Bonderam Festival

The Bonderam Festival or the feast of Bonderam is celebrated on the fourth Saturday of August each year. The venue for celebrating the Bonderam Festival is at Divar Island, which is 12 kilometers from Panjim, the capital of Goa.

The festival traces its origin during the Portuguese rule. Two villages on the Divar Islands, Piedalda and Sao Mathias, were constantly locked in conflict over property issues. The Portuguese stepped in and tried to resolve the issue. They introduced a manner of division of properties with flags of various nations. However, the villagers were in no mood to accept the changes and threw stones at the flags to knock them out. Each section of the village has its own float and there is plenty of music to keep the entire atmosphere alive.

The Bonderam Festival is celebrated in Goa in the memory of the protests that were made by the local villagers against the unjust and unreasonable system they adopted to settle land disputes and ownership issues of land. There were often some disputes and fights between the villagers on the Divar Island over the ownership of lands. Thus the Portuguese put up flags to mark the lines due to which the villagers were unable to capture the lands of the nearby villages. Thus they protested against this system.