INDIA BEATS
Tradition at a cost
DEEPA GANESH
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For the community of nomadic performers in Karnataka, keeping venerated folk forms alive is a thankless task.
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I stood there, gripped by the devotion in his song…
Photo: Bhagya Prakash K.
Roving minstrels: Lingaraju (right) and Durgappa.
I let it pass assuming that it was a case of an overworked imagination. If you hear a robust voice singing vachanas (12th Century poetry by Veerashaivas), supported by an equally full-bodied harmonium, and that too on a hectic morn
ing of a weekday when you feel exactly like a nervous breakdown, such a wraithlike phenomenon would surely be considered a figment of one’s imagination. It was also a fact that in my mind, art no longer inhabited urban, public spaces. I was a dweller of my imagined ethereal world for barely 10 seconds, for, the voice was too close to not be true, at my doorstep. I rushed out to find these two young boys — one a hagaluveshadhari, who was wearing a Hanuman costume, and the o
ther belting out vachanas set to chaste Hindustani ragas.
Song for the soul
I stood there, gripped by the devotion in his song, even as I wondered how he could become so one with his music with all the city clamour around him. “Shall I sing another, akka?” he asked with such earnestness that it
was hard for me to refuse, though I was fully aware of the menacing clock. It was a dasara pada in raga Megh and he was visibly excited that I could make some sense of his music. That became the starting point to our
conversation and as I rightly guessed, he had been trained at the ashram run by the blind visionary Puttaraj Gawai, who has trained thousands of destitute children.
According to Raju, his ancestors migrated to Karnataka from Andhra Pradesh way back in the 12th Century. This community of traditional performers, a la roving minstrels, were sent across Karnataka by the vachanakaras, at the height
of the vachana movement, and hence doubled as propagators too. Forgotten folk forms such as Burra Kathe, Hagaluvesha, Baalasantha, Bairagi, Malasanyasi, Goravaiah, Kurukurumaama and many others rest with this community. “We are a
nomadic lot. We travel mostly to the villages. They take good care of us. Even if they have nothing to offer us in kind, they give us food to eat and grains to take home,” says M.S. Lingaraju, who is a Class V dropout.
Though most of them travel, the older people in the family as well as the women and children are left behind at home. They hold on to the little patches of land with their dear life, given to them by generous patrons. When there is that occasional munificent rain, they manage to grow some paddy or jowar on it. Else, they have to depend on alms.
“We’ve been living here for several hundred years, but we’ve been denied even basic rights. We can neither vote nor can our children go to school,” laments Durgappa. Durgappa explains how they’ve lived on for centuries without a caste tag and hence have been left out of all the government’s developmental programmes. “For a long time, we weren’t even allowed into schools, because we didn’t know what to say in the caste column…,” adds Lingaraju.
A little progress
Only recently, when Dharam Singh was the chief minister of Karnataka, these traditional performers organised themselves, approached him and explained their plight. As a result, they have now been brought into the fold of the Budaga Jangama caste. “But that hasn’t made a great difference to our condition,” says Durgappa.
Durgappa, Lingaraju and their like, with all their miseries, sing with such fervour that it touches the soul. What is it that keeps their faith intact? “We have been constantly told that we are servants of God and we should go about it selflessly. We try hard to feel satisfied with what people drop into our jolige (alms sack). But when our children go hungry to bed, it’s difficult not to feel cheated,” explains Lingaraju, trying hard to hold back his tears.
This talented community of musicians have been largely restricted to the streets. Music and dance have just been handed down through the generations, though none of them can actually say how their knowledge in these genres is so sound. “We carry this burden of tradition that has to be taken forward. And at what cost?” The duo look worried.
India Beats features stories of the unusual, the exotic and the extraordinary.
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