One of Gandhi's favorites among the prayer music is this While the reference to the Hindu god, Vishnu, might distract a militant atheist, I ignore the Vishnu part and appreciate, and love, the ideas expressed there. For instance, this:
Vaishnav people are those who:Wouldn't you want to be friends with such people? Wouldn't you want to be such a person? A wonderful ideal to work towards, though a tall order for most of us mortals.
Feel the pain of others,
Help those who are in misery
So, yes, it was Gandhi's favorite.
The video below is an instrumental version of that bhajan. The lead musician is Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. Way back, when I was still an undergraduate student, I spent a few precious rupees from my meager allowance to attend his concert in Madras' Music Academy. I went alone, because I could not convince anybody from my generation of friends and family to go with me. As exhilarating it was, I felt the lack of companionship that evening. I should have known then it would be a recurring theme in my life :(
But, I digress! Yes, a Muslim musician and a Hindu bhajan. How cool is that, and how awesome the music he produces is!
The music below is Ustad Bismillah Khan's powerfully emotional rendering of Gandhi's another favorite "bhajan"--Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram. Yes, another Muslim musician masterfully treating a Hindu bhajan. A few years ago, when talking family stories, I came to know that the shehnai was a favorite of my grandfather's, perhaps a result of his undergraduate studies at Benares, which was also home to Bismillah Khan and many other musicians.
I worry that such coexistence and celebrations in daily life, among the regular folks, have all become a distant and faded memory, as much as Gandhi and his messages have become.
5 comments:
I love both these prayers. But I somehow feel that still AR Rahman is giving tunes to Javed Akhtar songs the unity is there but probably it also has been commercialized.
I love both these prayers. But I somehow feel that still AR Rahman is giving tunes to Javed Akhtar songs the unity is there but probably it also has been commercialized.
The names you mention are all alien to me ... well, I know who Rahman is, but having been out of the country for long means that the only Rahman music I know is when it crosses over to this part of the world ...
But, it is the more mundane cross-religious interactions that I think of ... I remember reading news items even recently about Muslims finding it a tad tough to rent homes, for instance ... India is way too complicated!
There are plenty of such examples in music - Yesudas's Sabarimalai bhajans are immortal as is Sheikh Chinnamoulana Sahib's nadaswaram.
I actually think there is far more religious unity in India than there is conflict. There is a fringe militant element in all religions, but the vast majority is extremely tolerant and happily coexist. In very inclusive religions like Sikhism, its very common to find Sikhs and Hindus in the same family. For the Christmas and New Year masses in churches, the majority of the attendees are actually non Christians. Where conflict arises is more with Islam , partly because of history and partly because of a more militant approach.
The issue of not renting houses to Muslims is, I think, more an issue of vegetarianism than religion - many vegetarians object to non vegetarians in the colony purely on ground of cooking smells - in fact there is equally a no Bengali requirement (Hindu or Muslim) because of their mustard oil base.
India's plurality in religion is one of its positive aspects, I believe.
Well ... Gandhi's everyday celebration of any faith is on a different plane ...
I am not sure about your assertion that a majority of church attendees during those special days are non-Christians ... the years I was married, and the few occasions I ventured into the church there, it didn't seem any cosmopolitan at all, as much as a Hindu temple wasn't with significant non-Hindu crowds ...
I am not so sure about the "tolerance" either. I think that the religious could "tolerate" those from other faiths, without ever getting to know the people from other faiths.
The plurality of ideas in the public space is a wonderful thing--we debate and argue. The plurality of faiths does not mean that people even attempt to engage in cross-faith social interactions. That everyday life proceedings is how, I would think, we get to the higher plane where Gandhi was ...
But, hey, the world needs optimists like you ...
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