Place · Portuguese administrative town · India
Silvassa
The administrative centre of Dadra and Nagar Haveli (now part of the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu since 2020), on the Daman Ganga river, 170 kilometres north of Mumbai. Silvassa was the Portuguese administrative centre of the Dadra and Nagar Haveli possession from the 1783 Portuguese purchase of the territory from the Marathas until 2 August 1954, when it was liberated by a volunteer group of Indian nationalists (the United Front of Goans and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh volunteers under Francis Mascarenhas and Vinayak Rao Apte) without Indian government involvement — the only Indian territory liberated by civilian action from Portuguese rule. The 1961 Indian annexation of Daman and Diu subsequently absorbed Dadra and Nagar Haveli as a Union Territory.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 20.273, 72.996
Connections (2)
- Succession in timeOld Goa
Dadra and Nagar Haveli were taken from Portugal by volunteers in 1954 without the Indian government's involvement, and ran themselves for seven years. Goa took until December 1961 and took the army, because Salazar had made Goa constitutionally a province of Portugal rather than a colony and would not negotiate at all. The thirty-six-hour operation drew international criticism and was, in India, the single most popular thing Nehru's government ever did.
- Power passed toShaniwarwada, Pune
Nagar Haveli's seventy-two villages were ceded to Portugal by the Maratha Peshwa in 1783 under the Treaty of Pune, as compensation for a Portuguese frigate seized by Maratha ships — the revenue of an inland forest tract settled against a maritime claim. It is the last territory the Estado acquired in India, and the first it lost, in 1954.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Silvassa”. Charles Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire; the Historical Archives of Goa; UNESCO’s Churches and Convents of Goa file.
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