His coronary heart actually will go on. Apologies to whoever wrote the saccharine lyrics to the Titanic hit tune by Celine Dion. However I’m referring right here to an precise coronary heart, the embalmed coronary heart of Dom Pedro I (1798-1834), nicknamed “the Liberator”, the primary Emperor of Brazil.

September 7 marked the bicentenary of Brazil’s Declaration of Independence from Portugal, or extra exactly the UK of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.

To mark the event, the previous emperor’s coronary heart was flown from Portugal to Brazil and acquired a ceremonial welcome often accorded to a visiting head of state.

Brazil’s colonial historical past is inexorably tied to Goa’s, as Ernestine Carreira’s exhaustively-researched (and fortunately translated into English) e-book Globalising Goa (1660-1820): Change and Change in a former Capital of Empire underscores.

To cite one occasion, emphasising “Goa’s place within the huge buying and selling chain throughout the Portuguese empire”:

“For the reason that 1660s, the federal government of Lisbon had allowed vessels from the Carreira da Índia on their annual voyage to India to name in at Salvador de Bahia [Brazil’s capital then]. It even arrange a customs-house there within the 1730s, with plentiful provides of pepper from the Malabar coast, [later to become one of the essential ingredients in local cuisine and called pimento do reino] and cotton textiles wanted to dress a continuously rising inhabitants and likewise as buying and selling foreign money in African slave markets.”

Spices and cotton textiles as “buying and selling foreign money” for slaves. I baulked the primary time I examine it, however it comes up repeatedly.

Additionally: “We will suppose that the event of change with Brazil introduced in massive quantities of piasters and treasured or semi-precious stones, which might additionally clarify the growth within the jewelry enterprise in Goa after the 1780s.”

With the independence of Brazil in 1822, the repercussions of the “lack of the patron markets throughout the Atlantic” (quickly adopted by these from East Africa, which had been absorbed into Brazilian financial exercise from the 1820s onwards) altered for higher or worse the fortunes of these throughout “the huge buying and selling chain of the Portuguese empire”.

It “broke up the circulation of financial flows”, lowering Goa to “a modest Asian suburb, a marginal determine inside the globalised banking community which was as anachronistic in financial phrases as had been its former dependencies Mozambique and Macau.”

“Goa’s financial future was all the time linked to the fortunes of the ocean and the incoming provides of steel. After 1822, hyperlinks with East Africa grew to become much less frequent”, and there was full severance of hyperlinks with Brazil by 1826.

Anyway, again to Emperor Pedro and his embalmed coronary heart. Many historians are sceptical in regards to the ceremonial fuss over it, because it appeared just like the exploitation of a historic relic and an enchantment to nationalism by incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro. The Brazilian president is campaigning for re-election and the primary spherical of voting for the final elections was held on October 2.

“That is …..a farce by Bolsonaro, welcoming this coronary heart like a visiting dignitary. We must always ask ourselves what sort of means that is to consider historical past – a lifeless historical past caught in time, just like the stopped organ of a deceased emperor,” mentioned historian Lilia Moritz Scwarcz to The Guardian.

Schwarcz has written a number of books on Brazil’s historical past, its independence period and Pedro I.

I discovered an English translation of considered one of her books, Brazil: A Biography. The chapter “The Father leaves, the Son stays” offers with a convoluted interval resulting from a succession disaster within the historical past of Portugal and its largest abroad colony Brazil. The daddy was Dom João IV and the son, Pedro (who would turn out to be Pedro I of Brazil and IV of Portugal). Because the chapter title suggests, the daddy left for Lisbon whereas the son remained in Brazil.

However by 1821, issues had come to a head. As Schwarcz analyses in her e-book: “If he [Pedro] left, Brazil would declare independence; if he stayed, it might stay united, however would now not settle for orders from the Portuguese Courts.”

The clamour for independence solely grew. When the Cortes, or Portuguese Courts, dissolved the central authorities in Rio de Janeiro and ordered Pedro’s return, he was offered with a petition containing 8,000 signatures that begged him to not depart. He acquiesced, “Since it’s for the nice of all and the final happiness of the Nation, I’m keen. Inform the those that I’m staying.”

When Pedro obtained phrase on September 7, 1822, that the Cortes wouldn’t settle for self-governance in Brazil and would punish those that defied its orders, he’s famously mentioned to have mounted his bay mare and uttered dramatically earlier than these assembled, “Mates, the Portuguese Cortes wished to enslave and persecute us. As of in the present day our bonds are ended. By my blood, by my honour, by my God, I swear to deliver in regards to the independence of Brazil. Brazilians, let our watchword from today forth be ‘Independence or Demise’!” The date is widely known by Brazil for that reason.

I occurred to tune in not too long ago to BBC Radio3, dedicated to classical music, and was stunned to listen to Portuguese (within the unmistakably nasal Brazilian accent) being sung to a marching tune performed by a wind band. It turned out to be Hino da Independência, an Independence anthem, to not be confused with Brazil’s nationwide anthem. It’s a Brazilian official patriotic tune commemorating the nation’s declaration of independence from Portugal and was composed in 1822 by Emperor Pedro himself, with lyrics by poet Evaristo da Veiga.

The radio station had ready a programme celebrating Brazil’s bicentenary, and the remainder of the phase was dedicated to extra widespread Brazilian music.

The presenter Sean Rafferty (who by the way visited Goa some years in the past) wryly commented that the one different composer-monarch (not less than in European historical past) was England’s Henry VIII, who evidently discovered the time to put in writing songs and instrumental items when he was not marrying, divorcing or beheading his six wives.

So as to add insult to damage, considered one of his tune lyrics goes: “I do no flawed; I really like true the place I did marry.”

Pedro’s anthem has ten verses (of which solely 4 are often sung) with a refrain between every verse and an eight-bar introduction previous every verse. The music is catchy, jaunty and stirring, in brief the whole lot you’d need in an anthem.

The poet will need to have exhausted a lot of the Portuguese phrases that rhyme with “Brazil” within the lyrics. One verse (often unnoticed) even has “viril” (virile) referring to Pedro, and maybe apt, given his fame as “incorrigible womaniser”.

Pedro’s specific request was that upon his demise his coronary heart be eliminated and preserved in Portugal (the place it discovered a house within the Church of Our Woman of Lapa, Porto), whereas the remainder of his physique would stay in Brazil (the place it’s interred along with his two wives on the Monument to the Independence of Brazil in São Paulo).

Pedro was an ardent champion for the abolition of slavery, terming it not solely “an evil, and an assault towards the rights and dignity of the human species” however “a most cancers that devours the morality” of any nation. The road in Pedro’s anthem, banishing “temor servil” (one other rhyme with “Brazil”), driving away concern of slavery was “coronary heart”-felt and no empty platitude.

Luis Dias is a a doctor, musician, photographer and author who lives in Goa. He’s the counder ofYoungster’s Play India Basis, a music charity that goals to impart educating the enjoying of orchestral devices to deprived youngsters.

It is a frivolously edited model of an article that first appeared in The Navhind Occasions, Goa. It has been reproduced with the permission of the author.