To mark 500 years of its existence, a new English translation of the Foral revisits its provisions and what they reveal about Goan communities under early Portuguese rule
VINIKA VISWAMBHARAN
NT BUZZ
On September 16, 1526, a document was agreed upon in Goa that recorded the terms of a relationship between the Portuguese administration and local Goan communities. Known as the Foral, it set down provisions relating to land, cultivation, inheritance, taxation and village administration. It was issued by the Comptroller of the Exchequer in Portuguese India, Afonso Mexia, following negotiations with 31 ‘ganvkars’ of Tiswadi.
Five centuries later, the Foral is being revisited through a new translation and commentary that asks what it reveals about the people who negotiated
its terms.
‘The First Constitution of Goa: The Foral of 1526’, edited and translated by historians Dale Luis Menezes and Miguel Rodrigues Lourenço, with commentary by Menezes, brings a new English translation of the 1526 document to contemporary readers. Published by a Margao-based publisher Under the Peepal Tree, in association with The Dogears Bookshop, Margao, it will be available from September 16, exactly 500 years after the Foral was concluded.
For Menezes, calling the Foral Goa’s “first constitution” changes the way the political history of early Portuguese Goa can be understood. “For decades now, scholars and activists have only focused on power, particularly on those who ruled,” he says. “But societies, whether in history or in the present, function not only through the powerful but also those down the pecking order.”
That, he argues, is where the significance of the Foral lies. Recent scholarship has increasingly examined how power is negotiated rather than simply imposed. “Power is something that the powerless tend to negotiate with the powerful,” he notes, adding that the powerful themselves may have reasons to negotiate.
In this reading, the Foral restores historical agency to Goan communities. Menezes believes the word “constitution” itself can be understood in two ways. “One is the document as a written charter, which is very rare in pre-modern India. The other is the constitution in the sense of “putting together”, or constituting, a society that is governed by a government,” he explains.
The distinction is important because the agreement was not simply a matter of Portuguese authorities issuing orders to local communities. Menezes believes the ‘ganvkars’ had considerable influence in determining its terms.
“At the negotiating table we often find surprises!” he says. The Foral, he points out, accepted many local customs and “usages” as legal facts. Although the precise nature of the deliberations between the Portuguese officials and Goans is not known, the resulting document records a series of agreed terms.
The document’s continued use, Menezes argues, is also significant. Its provisions were invoked and contested by Goan communities in their dealings with the colonial administration, showing that the Foral continued to have a role in negotiations over local rights and arrangements. He emphasises that focusing only on colonial power can obscure the everyday negotiations through which Goan society continued to function. “By placing power as the sole framework for analysing history, we lose sight of the finer details,” he says.
The same historical approach, he argues, is needed when examining the Comunidades, which are often presented as quaint remnants of an idyllic old Goa. “The Foral is a political document precisely because it can be located in historical time. That is where we have to begin for a better understanding of the Comunidades,” he says.
The provision concerning the rationalisation of coconut cultivation was what surprised Menezes most during his research, but it was the document’s broader pragmatism that stayed with him. “It is time we give the document the attention it deserves!” he says.
Bringing the document to a modern readership also meant confronting the difficulties of translating a text written five centuries ago.“To ensure that we are as close as possible to the original meaning and intent, we have brought to bear our archival knowledge as well as our training in the historian’s craft,” says Menezes. The translation, he adds, maintains a balance between the old and the new, with footnotes helping address the difficult technicalities and
semantic questions.
Menezes hopes that the Foral’s return to public attention will lead to more questions about Goa’s past. “I hope that a new generation in Goa will feel motivated to devote themselves to the study of history,” he says.
