*This episode has also been published to my new podcast, Woman of Culture.*

September 11th, 2021, marked the death centenary of Indian national poet ("Mahakavi"), C. Subramania Bharati (1882-1921). Since then, the Indian government has designated this day as "Bharati Day."

Bharati, the greatest Tamil writer of the 20th century, is a legendary figure. He was a multifaceted personality - leading to the interesting situation that, even today, the full extent of the poet's artistic and intellectual contributions is not known. Much remains to be discovered!

This podcast episode deals with a lesser-known aspect of Bharati's creativity: the music that the poet composed for his own poems to be sung. While the words of Bharati's songs are well-known to the public, his melodies are not. When Indian classical musicians do sing his songs, they generally write their own melodies, or adapt them from versions popularized in the movies.

I discuss Bharati's musical contributions with a star of South India's classical music scene, percussion maestro Suresh Vaidyanathan. Suresh plays a uniquely fascinating traditional instrument, the ghatam – a clay pot. 

Links:

Maestro Suresh's music teaching site, Ghatam Kulam, is available here. His interview and performance on ghatam with the Sandy Evans Trio was broadcast on Australian radio earlier this week, and is available here.

Music Credits:

Drums of India, Bickram Ghosh on Tabla and V. Suresh On Ghatam. Subscribe to Bickram Ghosh's YouTube channel.

The International Booker Prize is a prestigious award given to the author of a novel originally written in a language other than English and translated into English. It is a companion to the Booker prize for English-language novels. In 2022, the prize was awarded, for the first time, to a novel originally in an Indian language. The language was Hindi, and the novel was Tomb of Sand, written by Gitanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell. This episode examines the status of literature in India's national languages  over the past century, since Bharati's time,and considers the role that translation may play today in re-kindling international interest in Indian literature. This episode will be followed by a second episode on translation that will look specifically at translation from Tamil to English, consider Bharati's thoughts and words on this issue, and sample his own, exquisite translations of works from classic Tamil literature.

Music Credits:

Drums of India, Bickram Ghosh on Tabla and V. Suresh On Ghatam. Subscribe to Bickram Ghosh's youtube channel.

*Please note: an earlier version of this file contained some technical errors which have now been fixed. Thank you for your patience!

Bharati was deeply troubled by the apparent disintegration of moral values that characterized his times, affecting both colonized and colonial societies. He found himself perpetually searching for alternative ideals - sources of integrity and optimism - within the Indian philosophical traditions that he studied so deeply, with their rich and long histories. The breadth and depth of his reading and research are reflected in the essay "The Siddha & the Superman," first published in 1915, which is discussed in this episode. Bharati had not only read Nietzsche, but he had also reflected deeply upon the social implications of the German writer's powerful and controversial work. Bharati explores the Nietzschean character of the "superman" as an archetype that reflects the "historic reminiscences and spiritual aspirations" of Europe - and he compares and contrasts the "superman" with an analogous archetype from Indian culture, that of the "siddha", which Bharati translates as "perfected man." By juxtaposing these two, fundamentally contrasting models of human development, Bharati argues for the adoption of ideals that will encourage humanity to aspire for a better future - above all, one free of violence.

Music Credits:

Richard Strauss, "Also sprach Zarathustra," Opus 30, performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with conductor Georg Solti.

Drums of India, Bickram Ghosh on Tabla and V. Suresh On Ghatam. Subscribe to Bickram Ghosh's youtube channel.

Bharati is well-known as a champion of women's rights, but his impassioned advocacy for women's freedom transcends much of the usual discussion surrounding women's equality. Instead, Bharati saw women as the social superiors of men - engaged in the task of civilizing man through her masterful absorption and development of stories and symbols. "Where woman comes, comes Art," he writes, a stirring and provocative assertion that places him at odds with all those who have tried to minimize women's contributions to civilization or argued against women's capacity for artistic and intellectual life. His perspective on women shows him at his most creative and original. In honor of International Women's Day, this episode explores one of Bharati's most powerful essays on women, originally written in English, aptly entitled "The Place of Woman."

This episode continues the discussion of Bharati's biography from another angle - exploring how the poet is seen by Indians from other parts of the country, for whom access to Bharati's works in Tamil presents a fascinating challenge. Notwithstanding the language barrier, it is a triumph of Indian diversity that Bharati has come to be known as India's "National Bard." This delightful title was first proposed by Mohit Gupta when he organized the original presentation on which the episode is based on behalf of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. The presentation was part of the government's ongoing celebration of "Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav" – 75 years of India's freedom. 

December 11, 2021 was C. Subramania Bharati's 139th birth anniversary. On this occasion, I was interviewed by Storytrails, an Indian company interested in discovering, exploring, and sharing stories about India's culture and history. "India exists in her stories," they write. In this case, they wanted to know the story of Bharati's life - to trace the basic outlines of the poet's biography, attempt to separate fact from fiction, and celebrate the legacy of the great poet on his birthday. This will be the first in a series of podcast episodes dedicated to Bharati's biography this January, simultaneously allowing us to celebrate two more occasions: the Indian harvest festival known as "Pongal" to Tamils, and Canada's Tamil Heritage Month. Please join me on the podcast this month to explore the fascinating life of the man who has now become a Tamil and Indian legend.

Heartfelt thanks to the Storytrails team, particularly host, Akila Raman and organizer, Lavanya Rajagopalan. For more information, please visit https://www.storytrails.in/ and www.youtube.com/c/ThreeMinuteStorytrails/. 

Executive Producer and Host: Mira T. Sundara Rajan

Engineer: Emma Markowitz

Producer: Bradley W. Vines

Musical Credits:

Percussion by tabla maestro Bickram Ghosh and ghatam maestro V. Suresh in a spectacular "jugalbandhi" brings together North and South Indian classical traditions, symbolizing Indian cultural unity.

The full performance is available here: Drums of India, Bickram Ghosh on Tabla and V. Suresh On Ghatam. Subscribe to Bickram Ghosh's youtube channel.

In his short life, Bharati had to live through the first great disaster of the twentieth century: World War I. This episode examines the complex emotions of Indians faced with this stunning development, just as the Independence movement was poised to take flight. Instead, Great Britain's attention turned to the battlefields of Europe. In a powerfully moving essay, entitled  "India and the War" - one of two English essays that he wrote on this subject - Bharati puts aside his passionate desire for India's immediate freedom, and instead, throws his support behind the British, approving India's "generous" and "magnanimous" contributions of "men and resources" to the War. This episode explores his reasons for doing so - and how they emerge from his belief in the "unity of the human race," his deep faith in the "Divine Will" that guides history, and his absolute commitment to doing what is right in the present moment, whatever may be the errors, sins, and cruelties of the past. Bharati's essay illustrates an exemplary Indian attitude towards the War. It reflects his immersion in Indian cultural values, and his words convey the selflessness, nobility, and love of freedom that he and other Indians of his generation embodied. The extent of Indians' contributions to the War are not always recognized by today's public worldwide - and the same may be said of the contributions of people from other European colonies to the struggle, as well. For this reason, this episode is dedicated to reminding the world of what they sacrificed through Bharati's contemporary words.

This episode features a recording of the Funeral ceremony of the Burial of the Unknown Soldier, made at Westminster Abbey on November 11th, 1920. It appears in "About a Hundred Years: A History of Sound Recording," A Symposium to mark the Centenary of Commercial Recording in the United Kingdom, Symposium Records, 1997 (no. 1222) (CD); details are available in the accompanying booklet, which notes: ""Apparatus developed for detection of torpedoes and submarines was redeployed to record parts of the service of the burial of the unknown warrior. Although terribly primitive it is, de facto, the first electric recording."

Percussion by tabla maestro Bickram Ghosh and ghatam maestro V. Suresh in a spectacular "jugalbandhi" brings together North and South Indian classical traditions, symbolizing Indian cultural unity.

Executive Producer and Host: Mira T. Sundara Rajan

Engineer: Emma Markowitz

Producer: Bradley W. Vines

Music Credits: Drums of India, Bickram Ghosh on Tabla and V. Suresh On Ghatam.

Subscribe to Bickram Ghosh's youtube channel.

As India celebrates its festival of lights - Diwali, also known as Deepavali - this episode examines Bharati's views on religion. As he explains in his poignant essay called "Patriotism and Religious Differences," the poet feels that religious differences are necessary for a healthy society, and that dogmatism and homogeneity of belief should be avoided both for the good of society and for the sake of individual development. He reveals himself as an individualist and a humanist, advocating for something far richer than religious tolerance per se: diversity.

Percussion by tabla maestro Bickram Ghosh and ghatam maestro V. Suresh in a spectacular "jugalbandhi" brings together North and South Indian classical traditions, symbolizing Indian cultural unity.

Executive Producer and Host: Mira T. Sundara Rajan

Engineer: Emma Markowitz

Producer: Bradley W. Vines

Music Credits:

Drums of India, Bickram Ghosh on Tabla and V. Suresh On Ghatam. Subscribe to Bickram Ghosh's youtube channel.

The award of the 2021 Nobel prize in literature to Abdulrazak Gurnah, a writer originally from East Africa who writes in English about the ongoing legacy of colonialism, presents an interesting counterpoint to Bharati's own "Reflections" on the first Asian Nobel prize winner and, to date, India's only laureate in literature: Rabindranath Tagore. In this essay, Bharati writes about Tagore's travel to Japan and his reception in that country. He exhorts the Indian press to do more to publicize the exploits of great Indians, and urges all Indians to be inspired to new heights of achievement by their deeds. Expanding his perspective on India to the world at large, he writes of the "contagion of greatness" and of the ever present, sometimes surprising possibility of touching genius - a novel and refreshing idea for our own jaded times.

This episode features an exquisite Japanese koto performance by  Reiko Kimura. Percussion by tabla maestro Bickram Ghosh and ghatam maestro V. Suresh in a spectacular "jugalbandhi" brings together North and South Indian classical traditions, symbolizing Indian cultural unity.

Executive Producer and Host: Mira T. Sundara Rajan

Engineer: Emma Markowitz

Producer: Bradley W. Vines

Music Credits:

Reiko Kimura, Music From Japan / Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Reiko Kimura's koto performance was recorded at the Freer Gallery on January 15, 1998 and presented by Music from Japan. The full concert and detailed program notes are available on the website of the National Museum of Asian Art (Smithsonian).

Drums of India, Bickram Ghosh on Tabla and V. Suresh On Ghatam. Subscribe to Bickram Ghosh's youtube channel.

This episode challenges romanticized notions of British rule in India with the eyewitness account offered by C. Subramania Bharati in his extended English-language essay, "The Political Evolution in the Madras Presidency."  Bharati's article should quickly curtail any nostalgia for empire. It is a stunning narrative of the reality of colonialism in the southern part of India - a story that has been virtually forgotten by the world, but that now demands a fresh hearing in our current time of reckoning with injustice. Even more than police repression, Bharati dwells on the chilling hypocrisy of the British government, which claims free speech and individual rights as core British values, only to deny them to their own colonial subjects. The episode features an extended passage from his essay, as well as a brief excerpt from a second of his essays dealing with colonial rule, entitled "Police Rule in India: A Letter to Mr. Ramsay Macdonald." 

Percussion by tabla maestro Bickram Ghosh and ghatam maestro V. Suresh in a spectacular "jugalbandhi" brings together North and South Indian classical traditions, symbolizing Indian cultural unity.

Executive Producer and Host: Mira T. Sundara Rajan

Engineer: Emma Markowitz

Producer: Bradley W. Vines

Music Credits: Drums of India, Bickram Ghosh on Tabla and V. Suresh On Ghatam.

Subscribe to Bickram Ghosh's youtube channel.