Hindu Nationalism and North Indian Music in the Global Age

Bob Van Der Linden

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-85580-2_4

Abstract

AbstractAs a unique global historical event, a fundamental transfer from a Muslim ‘minority’ community to a Hindu ‘majority’ community took place in the modern north Indian ‘Hindustani’ music scene in terms of the number of musicians, the type of patronage (from courts to middle classes and the modern public sphere), music practice and audiences. This process of ‘Hinduization’ was largely the result of the music reforms initiated by elitist Hindus, who aimed to make Indian music modern, national and scientific, as well as spiritual. Successively, their efforts led to the stigmatization and subsequent marginalization of Muslim musicians. By taking music as a lens, the chapter sheds light upon the relationship between ‘religion’, nation and state in the context of processes of modernization and the global circulation of ideas.

Highlights

In modern states around the world, the imagination, canonization and institutionalization of national music by members of a social majority has repeatedly led to the stigmatization and marginalization of music created by social minorities
Since the seventeenth century, due to Mughal rule and Muslim patronage in general, the Hindustani music scene was dominated numerically and professionally by Muslim hereditary musicians, commonly known as ustads, yet this supremacy by a social minority was gradually dismantled into the twentieth century through a process of ‘Hinduization’
This chapter has shown that the stigmatization and subsequent marginalization of the Muslim ustad has a historical genealogy that began at the latest in the late nineteenth century. It has discussed how Hindu national music reforms in the context of processes of modernization and state formation led to the ‘Hinduization’ of north Indian art music and how this undermined the social position and authority of these Muslim hereditary musicians in different ways

Summary

Bob van der Linden

In modern states around the world, the imagination, canonization and institutionalization of national music by members of a social majority has repeatedly led to the stigmatization and marginalization of music created by social minorities. The first section discusses the importance of European Orientalist knowledge—mainly the discovery of Sanskrit, which led to the idea of a ‘Hindu’ golden age, and the historical view of Muslims as outsiders to the subcontinent—to the stigmatization of Muslim musicians by Hindu national music reformers Over time the latter institutionalized music theory and practice in a modern and rational manner. In contrast to Bhatkhande, the musician and music reformer Vishnu Digambar Paluskar (1872–1931) straightforwardly argued that ancient ‘Hindu music’ had become degraded in the hands of the ustads, and he made its revival and diffusion among the general public the goal of his life For this purpose, he propagated Indian national music on behalf of Hindu devotional music (bhakti). The ascendency of a dominant Hindu identity in Hindustani music led to the retreat of an important domain of shared music and affective experience but consecutively to the marginalization of the ustads in modern music institutions

Institutional Marginalization

Conclusion