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.
