Gandhi claimed that he did not choose the bhajans sung during his prayer meetings. As he publicly stated on 17th June 1947, ‘I have no hand in choosing the bhajans that are sung these days. But often the bhajan that is sung fits the occasion.’ This was not surprising on two accounts: one, by this time there was a clearly defined repertoire of songs that Gandhi appreciated and made full use of, and two, many of these he had already annotated with comments that were specifically relevant to the freedom struggle. 

Virtually most of the songs were about resolving differences arising from ignorance and greed, and emphasised the sublimation of the ego in the service of truth and salvation. These sentiments were general enough to address the problems at hand—the burning fires of communal hatred in Bengal, Bihar and the Punjab, the utter poverty and degradation of the Indian masses, and subsequently after Independence, the pressing crisis of refugees and their rehabilitation. Each of these issues directly touched on the notion of the individual self and the willingness to identify with the ‘other’ and work towards replacing enmity with friendship.

At the same time, the idealised Ramrajya of Gandhi’s political imagination, configured by the songs of Rama composed by Tulsidas, spoke directly to the imagination of the toiling peasant. For Gandhi, Tulsidas seemed to strike the right chord, that of the striving devotee who had to take torturous steps to realise the truth and accomplish his duty with utter equanimity. It was not as though Gandhi was not critical of some verses and sentiments that Tulsidas espoused, but the poet’s work remained by far the most distilled expression of age-old devotion in the subcontinent. To this, Gandhi added his own appreciation of faith practice and thus the modified ‘Ramdhun’, with its inclusion of Ishwar and Allah, provided not the rallying cry of mobilisation, but the soothing murmur of reconciliation and unity of all religions.

Apart from the poetry of Tulsidas and Meerabai, whose compositions enjoyed special resonance with Gandhi, there were select songs of Tagore that appealed to him for their passionate commitment to struggle and to the beauty of the motherland. These were patriotic songs with a difference—they did not lend themselves to jingoistic shrieks of adoration, but contemplated the India of the poet’s dreams, a land unfettered by hate and fear, and championed the cause of the noble warrior marching single-mindedly and resolutely. Not surprisingly, these songs set the stage for a discourse on the cultivation of a society that was not plagued by poverty, anger, greed and attachment.

It was this ideal that the song celebrated, and as Gandhi stated in his speech on 1st November 1947, it was only such a nation that could be considered a dharmarashtra (a righteous republic). On all these occasions, Gandhi used bhajans to convey the simple message of seeking God within the precincts of the heart on which larger issues of political reconciliation were superimposed. Gandhi could not agree with the Partition plan, but had no choice but to go along with it. Drawing from a bhajan composed by the Marathi saint Tukaram, he told his audience on 1st July 1947 how the song itself embodied the mixed cultural and language practice while its content stressed devotion to God that could always help an individual to withstand losses and misfortune. On this occasion, he pointed out that he had never suggested that the Partition plan could be undone but that political division notwithstanding, the division of hearts would never happen. 

It may well be that Gandhi found in music, song and poetry the remarkable synthesis of emotion and experience produced by Indo-Islamic interactions. As he put it, ‘to me there is no difference between Sikhism and Hinduism. I have read the Granth Saheb. What it contains is also contained in the Vedic dharma.’ The need of the hour was total commitment to non-violence and to the purging of hatred, which was the only means to the truth. The refrain of the Ramanama was essential to steadying the mind and making it mindful of the ephemerality of life. For him, the two syllables were key to the moral kingdom—और नहीं कुछ काम की, मैं भरोसे अपने राम की (When nothing works, I put my faith in Rama) was the persistent motif and it remained for his followers to embrace the message with conviction and commitment.

Were these assertions of non-violence and unity and of the implacable reliance on religiosity as the only basis for politics simply rhetorical? If one were to assemble the various bhajans Gandhi used as opening gambits for the day’s discourse, we find a complex interweaving of ethical prescriptions with political discussions. Take, for example, the case of a bhajan, presumably by Kabir, that marked the meeting of 16th July 1947. The song spoke of the perishability of the body and the futility of attachment in an ephemeral world. Yet Gandhi resisted the interpretation suggested in the same bhajan that said ‘after me the deluge’, presumably indicating that there was nothing that was stable or permanent in the world. However, this was not to be taken as a message that exhorted inaction. For while life was but God’s divine play, no one could rest idle. As he said,

But we do not go wholly by what the bhajan says. If we did, where was the need of a Constituent Assembly? Where was the need of all the laws that our leaders are busy enacting. If they had all taken up the attitude of “after me the deluge”, no one would have been doing anything for anyone. This sentiment, therefore is an expression of extreme selfishness. 

This is an excerpt from Singing Gandhi’s India: Music and Sonic Nationalism by Lakshmi Subramanian, published in 2020. No part of this excerpt may be quoted or reproduced without prior written consent from its publisher, Roli Books.