TEAM HERALD
MARGAO: Exactly two months from now on (September 30) freedom fighters, historians and citizens will remember the great Indian nationalist, Dr Francis Luis Gomes ~ originally from Navelim ~ who represented Portuguese India in the Portuguese Parliament from 1861 to 1869.
In honour of this great physician, writer, historian, economist, political scientist, who was acclaimed for his outstanding contribution to the field of liberal philosophy and economics, memorials are erected and roads named across the State as a tribute to a great personality.
Sadly, indecisiveness and indifference on the part of successive governments have left his ancestral house at Colmorod-Navelim in ruins, with all plans by historians and citizens to maintain it as a heritage monument coming a cropper over the years.
Inquiries by Herald have revealed that the Margao Municipal Council came close to acquiring the Dr Gomes’ ancestral house, now owned by a private party, way back in 2009. Resolution No 3772 speaks of the MMC’s unanimous decision to acquire the house of Dr Francis Luis Gomes at Colmorod and conserve the same.
The civic body had written to the Land Survey, South Goa Planning and Development Authority in this connection, but in vain. It had even prepared the estimates for the proposed acquisition of the house admeasuring 1,143 sq mts.
Four years down the line, the process is stuck up in the corridors of the civic body, with successive Municipal Chairpersons showing no interest in pursuing acquisition of the house.
Says former MMC Chairperson Savio Coutinho: “During my tenure, I started the process to protect the house of this great man for posterity. After my departure, things have come to a halt. I hope the civic body would take the land acquisition proposal to its logical conclusion.”
Coutinho felt that nothing should come in the way of protecting the house, even though it is now owned by a private party. “It would not cost the government or the civic body much to acquire the house. The present owner can be compensated by the government to retain the house,” he added.
Incidentally, when Herald contacted Nitin Naik, son of the owners Anand Rama Naik and Rohinibai Anand Naik, he said the house of Francis Luis Gomes and the adjoining property at Colmorod must have been purchased by his great grandfathers. “The house is lying in the present state because of a legal dispute between the owners and a tenant,” he said.
Interestingly, the government had named the state-of-the-art district library after Dr Francis Luis Gomes in 2010 at Colmorod, behind the Navelim Church, along the way to the Margao railway station, which was inaugurated in November in that year.
Dr Gomes was 40 years when he died onboard a ship on September 30 when he had left Europe for India. Eminent Portuguese writer, Julio Dantas, had commented about Dr Gomes’ legacy: “The thinkers or the wise live beyond their death. Theirs is an eternal youth, like trees forever blossoming. I wish to pay my respects to the thinker in him, as well as to the brilliance and immortality in the eternal youth of knowledge.”
