Reclaim Ram, Reclaim Allah... and reclaim all that is Indian, says T M Krishna
A concert by T M Krishna at New Delhi on the first day of 2020
By Vijaya Pushkarna


Indians on the streets is all about wanting to reclaim our
idea of India, seen to be under stress and threat. In his characteristic way, the unorthodox Carnatic singer T M Krishna
gave vocal and musical support to that effort at reclaiming India. He went
beyond, emphasizing on the need to reclaim our National Anthem, Rama, Allah and
our public spaces that are being violated in the name of development under the
Make in India programme.
The Magsaysay awardee’s concert was part of the
Jashn-e-Noor organized by the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust and Sahmat on the
first day of 2020, which also marked the 31st death anniversary of Hashmi. The political activist and theatre allrounder was attacked by Congress
lumpens in Ghaziabad, as his street play “Hallo Bol”, exhorting people to raise
their voice, was being performed.
Krishna punctuated his call for this reclaiming with songs that fit his theme.
“There are two parts
to the discourse. One is the reclaiming of what we believe is this complex,
incredibly crazy, incredibly beautiful, warm, embracing messy country we call
India” he began. But going beyond
reclaiming that space with all its diversities, the discourse , in his view,
was also about reclaiming “many things that
we may not believe in”, given the many different shades to what India
is.
“We may not want to claim
them because of our own philosophical and political outlook. But may be
it is also time to traverse those boundaries and claim those things as long as
they are embedded in fundamentally what is India, which is enshrined in the
Preamble of the Constitution”, he told the crowd of largely very young people
as well as the who’s who of the world of
progressive left and liberal intellectuals, theatre personalities, writers,
activists and teachers of the national capital.
The venue was the annexe
of the Constitution Club in Lutyens’ Delhi. Many who had come to hear
him were relieved that Krishna did not face the hostile Central government the
way he did a few years ago. That time the Kejriwal government in the National
Capital Territory ensured he got a stage in the lovely and spacious Nehru Park
where the turnout was the more because of the Modi government’s effort to
stifle Krishna’s voice.
Krishna spoke of the
need to embrace “those things we have limited ourselves from embracing”, and
also the need to keep asking difficult questions, and not stopping there. Ask
the questions in all the different ways we can—through music, dance, drama,
writing or even just standing on the street,
he said.
The stage backdrop had a sketch of Mahatma Gandhi with his
walking stick, and the slogan read, “In Defence of Our Secular Tradition”
Posters on the walls quoted Gandhi saying “Non cooperation with evil is as much
a duty as cooperation with good”, and Brecht saying “This is the year which
people will talk about, This is the year which people will be silent about”
Krishna’s first song of the evening was in a bid to reclaim
Ram. “Because Ram needs reclaiming too. It is important that we reclaim Rama,
it is important that we reclaim the spirit of Rama, and important that we
disagree with Rama. We can argue with him, disagree with him, and we don’t have
to push him away”, Krishna explained before singing a Thyagaraja composition
because “if anyone embodied love , devotion and surrender to Rama , it was
Thyagaraja.
He may not have reclaimed the national song, but without
making the audience jump to attention he had them wonderstuck and moved at
once. What he sang in a deeply felt way, almost caressing the song was a
melodious Rabindra Sangeet of verses from Tagore’s original in Bangla. Krishna
interrupted himself to point out the paragraphs that referred to North East,
which were not part of our national anthem.
Allah reclaiming, came in the form of the song made famous
by another doyen of Carnatic music—Yeshudas. The Arabic song “Sanatullah “ in
Raga Bhaivari left many not so familiar with the South Indian musical
tradition, stunned.
With Mahatma Gandhi in the backdrop, “Vaishnava Janato “ it
had to be for communal harmony. Vaishnava Janato became inclusive, with Muslim
Janato, Parsi Janato, Christuva Janato, Buddha Janato, Jaina Janato etc.
Referring to his own excitement and delight when he discovered that this was
the way Bapu’s favourite song was sung at the Sabarmati ashram, Krishna sang it
part in Carnatic style, and part the usual, familiar way.
Power. That was what he packed into his translation of a
composition by the very understated voice of resistance and dissent—Perumal
Murugan. The Tamil writer who has been widely translated into English and other
languages, Krishna said, took almost a year to wrap up the few verses on the
evil of manual scavenging, in the context of Swacha
Bharat Abhiyan
(That will form a later day post, perhaps with no comments
or views other than those of Perumal Murugan )
Krishna’s rendering of a composition by the Lingayat saint
poet Basava was hauntingly familiar to the youth and adults alike. It could
well have been a part Carnatic version of “Tumhi ho mata, pita tumhi ho”. As he
told the audience, the Raga Hansadhwani had travelled from the south to the
north.
The idea of language and diversity within it, was the
context for his very popular “Poramboku”,
set in the backdrop of new power plants that came up in Ennore, swallowing lakes
and parts of the sea, as it were. That was the take on Make in India, that left people homeless and jobless.
If it can happen there, it can happen here, anywhere.
What a creative protest against all that is happening in the
country today!
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