lit a candle 1d agoA Hindu ceremony at the end, after all those years in Portuguese public life. He lived as he meant to live. That's rare and it matters.
Their story
Narana Sinai Coissoró was a Goan-born Portuguese lawyer, professor, and Christian-democratic parliamentarian who spent almost three decades in the Assembly of the Republic and never stopped saying he was a Hindu democrat. He was born in Goa on 3 October 1931, when the territory was still Portuguese India, into a…
Narana Sinai Coissoró was a Goan-born Portuguese lawyer, professor, and Christian-democratic parliamentarian who spent almost three decades in the Assembly of the Republic and never stopped saying he was a Hindu democrat. He was born in Goa on 3 October 1931, when the territory was still Portuguese India, into a Hindu family that later profiles describe as orthodox and, in SOL's account, influential in the courts and local administration. At 18 he left for Portugal to study law. SOL records that he later said his father chose Coimbra rather than Lisbon because the university city offered fewer distractions. He took his law degree at the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra and later a doctorate in political science at the University of London. The ISCSP death notice repeats both degrees. He came to practise law and to teach.
This page is that deputy, lawyer, and professor. It is not the Monte Horeb family restaurant at Nadadouro, which later reports associate with his daughter Smita. It is not the song titled Narana. It is not any other public figure who shares the given name. He led the CDS parliamentary group from 1978 to 1991. He was not the party's president.
The school that became his academic home was the Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas, then part of the Technical University of Lisbon, and earlier, under the Estado Novo, the Institute of Overseas Studies, with Adriano Moreira as director. Coissoró became a full professor there and, later, a jubilee professor. He also taught at the Universidade Internacional, Universidade Lusófona, and the Catholic University of Portugal. In 1989 he founded the Instituto do Oriente, the ISCSP research unit for Asian studies, and presided over it until 2018. On 19 April 2018 the institute and ISCSP honoured him at the launch of a volume of contemporary Asian research, named him honorary president of the Instituto do Oriente, awarded him the ISCSP Medal of Merit, and gave his name to the documentation centre of the room in which he had worked. Adriano Moreira delivered the eulogy. He was a member of the Academia Internacional de Cultura Portuguesa and, later, of the ISCSP Honour Council.
His books sit at the meeting of colonial law, custom, and Goa. Portuguese Wikipedia lists Alguns aspectos da paisagem goesa (1955), O regime das terras em Moçambique (1964), As instituições de direito costumeiro negro-africano (1964), Os princípios fundamentais do direito ultramarino português (1966), and História de um escândalo político (2008). Sete Margens, writing after his death, recovered an earlier 1969 episode at the then ISCSPU: a thin pamphlet, História de um escândalo político, printed in solidarity with students in conflict with the colonial-training school. Former students and Adriano Moreira himself attributed it to Coissoró, who never denied authorship. The same outlet called him a Hindu democrat who, inside the most right-wing party of the early democracy, did not treat opponents as enemies.
Politics was not, by his own later telling, the first plan. In a 1998 interview quoted by Visão, he said that when parties began to form after the revolution, his wife joined the CDS at once, while his own leaning was closer to the PSD. A split household seemed a worse idea than joining her party, and he also found the PSD of that moment too large and too loaded with commitments. He was first elected a deputy in June 1976. He sat in the I, II, III, IV, V, and VI legislatures, missed the 1995 Guterres victory legislature, and returned for the VIII and IX, eight legislatures in all. He was elected for Lisbon except in the IX legislature, when the circle was Setúbal. From 1978 to 1991 he led the CDS parliamentary group for 13 years. From 1999 to 2005 he was a vice-president of the Assembly of the Republic, after four years out of the chamber. The CDS-PP note issued on 29 August 2026 remembered him for rigour of thought, force of speech, firmness of values, and a courageous defence of causes, and placed him in the fights for human dignity, democracy, and freedom that shaped the party.
Colleagues remembered a parliamentary intervention that became his calling card. José Ribeiro e Castro, recalling a group argument about whether the CDS was defending Christian democracy well enough, quoted him interrupting: "Eu não sou democrata-cristão, sou democrata-hindu." Portuguese Wikipedia says he described himself as a Hindu Christian-democrat. The point was not a slogan. He refused to collapse Goan Hindu origin and Portuguese political belonging into one label. He also kept a public life inside the Goan community in Lisbon. He presided over Casa de Goa until 2014, when Edgar Valles succeeded him. On 3 October 2021, his 90th birthday, at a lunch at Casa de Goa, Ribeiro e Castro invested him with the Grand Cross of the Order of Public Instruction under a warrant signed by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. A life film and a video de vida were made for that anniversary and remain on YouTube.
The honours trail is dated. He was made Grand Officer of the Order of Public Instruction on 9 June 1993, Grand Officer of the Military Order of Christ on 9 June 1995, Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry on 30 January 2006, and Grand Cross of the Order of Public Instruction on 3 October 2021.
Private life was as public as he allowed it to be. He married Teresa da Costa Brandão, from Caldas da Rainha, by civil ceremony at 26, setting aside Hindu customs he later said would have blocked that marriage. In 1998 he told Visão that divorce was unthinkable for him, that he still took himself as mainly responsible for the family's well-being, and that love was not only a gift between a man and a woman but a cultural knot in which feelings and the memory of a family past were bound. They had a daughter, Smitá da Costa Brandão Coissoró. Portuguese Wikipedia's 2026 personal section also records an adoptive daughter and does not name her. That name is not supplied here. For years the family lived at Nadadouro, in the municipality of Caldas da Rainha, at the quinta Monte Horeb, where they also kept a restaurant of the same name, designed by the architect Joaquim Pereira da Silva. Gazeta das Caldas later quoted Smita Coissoró as the person reopening and running Monte Horeb, with Goan, Portuguese, and Russian cooking. A Gazeta piece on the restaurant's tandoor referred to Teresa Brandão as already deceased, without a date. That year is not stated here. Readers who type restaurante are looking for that family house, not a second public figure.
He died in Lisbon on 29 August 2026, aged 94. The party confirmed the death the same day. The family set the wake at Basílica da Estrela from 17:00 on 30 August and, the next afternoon, a Hindu funeral rite at Cemitério do Alto de São João followed by cremation. No cause was published. What the public record keeps is the long crossing: a boy sent from Goa to Coimbra, a lawyer of overseas custom, a professor who built an institute for Asia in Lisbon, a deputy who led a small party's bench for 13 years, and a man who would not let Christian democracy rename him out of his own faith.
Biography adapted from pt.wikipedia Narana Coissoro; Observador 29-30 Aug 2026; ISCSP 29 Aug 2026; Visao; SOL 5 Sep 2026; Gazeta das Caldas; Sete Margens..
In their own words
“Eu nao sou democrata-cristao, sou democrata-hindu.”
Recalled by Jose Ribeiro e Castro as Coissoro's interruption in a CDS parliamentary-group argument about Christian democracy. SOL, 5 September 2026, citing that recollection. Brief spelling is ASCII-normalised; accents belong to the Portuguese source.
“Mantenho a ideia de que sou o principal responsavel pelo seu bem-estar. Seria totalmente impensavel divorciar-me. Porque, para mim, o amor nao e apenas uma dadiva entre um homem e uma mulher, mas antes um no cultural no qual estao entrelacados varios sentimentos e a memoria do nosso passado familiar e cultural.”
Narana Coissoro, Visao interview, 1998, quoted by Visao on 29 August 2026. Brief spelling is ASCII-normalised; accents belong to the Portuguese source.
“distinguiu-se permanentemente pelo rigor do pensamento, pela forca da palavra, pela firmeza nos valores e nas conviccoes e pela defesa corajosa de causas.”
CDS-PP note of condolence, 29 August 2026, on Narana Coissoro. Reported speech about him, not his own words. Brief spelling is ASCII-normalised.
“deixa uma saudade profunda, mas tambem um legado que permanecera bem vincado no Ensino, na Justica, no CDS-PP e na historia recente de Portugal.”
CDS-PP note of condolence, 29 August 2026, on his death. Reported party wording, not his own words. Brief spelling is ASCII-normalised.
Photos
1Narana Coissoro in 2009 at a university award ceremony. This is the CDS deputy, not Monte Horeb or another Narana.
Feb 2009
by People Forever
A lot of us carry that. Good to remember he held it with grace.