Stain of silence

Legendary Ghazal Mastero Ghulam Ali performed at the Hanuman Darbar during the Sankat Mochan Music Festival at Varanasi in India in April. Mahant Vishwambhar Nath Mishra of the famous Sankat Mochan temple said that he is ready to welcome back Ghulam Ali any time in the temple-A welcome comment that too at a time when Ghulam Ali’s Mumbai and Pune concert were cancelled.  The organizers of concerts by Ghulam were quick to cancel the programs after the Shiv Sena “asked” them not to host a singer belonging to a “country which is firing bullets at Indians”. Yes, Shiv Sena this time managed with “an appeal”, earlier it had to resort to protest and at times violence too. The change in execution of its commands for Shiv Sena comes from the fact that this time it is a part of the ruling alliance in Maharashtra. It’s off little interest to the Sena that Ghulam Ali was to perform in commemoration of India’s beloved Ghazal Singer Jagjit Singh in gesture of goodwill.  Now that it is in power, the Sena can effectively veto any cultural program without even organizing a public protest. Ghulam Ali willing to perform for Jagjit Singh, cutting across the borders; but Sena and Mahant have divergent views for the same person!

From digging up the cricket pitch and forming squads to stop matches between India and Pakistan, the Sena has had chronicle of opposing any kind of cultural or sporting interaction between India and Pakistan. Their opposition against Pakistani musicians and cricketers goes back many years. The stance of the party has been that there should be no cultural and sporting relations between India and Pakistan, which, it believes, is involved in terror-related activities on Indian soil. In 2012, Raj Thackeray threatened to disrupt a television show Sur Kshetra that included Pakistani singer Abida Parveen as one of the judges. The Sena members attacked the office of Colours, the channel hosting the show, which, also featured, besides Parveen, Atif Aslam and eight Pakistani contestants.

Now that it is in power, the Sena seems firm on its agenda of imposing a boycott on all Pakistani things without resorting to open threats or violence. Their anti Pakistan stance reached a new height when top Indian diplomat Sudheendra Kulkarni said that Shiv Sainiks smeared black paint on his face to protest the launch of a book on foreign policy by Khurshid Kasuri, Pakistan’s former foreign minister at Mumbai. And to add fuel to the fire “The ink attack on Kulkarni is a mild reaction from Sena, this is not ink but the blood of our Soldiers,” was the remark by Shiv Sena parliamentarian Sanjay Raut, after the incident. While doing so, the Shiv Sena perhaps got too carried away and forgot that in a democracy everyone has the right to agree or disagree and their can’t be any kind of justification to this type of protest  as it is against the very core of the democratic values. The act by Shiv Sena was an attempt to prove them as an extra constitutional authority.  Kasuri as a foreign minister of Pakistan has been venting out his pent up feelings against India, but to blacken the face of an ex Indian diplomat for hosting an ex foreign dignitary as guest?

The treatment meted out to Ghulam Ali only goes to say that certain parties in India have forgotten that an artist can be the biggest messenger of peace and harmony amongst mankind. Perhaps it is uneasy for the party to really understand that Music is a moral law, and artists need not to be taken to a moral low. Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the wind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, life to everything that too without knowing any borders, any restriction of any religion.  Sena’s hollowness on the issue got projected when media in India came out with pictures showing Aditya Thackeray , son of Uddhav Thackeray  at a program in Mumbai where Pakistani singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan performed on September 20th.  This time however, Sena couldn’t allow Ghulam Ali to perform mainly because it has run out of ideas to stay in the limelight. The limelight that it has always cherished-that of hatred, violence, attacks, polarization. The concerts of Ghulam Ali came as bright spot for Sena and the party’s act against him and Kulkarni only brought bad light to India making it difficult for Indians around the world to stand with their head held high.