'Voice of Freedom' and the battle for air waves over Goa

The defiance of over four centuries of Portuguese rule was not just limited to land and sea. There was another battle which was raging in the air waves over Goa.

The face, rather the voice which defined the battle, was that of a young woman named Libia Lobo, the soul behind the 'Voice of Freedom', an underground radio station functioning from salvaged wireless sets which were used to relay the signals from the jungles of the Western Ghats region in independent India, both in present day Maharashtra and Karnataka into Portuguese-held Goa. "Voice of Freedom created awareness about the freedom struggle amongst people of Goa through their regular bulletins anchored by Libia Lobo. The radio station was set up by Vaman Sardesai and Nicolau Menezes assisted him. It was no easy task to set up a radio station with the difficulties that one encountered in those jungles," according to Goa-based historian Prajal Sakhardande.

The radio station went live in 1955, just as Goa emerged on the map of global diplomacy, as Portugal and India went after each other over the territory, which was one of the last vestiges of European colonial power in the Indian sub continent.

Libia Lobo and Nicolau Menezes were Goans settled in Bombay, while Sardesai (Libia later married Sardesai) was a radio programmer who programmed broadcasts for the central government's external civil services division.

"So the idea came, if we can produce broadcasts to beam them from Delhi to the world, why can't we do something and beam broadcast to Goa? So we wanted to keep the people informed about the day to day events that were taking place of the support that this struggle was getting from, not only from India but from all over the world," Libia Lobo said in an interview published in news platform in 2017. Lobo, 99 now, claims that the objective of 'Voice of Freedom' was to keep "people informed about the day-to-day events that were taking place of the support that this struggle was getting from, not only from India but from all over the world".

Under the dictatorial regime of Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio de Oliviera Salazar, there was severe crackdown on demonstrations as well as news material published in the rest of India. Goan newspapers themselves were heavily censored.

The broadcasts over 'Voice of Freedom' were a breath of fresh air for the local residents of Goa, whenever they locked in on its frequency during the broadcast.

"The radio transmitters and other equipment had to be set up countering the unpredictable weather conditions. It required a bold nerve to set it in the wake of Salazar's dictatorship albeit it was not in Goa but on the border village of Castle Rock in Karnataka," Sakhardande said.

Sometimes the main transmitter would be hauled in the back of a truck and operated from the forests of Amboli village, which is located in Maharashtra and close to the Goa border towards the north.

In her thesis 'Voices in the Liberation Struggle - The Case of Goa 1947-61', Anita A. Raudesai has listed the four-fold purpose of the under radio platform, which includes keeping the local population updated about the developments in the region's freedom struggle, demoralising Portuguese troops, countering Portuguese propaganda and to convey a solidarity between Goa and other regions fighting for freedom in Asia and Africa.

The station also ran speeches by Indian freedom fighters like Vinoba Bhave, who through the station urged the Portuguese to peacefully quit Goa.

On the day -- December 19, 1961, when the Portuguese armed forces gave up and India took control of Goa, Libia Lobo literally took to the skies to broadcast the victory.

"General (Lt Gen J.N. Chaudhari) came in his jeep and he said 'Kumari Lobo I have got news for you. Do you know the Portuguese have surrendered'. 'Oh' I said, 'so Goa is free. I would like to go to the skies and announce that Goa is free'. That's what I told him," Lobo said in the 2017 interview.

"So we immediately wrote down leaflets and we were told that we would hover all over Goa and drop these leaflets. So exactly when the tricolour was hoisted and the Portuguese flag was brought down, we declared from the plane that Goa was free and joined the motherland," she further said.