*LUIS de MENEZES BRAGANZA (1878-1938)* Luis de Menezes Braganza (also spelt as Luis de Menezes Bragança) was born as Luis de Menezes in Chandor on 15 January 1878, into a wealthy Chardo (Kshatriya warrior clan) family. His mother came from another distinguished family from the same village – the Braganzas, whose ancestors were an educated and wealthy Hindu family named Desai who got converted to Christianity after the Jesuits came to Goa in the mid-16th century. Later, somewhere in the 19th century, because of their dedicated services to the government of Portugal, the family was conferred with the name of the last royal house of Portugal, Braganza. Luis’s maternal grandfather Francis Xavier Braganza didn’t have any sons. So, he agreed to appoint Luis as his heir provided that he adopted Braganza as his own surname.
Luis was barely 22 years old when in 1900, together with another reputed Goan writer, Professor Messias Gomes; he established the first Portuguese language daily in Goa – *O Heraldo*. (Read more: http://www.veenapatwardhan.com/greatgoanluisdemenezesbraganza18781938.html) The below info, I had in one of my old files: In 1910, the Portuguese parliament shrugged off the remnants of monarchical rule and declared the country to be a republic. Seven years later, this Government granted a limited form of autonomy to Goa, but, in July 1918, on the very day it was supposed to come into effect, promulgated an ordinance suspending its implementation. This action raised a howl of protest from the Goans in public life, and for almost the first time in history, a public meeting was held in Margao to protest against something that the rulers had done. The chief spokesman at this meeting was a man called Luis de Menezes Braganza, who, now in his fortieth year, had already come to be regarded as the voice of Goa. The Government gave in under pressure and Goa for a few years actually had a legislative council in which the majority of members were elected. Then on 28th May 1926, Dr Oliveira Salazar became the dictator of Portugal, and as far as Goa was concerned, put the clock right back to the era of rule by absolute monarchs. Even in the most repressive days of dictatorial rule, the one man who maintained a ceaseless barrage of protest against the denial of political rights to the people of Goa, and also against the social evils of his times, was Luis de Menezes Braganca. He was altogether an amazing man, someone whose birth and upbringing fitted him for the highest echelons of Goa's establishment, but who yet shunned all official blandishments and chose to remain fiercely independent. He was born in 1878, which was eleven years after Gopal Krishna Gokhale and eleven years before Jawaharlal Nehru, and that fact somehow places his political thinking in the right perspective, as covering the middle ground between the two, or what were then called the moderates and the extremists. And yet, as far as his crusade against the social evils of his times was concerned, he was so far in advance of his times as to be wholly in line with the thinking of today's reformers. He was the only son of extremely wealthy parents, and brought up in conventional Roman Catholic orthodoxy in a palatial house with its own chapel which has a special claim for holiness in that it contains a toe nail of St Francis Xavier. As a boy he was schooled at the seminary of Rachol and actually thought of taking holy orders, but later, as a young man, he wanted to marry out of his caste merely in order to demonstrate his protest against the taboos of his class, but was finally prevailed upon not to do so. He lived in great style, entertained lavishly, and dressed "like a dandy", and yet remained essentially a man of the people, who called himself a "free thinker" and an agnostic, who repeatedly went against the grain of orthodox opinion to take up the cause of "reason, science, freedom and justice", to say nothing of that of Konkani, the evils of caste and "biblical fables" which masqueraded as religion. He deplored timidity, and himself boldly propagated his view through editorials in his own paper 0 Debate, and later, in another outspokenly independent journal which he supported, the Pracasha. He died on 10th July, 1938, to be mourned by Christians and Hindus alike, and the fact that the Vicar of Chandor "tried to impede his burial in the local cemetery" is merely a reflection on the depravities of the times - or of colonial rule. Twenty-five years later, he was to be publicly honoured when the most prestigious cultural institution of Goa's colonial days, Instituto Vasco da Gama was renamed Institute Menezes Braganza. Later still his statue was put up in Margao, which was the scene of his activities. But perhaps the most fitting tribute to the memory of Luis de Menezes Braganca must be the Konkani poem composed for the occasion by another of Goa's sons with a special claim for a niche in its hall of fame, the poet, Manohar Sardesai, and which begins: Sogleam Poros Voddlo Tum: You are the greatest of them all. MD
