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Magazine
PAST & PRESENT
Devotions destructive and divine
RAMACHANDRA GUHA
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Instances of India at its best and at its worst…
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PHOTO: R. SHIVAJI RAO
Celebrating A diverse Tradition: Ashwini Bhide Deshpande.
I forget who it was who said that “India is home to all that is truly noble and truly disgusting in humankind”. As a citizen, and as a writer, one encounters both varieties of Indian-ness, sometimes in a single day. One morning last month
I received an email from a friend who teaches History at the University of Delhi. His department had designed a reading list for undergraduates that included a classic essay by A.K. Ramanujan entitled “Three Hundred Ramayanas”. Right-wing groups had, however, objected to the inclusion of this essay in an undergraduate curriculum. In the course of their protests they had burnt copies of the offending essay, and marched through the University issuing dire threats to those who dared teach or talk about it.
A.K. Ramanujan, who died of a botched surgical procedure in 1993, aged sixty-four, was one of modern India’s greatest scholars and writers. He was an accomplished poet in Kannada as well as English, and also translated, from the first language into the second, U.R. Ananta Murthy’s classic novel, Samskara. However, he is best known for his masterful translations of Tamil and Kannada poetry and folklore. It was he who brought to world attention the forgotten jewels of Sangam literature and of the bhakti saints of South India. He was a writer of uncommon skill and sensitivity, who handled each of his four languages (Sanskrit being the last one) with equal felicity.
Diverse representations
Ramanujan’s essay first appeared in an excellent volume entitled Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, edited by the folklorist and linguist Paula Richman. The title of the book, and of the essay, expressed a truth that must seem self-evident to anyone who was born a Hindu — namely, that there is a great diversity in the ways in which the mythic heroes (and heroines) of the past have been represented and remembered down the ages. For many of us, this precisely is the beauty of the Hindu tradition; that it cannot be reduced to a single authorised text or version. However for some years now, some other kinds of Hindus have sought to simplify and vulgarise a great and greatly variegated religious tradition. Their intention is to reduce Hinduism to certain “fundamentals” that shall go unchallenged. It is these Hindu, or more accurately “Hindutva”, groups, that had protested against Ramanujan’s essay being taught at Delhi University. They could not abide young Indians being exposed to an argument that challenged their claim, or belief, or dogma, that there was only one Ram and only one Ramayana.
In the morning I was alerted to this latest example of destructive bigotry; that same evening, I went to hear a concert by one of my favourite classical vocalists, Ashwini Bhide Deshpande. (Some readers of this column have complained that I do not ever mention Carnatic music. This is for two reasons — first, that I grew up in north India among a group of friends who were Hindustani music nuts; second, that for me to write about Carnatic music in a newspaper many of whose readers know more about that style of music than I know about life itself would be an act of gross presumption.) Ashwini is perhaps the finest representative in her generation of what is perhaps the most evolved of Hindustani musical traditions: that identified with the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana. Somewhere, and somehow, in between the hours and months and years of riyaz, she managed to take a Ph. D. in biochemistry as well.
On this day, Srimati Bhide Deshpande was accompanied by two skilled local musicians: the harmonium player Vyasmurti Katti and the tabalchi Ravindra Yavagal. She began with a khayal in a raga that I had never heard before, Gauri. Then followed a lovely composition in Durga that I was more familiar with. The penultimate item was a lively thumri in what appeared to be some variety of Khamaj.
So far, the concert had followed the prescribed lines — a khayal in a raga that was slow and serious, that required an elaborate exposition; next, a khayal in a raga that was more melodious (if less technically complex); third, a thumri. I was priming myself for the obligatory ending in Bhairavi when the singer announced that she would like now to render a Marathi abang, composed by the medieval saint-poet Tukaram, and set to music by her own mother, Manik Bhide.
Essence of Hinduism
Ashwini sang the abang with great devotion, as well as enjoyment, this passed on to the audience as well. I do not know Marathi, but from the words it was evident that this was a composition that praised the Vithal who is housed in the temple in the town of Pandharpur. In other words, it was a salutation to a specific deity in a specific place; and, as such, a superb illustration of the staggering heterogeneity and diversity that nests under that umbrella term, “Hinduism”.
There are 300 (or more) Ramayanas; 3,00,000 (or more) local cults devoted to Ram and to the other deities that constitute a pantheon unmatched in its capaciouness. It is this kind of Hinduism that elevates and refines, that produces exquisite poetry and music and art, in spaces sacred as well as secular. It is this kind of Hinduism whose study and rendition was the life’s work of the late A.K. Ramanujan. And it is this kind of Hinduism that the self-appointed guardians of our spiritual traditions seek to diminish and decertify.
P.S.: As this column goes to press, news has just come in of the vandalism of the Delhi University department by activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. Windows were broken, books and files damaged, and the head of the History Department manhandled. The “protests” were aimed at the Ramanujan essay mentioned above. The “protesters” clearly care little about history, and even less (despite their protestations) about Hinduism.
ramguha@vsanl.com
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