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Notes that tug at the heart of the Republic

ByDhrubo Jyoti
Dec 02, 2024 05:14 AM IST

Folk artists in Maharashtra use songs about the Constitution to empower marginalized communities, celebrating equality amid ongoing social struggles.

Night comes early here. The yellow haze of a solitary grubby streetlight struggles to dispel the darkness. It is only 10pm but the alleys are fast emptying as a chill descends on the chawl. The only sign of life next to a clump of hutments is where six men are tuning their instruments, the centrepiece being an old harmonium held together by a patchwork of black tape. A makeshift shamiana above their heads and a lime-green carpet stretched out in front of them, the men huddle together for warmth as they ready their repertoire. A slow trickle of people is gathering in front of the troupe shorn of even basic glamour – all pushing middle age, all impoverished, all raring to go.

Gautam Awad’s troupe is hired by grassroots communities to mark occasions as varied as Republic Day, weddings or funerals. (HT Photo)
Gautam Awad’s troupe is hired by grassroots communities to mark occasions as varied as Republic Day, weddings or funerals. (HT Photo)

Such scenes are not uncommon across India’s hinterland, where folk artists often put up all-night shows or jalsa. But Gautam Awad’s troupe is different. Their performance will not contain devotional songs or sagas of divine miracle. Instead, over the next few hours, Awad and his musicians will be singing about India’s founding document, using Marathi poems and folk songs to underline how the Constitution has transformed the lives of India’s marginalised castes. “In India, a wastepicker can become the ruler – that’s the miracle of the Constitution. This is our first song,” said Awad, whose troupe is hired by grassroots communities to mark occasions as varied as Republic Day, weddings or funerals.

It’s not economically rewarding work; when Awad began singing about the Constitution in 1968, a night’s performance would fetch 60. Today, it can range anywhere between 2,000 and 4,000. Yet, the expanse of Maharashtra is dotted with lok shahir or folk artists who travel from village to village, singing about the Constitution. The grain of their untrained voices and the bellows of their harmoniums have forged a robust grassroots link between the Constitution and the legions of ordinary people whose lives it governs.

“This is a long tradition, as old as the Constitution itself. Through their words, these artists are perceiving the Constitution not just as a legal document but as a social code of equality and self respect,” said Milind Awad, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Folk arts for social change

The practice of writing and performing songs and poems about the Constitution came into prominence during the 1950s when a young republic was coming to terms with the new social and moral code unveiled by the document. Away from mainstream adulation, these folk artists commanded loyal followings in the hinterland. “Maharashtra has a history of folk art such as tamasha, from which forms such as jalsa were born. The Lavni that is popular today is also a branch from the same tree,” said Atul Yerekar, a doctoral candidate at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

His father, Sahebrao Yerekar, is one of the most celebrated exponents of this form that took a turn away from devotional songs to questions of equality under the tutelage of Jyotiba Phule, the 19th century reformist who used songs and poetry to expound rationalism. A resident of Parbhani district, Yerekar Sr was a disciple of the Ambedkarite Marathi poet Vamandada Kardak and started singing hymns in praise of the Constitution when he was 12. “We had a troupe of nine people – playing the tabla. harmonium, banjo, dhol and the chorus. Performances would typically last the night -and comprise songs and plays around the Constitution,” he said.

The Constitution was a substantially more serious subject – as opposed to, say, mythical plays or devotional songs – but singers used the extraordinary life arc of Dr BR Ambedkar to build a connection according to Yerekar Sr.

“The image of Babasaheb was enough to bring people in. We’d pepper our songs with his life’s story – the discrimination he fought and the challenges he overcame. And we’d talk about how the Constitution made it possible for people like us to go wherever we want and keep our heads high.”

It was a time of intense strife and songs about the Constitution were often seen by upper-caste groups as a proxy for Dalit assertion, prompting violent responses. “Every week, there would be some skirmish or the other. People would hurl slurs, file cases against us. There would be fights after programmes because upper-castes couldn’t believe that we organised our own cultural events. They’d beat us up,” Yerekar Sr added.

‘Challenging the dominant culture’

In the quest to bring the words of the Constitution to the people, each generation of activists faced their own challenge. For ballader Sambhaji Bhagat, whose life was made famous by the 2014 National Award-winning movie Court, that obstacle presented itself in the form of communalism and cultural supremacy that threatened to erase the lifeworlds of marginalised castes in the 1990s.

“Whether it was the Babri Masjid demolition or brutal caste attacks, we ran campaigns on protecting the Constitution. We would go door to door singing songs; and until we had not touched five households and spoken to them about the Constitution, we would not drink water,” said Bhagat.

His booming voice and signature locks are now a mainstay of the Marathi theatre landscape; Bhagat moved to Mumbai in the 1980s and lived in the now-demolished Siddharth Vihar hostel, gleaning in conversations about the Constitution and emancipation from that hotbed of anti-caste thought. “From that experience, it was clear to me that we had to talk about the Constitution to young people. That’s why we started insaniyat ki pathshala (school of humanity), where we would hold an hour-long class every Sunday in slums, and talk to the kids about the preamble, interspersed with songs and sports,” he said.

For him, the power of the ordinary man lies in challenging the dominant culture. “Look at us, we are small men with insignificant lives. We have neither money nor influence. But we have songs and the Constitution. To better humanity, that is enough,” he said.

Great art comes from struggles

Many of the men and women who sing about the Constitution come from impoverished families and marginalised backgrounds, their poems imbued not by legal erudition but the grassroots transformation – such as the abolition of untouchability – that the Constitution implemented.

“Their constitutionalism is beyond a legal procedural text. They’re helping replace the commonsense of caste society with a new good sense of rules and order. For people who were humiliated by social inequalities and caste, these songs are a celebration,” said Milind Awad.

Rekha Bharti is one of them. A resident of Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Bharti started singing at the age of eight and using the qawwali form, has since made a name for herself with her troupe – Rekha Bharti Ani Sanch – that she formed in 1991. Sakhubai Salve is another. The 60-something woman is illiterate but often jokes about how she can perform any song by committing it to her personal computer – her mind.

For women singers, disapproval often comes from within their families, said Samiksha Bamne, a woman poet whose troupe – the Samvidhan Sanskrutik Jalsa – performs short skits about the Constitution. “Many members of my own group face pressures to leave the stage, and of course, among our generation, these forms of art are not seen as cool,” said the law student. “There is a fear that the tradition is dwindling, though some of our most enthusiastic listeners are women domestic workers and victims of violence.”

Carrying the legacy forward

It’s now a few minutes past midnight and Gautam Awad’s energy is flagging a bit. As the older man stops for a sip of water, his younger colleague Rajesh Tupe takes over the high notes. He is 29, one of a handful of young men who continue to take forward the tradition of composing songs about the Constitution. But he is not happy.

“The violence might be less but the bias of the purana daur (old times) has not evaporated. There is still no intermarriage or inter-dining between higher castes and ours; they don’t allow us to get into temples. Even if our keyboard artists play tunes in praise of Babasaheb, he is attacked. Kitna bhi samjhao, unhe samajh nahi aata (you can try to make them understand, but they won’t).

But Gautam Awad advises calm. The older man has lived through the turbulent 1970s and 80s, when Dalit communities were attacked for merely invoking the Constitution, where a movement asking for a university’s name to be changed to include Dr Ambedkar spanned 16 years and cost four lives, and where singing against social strictures of caste would often invite violence.

“We were scared but we never stopped singing. After all, this is our Constitution,” he said. Pointing at the glass of water, half full, still in his hand, he recalled the time when he was 20 and was slapped in the middle of a show in his aunt’s village because he dared to ask for a glass of water from the common well. “The dabang (strongmen) of the village thought they would stymie us,” he laughed.

“But what’s more dabang than the Constitution?”

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