Some 20 years ago, I was in Lahore for an academic conference, where I met an aspiring classical vocalist who travelled every week to learn from a teacher in Karachi. Though I cannot hold a note myself, I have had a lifelong love for Hindustani music. I was thus surprised to learn from this talented Pakistani singer that his teacher spoke derisively of a particular raga as one that “belonged to the Hindus” (woh toh Hinduon ka raga hai).

I didn’t have the heart to tell the young man that such distinctions did not exist among classical musicians in India, or that a singer he admired, Roshanara Begum, had continued to sing the ragas, Shankara and Durga, after she moved to Pakistan even though they were named for Hindu deities. I could also have mentioned Salamat Ali Khan’s rendition of Nadiya Kinare Mora Gaon where this singer (who also lived in Pakistan) explains that the thumri is based on the love of Radha for Krishna.

Admittedly, both Roshanara and Salamat were born well before Partition when such seamless interchange of ideas and motifs between different faiths was part of the musical culture of undivided India.

That conversation in Lahore came back to me when I was studying the vast collection of Gandhi Papers held at what is now called the Prime Ministers’ Memorial Library. The Gandhi Papers deal largely with the Mahatma’s work as a freedom fighter and social reformer. But I also found here a file dealing with, of all things, classical music.

In November 1944, the eminent Hindustani vocalist, Omkarnath Thakur, had written to Gandhi asking for his assistance in starting a Faculty of Music at the Banaras Hindu University. In this proposed new department at BHU, said Thakur to Gandhi, “a systematic study of the different styles of Indian Classical Music could be undertaken. There will be no racial distinction on the selection of styles. The important place which music occupies in the cultural pattern of India, its great value as a synthesiser of the different tendencies, which are blended in the Indian Civilization are well known.” Thakur wanted Gandhi to give his blessings for the new enterprise and also help raise funds for it.

Also in this file was a letter from a South Indian musician expanding on........

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