Punjabi hero of Goa’s liberation struggle

JV Yakhmi
Commentator and author

The 60th anniversary of Goa’s liberation (December 19) is a fitting occasion to remember Shaheed Karnail Singh. On the Independence Day in 2015, his bronze bust was installed at Government Primary School — which bears his name — in Patradevi village of Goa’s Pernem taluka by the Goa Heritage Action Group (GHAG) and Goans for Education to mark 60 years of his martyrdom. An inscription below the bust reads: ‘Shaheed Karnail Singh Benipal (09/09/1930-15/08/1955). He sacrificed his life at the young age of 25 for Goa’s liberation from the Portuguese rule by braving bullets on his chest on August 15, 1955, at Patradevi, Pernem, in Goa.’

According to the GHAG president, Prof Prajal Sakhardande, the bust was made and donated by sculptor Sachin Madge. Sakhardande is an associate professor in the history department of the Dhempe College of Arts and Science at Miramar in Panaji. He considers Karnail his god. “I have his picture at my residence, and the last thing I always do before leaving home is to pay obeisance to him. After all, he contributed to the liberation of Goa,” he told me recently.

Back in 1955, I came to know about Karnail’s martyrdom from a relative, Mohan Lal Singhi, who was a member of the local unit of the Communist Party of India (CPI), which had organised a condolence meeting in Punjab’s Khanna town, and a larger one at nearby Issru, Karnail’s native village. I was then a student of Class V at AS High School in Khanna, my birthplace.

Karnail was just seven years old when his father Sunder Singh died. He was brought up by his mother Harnam Kaur and an elder brother, who encouraged him to get educated. Issru village is located along the Malerkotla road, about 12 km from Khanna, and Karnail would walk daily to AS High School to attend classes.

In his schooldays, Karnail learnt a lot about the ongoing freedom struggle in India, and was much inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and the freedom fighters from Punjab, namely Bhagat Singh, Kartar Singh Sarabha, Sukhdev Thapar, Udham Singh and Lala Lajpat Rai, all of whom laid down their lives during the freedom movement. The folk song, “Punjab nu maan shaheedan te” (Punjab is so proud of its martyrs), was his favourite.

After finishing high school, and considering the lack of financial resources of his family, Karnail completed the JBT course and became a teacher in a primary school. Around this time, he also joined the CPI as a member of the local unit at Khanna. In May 1955, he was married to Charanjeet Kaur.

After Independence, the Portuguese continued to rule their colonies in India — Goa, Daman, Diu, Dadra, Nagar Haveli and the Anjediva island. The Portuguese were unwilling to negotiate and tried to suppress every Goan anti-colonial movement with a heavy hand. Dr Ram Manohar Lohia pioneered the Goa liberation movement, which was joined among others by Purushottam Kakodkar, a prominent social worker, who was deported to Portugal along with other leaders of this movement — Dr Tristao Bragança Cunha and Laxmikant Bhembre — and kept there in detention for a long time.

The liberation struggle continued through peaceful means, but each time the anti-colonial activists entered the borders of Goa, they were pushed out mercilessly by the Portuguese forces, resulting in injuries to many and even deaths. An all-party committee, the Goa Vimochan Sahayak Samiti, was formed in Pune in 1954 to liberate Goa through civil disobedience and to provide financial and political assistance to the satyagrahis participating in it. The Praja Socialist Party assisted this committee in organising several such satyagrahas during 1954-55.

In mid-1955, the CPI decided to send regular batches of satyagrahis to Goa’s borders and even inside it. Inspired by Kishori Lal (1912-1990), a freedom fighter and an associate of Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev, and Vishnu Dattatraya Chitale, a prominent leader of the CPI, Karnail Singh enlisted himself as a satyagrahi with the aim of entering Goa peacefully and hoisting the Tricolour, fully aware that there was a danger to life and limb when the Portuguese police would stop them with force.

Karnail travelled from Punjab to Pune, and he and Chitale joined a large group of satyagrahis who travelled from Pune to Goa on August 14, 1955. After reaching the border of Goa on August 15, they walked in a procession, which was being led by a young widow from Madhya Pradesh, Sahodrabai Rai (1919-1981), a member of the Indian National Congress. As soon as this procession entered Patradevi village in northern Goa, the Portuguese forces fired at them, with one bullet hitting Rai in the arm. Karnail rushed to the front to help her, even as he shielded Chitale from another bullet. Karnail challenged the Portuguese troops, who then shot him in the chest, killing him instantaneously.

In 1961, India proclaimed that Goa should join the country peacefully or it would be merged into India by force. After the failure of all diplomatic overtures with the Portuguese, the Indian armed forces conducted a military operation and captured Goa on December 19, 1961, with little resistance.

In Karnail’s village Issru, there is his statue, a park, a stadium and a Senior Secondary School named after him. On August 15 every year, various political parties hold parallel congregations in the village, where their leaders pay floral tributes and deliver speeches, but, by and large, he remains unsung.

Sakhardande laments that we have all but forgotten this great hero. He says there should be a chapter in the school textbooks in Goa on Karnail and his martyrdom for the cause of Goa’s liberation from Portuguese rule.

All what stands in Karnail’s memory in Goa is the one-room, single-teacher government primary school at Patradevi, with an enrolment of less than 10 students. Mohinder Singh, a cousin of Karnail, who visited the school in 2015, had stated that its condition needed to be improved and it should be upgraded to the secondary school level.

Right now, well-to-do parents of the Patradevi region hire private vehicles to transport their children to secondary schools in Pernem, 15 km away. Can’t the state government announce the upgradation of this school on December 19, 2021, the 60th anniversary of Goa’s liberation? Or, can’t the Punjab Government sponsor the upgrade to commemorate the memory of Karnail Singh, who sacrificed his life in the village where this school stands?