A memorial cross at the Panjim ferry more than a century old goes largely unnoticed in the profusion of wayside shrines in Goa. But this one bears special significance for Dr Wilfred D’Souza, the former chief minister of Goa.
In the early hours of December 3, 1901, a launch transporting 170 people from Verem to Panjim capsized in the River Mandovi, killing 81 people, many among them children. Most of the passengers on that ferry, Goa, were from Bardez—pilgrims headed to the St Francis feast at Old Goa. The scale of the tragedy must have been immense for a state with less than 6 lakh citizens at the time. The victims—who came to be referred to as the “Souls of the Mandovi”, according to historian Prajal Sakhardande—would be remembered with the dedicated Portuguese inscription on the cross put up in 1904 that urges passersby to say a prayer for their eternal repose. At least 21 people from Saligao are believed to have died in that accident.
“Had it not been for my aunt neither my father nor his brother would have survived the tragedy of the vapor—and I wouldn’t have been here today!” Dr Willy says emphatically when retelling the story. Estefania D’Souza saved both siblings, aged 10 and 12 at the time, from drowning in that accident.
Years later, Wilfred D’Souza would come to inherit Estefania’s house—the beautifully remodelled single-storied white bungalow with genuine shell windows—where he currently lives in Saligao. Though the constituency helped steer the political career of one of Goa’s most astute politicians, the D’Souzas had little connection with Saligao. They were among the original gauncars of Anjuna, given the privilege to wield the silver sickle on the first sheaves of rice which they carried in the village procession to Anjuna Church.
Like many Goan Catholics from Bardez in those times, Dr Tito Fermino D’Souza set off for British East Africa, arriving in Kampala, Uganda in 1929, two years after his son Wilfred was born. “You could count the number of doctors in that African region in those days. There were only five of them,” says D’Souza. His father ran a successful general practice and was called out often to the remotest regions to attend an African chief. In 1932, Dr Willy and his brother, Roumaldo, joined their father in Kampala, starting at the Goan School and finishing the Senior Cambridge at the Government Indian School. “The next step was to move to the UK,” but World War II was raging. So it was back to Goa for the two of them.
The journey, undertaken by steamer from Mombasa to Bombay via Seychelles at the height of the war in 1941, was not without its share of drama. “In the distance a ship was spotted. Was it a German warship? The drill was laid out and the lifeboats readied,” D’Souza recalls. But as it turned out, it was only a friendly British vessel. In 1944, his brother Orlando would make the same long journey too, but by an Arab dhow—the steamers were no longer plying because of the war—touching port at Porbandar.
Back in Goa in 1941, Dr Willy’s Senior Cambridge certificate was ruled no better than Standard 8 at St Thomas, Aldona. He eventually managed an NOC from Bombay University to sit for his matriculation and moved on to further studies in Dharwar.
At 87, one would imagine many of the details of the past can escape you. Not with Wilfred D’Souza, who recalls even the initials of the house surgeon he interned under at St George’s, Mumbai, after his MBBS at Grant Medical College. In Edinburgh, where he did the first FRCS (he acquired one from London as well) he shared a boarding house with two Russian doctors, Boris Kornikoff and Nikolai Trapenizkov. “They were carrying such a huge stash of caviar, we had it for breakfast practically every day the three months we stayed there.”
Why, I ask D’Souza, did he choose to get embroiled in politics when he was already hands deep in a successful surgical practice in Goa. Wasn’t there a conflict in pursuing both? “I was a surgeon first. The two were not in conflict,” he asserts.
Was the question misdirected, I later wondered. We’re talking here of one of the most educated chief ministers Goa has had. Yet as a politician, he was a player so enamoured of political intrigue that outwitting the opponent often became an end in itself. The analogy of the surgeon extending his deft surgical skills to political strategy became a favourite with journalists when referring to Dr D’Souza and the political turbulence in Goa that extended from the early 80s well into the 2000s. This incident, which Wilfred D’Souza relates with some relish, only underscores his acumen for shrewd strategy.
After six years in power, Shashikala Kakodkar’s government began to come unstuck in March of 1979, much to the delight of those in the Congress and United Goans Party waiting in the sidelines. Raul Fernandes, who was MGP MLA from Calangute at the time, was sending out feelers he wished to cross over. Though his medical practice was running full steam, Dr Willy was already in the thick of the political churning. Fernandes was occupying a government bungalow in Altinho just two houses away from the Bandodkar residence. It would have been impossible to pick him up without setting off alarm bells in the MGP camp surrounded by guards and official and unofficial spies. To get round them D’Souza instructed the MGP MLA to walk with his wife later in the night to the CMM Polyclinic (round the corner in Altinho), from where he would have them ferreted away. It’s another story that Fernandes failed to show up, but the Shashikala government collapsed on April 23, the same year (Dr Willy remembers the date clearly, it fell on his birthday), and Wilfred D’Souza became a central player in the events that followed that brought the Congress to power in Goa in 1980.
“I could have become chief minister (in 1980) but I didn’t want to leave my profession,” he says. That claim would perhaps be contested by many of his critics. Was Babu Naik not also in the running? “Babu would have played hell in Goa. I and Panvelcar (the late Govinda Panvelcar, D’Souza’s man Friday) opposed him (becoming CM)”. The choice fell on Pratapsingh Rane who came with “some experience of administration” having been part of the previous MG government. Wilfred D’Souza would become chief minister for two short stints—11 months in 1993 and 8 months in 1994—as Goa lurched from political instability to more political instability which came to an end only after the Anti-Defection Law came into force. After all these years, one can still detect the rancour in his voice over the incident of his being unseated as CM on April 2, 1994 by then Governor Bhanu Prakash Singh who brought in Ravi Naik who lasted all of six days.
The combative politician who hated to be grilled at press conferences and responded to questions mostly with more counter questions, has mellowed considerably with age. In his working den where he uses the computer are a profusion of photographs, among them one with the then Portuguese President Mario Soares taken at Algarve in August of 1991 and one of him taking oath as CM for the first time in 1993.
Wilfred D’Souza believes he “changed the politics of Goa”. First by defeating the 17 years of MGP rule and later by dismantling the Bahujan Samaj politics founded by Bandodkar. He is proud of the fact he represented five different parties—UGP, Congress, Goa Rajiv Congress, NCP and lastly even the Trinamool Congress. While many would see such party hopping as sheer political opportunism, the former chief minister argues he “did what was politically necessary at the moment”. History, no doubt, will be the judge of that.
