In December 1961, India's armed forces invaded and annexed the Portuguese enclaves of Goa, Daman and Diu after Portugal refused to relinquish them as it had other European colonial holdings in the subcontinent. The brief operation ended over four centuries of Portuguese colonial rule with minimal casualties. India characterized the action as the completion of decolonization; Portugal, then under the Estado Novo dictatorship, and some Western governments condemned it at the time as an act of military aggression against a NATO member's territory. Portugal did not formally recognize Indian sovereignty over the territories until 1974, after its own Carnation Revolution.
India's military conducted 'Operation Vijay,' seizing the Portuguese colonial enclaves of Goa, Daman and Diu on the western Indian coast
The 1961 census of India recorded 626,978 people in the new union territory of Goa, Daman and Diu; late Portuguese counts for 1960 give a closely similar figure. The operation was a transfer of sovereignty accomplished in about 36 hours with few casualties and no mass displacement, though several thousand Portuguese officials and soldiers were repatriated.
Sources converge: 22 Indians and 30 Portuguese were killed in the 36-hour Operation Vijay, with 225 Indian wounded. India characterises the operation as liberation from colonial rule and Portugal characterised it as aggression; a UK/US/French/Turkish Security Council resolution calling for Indian withdrawal received seven votes but was vetoed by the Soviet Union. The dispute is over the legality of the seizure, not the casualty figures.
India