He is popularly known as the "Father of Goan nationalism", and was the organiser of the first movement to end Portuguese rule in Goa.

[6] In Paris, Cunha was associated with the Anti-Imperialist League and with Romain Rolland and his Information Bureau as part of its Pro-Indian Committee.

Cunha helped publicize the Indian independence movement generally, and the case of Portuguese India in particular, in the French language newspapers, such as the L'Europe Nouvelle and Clarté.

[7] The Indian National Congress (INC) invited the GNC to its Calcutta session, offering it affiliation.

[2] In 1929, he launched a protest against agents of British tea planters against their forced indentation of Goan kunbis as labourers in Assam.

[8] Bakibab Borkar, who was present at this meeting, wrote the song "Dotor bos, uthun cholunk lag" (transl.

Cunha formed and headed the Goa Action Committee, to help co-ordinate the numerous Goan organisations that had emerged by this time.

He published a newspaper called Free Goa,[2] along with his niece Berta de Menezes Bragança.

The Catholic Church denied their premises for the funeral and for his internment in the cemetery due to his open atheism.

[5] On 26 September 1986, Cunha's mortal remains were transferred from the Scotland cemetery at Sewri, Bombay,[2] and are now housed in an urn at a memorial located in Panaji's Azad Maidan.

[17][18] A sports' complex in Cansaulim, Cuelim is named after him,[19] and his portrait was unveiled in the Indian Parliament[20] in 2011 to commemorate the golden jubilee of Goa's accession to India.