Carnival in Goa

Among the various colourful feasts and festivals feasts and festivals that Goa celebrates -with great eclat, Carnaval and Shigmo are the most rumbustious, awaited by the population with intense enthusiasm. Unlike 'Shigmo' which is also celebrated in some oilier parts of India, although under different appellations, 'Carnaval Goa's own, unique, and the Union Territorys contribution to India's other expressions at untrammelled revelry.

If down the centuries Carnaval was enjoyed only by the local population, today its fame has crossed the frontiers attracting thousands of people from all over India to whom this type of extravaganza is at once riotous and different.

The participation of the Goa Government and the Municipal Councils in it and the post-liberation introduction of the King Memo and his colourful procession have endowed Carnaval with a new dimenion and it is bound to attract more people every year to this territory whose scenic beauty and white-sanded benches have already earned Goa high praise.

It was in the fitness of things that the Goa Government, through its Department of Tourism, should have given a boost to the celebration of the three-day Carnival festival as a major tourist attraction. Distinctly Latin in character, a legacy of Portuguese cultural tradition, the Carnival is not celebrated elsewhere in hidhi, and it wan in decline even in Goa in the last years of Portuguese rule. Its revival and celebration with an added zest was, therefore, on the cards as, after Goa's Liberation, tourism was being developed as a regular industry. This festival of three days of gay abandon, riotous revelry and merry-making now attracts to Goa thousands of tourists from all over India.