BY DEVENDRA SATYARTHI

Since 1927 I have been traveling in various Provinces of India to collect folk-songs. It is a great joy to me to live among the villagers and to listen to them singing their indigenous songs. My note-book is always with me, my pen ever ready to record these songs, and my camera ever ready to yield the pictures of village life. I am myself a villager. But I cannot confine myself to my native village in the Punjab. I have the urge to see each village of India. You may call me a Gypsy–a way-farer going from place to place. I am glad to see new faces, but the real joy comes when I peep into the hearts of the people, and that is possible through their songs. I have so far collected songs from more than thirty languages of India. This song-pilgrimage is now the mission of my life.

The true heart of India lives in her seven lakhs of villages. The vitality of the Indian villager is India’s real vitality. "Villages are like women;" observes Rabindranath Tagore, "in their keeping is the cradle of the race. They are nearer to nature than towns, and are, therefore, in closer touch with the fountain of life. They have the atmosphere which possesses the natural power of healing. It is the function of the villages, like that of women, to provide people with their elemental needs, with food and joy, with the simple poetry of life, and with those ceremonies of beauty which the village spontaneously produces and in which she finds delight." The voice of India’s villages is, indeed, par excellence, India’s innermost voice; the threads that sew through it are of the past and of the present; and the past and the present prophetically throw their shadows into the future.

India’s folk-songs are of many varieties; they pervade all walks of life; they are deeply associated with various religious rites and social ceremonies; men and women, young and old, all alike share the joy of song. They are redolent of the common joys and sorrows of the Indian people.

Folk-songs are always the Gypsy Children of the Muse, and they come as easily to the people as the sweet notes to the nightingale. Their characters have always the true air and light of the village life, and, in the words of the poet, "they live in description and look green in song." We are impressed by their spontaneity, freshness and originality. They always offer us a true source of joy and inspiration in life.

The aspirations and ideals, the loves and hates, the hopes and the beliefs of the people tell their own story in folk-songs; the tears and smiles of the people speak in the first person; nothing is hidden here; even the most secret compartments of the heart are thrown open. We can take them as the real auto-biography of the people.

The urge of song has never been the monopoly of a particular country. Songs are omnipresent. They are the same all the world over. Their birth-place is the same universal heart. Do away with the difficulty of language and you will find the same songs in all countries. There is, of course, difference of local colour, but that makes them all the more pleasant. It is very seldom that the local colour in them is entirely local in appeal.

The wandering bards have been serving as the moving universities of folk-music in all countries. Patriotism touches many of their compositions. But they are not expected to be Hiders and Mussolinis in their outlook of patriotism. They may simply celebrate their love for their respective countries without shouting a war-cry against their neighbours. And we observe that songs of patriotism current among the villagers in various countries harmonize in one orchestra. Here is an Indian folk-song, from the Khasi hills of Assam:

This Khasi song can be in tune with any folk-song of simple patriotism, current in any part of the world. Especially is it in tune with many Indian songs. The bard of Nepal can be heard celebrating his native land as "a golden Heaven." The Coorg bard in the Western Ghats calls his home "a star- besprinkled Heaven." A Gujarati song describes Gujarat as "a country dyed with henna." If the Kashmiri bard sings of the Jhelum:

the Burmese poet sings of the Irrawady in the same spirit:

The Kacha road in Utmanjaee, a Pathan folk-song, well illustrates people’s love for home:

The Gond, who compares his village to the moon, cannot be said to be devoid of the life-lit note of patriotism; and the peasant in the desert tract of Bikaner State, who compares his heart to a grassy plot in the rains, loves his village no less. The villager’s love for his soil is, indeed, a sincere note of nationalism; the village, where boys and girls grow up only to be married as a matter of course, has its own picturesque scenes and emotions, too, that never fail to temper its children’s sense of patriotism; generations come and go, but the songs of the people, their dances, their festivals and fairs are always there to add to their love for home.

The song of motherly love covers a wide range. What narrow frontiers can there be for the simple lullabies and cradle-songs? If the woman of Gujarat sings:

the Pathan woman, too, sings a similar song:

If the woman of South India says in a Telugu song:

the Pathan woman can contribute her own note:

How a genuine folk-song is born is evident from a Birha song, sung originally by the Ahir in Bihar:

Birha means separation from the lover or the beloved. But the Birha song is not always a song of separation. Any theme may enter into it. It is originally composed of four lines. The Ahir (cowherd) seems to be the uncrowned king of this type of folk-song. But how can he establish a monopoly? "Don’t you know any Birha?", I once inquired from a villager who was not an Ahir himself. "I know many," he replied smilingly, "though I cannot sing them like an Ahir." The Ahir is often a good flute-player. But his love for Birha songs is great and perhaps nothing can compete with it. They are his poetic asset which he hopes to carry even beyond his present life. "No matter if I go to Heaven or Hell after this life, I will not leave my Birha here," is a beautiful expression found in the Ahir folklore itself.

Love-songs are many. Here is one from Bengal. A far-traveled villager returns home, and wants to please his sweetheart with a few betel nuts and pan-leaves. But she refuses them and sings:

That love appears in the human heart as pollen on a tree is a popular idea in the folk-songs of the Punjab:

A Garhwali song begins thus:

Marriage-songs constitute quite a big family. Indispensable accompaniments of various rituals, the songs of marriage-festivities are supposed to have an auspicious influence over the marital life of the couple.

The Khondh bride, in Udyagiri Agency greatly enjoys her song addressed to her bridegroom, the hunter of tigers:

The bride and the bridegroom, as seen in marriage-songs, talk to each other. The song of the Sora bridegroom has an air of freedom about it:

The inheritance of ancient religious stories, side by side with the folk-experience, is apparent in many parts of India. Ramchandra is still the beau ideal; Sit a is still there. Next to Ramchandra is the name of Krishna that they give to the bridegroom with a religious flavour.

A strong and sincere note of parallelism runs through a wide range of marriage-songs, as in a Telugu song, which the Andhra mother may sing even as a cradle-song, imagining the auspicious day of her child’s wedding-day:

When the bride goes to her husband’s place the wedding-song turns pathetic, as a Bihari song depicts:

The song of the Assamese bride, too, is no less pathetic:

That the girls are like sparrows is a common theme. A wedding song in the Punjab opens thus:

The daughter of Gujarat, too, sings in the same strain:

There is a long series of peasant-songs; at the time when the Indian peasant is beginning to feel the impact of the outside world as never before, it is essential that his songs of joy and sorrow should be studied from a new angle. When the Gond youth brings forth the rich refrain of his favourite song, telling us about his landlord who sold his sister to buy a dhoti, we should not pass on to his next song without visualizing a famine-scene.

The fear of hunger is present in many songs. Even the kachar creeper, that is too fruitful, remembers the horror of famine in Marwar:

The suffering peasant is tired of his life; here is a contemporary song from the peasantry of the Punjab:

The bullock-cart driver, in Maharashtra, has his own contemplation, touching the fringe of the modern problem of exploitation:

Songs are many. We may divide them according to the phases of life from birth to death. Most of the songs seem to be common to the people in almost all Indian Provinces; some are confined to various professions and modes of labour. Many of the longer songs, like the Pathan ballad of Mamunai who was killed by her own husband, or the Andhra song of Urmiladevi’s Sleep, have their separate, unique importance.

Since the dawn of Indian folk-songs, innumerable songs may have been sung and have disappeared, as none cared to preserve them. Who can say that there were no folk-songs in Vedic India, and again in the days of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata? But it is probable that some of the ancient folk-songs, which disappeared from the living lips of the people, are reborn again and again in various forms in different languages and dialects of India. Songs, perhaps, never die.

It should be the duty of every son and daughter of India to spread love for these songs–these cultural and literary Kohinoors of India. We must welcome now the revival of all-India folk-songs. It will certainly offer new inspiration to all artists and literary persons. As every ripe fruit wishes that the dear hand of some man or woman should receive it from the branch before it falls down on the earth and gets spoiled, perhaps every genuine folk-song awaits the hand of a great poet who may transform it into a master-piece of poetry.

How fundamentally one is life all over India! The oneness of Indian life and culture pulsates in the songs of the Indian people, as we pass from one Province to another: same smiles and tears, same love for home, for nature; same hoary belief in the pity of gods; same metaphors and similes of life and death.

I have not been able to express my love for my country in political activity; nor could any form of social service suit me. I have only one work for my whole life–the study of Indian folk-songs.

I will put my collections one day at the threshold of India reborn.

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