Ghoghla Beach in Diu Was One of India's First Eight Blue Flag Beaches in October 2020, on an Island With a Portuguese Fort Begun in 1535 and a Church Consecrated in 1610

Ghoghla beach on Diu island was one of eight Indian beaches awarded the Blue Flag eco-label on 6 October 2020, according to the Environment Ministry. The island off the Gujarat coast also holds a fort the Portuguese began in 1535 and a church consecrated in 1610, and the Archaeological Survey of India lists both as centrally protected monuments.

Diu belongs to the Union territory we profile in Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu at a glance, which covers how the territory is governed. This piece is about the island itself.

What the Blue Flag at Ghoghla certifies

On 11 October 2020 the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change announced that eight beaches in five states and two Union territories had won the Blue Flag from an international jury with members from UNEP, UNWTO, FEE and IUCN. The eight were Shivrajpur in Gujarat, Ghoghla in Diu, Kasarkod and Padubidri in Karnataka, Kappad in Kerala, Rushikonda in Andhra Pradesh, Golden Beach in Odisha and Radhanagar in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. A ministry release of 28 December 2020 gives the award date as 6 October 2020, when the jury announced it at Copenhagen. Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said no Blue Flag country had been awarded eight beaches in a single attempt.

The label comes from the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) in Denmark, and the ministry says it rests on 33 criteria. The Blue Flag programme’s own site groups its requirements under bathing water quality, environmental management, environmental education and information, waste and resource management, biodiversity, accessibility, safety and services. A ministry release of 21 September 2021 says FEE monitors and audits compliance with the 33 criteria and describes a flying flag as 100 percent compliance.

India’s route to the label ran through BEAMS, the ministry’s Beach Environment and Aesthetics Management Services programme. The December 2020 release credits BEAMS in 10 coastal states with more than 500 tonnes of solid waste collected, recycled and disposed of, and says marine litter fell by over 78 percent and marine plastic by over 83 percent. Those are the ministry’s figures for the programme’s beaches as a group, not for Ghoghla alone.

The Diu administration describes Ghoghla as the largest beach of Diu, with golden sand and a wide flat tidal area. It lists bio-toilet blocks, change rooms with showers, drinking water, an open gym, a children’s park and trained lifeguards with rescue equipment. The Ministry of Tourism puts the beach about 15 kilometres from the centre of Diu town.

Ghoghla since 2020

Blue Flag is awarded season by season. The 21 September 2021 release says FEE recertified the eight beaches of 2020, Ghoghla among them, and added Kovalam in Tamil Nadu and Eden in Puducherry, for a total of ten. On 26 October 2022 two Lakshadweep beaches, Minicoy Thundi and Kadmat, took the total to twelve (our profile of Lakshadweep covers the territory). A Press Information Bureau feature of 31 October 2023 still names Diu’s Ghoghla among the twelve.

A 4 June 2026 government review gives the national count as 13 in 2024-25 and 18 in 2025-26, across seven coastal states and four Union territories, without naming the beaches. We could not open a dated list for 2025-26 that names Ghoghla. The Ministry of Tourism’s undated Ghoghla page calls it Blue Flag certified, while the Diu administration’s Ghoghla page, last updated on 17 November 2022, still calls it “an aspirant” for the certificate. The Blue Flag programme says sites must keep meeting the criteria through the season and that a flag can be withdrawn, temporarily or permanently, so the Diu administration is the place to confirm the current season.

A fort begun in 1535 and besieged twice

The Union territory’s history page says Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat, pressed by the Mughal emperor Humayun on one side and the Portuguese at Diu’s gates, signed a treaty with the governor Nuno da Cunha on 25 October 1535 that let the Portuguese build a fortress in the harbour. The Diu administration’s fort page says Nuno da Cunha built it in 1535 and João de Castro rebuilt it in 1546. The Encyclopaedia of Portuguese Expansion, hosted by NOVA University Lisbon’s faculty of social and human sciences, says construction began in 1535 and that Castro repaired and enlarged the fortress with a wall about 8 metres thick and 280 metres long.

Two sieges tested it. The encyclopaedia says the garrison under António da Silveira withstood all attacks in 1538, and that in the second siege, in 1546, a relief armada destroyed the attacking force. The Union territory’s history page says every attempt by the Sultans to oust the Portuguese between 1537 and 1546 failed. The encyclopaedia adds that little of the original fortress survives and that most of what a visitor sees comes from restorations and additions of the 17th and 18th centuries.

The fort covers 5.6 hectares and stands 26.40 metres above sea level, with the sea on three sides and a canal on the fourth, the administration says. It lists ten bastions, with St George believed to be the oldest, and says a lighthouse and a jail stand on the site. The Archaeological Survey’s list of centrally protected monuments names “Fort together with the inside building” among five entries for Diu, alongside Bangli, the Tower of Silence, the Old Mosque (Jami Masjid) and St Paul’s Church. The whole Union territory has 11 protected monuments on that list, all in the survey’s Vadodara Circle.

St Paul’s, a church built as a seminary

The Diu administration says the foundation stone of St Paul’s Church was laid on 7 April 1601 under Governor Duarte de Melo, to a plan by the Jesuit priest Gaspar Soares, and that it was consecrated in 1610 and dedicated to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. The Jesuits built it as a seminary, and the cloister served as the seminarians’ quarters. The administration says “it is said” that the seminarians were being prepared to work in Akbar’s court, so Arabic was on the syllabus. The encyclopaedia dates the Jesuit college of São Paulo to 1600 to 1615.

The altars and pulpit are of black wood that the page says is believed to have come from Mozambique, another Portuguese colony. The page suggests that the shell-like motifs on the inside walls echo the shells on Diu’s shores. The church is on the Archaeological Survey’s list.

Panikotha, the fort in the sea

The Fortress of Panikotha stands in the sea at the mouth of the creek. The Diu administration says it was built by Malik Aiyaz during the period of Muslim rule to control merchant ships entering Diu, with a metal chain across the river bed that was raised and lowered to stop hostile vessels. The Portuguese added to it in 1588 on the orders of Aires Falcão, the captain of the Fort of Diu, according to a stone inscription inside, and built a chapel in 1638 to Our Lady of Victory in memory of a Portuguese victory over the Dutch, according to another inscription.

A lighthouse stands on the central bastion. The page says the fortress is believed to be connected to the Fort of Diu by an underwater tunnel. It lies about one nautical mile from Diu Jetty and can be reached only by motor boat. It is not among the five Diu entries on the Archaeological Survey’s list.

Gangeshwar and Nagoa

The Gangeshwar temple is about 3 kilometres from Diu in Fudam village, a cave shrine where Shivalingas stand among rocks on the seashore. Devotees hold that the five Pandavas worshipped Shiva here during their exile, the Diu administration says, and the Ministry of Tourism describes five Shivalingas at the water’s edge where the waves reach them.

Nagoa beach is crescent-shaped with golden sand, the Ministry of Tourism says, and the page lists water sports there.

December 1961: how Diu became part of India

Diu stayed under Portuguese rule from 1535 until December 1961, the Union territory’s history page says. Brigadier A. S. Cheema (retd) describes the operation in the Journal of the United Service Institution of India. The Diu objective went to 20 Rajput and a company of 4 Madras, the Navy was to control the seaward approaches, and the Air Force was to deny the Diu and Daman airfields to the enemy.

Cheema puts Diu at about 40 square kilometres, with no bridges across the creek in 1961 and about 500 Portuguese soldiers holding it with artillery, mortars, machine guns and the patrol boat Vega, the main defences being in the fort. Night crossings by the Indian infantry on improvised rafts failed under artillery and mortar fire. Air attacks began at 0700 hours, he writes, and forced the defenders back into the fort. Indian aircraft sank Vega, and he credits the 6-inch guns of INS Delhi with taking the fight out of the garrison in the fort. By evening 403 prisoners had been taken.

Cheema dates the main offensive to 0400 on 18 December and describes the Diu fight as over by that evening. The Union territory’s history page gives 19 December 1961 as the date Diu was liberated and says the fighting lasted 48 hours. Our account of Goa’s liberation covers the Hague case, the UN vote and Portugal’s 1974 treaty. The history page says Goa became a state on 30 May 1987, after which Daman and Diu became a separate Union territory.

Getting there

The Diu administration’s pages, the fort page last updated on 17 November 2022, give road distances of 370 kilometres from Ahmedabad and 595 kilometres from Vadodara, and name Veraval, 90 kilometres away, as the nearest railway junction. The Ministry of Tourism calls October to March the cooler months and the best time for outdoor activity. It puts Gir National Park, home of the Asiatic lions, about 45 kilometres from Diu and the Somnath temple about 85 kilometres to the west.