to the pain.

By the time the policemen took up positions and cocked their rifles to fire at the runaways, they had disappeared into the undergrowth.

Travelling by night and hiding by day, they reached Lavachha the next morning.

The news they had escaped with was chilling. There were over 200 policemen in the Silvassa police station, armed with rifles, hand grenades and light machine guns.

The group met in Pune towards the end of July to collate all the information they had gathered and decide on a possible course of action.

Vaidya drew a map that indicated the positions of the various police posts on the road to Silvassa.

After studying it, they agreed that they would first focus their attention on Dadra, which was separated from Nagar Haveli by a strip of Indian territory, and then enter Nagar Haveli from Naroli.

After capturing Naroli, they would take Pipariya and march on to Silvassa with the weapons they managed to seize from each of the police posts.

Since their numbers would not exceed thirty, even including the volunteers of the Azad Gomantak Dal, they decided to get reinforcements from Pune for the final assault.

Wakankar spoke to Vinayakrao Apte, the regional head of the RSS, and he agreed to organise a team of boys who would ready to move when required.

The meeting identified two primary areas of concern. The first was the possibility of Captain Fidaldo getting reinforcements from Daman.

For this, the Portuguese would require permission from the Indian government to pass through Indian territory as there was a 35 kilometre stretch of land separating Daman from Nagar Haveli.

The group believed that once it was evident that Indian citizens had participated in the rebellion, the Portuguese were sure to ask for a right of way, so they could send troops in. And if enough international pressure was applied, Nehru might well agree to the demand.

The second matter was of urgent concern too: An assessment of the strength of the garrison at Daman and Wakankar once again took the responsibility of getting the information.

This time, Tryambak Bhat accompanied Wakankar. They found the easiest way to get into Daman without any documents -- they simply told the border guard they wanted a drink.

In the 1950s, Maharashtra and Gujarat were joined together as a cohesive administrative unit called the Bombay State.

Its chief minister, Morarji Desai, had enforced prohibition across the state in keeping with his puritan ideology, and soon, it became common for people to nip into Daman for a drink.

On that day, the two well-dressed businessmen winked at the guard who had stopped them and told him they were looking forward to a bit of relaxation.

Knowing what that meant and being used to such crossings, the guard waved them on with the warning that they would have to be back before sunset.

As they strolled towards the market, Wakankar noticed a border guard tailing them. So, he turned into the nearest bar and sat down and ordered drinks for two of them. The guard's suspicions were allayed and with a friendly nod, he turned away.

Later, Wakankar and Bhat walked around town, stopping sometimes to enquire about the price of fruit and conversing with random strangers on the street.

They soon realised that the Portuguese were better prepared to defend Daman than Dadra and Nagar Haveli. There were many more policemen and soldiers, and they seemed better equipped.

If reinforcements from here were to reach Silvassa, there was no chance of defeating the Portuguese or even escaping unscathed.

They decided that cutting Daman's communication lines would have to be their top priority before attacking Silvassa.

They simply could not afford an information leak that might alert the governor of Daman.

The two men made it back before the deadline given by the guard, but not before they went into a bar and had another glass of the local brew.

The guard smelt it on them and let them pass without comment. This was probably the first and only time they entered a bar or touched a glass of liquor to their lips.

The group withdrew to Pune to make plans for the final assault, leaving Kajrekar in Lavachha to keep an eye on things and update them.

Excerpted from Uprising-The Liberation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, by Neelesh Kulkarni, Westland Books, with the author's kind permission.

Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com