Stylized nation and its stylish anthem

India is becoming more and more stylized. You could chalk this one to globalization. Our celebrities are stylized – have you ever seen them wear anything but a designer outfit, the latest makeup and accessories? After all, no mall anywhere, even in Jhumritalaya, can afford not to sport a top of the line designer store. And Indians are flooded with money (I am talking about the 0.1 percenters, 1.2 million plus) and they have to find outlets to lighten their wallets/purses, even in these days of plastic money.

But, you can also trace it back to our national anthem Jana Gana Mana …, first sung on Dec. 27, 1911 – that is hundred years earlier. The lyrics, though in Bengali, is highly Sanskritized and hence I may be excused if I claim that to be highly stylized – Sanskrit is culture and culture is style, after all.

And style does not stand still, even beyond Paris, Milan and other fashion hotspots. Our national anthem does not either. It follows our popular culture, being always in fashion, a dynamic attribute. Over the past about a month or so, perhaps as a tribute to having sustained itself for over hundred years in spite of being abused in reality, I keep hearing the song sung by a host of voices, all I am sure the pillars of the music industry in India, with perhaps some celebrities from other fields thrown in. I have nothing against the song being re-mixed, which is the fashion of the day. Yet, I feel distinctly uncomfortable listening to the most recent re-mix, with visuals thrown in ostensibly for evoking a higher level of patriotic feelings.

I am now convinced that our stylized celebrities have no clue as to what the song says, what it aims to inspire. As a corrective action and aware as I am that none of the singers can claim to be illiterates in English, I offer below the song’s English translation.

Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people,
Dispenser of India's destiny.
Thy name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sindh,
Gujarat and Maratha,
Of the Dravida and Orissa and Bengal;
It echoes in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas,
mingles in the music of Jamuna and Ganges and is
chanted by the waves of the Indian Ocean.
They pray for thy blessings and sing thy praise.
The saving of all people waits in thy hand,
Thou dispenser of India's destiny.
 victory forever.

The lyrics have a tone that is absolutely evocative, stirring, indeed rousing. The people repose faith in the country, to provide for them and defend them. It encompasses all of what is now India, indeed more.

However, if you heard the song now you would not classify it as anything but an elegy. Truly, this is what the re-mix sounds like, at least to my untrained ears. And, remember the song should be sung to the musically trained and also the musically deaf. You look at the faces of the singers and it is all plastic sentiments. It is crass, crasser than the plastic smiles of the Miss Universe contestants. There is no sense of pride. There is no feeling of happiness, of gaiety. It almost echoes the daily drudgery, with nothing to look forward to, no one to repose faith in. It is a pessimistic plea, if anything at all. What the re-mix has done is to transform a set of uplifting lyrics into a morose stanza, devoid of life. The spirit of the song has been sapped.

I have listened to the Star Spangled Banner, the US national anthem any number of times and I can tell you many people have set it to various tunes, though not varying by much. But, what is common to all is that they all keep to the spirit of the original. Now, I claim, indeed assert that the most recent re-mix, on the occasion of hundred years of its birth, our national anthem has been emotionally, spiritually mutilated. It shows that it is tired after hundred years.

I am fit enough to make such assertions because I have heard it sung and I have honored it at cinema halls in the 1960s, every time the flag waved on the screen with the stirring music taking you for brief moments beyond the immediate environment. There was much substance and hardly any style. But, that is what is demanded of an anthem, not ephemeral style.

But, now it is style that matters and our centenary re-mix obliges and so do our celebrity singers. We are indeed becoming more and more fashionable and stylized, sad to say.

Raghuram Ekambaram

P.S
"Her rendering of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Superbowl in 1991, during the Gulf war—cuddly as a teddy-bear in a white tracksuit—was so joyously rousing [my emphasis] that it was reissued in the wake of the September 2001 attacks." - The above is from an obituary of Whitney Houston in The Economist that I read just now (6:30 AM, IST, 2012/02/17), much after this post made its appearance.  Whitney's re-mix was "so joyously rousing" the obit says and that is precisely what was lacking in the current re-mix of Jana Gana Mana that I have criticized in the post, in pretty much the same words. I pat myself on the back.

Raghuram Ekambaram