Diminishing Culture Of Syncretism

Shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan was given to syncretic subtleties, mellifluous refinement and civilisational culturality that underwrote the foundational ‘Idea of India’. An idea that naturally shunned the smallness-of-spirit inherent in the ‘two-nation theory’ that birthed a simultaneous nation of religious supremacists who believed in the idea of majoritarianism i.e., Pakistan.

Bismillah Khan’s (literally, In the name of Allah) beginnings were the typical normalcy of the times. Born into a family of devout Muslim musicians in the court of the powerful zamindari of Hindu Ujjainiya Rajputs, in Dumraon Estate. At six, the precocious child moved to the ancient city of Varanasi to be apprenticed by his uncle, Ali Bux 'Vilayatu' Khan. Bismillah Khan’s uncle was a shehnai player attached to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple on the banks of holy Ganga, yet another example of inter-faith acceptance and celebration, then.

Indeed, communal tensions existed subliminally and flared-up occasionally, but it took the likes of Khan, a practising Shia to also be a devotee of Saraswati, the Hindu Goddess of music, and posit an ideal of secularism and inclusivity. A man of exquisite tenderness and gentleness once confessed that he found the greatest joy in singing bhajans to children, “The applause that I get from children when I sing the bhajan ‘Raghupati Raghava Rajaram’ (Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite) gives me the greatest fulfilment”.

It was befitting that the setting of Bismillah Khan’s genius was the ancient city of Kashi (Sanskrit “to shine”) the ‘luminous city as an eminent seat of learning’ – about which Mark Twain observed, “Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older than even legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together”.

Khan simply loved Benares and its composite culture, as he said, “I would bathe in the Ganga and then run off to perform my namaaz. After that, I’d go to the Balaji temple for my riyaaz. We lived like fakirs. There is no place like this in the world”. With such a personal belief and conviction in syncretic moorings, it was only befitting that Bismillah Khanwas selected to perform at the historic Lal Qila (Red Fort) as the sacred Tiranga (Indian Flag) was unfurled on India’s independence on August 15 1947.

Around the Ustad’s formative years in Varanasi, was another distinguished son-of-the-soil, Dhanpat Rai Srivasatava or Premchand, one of the most celebrated and revered Hindi-Urdu writers of all times. Unlike Bismillah, Premchand’s education started in a madrassa where he was taught Persian and Urdu by a Maulvi.

Like Bismillah Khan, Premchand’s life and work sought to inspire the brewing ‘Idea of India’, before it gained independence. In those days of struggle and suspicion, both Varanasi and India needed the likes of Premchand and Khan to showcase the alternative possibility of civilisational dignity, harmony, and togetherness.

But it all seems so distant, and sounds so improbable, today. Men and women of incalculable dignity, decency and personal integrity once walked the streets of the oldest living city in the world, perhaps for a reason.

Ustad Bismillah Khan is no longer there to mesmerise the narrow gullies of Varanasi with his lilting shehnai and resonate the ‘Idea of India’ with its reassuring suggestions and hope, and Varanasi too, has a very different air about it. A few years back a strange incident signalled the shifting sands of time when some students protested the appointment of a Muslim as Assistant Professor of the Sanskrit Vidya Dharma Vijnan.

An alien stridency, puritanism and hate had replaced the genteel air of Varanasi that did not behove the teachings of Gandhi, Vivekananda or even Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya who nurtured the Banaras Hindu University. Madan Mohan Malviya had famously said, “India is not a country of the Hindus only. It is a country of the Muslims, the Christians and the Parsees too. The country can gain strength and develop itself when the people of the different communities in India live in mutual goodwill and harmony”.

That the young professor of a certain faith had volunteered to read and master the texts of another faith – what could be a glorious and lofty example of secular ‘Indianness’? Like Khan’s undying love for Ganga and the glorious temple traditions of Varanasi could be joyfully assimilated with his own personal faith of Islam, without any bitterness, intolerance or suspicion – the same ‘normalcy’ was not afforded of a young man in the 21st Century who chose a similar path, albeit, in academics. A different ‘new normal’ prevails.

This ‘new normal’ manifested last week in the Maihar township of Satna district where two Muslim employees who have worked in Maa Sharda temple since 1988, were set to lose their jobs as per a government directive (even though rules state that no employee can be removed on basis of religion). That this quaint town is also associated with the legendary musician Baba Alauddin Khan (Maihar Gharana) who played sarod in front of the deity at the Maa Sharda temple, is serendipitous.

Baba Alauddin too was the court musician of the Maihar Hindu Rajput Raja’s Estate, and one of his most famous disciples, late Pandit Ravi Shankar recounted his Ustad’s house to be full of photos of Lord Krishna, Goddess Kali, Jesus Christ and others. The syncretic normalcy of Maihar and those times, too have succumbed to today’s supremacism and exclusivism.

The loss of celebrating interfaith interventions will invariably extract a heavy toll on the ‘Idea of India’. It was Bismillah Khan who felt brave enough to insist, even though he knew that he could possibly offend a few from within his own faith, “God knows no religion. God belongs to mankind, I realised this while playing at the Balaji temple”.

Many of those who are today lapping the diminishment of syncretism and plurality of yore, would do well to recollect that it was the Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Government that had chosen to give Bismillah Khan (for all that he did for the ‘Idea of India’, besides the genius of his music) the ‘Bharat Ratna’ and not to any other person who did not behove or match that civilisational, cultural and constitutional dignity.

Would India be better off by normalising ‘Unity in Diversity’ and interfaith engagement or by choosing a path of majoritarianism (as chosen earlier by a neighbouring country) is worth introspecting and pondering? Are we served better by diminishing the grand culture of syncretism that once reigned from Varanasi, Kashmir, Maihar and way beyond, is worth considering? It is a question that is applicable to people of all faiths, without discrimination.

Lt General Bhopinder Singh (Retd), is the Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. Views expressed are the writer’s own.