WEDNESDAY, MAY 01, 2024
Jose Maria Miranda
Well-meaning people of Goa should avoid wasting their precious time, energies and newspaper space in suggesting names of outstanding Goan leaders or personalities for the new airport at Mopa. Naming it after them would be an insult to their memory because the new airport is meant to serve Maharashtra and not Goa. Besides causing great inconvenience to a great majority of Goans because of its situation at one extreme of Goa, it is constructed at the cost of precious land of poor Goans, who, far from benefitting from this new venture, may, in fact, be losers with the influx of people from across the border, taking away their jobs and trades.
Governments in Goa rarely bothered to honour celebrated Goans, who bought glory to Goa, particularly abroad. Dr Francisco Luis Gomes and Dr Dada Vaidya had life size statues in Panjim and Ponda, during the Portuguese regime. So also busts were erected in Margao Municipal Garden of Drs Agostinho Vicente de Lourenco, Jorge Barreto and Miguel de Loyola Furtado. The Leprosarium in Macasana was named after Dr Froilano de Melo. Through private initiatives, monuments were erected in Margao to St Joseph Vaz and Padre Miranda, the founder of Hospicio. But not many Goans were honoured after 1961.Busts of Menezes Braganca were erected in Panjim and Margao and of F. L. Gomes, also in Margao. Incidentally, Menezes Braganca was a great journalist, writer and author and a strong proponent of self-determination for Goa, within the Portuguese Empire. Much to the consternation of Goan freedom fighters and the Goa Governments, who consider “Freedom Fighters” only those who advocated merger of Goa into India, MB never supported this cause.
The Congress and BJP Governments in Goa named the Fatorda Stadium and the Sports Complex in Bambolim after Jawaharlal Nehru and the Bharatya Jan Sangh founder, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, respectively and the new Mandovi bridge after Atal B. Vajpayee. Fortunately, the Central Library in Panjim was named after Krishnadas Shama, considered the father of Konkani Literature and the Administrative Complex in Margao, after Matanhy Saldanha. Late Dr Wilfred De Souza crushed attempts and pleas to name the Goa Medical College after the great Goan scientist, Dr Froilano de Melo or any prominent Goan, who passed out from our prestigious Escola Medica, which produced doctors of great repute.
Luizinho Faleiro’s private resolution in the Assembly, to name the South Goa District Hospital after Padre Miranda was withdrawn at the instance of characterless turncoat Digambar Kamat. It received no support, as it could never be expected from an RSS directed Government. It was conveniently forgotten that it was he who founded the Hospicio and through it many other institutions sprung up like the Albergue, the TB Sanatorium and many other large properties, usurped unscrupulously by the Government.
The problem with our rulers and administrators in Goa, is not alone that they need to grease their masters but also that they ignore Goa’s history and how high some sons of our soil raised the name of Goa, which they have shamed by their performance, deeds and dishonesty.
