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

The other, Francisco de Bragança Cunha, studied in London and later at the Sorbonne University in Paris.

[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.

[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.