The Portuguese Presence In India

The author of this book hails from a Goan emigrant family and was born in British India and has had a rare exposure to British rule in India, to the Portuguese presence in Goa and to independent India, besides having lived in the United States for three years for post-graduate studies in engineering. After Independence, India raised objections to two forms of the Portuguese presence: (1) Portuguese government’s patronage over certain Catholic dioceses which had been evangelized by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, a dispute which was quickly resolved by July 18, 1969 and (2) the Portuguese political presence in Goa, Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, which India claimed on grounds of geography and Portugal claimed on grounds of history and juridical superiority,the absence of any significant desire of the people to merge with India. The author has been privy to a full set of diplomatic exchanges with India, few other countries and within the Portuguese Government, in four volumes published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lisbon, an official de-classification, on Goa and its dependencies, 1947 to 1967, some of which have been extensively used in their complete text for better understanding in the book.