Reis Magos Fort – Gunsmoke, Ghosts and Mario Miranda

Guarding the sea approach
A cannon and the turret typical to this fort on the
upper ramparts

Forts...... Evoke visions of battles, gun smoke, chivalry, heroism and even a touch of romance. India is replete with forts from time immemorial, everyone made them, ancient civilisations, the later invader turned rulers, and finally the European colonising powers. The industrial revolution really put an end to forts and fortifications as a pivot from which to wage war. A classic case being during the Second World War when the Germans outflanked the French fortified Maginot Line, arguably the last ‘fort’ constructed.

Silent Sentinel
A cannon with Portuguese coat-of-arms
guards the approach to the Mandovi

A fort was the symbol of power and writ and they were made for many reasons. These were primarily defensive (most Mughal, Rajput and Maratha forts), but often as the bastion of a city state (Vasai fort in the Mumbai suburbs), revenue collection (the many tiny forts around Gwalior and Central India) and symbols of primacy like the many the many fort-palaces in most erstwhile kingdoms. Colonising powers too made forts to protect trading rights and like the forts at Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai. Sometimes forts were made or extended as 'food for work' projects where, in times of famine, the ruler disbursed grain from the royal granaries in exchange for work.

the Protected Steps
from the upper ramparts to the lower river landing

Naval forts were important links in a shore based seaward defence and the Indian Coast is dotted with them. Usually made to protect important cities, harbours and navigable river mouths. These were usually sited in pairs on both shoulders of a harbour or creek, thus controlling entry and egress from these harbours. Reis Magos is one such fort, which in conjunction with Gasper Dias fort on the opposite shoulder of the Mandovi, protects the entrance to the Mandovi River in Goa. Made by the the Portuguese in the 1550’s, it rises steeply from the headland. The fort was designed for primarily two purposes, control passage of ships through the Mandovi River and regulate the use of the river landing at the base of the fort. Thus it has high turrets, typical of the age overlooking the entire approaches seaward and a fortified corridor leading to the river landing itself. It has multiple gun-decks at various levels with ports for 33 guns which dominated the area around and room for a small garrison. Like most Goan construction this fort too is built of red laterite stone.

The Lower Gun Decks
had cannon to protect the river landings

By the 19th century naval forts became less important and Reis Magos was converted into a jail for convicted freedom fighters. It continued as a jail till the 1990’s when it was abandoned and fell into decay.

Restored and opened to the public in 2012, it is site worth visiting. Apart from the history associated with the fort, it today houses a superb collection of Mario Miranda pictures and extracts from his childhood diaries.

Don’t miss this fort on your next visit to Goa, Portugese ghosts and the booming of cannon through the ages will make it worth your while, as will the exquisite drawings by Mario Miranda.

The Strategic Mistakes of the LTTE

This is the text of an article I wrote for India Today Online on 19 May 2009, shortly after the death of Prabhakaran and the bitter culmination of the battle between the Sri Lankan Army and the LTTE.

The end has arrived. The LTTE appears to have been annihilated. At least temporarily. But could a phoenix arise from the ashes? This is a distinct possibility should the Sri Lankan Government not address the aspirations of the Sri Lankan Tamil people, a fundamental cause of the struggle.

Having been the Brigade Major of an infantry brigade of the IPKF in Sri Lanka from 1988 to 1990 I had a ring side seat to some of the most severe fighting seen at that time.  I operated in and around Mullaitivu, which, as events have shown, has always been the hotbed of the LTTE and their reaction to military operations here have always been very severe. 

Due to my personal involvement then, I have since closely followed events in this civil war and what follows are my personal observations on what has brought about the destruction of one of the most motivated guerrilla forces in recent times.

Political mistakes
Somewhere down the line the LTTE shifted from being a motivated guerrilla force fighting for the Tamil cause; to being a force fighting for Prabhakaran's relevance. 

All internal dissent was brutally wiped out till the face of the LTTE was just Prabhakaran. Notice the dynastic aspirations in the positioning of his 24 year old son Charles Anthony. 

Such an organisation ceases to have credibility with the population it is fighting for because the military means to a political solution becomes the end in itself.

The LTTE (Prabhakaran) had no negotiation position; there were times during the war (particularly in the late 80's) when the Sri Lankan Government offered major concessions towards the devolution of governance to the Tamils in the North and the East. 

These were spurned by the LTTE whose position appeared to be 'Eelam or bust'; bust it now appears to be.  No government can accept such an inflexible position by separatists, thus the hard option of completely annihilating the separatists appears to have been adopted.

Flowing from the above, by continually fostering strife with no mediation position, the LTTE is bound to have alienated a war weary Tamil population. The North and East in Sri Lanka have seen near non-stop conflict for about three decades. 

Those who could fled; those that had to stay were subject to unimaginable hardship at the hands of the LTTE and the SLA. The LTTE had forced conscription, even of children; I had seen little boys and girls amongst the LTTE casualties even when I was there.

According to the dictum of Mao Tse-tung, guerrilla fighters must be able to live among a friendly population like fish in water. But the LTTE "had no audience. Without the people to listen to us, they had no sea to swim in-the fish had no oxygen."  The LTTE appears to have asphyxiated.

By continually using cease-fires to regroup and replenish and then breaching them; the LTTE lost political credibility.  This, I expect is the reason why (and correctly), the SLA has not let up in the end despite intense world pressure. The LTTE were unable to regroup and reorganise.

Military mistakes
Militarily perhaps the single biggest blunder the LTTE made was from shifting from very highly successful, fast paced, hit and run guerrilla actions to a positional defensive war.

No guerrilla army can absorb the high rates of attrition imposed by a positional war against a conventional army. The last stand is just that - the end. 

In his continued quest for power and legitimacy, Prabhakaran killed all leadership within the movement, this was obvious in the latter days of the movement when very little of the inspired military leadership so visible in the early days,   was available.