Mockingbirds are best known for mimicking the songs of
other birds, often loudly and in rapid succession. They symbolise both gay
abandon and innate mirth.
Harper Lee, in a celebrated novel, used the imagery to
depict a black man as a veritable mockingbird in the racially segregated
state of Alabama and his brush with death by an all-white kangaroo court
on a false charge of rape. The unfortunate state of Gujarat has had its
share of mockingbirds.
Gujarat is, after all, where Rasoolan Bai, Ustad Fayyaz
Khan, Wali Dakhani and Ahsan Jaffri had sung paeans to syncretic icons
like Krishna and Radha, Buddha and Meera. This is where Begum Akhtar gave
her last concert and died clasping the harmonium amid a multitude of
stunned listeners.
As with India’s other provinces, where music and art
flourished under feudal patronage, the royal house of Baroda, now Vadodara,
favoured the very best from across the country. Ustad Karim Khan founded
the Kirana gharana of vocal musicians after coming here from Punjab. He
married a Hindu princess of Baroda and settled down in Miraj where they
produced the legendary singers Hirabai Barodekar, Saraswati Rane and
Sureshbabu Mane.
But this is a tribute to just four of Gujarat’s countless
mockingbirds that were humiliated or killed by the people they sang for.
Every year in February, when newspapers begin to chatter about the
arriving budget, the memory of Rasoolan Bai, Fayyaz Khan, Ahsan Jaffri and
Wali Dakhani begin to haunt me. It was on a budget day that helpless women
were being raped and murdered across Gujarat on February 28, 2002, with
the approval of the state.
People have tried to explain the tragedy in the context of
provocation and reaction, insisting that the murder of Hindu activists by
a Muslim mob in a train in Godhra had provoked Hindu mobs to seek revenge
on the Muslims. This is utter nonsense, all the more so because the same
people had earlier justified the demolition of the 16th century mosque in
Ayodhya in similar terms. Only, instead of Godhra, the alleged antics of a
Mughal emperor were held accountable for the criminal violence unleashed
by ‘patriotic’ and ‘nationalist’ Hindu groups in December 1992.
The relevant question is: why did a mob burn down the
house of Rasoolan Bai in Ahmedabad in 1969? There was no Godhra then for
an excuse. So what could be the provocation for anyone to drive out an
extremely gifted and popular Muslim singer from her adopted home in
Gujarat? After her trauma, Naina Devi, herself a Hindu princess and a much
beloved patron saint of music and musicians, nursed Rasoolan Bai to
health, but she never sang again.
All the rioters and their neighbours can still hear
Rasoolan’s thumri in raga Bhairavi on the Web. Would you believe what the
words are? "Kaanha, visbhari basiya sunaai gaile na (O Krishna,
please do not torment me any more with your mesmeric flute)".
"Ab na bajao Shyam/ bansuriya na bajao Shyam/
(e ri) vyaakul bhaayi brajabala/ bansuriya na bajao Shyam/
nit meri galin mein aayo na/ aayo to chhup ke rahiyo/
bansi ki teri sunaiyo na (Play your flute not Shyam/ It perplexes my
little heart/ Play not your flute Shyam/ Nor come round my street/ Come
not, keep it down/ Play not your flute Shyam)".
In the 2002 violence, the mob in Ahmedabad destroyed the
several centuries old grave of Wali Dakhani. The state government did one
better. It flattened the grave to build a metalled road over it. Who was
Wali Dakhani and why was his memory so viciously abused? The 17th century
poet loved Gujarat and was an advocate of Hindu-Muslim cultural synthesis.
Here’s a small sample from this mockingbird’s otherwise large repertoire,
reflecting the earliest form of Urdu poetry.
"Kucha-e-ya ‘ain Kaasi hai/ Jogi-e-dil vahaan ka
baasi hai/ Pi ke bairaag ki udaasi sun/ Dil pe mere sadaa
udaasi hai/ Zulf teri hai mauj Jamnaa ki/ Til nazik uske
jyun sanaasi hai (Shah Abdus Salam translates it thus: ‘Beloved’s lane
is exactly like the holy city of Kashi/ My ascetic heart dwells therein/
Due to the sadness of the separation from the beloved/ My heart is always
immersed in dejection/ Your tresses are the waves of Jamuna river/ And the
mole next to the tresses is the ascetic on the bank’)".
The mob also attacked the grave of Ustad Fayyaz Khan, a
scion of the Agra gharana of musicians. The ustad, honoured in the
1950s as Aftab-i-Mausiqi by popular consensus, had sung countless
compositions to Krishna, the favourite icon of much of Gujarat and Mathura
in Uttar Pradesh. "Manmohan Brij ko rasiya", an early morning
composition in raga Paraj, and "Vande Nand Kumaram", a late
afternoon composition in raga Kafi, among other soul-searching bandish
(compositions), were rendered as a full-throated celebration of Lord
Krishna.
Fayyaz Khan’s grave in Baroda was razed unceremoniously
during the fanatical mayhem. Now, we can’t just snuff out anyone’s memory
at will. People have a right to know the tradition Fayyaz Khan
represented. Legend has it that it possibly goes back to the Mughal court
in Agra. Emperors Akbar and Jehangir were both lovers of music. There were
36 musicians in Akbar’s court, including Tansen, Baiju Bawra and Guru
Haridas, but Tansen alone was among the famous ‘nine jewels’ of the court.
Ethnomusicologist Bonnie Wade says that to understand the
place of music in the Mughal court one must not only ‘see’ miniatures but
‘hear’ them too. In her fascinating study, Imaging Sound, she shows
how the depiction of musical instruments in Mughal paintings also reveals
the cultural synthesis that was taking place in that era; how the
synthesis of Hindu, Muslim, Sufi and Central and West Asian musical
traditions led to the emergence of a North Indian classical musical
culture.
It is not clear when precisely the Agra gharana came into
being – whether its origin dates to the 13th century, or to Haji Sujaan
Khan, believed to have been a contemporary of Tansen and one of Akbar’s
durbar musicians, or to Ghagge Khudabaksh who also came to Agra from
Gwalior, about 150 years ago. Whatever the date of its origin, the gharana
represented a sound Indian tradition of open-minded synthesis and
assimilation.
Let me end this tribute to Gujarat’s lost mockingbirds
with a note on Ahsan Jaffri. He was brutally cut down by a mob along with
several members of his family and neighbours who had tried to protect him.
Jaffri was a communist trade union leader before he joined the Congress
party and won a seat in the Lok Sabha in 1977.
But it is his little known flair for Urdu poetry that
gives an insight into the man’s secular credentials, far removed from the
culprits of Godhra the Hindutva mob may have been hunting. Jaffri’s book
of verse is called Qandeel (Lamp). Published in 1994, it is a
collection of his poems from the time of his association with progressive
writers. It has a foreword by Majrooh Sultanpuri, himself a notable
progressive poet.
Here’s an example from several in the book which reflects
Jaafri’s nation-loving personality and only heightens the irony of his
lynching: "Geeton se teri zulfon ko meera ne sanwara/ Gautam ne
sada di tujhe Nanak ne pukara/ Khusro ne kai rangon se daaman ko
nikhara/ Har dil mein muhabbat ki ukhuwat ki lagan hai/ Ye
mera watan mera watan mera watan hai (Meera adorned your locks with
her songs/ Gautam called you out, as did Nanak/ Khusro filled colours in
your frills/ Every heart beats here for love and tolerance/ This is my
homeland, this is it)".