Random Musing 21: How Bhojpuri music can exorcise our inner Macaulay

Only when the mind is quiet enough will one realise the deep ontological revelations of Bhojpuri classics.

I recently found out, thanks to the aspirational upward mobility of one of my closest friends/mentors, that the Bengal Club – the country’s oldest such establishment (founded in 1827) – is housed in Chowringhee Road in Calcutta in a building that was formerly occupied by Thomas Babington Macaulay. The country’s most snobbish and elitist institution, the club didn’t allow Indian members till 1959 and it was only the threats of Dr BC Roy to cut off their liquor licence – nothing terrifies an Englishman as much as lack of libation – that Indian members were subsequently allowed. It was a moment so momentous that the country’s Home Minister Govind Ballabh Pant announced in Parliament that the club would now be accepting Indian members.

Now, as an Anglo-Bihari Macaulayputra of Bengali heritage, I get the high an Indian must get having a drink in the house where Macaulay’s spirit lingers. After all, good or bad, the influence that Macaulay left on our lives is immense.

For starters, never before have the Anglosphere had to deal with so many dissidents who can speak and write their language better than Charles III – and powered by the cheapest mobile internet in the world – are going around terrifying think tankies who like to refer to India as South Asia.

I mean, there are lots of Russians and Chinese who disagree with members of the Anglosphere but lack the effective grammar and vocabulary skills, not to mention a free internet, to let their dissent be known.

Indians on the other hand, have no qualms about writing: “You are a suck under handles” of every coolie – foreign or brown – who feel the need to tell New Delhi how to carry out their foreign policy. It's amazing how a few belligerent and bellicose Indians – and trust me it's just a few, many of whom have no loyalty to Modi at all and spend an inordinate amount of time criticising him as well – have made policy wonks lose their minds. 

But if there’s one strain of Macaulay DNA that we’d do well to get rid of, it’s the notion that one culture – it’s language, music, art, literature, or porn – is superior to another. For most living under a rock, Lord Macaulay famously said: “A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

This actually is a very colonial mindset, the notion that one race and its creations is somehow superior to another race. This strain exists to this day, when we see language warriors getting reactionary about Kanandiga signs or Tamil politicians invoke Hinthi imposition (by Gujaratis) whose only imposition is limited to adding cheese to carbs. We see it every day with Bengalis claiming their Rabindrasangeet is superior somehow to Pandeyji Ka Beta or that Ray’s cinema is much better than Rohit Shetty’s.

In particular, this sees negative connotations added to various genres. One musical genre that gets a really bad name is Bhojpuri music that philistines often think is ripe with patriarchy, misogyny, lack of intersectionality, or whatever new buzzword the reviewers of Animal conceived. However, to the true connoisseur, Bhojpuri music is both an observation and criticism of the real nature of perceived universe and all its creation, but only if we are truly willing to listen.

Only when the mind is quiet enough will one realise the deep ontological revelations of Bhojpuri classics.

For example, Lollipop Lagelu might sound like a simple young man admiring his lover but listen deeper and you will realise that song talks deeply of the alienation one feels when transformed from one’s physical self that Kafka evoked so beautifully in Metamorphosis.

Aara Heele Chappra Heele, one of the most well-known songs of the genre might sound like an iteration of Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie but is quite clearly an evocation of the deep misery Galileo felt when abjuring the truth about the universe (well the truth that existed pre-Einstein) and muttered under his breath: “Eppur si muove.” It’s a strain that exists in numerous Bhojpuri songs whose love for motion is clearly paying tribute to the grand old astronomer.

Meanwhile, Pandeyji Ki Beta is the deepest criticism one can think of Brahminical patriarchy and the misogyny it enforces. When the protagonist sings Pandeyji Ka Beta hun, chumma chipak ke leta hun,,. he’s clearly referring to the caste superiority enforced through millennia in India and how that instils in some individuals the belief they don’t have to understand consent.

The point is that that all artistes – like the universe – is trying to tell us something and it’s our job to listen closely to what he/she/xe are trying to say.

All this brings me back to Macaulay and my current pet peeve: the notion that one’s culture (and by extension its product) is superior to another.

The idea that any culture or its creation is superior to another is a Macaulayism, a legacy of enforced colonialism, used in divide and rule, and something we need to get rid of because it has no place in our syncretic culture where we’ve even accepted religions by transmogrifying elements without crying cultural appropriation. Oh Buddha, sure, he can be an avatar of Vishnu!

Therefore, the stupidest thing you can do in 2023 is judge people based on the art they consume. The same person can enjoy a multitude of things and that's no reflection on his intellect. Now if he has an MBA after going to IIT, that’s a different thing.

For example, a true Renaissance man can marvel at the criticism of Brahminical patriarchy in Pandeyji Ka Beta, enjoy the melodious tunes of Pandit Ravi Shankar's Raga Nat Bhairav or the nasal twang of Himesh Reshammiya's Aap Ka Suroor or Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright. He can enjoy the guitar riff of Jimi Hendrix in All Along the Watchtower and marvel at the divinity in MS Subbulakshmi’s voice. Surely, evolution – that idea that we came from some primordial soup – couldn’t conjure anything so divine.

(As an aside, when HG shared the joke: A pig without 3.14 is 9.8, Pater Dutta came up with the worst dad joke of all time: “Indeed but don't ignore its suffix -  m/ss = M.S. Subbulaxmi. Her glorious voice takes you to a world beyond pi and g - a world where even pigs can fly.”)

As I’ve written before: “Who are we to decide that the lines “Umar Hai 17, Hila Dungi Chhapra…” is somehow artistically superior to “There’s a lady who is sure that all that glitters is gold…”?” All we can do is marvel at each work of art.

To borrow the words of Oscar Wilde, the Orry of Victorian England: Only brutes and illiterates, who are incalculably stupid, judge based on the language they speak, the art they consume, the shows they watch or even the movies they enjoy. It’s 2023 and it’s time we rid ourselves of this colonial Maucaulisym. And if you’re still not sure, here’s my talisman. Actually, unlike Gandhi’s talisman, it’s just a playlist and doesn’t involve installing a Nehru instead of a Bose. I just call it Bihar Vibes.

Erratica: Titivilllus got me good this time.

1. The Home Minister who announced that the Bengal Club would now allow Indian members was Govind Vallabh Pant, not Sardar Patel. As the brilliant Devina Mehra pointed out on X: “Leaving the art appreciation aside, it would require some wonders of science for Sardar Patel to announce anything in the 1960s, when he had died in 1950!”

2. The Bengal Club started admitting Indians in 1959, not the 60s.

3. “A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.” (The full Macaulay quote was missing. It has been updated. Thanks Shakti Shetty for pointing it out.)