Uprising: The Liberation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, by Neelesh Kulkarni

Uprising: The Liberation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, by Neelesh Kulkarni

 
A freedom struggle with guns, clandestine meetings, and songs. That makes it a quintessential Indian freedom struggle, with music by Sudhir Phadke and songs by the legendary Lata Mangeshkar and Mohd Rafi. 

India’s struggle for Independence culminated on the 15 August 1947, when the Tricolour was hoisted atop Red Fort and India was free of the British. So goes the oversimplified version of history. More than 500 princely states had still to be persuaded to merge with India, as opposed to staying independent or acceding to Pakistan—this was the last act of pettiness from a British empire fleeing its “Jewel in the Crown”, intent on destroying what they could no longer rule. Then there were territories still under the control of other foreign powers—the French and the Portuguese. 

Relatively less known is the struggle to liberate Goa (and Daman and Diu) from the Portuguese, which finally happened after a brief assault by the Indian armed forces in December 1961. Much less known is the struggle to liberate Dadra and Nagar Haveli—also from the Portuguese. Most Indians know it as a Union Territory. That a small group of freedom fighters, fighting not under the banner of ahimsa (non-violence), but armed as best as they could, overthrew the Portuguese and established an independent state in 1954, and then joined the Indian Union on 16 August 1961, would come as news and surprise to many. It is this story of struggle, planning, plotting, setbacks, and liberation that Neelesh Kulkarni has put together in his unputdownable book. 

 In 1498, Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese marauder, landed on the Malabar coast, and after much looting and mayhem, returned with goods “sixty times the cost of the expedition”. By 1531, the Portuguese had managed to lay their hands on Goa; the seventy-two villages of Dadra and Nagar Haveli also came under their control “in the period between 1776 and 1783.” How, one may wonder. It turns out that Raghoba Dada, the uncle of Peshwa Madhav Rao I, laid claim to the title of Peshwa upon his nephew’s untimely death इस शब्द का अर्थ जानिये . When Narayanrao, the sixteen-year old brother of Madhav Rao, was appointed Peshva, Raghoba had him murdered. When twelve associates of Madhav Rao, disgusted by the turn of events, installed Madhav Rao II as the Peshwa, Raghoba took refuge with the British East India Company. While Raghoba was turned over to the Marathas in 1779 after the victory of the Marathas in the First Anglo-Maratha War, he soon left and took refuge with the Portuguese. The Marathas, aware of the consequences were the Portuguese to side with the British, agreed to a treaty that returned Raghoba. Among other things, the Marathas ceded sixty-five villages of Dadra and Nagar Haveli to the Portuguese, who later “bought the remaining seven” from the Raja of Jawhar. Thus did the seventy-two villages, spread over 491 square kilometres and with less than twenty-thousand people, came to be under Portuguese subjugation. 

 The dramatis personae in the freedom struggle here were Prabhakar Sinari, the “fiery revolutionary”, who joined the Azad Gomantak Dal; Raja Wakankar, a “short, squat, muscular”, wrestler who was also a full-time volunteer for the RSS and passionate about “spreading the message of militant nationalism”; and Godavari Parulekar, cousin of renowned freedom fighter, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who devoted her life to helping the Adivasis of Thane and Gadchiroli escape the “tyranny of the British and the local landlords.” Where do the song and entertainment come in? When Wakankar, along with his friend and singer-composer, Sudhir Phadke, in need of funds to purchase arms and ammunition, approached Lata Mangeshkar, she readily agreed to a concert to raise funds. Composer C. Ramachandra also agreed. Furthermore, when she suggested adding Mohd. Rafi to the fundraising concert, he too readily acquiesced. Even a road accident didn’t deter Lata Mangeshkar from performing at the Deccan Club grounds in Hirabaug in 1954. 

The funds raised were used to procure arms from the Dark Web of the times—Hyderabad. To defend his kingdom from the Indian government, the Nizam of Hyderabad had got in touch with notorious arms smuggler and a “great personal friend of Winston Churchill”, who succeeded in smuggling “1000 anti-tank mines, 25,000 mortars, 1,200 Biretta machine guns, 3,000 submachine carbines, 10,000 rifles… and a considerable amount of ammunition” into Hyderabad, transiting the loads via Karachi. When India finally got wind and the Indian armed forces started to infiltrate via vantage points in 1948, Kasim Rizvi, the head of the Razakars, the “militant wing of the Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen”, had these arms distributed among his supporters, “with orders to carry out a genocide of Hindus.” When their bluster was busted, and Hyderabad merged with India, the arms left behind were trafficked in the black market for years. It is these arms that Wakankar and others went after in 1954. Despite the prying eyes of a policeman intent on making a quick buck, and other hurdles, they managed to smuggle a small quantity of arms out of Hyderabad. 

 The first whiff of freedom came on the 23rd of July 1954, when Dadra was freed and the Tricolour hoisted by the United Goans. The Indian government, headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, refused permission to the Portuguese government that wanted to send armed “soldiers through Indian territory to shore up the defences of Nagar Haveli”. In the space of a few months, in November 1954, the elected heads (panchs) of the twenty-one panchayats elected a sarpanch, together forming a Varishtha Panchayat, whose first act was to pass a resolution asking that the state be merged with India. In 1960, the International Court of Justice decided the case between the Portuguese and Indian governments, paving the way for the Tenth Amendment to the Indian Constitution in 1961, and the merger of the putatively independent state with India on the 16 August. 

Neelesh Kulkarni’s book about the liberation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli is a stellar work of exhaustive research and the indefatigable desire to tell the tale of the small province’s struggle for freedom. That it reads like a thriller is a testament to his articulacy.


This review was first published on The Sunday Guardian on Feb 2, 2025.

Disclaimer: views expressed are personal.

© 2025, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.