‘Vande Mataram and Jana Gana Mana are two different ideas of India’: Carnatic classical vocalist TM Krishna on decoding India’s national symbols in his new book

Why are these symbols the right lens to understand today’s India?

There are political underpinnings of these symbols but also sociological imagery. There is also aesthetics, and that’s something most people have not looked at. My view of the world begins with listening and then I navigate other spaces. Our country is ultimately a feeling. You can intellectualise many things. But there is something visceral about feeling and these symbols do that. When you see a fluttering flag, it does something to you. That is fascinating.

The symbols allowed me to traverse a range of ethical ideas: whether it is the self, dharma, our relationship with the environment, the kind of country we want. The aggression that we hear and see today in the portrayal of India… Is that the India we imagined while selecting these symbols? For example, there is the argument that Ashoka was a meek symbol and we should be chest-beating in a manner that tells the world that we are the greatest or the best or the most macho. These are things that bother me. These symbols allowed me to go into spaces of contemporary struggles of justice and equality.

Why include the Preamble, which is not an official national symbol? How do you see the founding declaration today and what does it tell you about the distance between the Indian constitution and the lived experiences of the citizens?

I incorporated the Preamble because in the Constitution it is symbolic of all the pages that follow. I argue in the book that we failed our Constitution as people. We had the Independence struggle, we had a bloody Partition and a lot of anger. Then you had a majority of this country that was illiterate, with rampant poverty. We got our independence in this context. There’s no point in creating a document like the Constitution and then not sharing it with its people. We have not shared the spirit of the Constitution with the people of India, like in schools. Let’s be very clear, we are a caste-based society, carrying forward feudalistic thoughts for hundreds of years… The Constitution is an evolving document that becomes contemporary with the times but we did not develop a constitutional culture, a fundamentally democratic culture among Indians.

TM Krishna (Express photo by Jhothy Karat)

But in the book, Gopalkrishna Gandhi disagrees with you on this.

We do. He brings about a beautiful incident where this young girl in an economically weaker home pulled out a copy of the Constitution and read the Preamble. He is positive and I understand that. But I’m talking about it culturally. Look at the discussions happening after the new UGC guidelines. It is as casteist, as divisive and as insensitive as it can get. It’s so disturbing.

In the chapter on the anthem (Jana Gana Mana), you also engage with the national song (Vande Mataram). It is the 150th year of the latter and it continues to have a political afterlife. What does the persistence of the dispute tell you about nationhood?

These two songs have to be discussed together. That’s the politics of the last 100 years. But there’s another thing too. Vande Mataram and Jana Gana Mana are two different ideas of India; two different perspectives of why we are together. If you are looking at India as a Hindu-centric land in which others might be accommodated, then Vande Mataram is your song. If you think India is where everybody speaks different languages, wears different clothes, prays to different gods, yet exists equally in this land, then Jana Gana Mana is your song.

As national symbols increasingly function as tests of loyalty rather than expressions of solidarity, do you see this book as an act of course correction?

I’m trying to create clarity by saying that there are various ebbs and flows. People are playing political games on either side. It’s not new or old. But in all of that, they were trying to say that Muslims and Hindus can live together. We were fundamentally saying, ‘Let’s listen to each other.’ It’s not just about removing two verses in Vande Mataram. It’s far more complicated. There was a dialogue. They were saying, ‘Okay, let’s find a way to not antagonise each other? How can we see any of this but with the absolute intention of saying, ‘Let’s find ways in which we will resonate with one another.’ And that’s the story that needs to be told because it has been vulgarised; as if the entire 100 years and our struggle for independence has been some era of us not having self-respect or dignity.

In fact, we did it with grace. It’s an unusual case of a country of such differences somehow finding a footing together, despite violence, despite everything. And isn’t that something we should be celebrating, irrespective of our ideology? The fact that this country emerged from such diverse people and cultures and stayed together is miraculous. I’m hoping this book celebrates that miracle.