Faleiro urges expats to act as bridges

NT NETWORK
Posted on 2009-04-05
PANAJI - The Commissioner for NRI Affairs, Mr Eduardo Faleiro urged Goans based abroad to act as bridges between India and their home countries, even while being loyal to their country of adoption.Mr Faleiro said expat Goans had a crucial role to play in this regard and reminded them of the approach taken by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
He was speaking at a function organised to pay special tribute to anti-colonial campaigner, intellectual, journalists and academic, late Aquino de Braganza (1924-1986), who played a crucial role in networking the liberation movements in Algeria, Mozambique, Angola and other former Portuguese colonies in Africa.
The function was held at the International Centre Goa to mark Braganza’s 85th death anniversary. Braganza’s widow, Ms Silvia de Braganza who is based in Mozambique also participated in the function.
During the function, former joint editor of first English newspaper in Goa, Mr Lambert Mascarenhas, spoke about his second cousin, Aquino Braganza and narrated how they shared plans for the liberation of the former Portuguese colonies while Goa and Mozambique was still ruled by Lisbon in the late 1950s. “In a way, his birth in Goa was incident, he could have been born in Mozambique or Cabo Verde or Angola, as his involvement in the freedom of these diverse countries testified,’’ Mr Mascarenhas said while speaking of Aquino Braganza.
Former deputy speaker of the Kenyan National Assembly, Mr Fritz D’Souza said that the system of colonialism implied the acceptance of racism in a hierarchical order, which placed man at different levels of unfairness. He narrated his first experiences in colonial and post colonial Africa and said that another great Goan fighting for Africa’s cause, Pio Gama Pinto wanted to move on to fight with Frelimo in Mozambique but unfortunately his life was cut short by an untimely assassination. Goa University Science department professor, Dr Areliano Fernandes praised the role of Braganza as a freedom fighter, humanist, journalist and academician. He said the younger generation of Goans, born in post 1961 times, experienced what a colonial situation was and hence needed to understand the same better.
History lecturer, Mr Prajal Sakhardande spoke about Braganza and his connections to Goa and said that the state needed to recognise its high achieving sons and daughters regardless where they had spent their lives. Senior lawyer, Mr Jorge Colaco, who spent many years in Mozambique and Africa, narrated his first hand experiences with Aquino - the man and other students from colonial Africa then based in Lisbon.