The throb of the all-embracing life, light and love

Inaugurating a textile festival in Chennai, crafts diva Jaya Jaitley shared a story: “Happening to hear some wonderful music in Benares I traced its source to a flute-maker selling his ware. A hard life for so fine an artiste! But Mushtaq the flute maker said, “I have the blessings of Allah, and Ganga Maiyya.”

To people all over India, this plural heritage is neither anomaly nor intellectualised liberalism. They don’t have to read the Indian Constitution — their secularism is in their blood, in the very air they breathe. They can practice their religion with respect for others’ faith.

We know that it is common in India for Muslims and Hindus to worship in each other’s shrines. Muslim crafts persons hold hereditary rights to make objects used in several temple rituals. The practice of sending “saadara” (shawl) to the annual Nagore dargah festival is continued to this day by the prince of Thanjavur. Nor is it surprising to learn that Tamil Nadu’s hoary Srirangam temple has a sanctum for Thulukka Nachiyar (Muslim maiden). Legend has it that this daughter of Malik Kafur saved the plundered idol of Lord Ranganatha from being melted by the conquering general. The deity honours her love by wearing a kaili (the traditional lungi of southern Muslims) on certain grand processions. 

Santoor maestro Shivkumar Sharma once remarked that if the values of her musicians prevailed, India would be a stranger to communalism. Guru and shishya often belong to different creeds. Twenty generations of Dagars have sung dhrupad verses to Siva and Sarasvati. Hindu musicians render “Allah jaane” in passionate Todi. When you remember maestro Bismillah Khan, the embodiment of purity in life and art, it seems petty to associate him with any religious controversies. Our great musicians belong to the international community of artistes who take no heed of paltry divides.

In Chennai’s tradition-nurturing Kalakshetra school of performing arts where I grew up, our teachers explained that there was no religion but truth (satyaan naasti paro dharma) and that seers and artistes of every age and faith taught wisdom. Our day began with prayers of every religion, and the chant saying, “If you feel the throb of the all-embracing life, light and love, you are one with every other being in the universe”. Ramayana, Kalakshetra’s world acclaimed six-part theatre production, was no mere Hindu epic to us. Our Ramrajya was an ideal of joyous and peaceful co-existence between the races of the north and south, Aryan or tribal, men and women. So it was for our freedom-fighting grandparents.

But today’s political swamis, yogis and acharyas seem total strangers to this light beyond. My rightful values are being hijacked by demagogues who thunder of love jihad, and of madrassas spawning terrorists. Or declare, “All Indians are Hindus”, without understanding what those two key words — "Hindu" and "Indian" — really mean. Don’t they realise that their “pure” Hindu space is not utopia, but ghetto? Moreover, I cannot understand how present-day political supremos reconcile their inclusive-progressive language of eco-technological development, with their divisive-regressive rhetoric of communal militancy.

May I end on a sunny day last month, in the now flood-deluged Kashmir? Nissar, our taxidriver, who never missed namaz even on long trips, was particularly thrilled to take me to the tiny, 900-year old, little-known Mamalaka shrine, beside the gurgling Lidder river. I learnt that when the pandits fled from Kashmir, two Muslim priests from a nearby village kept this Shiva temple open and held regular aarti, believing that Inshallah, someday their brothers will return to their homes in the valley...  I saw the lamp glowing in the silent shrine…

The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician and journalist, writing on the performing arts, cinema and literature