TRANSRELIGIOUS AND INTERCOMMUNAL Hindustani Music in Classical and Contemporary North India

Hindustani Music in Classical and Contemporary North India Michiko Urita In Varanasi, since Babri Masjid was demolished, riots continued to happen every December during several years, and these riots produced a lot of tension. But on important annual festivals such as Holi and Divali, Bismillah Khan continued to play shehnai [Indian oboe] for Hindus. Because of this and also a picture in the newspaper of him playing shehnai with a tear running on his face, the tension provoked between Hindus and Muslims became decreased and sometimes ceased. This happened because music has no boundary. Music cannot be confined in any community, religion, and country. Music is boundless, delightful, and infinite. In Varanasi, when a Hindu disciple touches his Muslim guru's feet on a stage or a Muslim disciple touches his Hindu guru's feet on a stage, everyone sees and understands that this is music, guru-shishya-parampara [teacher-disciple tradition], humanity, and it has nothing to do with Hindu or Muslim. Like this, people's thoughts and emotions become generous, and more tolerance is produced. In this way, in Varanasi, music has played a major role in reducing communal tension. --Vidhu Shekhar (2005) 22:2 DOI 10.1215/0961754X-3464792 © 2016 by Duke University Press Published by Duke University Press Intercommunal rioting is ordinary and recurrent in present Indian society-- though I should say so-called rioting, because such events have tended to be organized and well planned. They are to be understood not as expressions of spontaneous fury by mad mobs but rather as pogroms.1 The violence of Hindu fundamentalists against Muslims in the state of Gujarat that occurred in February 2002 is an example, as is the December 6, 1992, demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, to which Vidhu Shekhar refers in the passage that I have quoted above. Many witnesses and survivors of such events testify that, with politicians' support, police and Indian army...