"[8][9] Following the end of Portuguese rule in 1961, Goa was placed under military administration headed by Major General Kunhiraman Palat Candeth as lieutenant governor.

Messages of solidarity were received by the Goa Congress Committee from leading figures in the Indian independence movement including Rajendra Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose.

[27] On 15 August 1955, 3,000–5,000 unarmed Indian activists[28] attempted to enter Goa at six locations and were violently repulsed by Portuguese police officers, resulting in the deaths of between 21[29] and 30[30] people.

Eventually, on 10 December, nine days prior to the armed action, code named Operation Vijay, Nehru stated to the press: "Continuance of Goa under Portuguese rule is an impossibility".

[52] An attempt by Portugal to send naval warships to Goa to reinforce its marine defences was foiled when President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt denied the ships access to the Suez Canal.

However, when permission to transport weapons through Karachi was denied by the Pakistani government, the Constellation landed in Goa at 18:00 on 17 December with a consignment of half a dozen bags of sausages as food supplies instead of the intended grenades.

[60] Hostilities at Goa began at 09:45 on 17 December 1961, when a unit of Indian troops attacked and occupied the town of Maulinguém in the north east, killing two Portuguese soldiers.

[61] At 02:00 on 18 December, the 2nd EREC was sent to the town of Doromagogo to support the withdrawal of police forces present in the area, and were attacked by Indian Army units on their return journey.

"[63] The same night Major Shivdev Singh Sidhu with a force of the 7th Cavalry decided to take Fort Aguada and obtain its surrender, after receiving information that a number of supporters of the Indian Republic were held prisoners there.

However, the Portuguese defenders of the fort had not yet received orders to surrender and responded by opening fire on the Indian forces, Major Sidhu and Captain Vinod Sehgal being killed in the firefight.

[59] The order for Indian forces to cross the Mandovi River was received on the morning of 19 December, upon which two rifle companies of the 2nd Sikh Light Infantry advanced on Panaji at 07:30 and secured the town without facing any resistance.

On the night of 18 December, the Portuguese used both aircraft to evacuate the families of some government and military officials after airport workers had hastily recovered part of the heavily damaged runway that evening.

The Portuguese garrison in Diu was headed by Major Fernando de Almeida e Vasconcelos (district governor and military commander), with around 400 soldiers and police officers, organised as the battlegroup "António da Silveira".

[52] Meanwhile, at 03:00, two companies of the 20th Rajput attempted to cross a muddy swamp[52] separating them from the Portuguese forces at Passo Covo under cover of dark on rafts made of bamboo cots tied to oil barrels.

In retaliation the Indian aircraft attacked the Vega twice, killing the captain and the gunner and forcing the rest of the crew to abandon the boat and swim ashore, where they were taken prisoners of war.

"[71] In the ensuing debate, the US delegate, Adlai Stevenson, strongly criticised India's use of force to resolve her dispute with Portugal, stressing that such resort to violent means was against the charter of the UN.

[71] By the evening of 18 December, most of Goa had been overrun by advancing Indian forces, and a large party of more than two thousand Portuguese soldiers had taken position at the military base at Alparqueiros at the entrance to the port town of Vasco da Gama.

[72] Canadian political scientist Antonio Rangel Bandeira has argued that the sacrifice of Goa was an elaborate public relations stunt calculated to rally support for Portugal's wars in Africa.

[47][page needed] Despite his orders from Lisbon, Governor General Manuel António Vassalo e Silva took stock of the numerical superiority of the Indian troops, as well as the food and ammunition supplies available to his forces and took the decision to surrender.

[75] When they received news of the fall of Goa, the Portuguese government formally severed all diplomatic links with India and refused to recognise the incorporation of the seized territories into the Indian Republic.

Later, in a show of defiance, Prime Minister Salazar's government offered a reward of US$10,000 for the capture of Brigadier Sagat Singh, the commander of the maroon berets of India's parachute regiment who were the first troops to enter Panaji, Goa's capital.

Cinemas and theatres shut down as tens of thousands of Portuguese marched in a silent parade from Lisbon's city hall to the cathedral, escorting the relics of St. Francis Xavier.

[83] After they surrendered, the Portuguese soldiers were interned by the Indian Army at their own military camps at Navelim, Aguada, Pondá and Alparqueiros under harsh conditions which included sleeping on cement floors and hard manual labour.

[87] Before the invasion the press speculated about international reaction to military action and recalled the recent charge by African nations that India was "too soft" on Portugal and was thus "dampening the enthusiasm of freedom fighters in other countries".

[93] Referring to the perception, especially in the West, that India had previously been lecturing the world about the virtues of nonviolence, President Kennedy told the Indian ambassador to the US, "You spend the last fifteen years preaching morality to us, and then you go ahead and act the way any normal country would behave ... People are saying, the preacher has been caught coming out of the brothel.

"[95] The American press generally construed the war cynically, as a hypocritical and politically motivated action by Menon, with Time Magazine dubbing the annexation 'Menon's war' and writing:[96]THE man most widely held responsible for India's conquest of Goa is not Jawaharlal Nehru, but Nehru's abrasive, acerbic Defense Minister, Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon, who apparently provided the necessary push to overcome his master's remaining scruples.

With elections due in February, Nehru and Menon have been under continuous harassment from Indian leftists for not expelling the Portuguese "imperialists" and from moderates and rightists for ignoring Red China's new incursions on India's northern frontier.

The statement emphasised that Pakistan stood for the settlement of international disputes by negotiation through the United Nations and stated that the proper course was a "U.N.-sponsored plebiscite to elicit from the people of Goa their wishes on the future of the territory."

"[101] In an official statement issued on 19 December, the Chinese government stressed its "resolute support" for the struggle of the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America against "imperialist colonialism".

However, the Hong Kong Communist newspaper Ta Kung Pao described Indian actions as "a desperate attempt by Mr. Nehru to regain his sagging prestige among the Afro-Asian nations."