When Harmonium was banned at All India Radio

“If you can ban Harmonium from the music programs at All India Radio then it will be very beneficial for Hindustani music.” - Rabindranath Tagore

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“If you can ban Harmonium from the music programs at All India Radio then it will be very beneficial for Hindustani music.” This is an excerpt of a letter from Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore to the All India Radio in early 1940. 

In fact, Tagore was not the only one calling for a ban on Harmonium. The newly appointed Director General of the All India Radio, Syed Ahmed Shah Bukhari ‘Patras’ (or, Patras Bukhari), who was previously serving as Deputy Director General under Lionel Fielden, a European officer, was also a fierce critic of Harmonium. The result was, one of the first decisions he took after gaining authority from Fielden, on the back of public opinion led by Tagore, was to ban Harmonium. It must be noted that Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the tallest political leaders of the time and the future Prime Minister, also demanded a ban on harmonium in India.

The ban remained in effect till 1971.

Matt Rahaim of University of Minnesota writes, “The fiercest objections to the harmonium arose quite suddenly, several decades after it had been assimilated into both performance and education, in the years leading up to Indian independence. As we shall see, this critique was developed by a community of British and Indian scholars (such as Rabindranath Tagore, A.H. Fox-Strangways, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and K.B. Deval) who were committed to defining and preserving a pure Indian musical heritage. Sometimes attacks on the harmonium adopted romantic or even orientalist language; sometimes they were expressed in stark nationalist terms. In all cases, such rejections served to define a distinctive Indian musical sensibility.”

Patras Bukhari as Director of All India Radio (credits: Rashid Ashraf)

Patras Bukhari declared about the ban in the following words, “Indian musical instruments have no equivalent all over the world owing to the softness and elasticity of their sounds and melodiousness. Unfortunately, Western instruments have been gradually replacing them in India for the past thirty or forty years. They are slowly replacing Indian instruments from music and dance concerts. Among them, harmonium has caused the maximum damage to Indian music. Isn’t it interesting that the West where it was invented has already rejected it because of its inferiority, but in India it is flourishing day by day. Not only is harmonium a low level instrument, rather it is harmful to singing. Because its noise suppresses all natural qualities of a singer’s voice and its subtle ups and downs.


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“For the last three years, All India Radio has consistently tried to stop the use of the harmonium. But since many artists felt, and some still do, that “they cannot sing without a harmonium,” the ban was not too strict and formal. But now is the right time for All India Radio to remove Harmonium from its Sangeet Sabha forever. We believe that our policy, which will be implemented from March 1st, will not only save the Indian musicians from being undervalued, but the sophistication of the Indian musical programs will also increase more than ever before.

“In this regard, we have received numerous letters from the intellectuals and important persons of India. In which our policy has been appreciated. A few names are mentioned below for your interest, excerpts from their letters will be included in the next publications:

  • Dr. Rabindranath Tagore, Shantiniketan (2) Sir Raza Ali Moradabad (3) Sir Guru Nath Bewoor, New Delhi (4) Mr. B. S (Sikh thinker) Bombay (5) Mr. S. N. Ratan, Principal Mary’s College of Hindustani Music, Lucknow (6) Thakur Jadev Singh, Secretary Sangeet Samaj Kanpur (7) Professor Mirza Muhammad Saeed, Delhi (8) Prof. M. Mujib, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi (9) Dr. Zakir Hussain Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi (10) Rao Bahadur K V Krishna Swami Aiyer, President Music Academy, Madras…etc.”

  Rabindranath Tagore in his letter to the All India Radio informed that he had already banned Harmonium in Shanti Niketan and it should be followed everywhere in India.

Matt Rahaim writes, “By the 1930s, a dedicated movement to ban the harmonium had successfully banished it from the South Indian classical stage. In 1940, the harmonium was banned from All-India Radio, theretofore the largest single employer of harmoniumists in India. John Foulds, a prolific composer and the European music director of All-India Radio, Delhi, was largely responsible for this ban…… In 1938 Foulds published an article called “The Harmonium” in which he suggested that it be banned because its tuning was incompatible with Indian classical music. Echoing a term coined by fellow7 theosophist Margaret Cousins, he called it the “Harm-Onium” in this article. But more significantly, he called it “un-Indian.” Shortly afterward, Lionel Fielden, the Controller of Broadcasting at the time, sent out a circular banning the use of the harmonium as an accompanying or solo instrument in Indian classical music broadcasts.”

The fact that Fielden sent out the circular during his last few days as Director of All India Radio skipped the notice of Rahaim. An important factor remained that the ban and ascendence of Bukhari to the Director’s post almost coincided. Bukhari, as an Urdu satirist, had already written against harmonium and played an important role in forming a public opinion against the instrument.

Article by John Foulds against Harmonium (credits: All India Radio Archives)

John Foulds, in his 1938 article, made a strong case for the bad on harmonium. He wrote, “The danger is, however, recognised. And imagine my delight at seeing a notice in a broadcasting studio not long ago, offering an increased fee to those who sang without the harmonium! A splendid lead or a safeguarding of your music is assuredly a safeguarding of one of the most beautiful of the traditional heritages of the peoples of India.” 

The harmoniumists staged a protest against the ban. A funeral procession of eleven harmoniums was carried out and they were lowered down in a grave. The procession took inspiration from a legend that the Indian musicians buried their musical instruments after a funeral procession to mark their protest when Emperor Aurangzeb banned them. 

A funeral of harmonium (credits: Twitter handle of Professor Aswin Punathambekar)

The ban was removed in 1971. The purpose in the pre-independence India was to resist the colonial hegemony and Indian nationalists made harmonium a rallying point. Rahaim points out, “Tagore’s most enduring contribution to the anti-harmonium cause was his coinage of a phrase that has haunted the harmonium to this day: “The harmonium, that bane of Indian music, was not then in vogue.” However, it is in the sentence that follows, less often quoted, that the political stakes in Tagore’s rejection of the harmonium become clear: “I practiced my songs with my tambura resting on my shoulder; I did not subject myself to the slavery of the keyboard”. The notion that playing a keyboard instrument would be a kind of slavery indeed may seem like a frivolous concern in light of the actual economic oppression that many landless Indians were suffering under British rule, especially coming from an aristocrat like Tagore. But in 1912, it was an extension of Tagore’s nuanced critique of British cultural hegemony. He was critical of strains of oppressive nationalism that threatened to dissolve India’s internal diversity within a single, homogeneous national identity.” 

 

(Views expressed are personal to the author and do not represent the Heritage Times)


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Saquib Salim

Saquib Salim is a well known historian under whose supervision various museums (Red Fort, National Library, IFFI, Jallianwala Bagh etc.) were researched. To his credit Mr. Salim has more than 400 published articles on history, politics, culture and literature in English and Hindi. Before pursuing his research and masters in modern Indian History from JNU, he was an electrical engineering student at AMU. Presently, he works as a freelance/ independent history researcher, writer and works at www.awazthevoice.in