A good way to understand what a confident Hinduism looks like and why the BJP’s Hindutva and hyper-nationalism, so grounded in insecurities and resentments, do not — and may not — find much of an echo in the south is to attend the December “season” in Chennai. Every year, roughly between late November and early January, scores of sabhas in this city play host to thousands of Carnatic music concerts, but also Bharatanatyam dance recitals, scholarly lectures and demonstrations, and other cultural and religious performances.
While its roots lie in the freedom struggle (specifically in the music conference and concerts organised in 1927 to coincide with the annual session of the Indian National Congress in Madras), the Chennai Music Festival has become as much a social as a cultural event for the city and the diaspora.
The “season” is now regarded as one of the largest cultural events in the world, all the more notable because it has developed organically, is entirely organised by patrons and connoisseurs, and owes nothing to any sort of government sponsorship. The atmosphere in the festival venues is steeped in tradition and Hindu religiosity. Songs and dances are almost entirely devotional. Images of Saraswathi and other Hindu gods and goddesses are highly visible on and around the stages.
Silk saris and jasmine flowers in their hair for women and kurtas and dhotis for men are standard concert attire even for the young, and performers prominently sport vibhuti and other marks of their Hindu faith. Against this backdrop, consider S Sowmya’s sublime kutcheri at the prestigious Music Academy — one of a dozen that I savoured over these past two weeks in Chennai. Sowmya is amongst the top-flight of Carnatic vocalists today and at 50-plus is no thrusting radical.
For her centrepiece ragam-tanam-pallavi, Sowmya chose Paraj, a ragam that she noted has roots in Persian and Arabian music. Her apposite Tamil pallavi (equivalent to the bandish in the Hindustani tradition) “paraspara anbinal vazhume uravugal valarum” cherished cross-cultural bonds based on mutual respect and love. As if to drive home her point, Sowmya rendered her ragamalika in ragas originating in the Middle East including Huseni, Hejjaji, and Navroz. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this recital was worth at least a few hundred. In one spellbinding hour, Sowmya showcased how a secure, fearless tradition confidently draws on other cultures without fearing for its soul.
Over two centuries ago, Sowmya’s forerunners had adapted the European violin into Carnatic music and the 18th century composer Muthuswami Dikshitar had experimented with western scales. No anxieties then in this staunchly Hindu classical genre over “colonial” let alone “Islamic” influences. But the Chennai season displays more than just a robust openness to the world. By contrast to Hindutva champions whose cultural horizon often appears limited to the Hindi-speaking belt, and without meaning to gloss over its failings (notably, a Brahmin-centric elitism), the Carnatic world embraces a pan-Indian inclusiveness regardless of religion, language, or region.
Despite its staunchly orthodox flavour and the occasional episode of nasty bigotry, the Carnatic scene has featured Muslims (such as nadaswaram virtuoso Sheik Chinna Moulana) and Christians (Yesudas, the American Jon Higgins) in its highest ranks. Season concerts around Christmas Day will often include songs dedicated to Jesus (albeit a few years ago a Hindu fundamentalist outfit stoked a vicious social media campaign against Carnatic musicians who had dared to perform Christian devotionals). Muslim nadaswaram players still play at the head of processions for many prominent temples in Tamil Nadu.
Former President A P J Abdul Kalam relished playing Carnatic on the veena. Recently, leading Carnatic vocalist Sanjay Subrahmanyan released an album of Tamil Sufi songs jointly sung with a practising fakir. The playlist of the average Carnatic kutcheri spans virtually every major South Indian tongue. Telugu is the most prominent (the famed trinity of Carnatic composers composed mainly in this language despite living in and around Thanjavur) but compositions in Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada, and even Malayalam figure. But what is remarkable is the extent to which Carnatic musicians routinely reach beyond the south. In her heyday, M S Subbulakshmi famously used to move audiences (including Mahatma Gandhi) with her rendition of Meera bhajans.
Krithis in Hindustani composed by Swati Tirunal, the 19th century Maharaja of Travancore, feature in the Carnatic concert repertoire today, as do verses from the 12th century Gita Govinda of Jayadeva, a Sanskrit poet in the Oriya court, Marathi abhangs composed by the varkari sants, and even the occasional Rabindra Sangeet. In the concert mentioned above, Sowmya briefly sketched the Hindustani version of Paraj in her alapanai to contrast it to the Carnatic.
(One has to go back more than a century to the legendary Abdul Karim Khan to find a north Indian musician of equivalent standing rendering Carnatic ragas, not to speak of actually singing in a South Indian language.) Last week, I sat in the audience of the Narada Gana Sabha as the Trichur Brothers led the mostly Tamil audience in a full-throated rendition of the Bengali “Vande Mataram” in a Carnatic idiom to conclude their concert — a moving display of patriotism that had little whatsoever in common with the hard nationalism of the Hindu right. Most Indians acknowledge that Hinduism in the south is more deep-rooted and “authentic” than anywhere else in the country.
Even Narendra Modi has implicitly nodded to this by reaching for the symbolism of the Tamil sengol at the opening of the new Parliament complex and staging the Tamil Kashi Sangamams to burnish his regime’s Hindu credentials. And yet it is precisely in the south that Hindutva is struggling to take hold. The fact is, both Hindutva and its twin, chest-thumping jingoism, are rooted in insecurity and a lack of self-belief. Perhaps the experience of being overrun and ruled over by Muslim invaders for nearly 500 years and the traumas of Partition have scarred north Indian Hindus and left them with deep-seated anxieties over the vigour of their own religious and cultural traditions. Hence, the craving for government — or, sometimes, even the mob — to attack outside influences and fellow Indians who profess Islam or other creeds.
Of course, Hinduism in the south is not without its black spots. Social reform movements in the south have stalled after empowering the more privileged backward castes whereas Dalits and extremely backward classes seem to have travelled further along the arc of social justice in the north. But what the Hinduism of the south manifests is that one can be deeply devotional without denigrating other faiths, steeped in one’s own tradition while relishing the richness of others and welcoming their influence, and proudly patriotic without being aggressively jingoistic.
Surely, BJP’s Tamil Nadu chief K Annamalai can arrange for some front-row seats for his northern counterparts, including the prime minister himself, to come down and listen to the strains of a more secure and confident music — and Hinduism.
The writer is a private equity investor and Carnatic music enthusiast
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