MARGAO
Outgoing TMC Rajya Sabha MP Luizinho Faleiro must have eyed Rs five crore funds under the Member of Parliament Local Area Development (MPLAD) scheme to realize his dream of setting up a central museum complex at Navelim dedicated to Dr Francisco Luis Gomes as a befitting memorial to the great son of India.
He knocked on the doors of all and sundry, including the office of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, hoping the Centre will accord special permission for the utilization of funds under the MPLAD scheme in a State other than the one from where the MP was elected to the Rajya Sabha.
Faleiro’s efforts, however, have partly borne fruit as the Centre has permitted him to transfer only Rs 25 lakh from his MPLAD funds to Goa for the memorial. Faleiro told The Goan that the amount of Rs 25 lakh stands transferred to the Goa government to take up the memorial project in Navelim.
The former MP said South Goa MP Francisco Sardinha has promised to chip in Rs 25 lakh from his MPLAD funds to the Dr Francisco Luis Gomes museum project.
Faleiro, however, pointed out that the amount of Rs 50 lakh will not suffice to take up the museum complex.
“I do not know whether we can proceed with the museum work with Rs 50 lakh when the project runs into crores of rupees. In the past too, my efforts did not bear fruit though the MPs had promised to chip in funds under the MPLAD scheme,” he added.
Sources said Faleiro had pinned hopes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to grant special permission to transfer the MPLAD funds from Bengal to Goa for the museum project in keeping with the PM’s avowed efforts to remove the colonial mindset from the people of India.
“My intention to pursue the Dr Francisco Luis Gomes museum project was to ensure that his works are made known to all the world. Gomes was a man who went by the sobriquet of Prince of Intellectuals,” he said.
Faleiro had drawn the attention of the Prime Minister to the fact that in 1866, Dr Francisco Luis Gomes published his now-famous novel Os Brahamanes. It was undoubtedly the first novel by a Goan among the first by an Indian and was set in Faizabad which is in today's Uttar Pradesh.
“It is a historical fact that Dr Francisco Luis Gomes propounded the concept of National freedom for India, much before the popular launch of the freedom movement in 1857 with the formation of the Indian National Congress, when he asked for liberty from the colonial rulers in India," he stated in his letter.
Faleiro added: “The words of Francisco Luis Gomes calling for freedom still echo in our ears. He said, "I was born in the East Indies, once the cradle of poetry, philosophy and history and now their tomb. I belong to the race which composed the Mahabharat and invented chess. The two works of sublimate eternity. But that nightingale which once rented the heavens is fluttering its wings against the cage which holds it captive. I ask for my country light and liberty.”
