By Soumya Jha
Introduction
Justice Adda’s ‘Anthems for Justice’ blog series is part of a larger project that aims to explore the interrelationship between law and music.
I have previously written two blogs on the subject as part of this four-part blog series; In my first blog post, I discuss how music has played a critical role in social movements, and in the second, I discuss how street theater (especially its music) has been an effective tool towards social justice advocacy.
In the third ‘Anthems for Justice’ blog post, we go way back in time to discuss how music became a part of reformist movements in India centuries ago. Music played a critical role in inspiring social reform among individuals and communities, challenging hierarchical structures created by caste discrimination, communalism, and gender discrimination. At the same time, it also became a source of discomfort and enragement for certain sections of the society who resisted social change.
The reform being sought pertained to the divisions and discriminations in the Indian sub-continent, birthed by the then prevailing notions of a law-abiding society. This society was characterised by hierarchical structures established by dominant groups, a system not challenged, being expected to be accepted by all.
Music became a tool of opposition, as part of larger reformist movements, to strongly address these. The reformist movements I refer to are the Bhakti and Sufi movements in India.
The musical compositions as part of the era of the Bhakti and Sufi movements characterized by strong soul-stirring writing, offered a mirror to the society, revealing its inherent hypocrisies, biases and discriminations.
We may wonder how this discussion speaks to the interrelationship between law and music. But one look at the Constitution of India, and especially its Preamble reveals the centuries of struggles, sacrifices and efforts made by those who have believed in the establishment of an equitable society.
For instance, Article 15 of the Indian Constitution which prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, race, caste, gender or place of birth, may be considered as an evolved reflection of the basic ideology of the Bhakti and Sufi movements, both of which speak to the need for socio-legal reform.
The roots of secularism, one of the foundational pillars of the Indian Constitution may also be traced back to the basic ideology behind the Bhakti and Sufi movements: a challenge to institutional strangleholds on popular religiosity; where Kirtan at a Hindu Temple, Qawalli at a Muslim Dargah, and the Sikh Gurbani are all derived from the idea behind Bhakti Movement, i.e., devotion, irrespective of religious differences. Sufi and Bhakti saints like Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, Baba Farid, Sant Kabir Das, Guru Nanak Dev, Saint Tukaram helped shape a secular culture in India even before the concept was adopted as part of the basic structure of the Indian Constitution.
Indeed, the efforts made centuries ago by the Bhakti and Sufi movement stalwarts, through their words and music to create a fair society reflected in both the Preamble and the text of the Indian Constitution.
Bhakti and Sufi music compositions were powerful. An example may be seen below:
“When you look at a stone snake
‘Give it a drink of milk’, they say O Friend.
When they see a real snake
‘Kill it’, they say, O Friend.
When a Jangama comes, ready to eat,
‘Get out’, they say.
For the Linga which cannot eat,
‘Bring rice’, they say, O Friend.
These hard-hitting lines that speak to human hypocrisy and blind faith are just one example of the vast and comprehensive literature pertaining to India’s Bhakti and Sufi movements.
These lines were written by Basaweshwara, a social reformer and a Bhakti movement saint from the 12th century, who used musical compositions to generate awareness about societal inequalities. I will be discussing his work in subsequent paragraphs.
India’s Bhakti and Sufi Movements
While India’s Bhakti and Sufi movements were birthed centuries ago, they continue to hold relevance even today. It’s interesting how both traditions, though emanating from two separate religions, found common genesis in the idea of equality and inclusivity. Both stepped away from mainstream religious convention, redefining the idea of devotion and worship for especially the marginalized in both Hinduism and Islam, respectively. And, both emphasized direct communication with God, the ultimate aim being the establishment of a personal relationship with God.
Bhakti and Sufi movement saints extensively used musical compositions to generate awareness about societal discriminations like those pertaining to religion, caste and gender. This helped create inclusivity (as opposed to ritualistic prayer performed only by certain God-men and priests, every person would now have the means to pray to God by song and hymns), ensure accessibility (the hymns by Bhakti and Sufi saints were deliberately written and sung in the region’s vernacular languages, and not in the traditional Sanskrit, Urdu or Persian texts), and thereby generate awareness about social evils and discriminations.
This blog post discusses examples from the Bhakti and Sufi movements highlighting the crucial role music has played for ages and continues to play as a tool to reveal societal maladies like communalism, caste-discrimination, gender bias and basic human hypocrisy.
Bhakti Movement
Tamil is known to be at the root of the Bhakti Movement, as Tamil Bhakti poets were already active in the sixth and seventh centuries. The flame that was lit by Tamil poets soon ignited inspiration in other regions like Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and finally the Urdu-speaking regions of (now) north India. The Bhakti Movement also gave birth to numerous saint poets in the Hindi belt, who produced extensive work in the vernacular for the benefit of the masses.
The Bhakti Movement spanned across millennia, knitting together India’s many literatures, with the main aim of alleviating societal maladies across the length and breadth of the Indian sub-continent.
The Bhakti Movement is characterized by the singing of devotional songs composed in vernacular languages (accessible) by poets. It challenges ritualistic vedic traditions, aiming towards inclusivity.
As John Stratton Hawley articulates this, “Individual gems of Sanskrit poetry may be cut finer, but vernacular bhakti digs deeper into the national soul”.
As a result, Bhakti music developed a wider reach, and even today is sung in the bazaar, at home, in temples and singing groups, and can be found on CDs and cassettes- not just in ritualistic settings.
India boasts of a range of ardent social reformers right from the sixth-seventh century (pre-India), who are known to be torch-bearers of the Bhakti movement. While the list of such stalwarts is endless, I discuss two such reformers here.
The first reformer rejected caste hierarchy and gender discrimination, using music as a tool to educate and reform the masses towards a fair and just society.
Basaveshwara
Basaveshwara was a social reformer in the 12th Century, born in Karnataka, into a Brahmin family but rejected this identity, as he believed it to perpetuate inequality and promote discrimination. His life’s efforts were therefore geared towards creating a casteless society, and achieving social and religious equality and spiritual regeneration of the masses. He also strongly believed in the equality between men and women, thereby opening the doors of spiritual pursuit to everyone, including women.
Basaveshwara was a poet who wrote ‘Vachanas’ to propagate his views and urge the masses to believe in social justice and equality, provoking listeners to rethink racism, gender, caste and class discrimination. Vachanas were poems or songs composed of simple words, though aphoristic, put together in four or five verses. They often lacked metrical rhythm, but were easy to understand and in the vernacular language of the people, not Sanskrit, which was less accessible to the common folk.
A lot of the literature for Basaveshwara’s vachanas was developed at the ‘Anubhava Mantapa’, an experience center. This was an academy of saints, Dharmic gurus, philosophers and common people of all castes and creeds who jointly deliberated on issues pertaining to faith, society, God etc.
Vachanas propounded profound philosophical and reformist ideas, providing some of the strongest critiques of social, economic and cultural practices of the time. The vachana reformist movement saw a diverse representation of poets, including women, the language and style ensuring accessibility, as they believed that there was no specific language required to communicate with God.
While the special musical quality of Basaweshwara’s vachanas could not be translated in English language, and have therefore lost their original artistic music-function, the beauty of expression, imagination and emotional content of the vachanas continue to be felt and experienced.
Several renditions of Vachanas have been seen over the years. While in the early 1900s, they were taught in Indian classical ragas by Ganayogi Panchakshari Gawai, and also his disciples, more recently, they have assumed a rock-genre flavour. A rock album titled ‘Basava in You’ was released by an artist, wherein the rendition of vachanas was accompanied by guitar and drums.
Mirabai
The second is Meerabai, one who everyone knows as an ardent devotee of the Hindu God Krishna. But there was so much more to Meerabai than most of us may be aware of.
Mirabai was a saint in the 15th century, who composed her poem-songs in the Rajasthani dialect of Hindi. Mira Bai belonged to a conservative Rajput lineage, but through her powerful musical compositions themed on her undying devotion to Krishna, was representative of a radical feminist challenge to the powerful patriarchal medieval order that contested society’s female marginality.
Mira’s desire for renunciation by rejecting traditional customs and expectations regarding a married woman symbolizes her direct opposition to patriarchy, being anti-casteist, anti-accumulation and women-centred. She wrote and sang about Sati, a (now) abolished social evil requiring a widowed woman to jump into the funeral pyre of her husband. She is known to have been widowed soon after being married, and refusing to perform Sati.
Sufi Movement
Sufism took shape not very long after the establishment of Islam, but is known to have flourished during the Islamic Golden age from the 7th to the 13th century. In India, Sufism emerged as one of the greatest contributions of the confluence of Indo-Persian cultures, adored as the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb.
The underlying principles of Sufism lie in purification and remembrance, and similar to the Bhakti movement, in a direct relationship with God. Sufism may be considered as the cultural expression of Islam, an umbrella term for a variety of philosophical, social, and literary phenomena occurring within the Islamic world. This includes a plethora of Sufi musical compositions.
These compositions tend to crisscross the micro-cultural structures of both Hindu and Islamic religio-civilizational frameworks and produce a unique blend of literary and musical forms that lead us to the high philosophical path of moral attainment. Similar to Bhakti music, Sufi compositions found popularity due to their expression in vernacular, and not dominant mainstream languages.
I discuss against this backdrop, Shishunala Sharif, also known as the Kabir of South India; A saint and social reformer born in Haveri district of Karnataka in 1819. He was the first Sufi saint to compose songs in Kannada.
Shishunala Sharif
Sharif was born into a devout Muslim family, yet was well-versed with scriptures of other religions, celebrating both Hindu and Muslim festivals from a young age. Sharif’s guru was Govinda Bhat, a Smartha Brahmin, who imparted to him knowledge of Hindu scriptures. He had followers in both the Hindu and Muslim communities, and his criticism of blind belief in both faiths continues to hold relevance even today. His songs are still sung in homes, temples and mosques, as they espouse qualities of universal fraternity and purity of thought, and blur the artificial distinctions between Hinduism and Islam.
Sharif’s musical compositions were in Sufi style, spreading the gospel of Sufi mystical tradition in simple folkloric forms in the vernacular language, and also attempting to impart a localized fervor to it by references to the village deity as that transcendental power which every individual must aim for their ultimate union with. Sharif’s music aimed at promoting religious harmony between Hindus and Muslims, and also liberalizing the Hindu social order to make it more inclusive.
His singing was accompanied by a single-string instrument called the ‘Ekatare’, and while he didn’t write any of his compositions down, they have been passed on through generations by word of mouth.
Several renditions of Sharif’s compositions have been made even in recent times; for instance, Raghu Dixit, a popular Indian musician released some of Sharif’s compositions as a tribute to his great legacy. A movie (in Kannada language) about Sharif, and his life’s interesting journey was also made in the year 1990, which can be watched with Hindi subtitles here.
Conclusion
As Maya Angelou’s famous quote goes, “A bird does not sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song”. Music for justice may not offer solutions, but it has the ability to stir the soul to seek answers, urging people to think differently, and even make a change. India’s Bhakti and Sufi saints did exactly that. Through their musical compositions, social reformers and saints like Basaveshwara, Shishunala Sharif and Mirabai (and so many more) showed a mirror to the society, revealing its stark reality, the maladies, discriminations and hypocrisies intrinsic to it.
In turn, their relentless efforts through their writings and music to create a fair and just society proved to be an inspiration for many reformers for centuries, and as discussed in the introduction, offered the possibility then, and in future, to challenge the prevailing notions of a law-abiding society.
Though these movements found genesis centuries ago, they are relevant, especially today, in a society marred by discrimination, division and the violation of rights. Maybe it’s time for us to revisit the works of these stalwarts who despite severe adversities sang about what they believed in. While some present-day artists continue to showcase the exceptional works from the Bhakti and Sufi movements, the younger generations should be told their stories.
This is exactly why Justice Adda initiated the ‘Anthems for Justice’ project- to tell (or re-tell) these fascinating and impactful stories.
Justice Adda aims for justice to be made more accessible to people through its various projects. On this, the ‘Anthems for Justice’ project aims to bring to notice the impact music can have on accessing justice, thereby improving legal literacy in India. We, in this respect, are attempting to initiate fresh conversations, as well as revive existing ones around the subject, with the hope and aim to garner interest from readers and patrons to collaborate with us in this effort. Soumya Jha is a New Delhi-based lawyer and musician. She holds an LLM in international and comparative law from the National University of Singapore and recently completed a course in music production from the Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication.
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