S Anand: I wondered why we weren’t singing such fabulous poetry from Bhakti movement with our ragas

By Dilip -

Back in the 14th century, Sant Soyarabai was writing and singing abhangs about Vitthal, her god whom she could not visit in a temple because of her Dalit identity. Her abhangs were not just proclamations of her predilections towards god, they were also lessons in understanding caste hierarchy and the pain that was caused by untouchability and Brahminical systems. S Anand, co-founder of Delhi-based publishing house Navayana and author, came across Soyarabai through The Ant Who Swallowed the Sun, a book by musician Neela Bhagwat and author Jerry Pinto, which translates and explains poetry by 10 women saints of Maharashtra from the Bhakti movement. 

Kiti kiti bolu deva, kiti Karu aata heva 

(O god how much more do I plead

The jealousy I must bear till you heed) 

Anand uses Jaijaivanti, a raga from Guru Granth Sahab that’s mostly represented as a combination of joy and sorrow, to convey this abhang, which talks of a god who does not care for her, but does for all the others. Soyarabai says, why should she protest at the doors of his temple to be let in. “People who are kept out of the temples can sing the best songs for the gods that they cannot visit. What can be more nirgun than this,” says Anand, 49, who will perform the abhang at India International Centre in the Capital today...

https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/art-and-culture/i-wondered-why-we-werent-singing-such-fabulous-poetry-from-bhakti-movement-with-our-ragas-8043599/


An Ambedkarite is interweaving Buddha’s teachings with dhrupad in a leap of artistic faith

Siñca bhikkhu imaṁ nāvaṁ sittā te lahum essati/ 

chetvā rāgañ ca dosañ ca tato nibbānam ehisi

The boat must be lightened, says the boatman
It can’t take all of you, it will capsize.
The Buddha says shed your passions and can
All desire, make yourselves weightless and wise.

This delightful and lyrical call to abandon ego on the ride to nibbana, or nirvana, is from Dhammapada, a collection of suttas or Buddha’s teachings in verse form. Suttas are far moved from the poetic universe of the dhrupad, a genre of Hindustani classical music that is set to eulogies to gods and kings. But S Anand has been interweaving the two in a leap of artistic faith. Over the last two years, the Ambedkarite and founder of publishing house Navayana has been exploring the possibility of setting suttas to ragas. A student of dhrupad stalwart Wasifuddin Dagar, he has been writing raga-sonnets, some set to suttas, as a bid to break away from the traditional body of Hindustani bandishes that remain stuck in antiquity...

https://scroll.in/magazine/1020101/an-ambedkarite-is-interweaving-buddhas-teachings-with-dhrupad-in-a-leap-of-artistic-faith


Why Devanoora Mahadeva’s New Kannada Book Has Left the Sangh Fuming


Salaam Comrade


The Forgotten Life Sentence of Comrade Ramchandra Singh, a Prisoner of Memories. By S. Anand

 

Maoism and the philosophy of insurrection


Baldev Singh Mann: ‘My darling daughter!’


Remembering Rabindra


Some uncomfortable thoughts on 'urban naxals'


In Naxalbari, forty-eight years later


Suhas Palshikar - Disenfranchising The ‘Other’ // Ajaz Ashraf interviews Ashis Nandy on the future of India


Suhas Palshikar: Bhoomi pujan of the new republic // Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Political colonisation of Hinduism


Dilip Simeon: Closing the Circle: On Revolution (Frontier, 2012)


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