Jai Ho! Let there be victory! I would like to start this edition’s editorial by wishing a very Happy 80th Birthday to Sangeet Martandya, Padma Vibhusan, Ved Shiromani Pandit Jasrajji, who celebrated this landmark on 28th of January early this year. He has popularized Indian Classical Music across the globe, has excited many generations in India and abroad to take up and continue our rich musical heritage.
He is the inspiration behind our AVIDES Foundation, which selects young classical musicians and dancers from across India and presents them at our Annual Dipawali Function in New York. We are very blessed to have him as a ‘benefactor’ of Vedic Heritage Inc. Since I remember, for probably more than a decade, Pandit Jasrajji greets everyone on the phone or in person with ‘JAI HO’. Let there be victory, he declares in his sublime voice to anyone who greets him. What a powerful message and blessing from a maestro – and he is not even stingy about it. And now, Pandit Jasrajji’s greeting has been immortalized be another great musician from India – A R. Rahman. Jai Ho is the title of his song from The Slumdog Millionaire, which won him 2 Oscars for Best Original Score and Best Song. Times of India reports that, the 'Mozart of Madras', who redefined contemporary Indian music and has been a role model for millions of Indians, had already won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for his music in Oscar-winning film. He has made over a billion Indians living around the globe very, very proud. While our classical musical heritage is important, the young are also inspired by contemporary music, which takes the best from our classical traditions, and western influences.
Born as A S Dileep Kumar in a musically family in Chennai on January 6, 1966, he changed his name to Allah Rakha Rahman after his family converted to Islam in the late 1980's. He was a musical genius from an early age, and started making waves in his teens. The music from the film Roza, made him popular all over India. Bombay Dreams, a musical production on Broadway by Andrew Lloyd Webber made him popular in the West.
Jai Ho has now made him a celebrity in Hollywood, and even more worldwide fame awaits him. Moreover, what is more important for Indians are that all the three Oscar winners are not Hindus in a Hindu-majority country, and yet the celebrations have been across the land! Mr. Vir Singhvi writes (excerpts follow): 3 Indians won Oscars: A.R. Rahman, Resul Pookutty and Gulzar. Their victory set off a frenzy of rejoicing. We were proud of our countrymen. We were pleased that India ’s entertainment industry and its veterans had been recognized at an international platform. And all three men became even bigger heroes than they already were. But here’s the thing: Not one of them is a Hindu. Can you even conceive of a situation where the whole country would celebrate the victory of three members of two religious minorities? For that matter, can you even imagine a situation where people from religious minorities would have got to the top of their fields and were, therefore, in the running for international awards? (This is) the triumph of Indian secularism. We are defined by our nationality… But it gets even more complicated. As you probably know, Rahman was born Dilip Kumar. He converted to Islam when he was 21. His religious preferences made no difference to his prospects. Even now, his music cuts across all religious boundaries. He’s as much at home with Sufi music as he is with bhajans. Nor does he have any problem with saying ‘Vande Mataram’. Resul Pookutty’s is an even more interesting case.
But here’s the point: even when you point out to people that Pookutty is in fact a Muslim, they don’t really care. It makes no difference to them. He’s an authentic Indian hero, his religion is irrelevant.
Resul did by referring to the primeval power of Om in his acceptance speech? Most interesting of all is the case of Gulzar who many Indians believe is a Muslim. He is not. He is a Sikh. And his real name is Sampooran Singh Kalra. So why does he have a Muslim name? it’s a good story and he told it on my TV show some years ago. He was born in West Pakistan and came over the border during the bloody days of Partition. He had seen so much hatred and religious violence on both sides, he said, that he was determined never to lose himself to that kind of blind religious prejudice and fanaticism. Rather than blame Muslims for the violence inflicted on his community — after all, Hindus and Sikhs behaved with equal ferocity — he adopted a Muslim pen name to remind himself that his identity was beyond religion. He still writes in Urdu and considers it is irrelevant whether a person is a Sikh, a Muslim or a Hindu. India was founded on the basis that religion had no role in determining citizenship or nationhood. An Indian can belong to any religion in the world and face no discrimination in his rights as a citizen. (We are not perfect).
But only a fool would deny that in the last six decades, we have traveled a long way towards religious equality. In the early days of independent India , a Yusuf Khan had to call himself Dilip Kumar for fear of attracting religious prejudice. in today’s India , a Dilip Kumar can change his name to A.R. Rahman and nobody really gives a damn either way. (These were excerpts from Mr. Singhvi’s article). This brings me to the third link to the Jai Ho story. One of the national parties in India selected Rahman’s Jai Ho as its theme song for the just concluded Indian elections. Whoever won, it was a huge victory for the Indian population, and for the blossoming Indian democracy. Says Fareed Zakaria on CNN, These elections I think may be looked upon as India's debut as a great power -- the way the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics heralded China's debut. They are also the perfect symbol, in this case, of India's unique strengths -- which are defined not by government power but people power with all the messiness and chaos that implies. With 420 million people voting, India's recent polling was the biggest exercise of democracy ever. Over the last two decades, India has been consumed with its internal divisions -- of caste, ethnicity and religion.
This has made if difficult for a government in New Delhi to mobilize national power to any purposeful and responsible end internationally. A decentralized, divided, and diffuse polity has punched well below its weight internationally or adopted policies abroad for purely domestic reasons. That's bad for India and bad for the world. This could all change, starting with this election result. For the first time in three decades, a single party was given a clear and large mandate. Fareed Zakaria continued, “ But I also do want to take a minute to impress on readers the scope of elections in India. It really is amazing to see the largest democracy at work. First of all, look at the scope. 420 million people voted. That's more than all the people (men, women and children) who live in the United States, Britain and Canada combined. Then the process -- there are five election days over the course of a month; votes are cast in almost 1 million polling places. It is by far the biggest exercise in democracy in the history of the world. But all of that is only part of what makes it really remarkable.
The Indian electorate is one of the poorest, least educated in the world but they actively participate in the political process. And they voted in a very intelligent way. Something they should be very proud of. Jai Ho!!
