Colva

History

Colva was a vast barren uninhabited land with a scenic Arabian Sea beach that had beach plants such as scaevola sericea until a few Goud Saraswat Brahmin settled there as migrants, primarily in the neighbouring village of Benaulim. The mughals, the people of Adil Shahi dynasty preferred the north and hilly regions of Goa, where they built forts and defences, rather than the coastal belt, and hence had not settled the barren land of Colva. It was the Portuguese conquest which established the western regions of South Goa as a full-fledged human settlement.

Colva was under Portuguese administration, as the Province of Portuguese-Goa, from 1510 until 1961 (and was still under dispute and represented in the Parliament of Portugal till 1974/75). It was the village of the Portuguese Roiz family, the descendants of D. Diogo Rodrigues, and its villagers. The village had belonged since 1550 to D. Diogo Rodrigues, who was the Lord of Colva (Landlord of Colva). He built the first Portuguese architecture residential house in 1551 facing away from the sea and at a distance from the shore to avoid any enemy attacks from the Arabian Sea. The entire beach called Praia da Colva belonged to him.

In the 18th century, one of Diogos descendants, Sebastiao Jose Roiz, ordered the village people to plant coconut trees along the entire coastline, which the villagers thought was a waste of time as the soil was white and thus infertile and unable to sustain their growth. However today the shore line is fringed by those plantations of coconut trees. The entire Colva shore and beach property as far as Betalbatim was inherited by various descendants of the Roiz family until the late 20th century, after which parts were handed over to the Government of Goa under the post-1974 Indian administration following the 1961 annexation of Goa by India. The rest of the land was sold.

Colva is still famous for the white-washed Our Lady Of Mercy church, also known as Igreja de Nossa Senhora das Merces, that was founded in 1630 and rebuilt in the eighteenth century in the village square. It houses the miraculous statue of Menino Jesus (Baby Jesus), which was introduced by a Jesuit missionary and which is believed to have healing powers. According to local legend, the statue at Our Lady of Mercy church was found in the mid-seventeenth century along the coast of Mozambique after Rev Fr. Bento Ferreira and his party had been shipwrecked off the coast. After swimming to safety, they spotted it as it was washed ashore after being dumped into the sea by Muslim pirates. In 1648 when Father Ferreira was posted to Colva, he placed the statue on the altar, and it soon started drawing large crowds of devotees as it granted their favours. The Menino Jesus statue is kept for public viewing in October for the annual Fama (Fame) festival for which thousands of people assemble. This is the only time that it is removed from the triple-vault locks of the Church. It is then dipped into a nearby river after a procession, and the pilgrims use this water for anointment and good luck.