Of enticing overtures and ecstatic renditions: folk musicians communities in Thar, Rajasthan

Ustad Hakam Khan ji, Barmer 

The desert districts of Rajasthan have been well known for their vibrant folk music traditions. Musicians from here were among the first to give scintillating performances in ensembles of national and international cultural festivals organised by the Indian nation state especially after the seventies. Contemporary community traditions popular among folk musicians from the deserts of western Rajasthan  recount with pride names of Allah Jilai Bai, Dodhe Khan, Sadiq Khan, Bhungar Khan, to name a few pioneering artists, around whose performances a distinct identity of ‘Rajasthani folk music’ grew in India and abroad. In the initial heydays of construction of ‘national culture’ by the young Indian state, these musicians from remote rustic interiors of Thar were much sought after ‘culture makers’ of scintillating performances.

Over the last few decades this quaint and rustic representation of ‘Rajasthani folk music’ has transmuted into a veritable trope of brand ‘Rajasthan’ being represented in different forms and patterns by public and private actors. Although only a handful of musicians from these communities are now regulars on national and international festivals, tours and cultural exchange circuits of different genres of ‘world music’, this has contributed to the much hyped visibility of folk musicians. Without doubt singers and musicians like Anwar Khan, Fakira Khan, Mukhtiyar Ali, to name a few prominent ones have really contributed in continuing to make sufi music known world over. In our contemporary times of short lived stardom and a crowding of the sufi genre by performers who are urbanites, these folk sufi performers they have managed to carve out dignified niches of existence.  In public gaze this has fed a misconception about these communities having good fortune in this culture industry that continues to expand and diversify around brand Rajasthan.

The production of culture industry incessantly expands its influence becoming widespread with many Indian and foreign labels fervently producing ‘haunting’, ‘seductive’, ‘melodic’, ‘lilting’, ‘soul stirring’ folk music from the deserts of Thar, Rajasthan.  This is not to mention Bollywood film music that has with uncanny consistency transmogrified this pristine music into mass entertainment. Latest to join the on- going glitter of this culture industry are mega live music events amidst sand dunes, recreating the royal heritage, organised in collusion by media syndicates, local tourism lobby and regional elites. The folk musicians are paraded endlessly to adorn the gatherings of culture elite, fairs and festivals in Rajasthan. Folk music interludes are a quintessential feature in tour and travel packages for foreign and domestic tourists. The enticing overtures and soul stirring renditions of these musicians are ceaselessly marketed globally and locally by music industry- tourism complex.

Underneath this scintillating and loud sonic extravaganza of folk music lies a sordid story of languishing traditions, pathos and destitution that characterises lives of majority of these marginal practitioners of culture. Engulfed by these existential dilemmas regarding dignified continuation of their music traditions, these musician communities find themselves at cross roads. With the waning away of traditional societal contexts of hereditary transmission of these traditions, the twin spectre of crass commercialization leading to dissipation of their musical traditions and dwindling opportunities for sustained livelihood looms large over them.

In the contemporary context where issues of everyday existence, dignified arts practice of these musician communities continue to escape public discourse with unceasing monotony are their strategies and processes possible that contribute to well- being of these musician communities?

Of enticing overtures and ecstatic renditions seeks to draw attention to issues of pathos and destitution that paradoxically engulf the lives of musician communities whose music is the harbinger of peace, serenity and soulful ecstasy.

These musician communities have been subjects of ethnography, tour diaries and memoirs. Ethnomusicologists have engaged with these musicians whose music has been subject of much study, documentation, archiving and survey for the last three decades, if not more. This ‘western quest’ of ethnomusicology originating from universities in UK or USA has contributed a systematic body of ethno-musicological literature / archive. The rich collection / archive of folklore and ethno musicological inquiries have engaged with some of these communities and their selective repertoire over the last few decades. While not discounting the value of the repertoire collected or insights regarding music in society it could be safely said that it has mostly refrained from engaging with challenges of lived everyday context of these makers of the music.

It has been correctly observed that the tourists and visitor are not very different from ethnomusicologists. They both share the fascination for the unique and spectacular elements. This is much to the neglect of the material context of these musicians. The emphasis has been on the music, as it is consumed, not on the musicians. Another emergent trend is the individual ‘creativity unplugged’, ‘soul searching’ kind of creative arts practice that subordinates folk community creativities as subservient to its own exalted aesthetic feats. The climax of this celebration of ‘creativity outside the folk sphere’ is most glaringly seen in Bollywood, the industry processing folk music into mass entertainment.

The irony implicit in these promises of job creation is that these do little to alter basic existential realities of these musicians, that of being integrated largely as casual wage earners at the bottom of the culture industry. With the expansion of techno aesthetics of culture industry networks especially in the last decade, both in density and spread, employment generation based on folk music thrives on casual payment contracts, many times unspecified and assuaged by neo feudal hegemony. In such a context there is little hope to be pinned on culture industry,  in its current dispensation, in liberating these folk musicians from drudgeries of daily survival in an ‘economy of tragic choices’.

Instead of getting mystified by a cultural aesthetic that seeks to assuage the sentimental narrative of bemoaning the loss of traditions or becoming bewitched by glittering gismo of unbridled commercialization making community folk aesthetic completely subservient to the whims of ephemeral modern entertainment, or even the individual quest of soul searching creativity of urban professional artists, it is important to invest in human resources and cultural skills of these unique producers of veritable civilizational intangible heritage.

Mir Abdul Jabbar and Mir Vassu Khan, Bikaner

One possible way is to strengthen the resilience and inventiveness of cultural traditions by taking account of skilful and refined "interweaving, combining and conjoining" that is the continuing hallmarks of these robust ‘traditions under siege’ in the modern world. Traditional cultural traditions need to be recognised as veritable skills having the potential of translating into viable livelihood strategies. The versatile ability displayed by many of these musicians to straddle effortlessly across different repertoires and indeed different performative contexts exemplifies innovation that springs from frugal resources. It is important that this be not recognized as individual ‘talent’ alone, rather seen as embedded in collective core of these traditions. It is this that needs to be nurtured.

Be the change: transforming lives and ecology of Thar for betterment

Starting in 1990 as a voluntary effort in remote regions of Chohtan, SURE today works in the desert districts of Barmer and Jaisalmer, two of largest and backward districts of India.

From the beginning SURE has focused on strengthening rural livelihoods, strived for dignity and well being of vulnerable and marginal communities, especially women and people with different abilities. Interventions in improving agriculture, conservation of Thar Parkar breed of cow, ensuring food, fodder and water security have attempted to sustain a judicious relation with fragile ecology of the Thar. Motivation to pursue our goal, sustain the vision and mission owes a great deal to the acceptance by rural communities who have always reposed their faith in us. They have participated in development initiatives of SURE with a sense of ownership and accountability. We have been fortunate to get support from well meaning and pro poor people in the state bureaucracy and development agencies.

Developing and sustaining of these programs has been made possible by altruistic and relentless work over these years. What began as a voluntary movement of a small number of people is today transformed into an organization with more than hundred staff and hundreds of community volunteers in villages of Barmer and Jaisalmer.

These remote districts of Thar are changing fast. Following the discovery and drilling of oil and setting up of a power generation unit, Barmer is poised for a period of industrial growth. There is an increasing talk about the vast potential of reserves of solar energy. All this modernization is sure to put further squeeze on the fragile ecology and scarce natural resources of the region. This heightened context of resource tapping and use has created its opportunities and challenges before rural communities. The largely survival economy based on fragile natural base and rustic life is volatile with possibilities of change.

At this juncture, we all fondly remember late Magraj Ji who made SURE possible and would continue to motivate us for selfless voluntary action. As in the past, it is my sincere hope that needs and concerns of vulnerable and marginal communities would guide our way forward to strengthen economy of people, and in protecting their basic rights and entitlements.

The ensuing report narrates key features of our programme interventions over the years since the inception of SURE. I am pleased to place before the reader this journey of SURE.

(Lata Kachhawha)

Founder Member and Joint Secretary, SURE

for more on story of SURE click here 

a homage to Padamshree Shri Mag Raj Ji Jain: tenacious desert volunteer

Learning from ‘cultures’ of pastoralism for sustainable development in Thar

The Indian Thar is a hot desert and ranks among the few deserts of the world that have had a long and populous human history of settlement. This sustained human settlement has been made possible by unique attributes of the complex of eco systems and their natural endowments that make the natural setting of Thar. Equally ingenious and resilient have been life practices of different communities, mobile and sedentary, who have displayed remarkable forbearance and endurance in populating the region. Different varieties of pastoralism practiced by semi nomadic communities complemented with subsistence oriented rainfed farming have been core elements in constituting, settling and sustaining human history of this region.

The changes over the past few decades beckon us to understand experiences of modern transformation of pastoral Thar especially since the last quarter of the 20^th century with the coming of IGNP in north-west Thar. Ideologically propped up by Jawaharlal Nehru as the 'kingpin' of State planning for developing the desert, the IGNP was started with generous loans from the World Bank and a favourable policy framework enabled by the Indus Water Treaty of 1960 between Indian and Pakistan under the watchful gaze of the World Bank. The main components are the 445 km long lined canal running parallel to the Indo-Pak  border, nine branches, seven lift schemes and twenty-one direct distributaries apart from 8187 km. of minor canal network. The state claims to have opened more than ten lakh hectares of area for irrigation and provide drinking water to more than 3500 towns and villages. IGNP is a gigantic settlement and irrigation project that is supposed to benefit more than 2 million people. So far so good!

Most of development strategies and precepts that have informed the making of ‘modern development’ in Thar region argue that pastoralism as a resource use system must / should / would be done away with, transformed into sedentary husbandry integrated with dairy industry and in a subsidiary position to the meta- narrative on agro industrial farming. It could be said that this development thinking is rooted in perspectives on maximizing private economic profit derived from irrigated farming as the prescribed dominant land use system. Surplus gained from this agricultural enterprise, it is argued, would then feed the diversification into non-farm enterprises and to the making of agro industrial complexes. The dominant assumptions of this economic thinking against pastoralism influenced formulation of apathetic development policy and tardy implementation of development schemes and programmes relating to livestock rearing.

It would not be inappropriate to reiterate that sustainable modern development does not mean economic transformation alone but is better and more fully understood as well- being incorporating dimensions of human and ecological well- being. In keeping with this perspective pastoral way of life is more suited, better rooted historically and ecologically among communities in north-west Thar as compared to  ‘modern development’ that is a recent undertaking primarily orchestrated by state, increasingly controlled by market,  imposed from above and benefitting only a few.

The culture of pastoralism as it developed and sustained itself over long periods of human history in Thar has been adaptive in sharing an interface with subsistence based agriculture and had evolved elaborate customary practices to use and regenerate collective natural endowments of water and fodder. The social organization of this pastoralism consisted of reciprocal ties among communities for utilization of scarce natural resources, adoption of rustic lifestyles that had ability to survive in the long periods of harshness and bloom in the brief spells of abundance. The sway of pastoral way is evident in the dexterous everyday work ethic of rearing animals to aesthetic pursuits of exquisite creations of music and rustic textiles and other crafts. The embedded pastoral landscapes of wide limitless horizons and sprawling sandy plains interspersed with grasslands form a backdrop to growth of musical traditions of sufiyana qalam that celebrate pluralism of human existence and are marked by a heightened ecological sensibility. These life-sustaining practices that illumined the material and symbolic world weave the complex of cultures of pastoralism. The unique contribution of this culture has been notions of abundance and well- being by perfecting frugal lifestyles in a resource scarce region.

This is not a romanticist reinstating. There is need to specifically engage with issues relating to complex ‘culture’ of pastoralism and ‘modern development’ to ask meaningful questions regarding integration and adaptation of the culture of pastoralism in the emerging geography of built environments, roads crisscrossing canal networks and agricultural fields. Far from assuming that contemporary pastoralism is in an inevitable crisis and should/would give way to agro industrial complexes in the rapid on-going transformation, the role of pastoralism needs to be understood keeping in view the historically evolved human ecology of the region and a realistic assessment of possibilities and limits of ‘modern development’ for a sustainable future of Thar. This is quite in order given the high environmental costs, increased economic disparity, intensification of private resource use that characterize the nature of transformations brought in these regions with ‘modern development’.  The sordid tale of grass root realities of colonisation of desert grasslands and water sources - the common property resources - has led to marginalisation of pastoralists and created a political economy of natural resource use that has set in conditions for greater pauperization of poor allotees, stifled collective initiative, intensified resource use and control by private property and greater penetration of market and tightened the hold of soulless institutions of the state.

These questionings are emboldened by several studies elsewhere in world that have highlighted the critical importance of pastoralism in its contribution to sustain natural economy that makes possible and acts as an environmental cushion for the fast urbanizing world. Extensive land use systems need to be promoted and regenerated with reference to arid and super arid regions like the one under discussion. In a world that is increasingly becoming intolerant,  plagued with xenophobic conflict, unbridled consumerism, heightened and often cut throat individualism, and social stress, the deep message inherent in this popular pastoral culture of sufiyana qalam is coterminous with wisdom, love, peace, and dignity of all life. 

There is sense in learning from this remarkably resilient and frugal way of life. It may hold insights and cues for transition to a sustainable world.

Read Related Stories:

http://rahulghai.blogspot.in/2015/12/ignp-canal-in-rajasthan-experiences-of.html

http://rahulghai.blogspot.in/2015/12/pastoralism-in-thar-ignp-and.html

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IGNP Canal in Rajasthan: Experiences of People

The Indira Gandhi Canal Pariyojna (IGNP) initially known as the Rajasthan Canal Project (RCP) is one of the most significant projects of the modern state in the desert in Rajasthan.  It is one of the biggest canal networks in the world serving one of the least populated and most inhospitable regions. Though covering only 10-15% of the arid area of the       Thar it has been accorded prime importance and is the largest ‘public investment’ by the post-colonial developmental State in the state of Rajasthan having fed on liberal loans by the World Bank and the Japanese government. The IGNP has multiple objectives like “...provision of water for drinking, irrigation and industrial use; develop the vast land resources, settlement of the thinly populated areas; drought proofing; checking the spread of desertification and improvement of the eco-system; and overall development of the area through creation of infrastructure for exploitation of natural resources...”.

The IGNP was conceived in 1948 by the genius Rai Bahadur Kanwar Sain, the then Chief Engineer of the Bikaner State who thought it was feasible to ‘irrigate untold millions of acres in the Rajputana desert from the Punjab rivers’. Ideologically propped up by Jawaharlal Nehru as the 'kingpin' of State planning for developing the desert, the IGNP was started with generous loans from the World Bank and a favourable policy framework enabled by the Indus Water Treaty of 1960 between Indian and Pakistan under the watchful gaze of the World Bank. More than 3,200 million rupees have been spent on the canal network till 2008. The main components that have been accomplished till now are the 445 km long lined canal running parallel to the Indo-Pak  border, nine branches, seven lift schemes and twenty-one direct distributaries apart from 8187 km. of minor canal network. The state claims to have opened more than 9.5 lakh hectares of area for irrigation. Another 2 lakh hectares is being planned to be opened for irrigation in the Barmer district. Apart from this the IGNP provides drinking water to all the major towns and cities of the western Rajasthan, and more than 3500 villages and settlements in the command area as well as outside it. IGNP is a gigantic settlement and irrigation project that is supposed to benefit more than 2 million people. 

Thar and IGNP Stage II

The 256 km long main canal in Stage II starts near Sattasar, (km 189) in Bikaner district and extends all the way to Mohangarh (km 445) in Jaisalmer district. It can be said that in Stage II the interaction between the three meta processes of colonisation and allotment of land; construction of the canal network and development of the command area; and irrigating the command area, that together constitute the basic structure of the IGNP, reached a level of complexity that is not to be seen in Stage I. All through its flow area the canal passes through highly undulating terrain of high and medium sized sand dunes, many of which are shifting, covering regions in Pugal and Kolayat (Bikaner district) and Nachna, Mohangarh, Ramgarh, Jaisalmer (Jaisalmer district) covering an area of 5 lakh ha (CCA). Additional area (2 lakh ha CCA) under Gadra Road extension (Barmer and Jaisalmer) have been recently included. Droughty and calcareous soils having low fertility, negligible farming, low population density, scattered settlements and a pastoral way of life situate the regions in Stage II as markedly different from Stage I. Though the area to be opened for irrigation in Stage II is almost double that of the Stage I it is here that the irrigation potential has been the most difficult to create and utilise problems of which have been compounded by the low rate of settlement of potential farmers.

The coming of the IGNP in these arid and hyper arid regions ushered in processes of radical transformation. For the communities as well as the state the scale and scope of changes entailed has been unprecedented. No other single development project has had so significant an impact on the workings of the state, the destinies of the communities and the fragile ecology of these regions as the IGNP in the last thirty years.

The narratives of the experiences of survival by plebeian settlers offer a different perspective to the ‘greening of the desert’ than the dominant narratives from the top about this mega initiative of ‘making the desert bloom’. These panegyrics, zealously proclaimed from the corridors of power, ivory tower pedestals of politicians, technocrats and canal elites, invoke metaphors of equating Indira Gandhi Canal akin to Saraswati, the mythical river of abundance. Applauding it as the supreme feat of technology and human ingenuity, as the hallmark of modern progress and development in the inhospitable Thar desert has been the dominant narrative of ‘modern development’ in Thar.  

In sharp contrast to these eulogising epithets, the narratives of existence of plebeian settlers reveal quite a different story about these staggering costs and awesome labyrinthine hydraulic spectacle that IGNP has inscribed on the face of the Thar. The canal in transforming the desert that it thought was ‘waste’ has created its own miseries and in fact has not only done irreversible harm to the fragile ecology of the area but has introduced structural inequalities and laid the conditions for a new order of exploitation. What is really tragic is the ‘waste’ that the canal has wrought upon commons, pastures, rangelands, their bio diversity, traditional dry land farming practices combined with intricate use of rain water harvesting structures, and so on.  The coming of the IGNP can be seen as initiating processes that mark a decisive break with the pre modern customary sanctions and practices. The canal command area created by this hydraulic network has set in processes of reshaping the distinct natural resource regimes of the Thar by demarcating and dividing them indiscriminately into slices of private  agricultural land holdings (6.2 hac. each). In doing this, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the IGNP has tampered with the essential integrity of the fragile ecological base of the Thar. It has not only restructured the physical landscape but has put in place a set of attitudes and ambitions which bear a sharp contrast to older way of life in Thar. 

Never has the rhetoric of productivity of land and indeed man as a productive and individuated unit governed the popular psyche so much before in the Thar where communities have long survived through shared communal traditions and have been known for celebrating what is rustic and elemental in life venerating nature as sacred. As many settlers sagaciously point out increasing desertification is not the nightmare; it is the increasing laying waste and rapacious plunder of nature orchestrated by the sway of private capital and maximising greed brought by the canal that is.

But this is not really an ‘ecological critique’ of the canal or a mournful lament at the loss of the pristine desert or counter sloganeering against big canals etc. The ensuing narratives are firmly embedded in the experience of engagement of people with the massive edifice of the canal in this harsh terrain as they battle their lives toiling hard in the changed landscape of the desert.  The ecological sensibility that we wish to recover from the dusty layers of Thar and the intricate network of canals, small and big, is constituted of the experience of the travails of people in the material history of everyday life in the canal command area. This diverse world of the settlers is constituted by both the old natives, those who have come from other parts of Rajasthan as well as the wealthy farmers from the northern state of Punjab. Among them are landless agricultural labour often belonging to low caste, women who toil in the agricultural fields and are dextrous embroiderers as well, erstwhile nomadic pastoralists as well as those who stubbornly continue to be semi nomadic pastoralists against all odds, sedentary husbandsman who has made a successful transition to stall feeding of a few milch animals and sells milk to the dairy, new farmers who have successfully lived up to the ‘individualist-frontierist’ ethic of colonising the perilous desert, poor allotees who could not save their land due to paucity of resources, allotees who have been rehabilitated after being displaced from their generations old ancestral villages because of war or the coming of a firing range, traditional elders as well as PRI / Chak Samiti representative, young teachers who are eager to be seen as more ‘cultured’ than the ordinary mortals, a range of casual workers from the ranks of labouring poor, etc. 

The voices of these different kind of settlers are not 'individual feelings' alone. This polyphony of voices has its own share of rustic reckonings, existential ramblings, joyous expressions of success and represents an echoing of the perceptions and values of a much larger community in telling about the tenacious moral economy of the desert natives helping us understand the story of the peculiar ‘green revolution’ by this desert canal from below. These testimonies while recounting the daunting perseverance of the settlers point to the miserable travesty this piped dream of making the desert bloom has been smothered to, a chimera that continues to produce and reproduce its own mirages.