India became independent in 1947, but the Portuguese enclaves of Goa, Daman and Diu did not. Portugal's position was that these were not colonies at all but overseas provinces of Portugal, and it refused to negotiate their transfer. The Indian response through the mid-1950s was satyagraha rather than force: volunteers, drawn from across the country and organised outside Goa, would walk unarmed across the border carrying Indian flags. Patradevi, on Goa's northern boundary with what is now Maharashtra, was one of the principal crossing points. On 15 August 1955 — the date chosen for its symbolism — thousands of volunteers attempted such an entry, and the group that crossed at Patradevi was met with machine-gun fire. Several were killed there and others at different points along the border. The satyagrahis the Raksha Mantri named come from Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, and that spread is the historical point the memorial makes: the volunteers were not Goans defending a local cause but Indians from across the country asserting that Goa's status was a national question. The failure of the satyagraha strategy — an unarmed campaign against an administration willing to shoot — is what shifted the question towards the military option that became Operation Vijay in December 1961.