Karl Marx whispers

Kings and Queens, Courts and Palaces, Myths and legends, Wars and Revolutions and most of all, dazzling personalities and splendid leaders of men and women, these are the pictures that we conjure when we think of remote past. While these images are colourful and fantastic, they also represent ideas and feelings that have moved people for last thousands of years. To some of us, these pictures are a source of great interest and entertainment. As we delight in them, we also try to arrange them, often chronologically. But we are not satisfied with a mere ordering of the events behind these pictures; we also explore reasons behind these events and personalities. This urge to organise our past so as to facilitate its easier understanding has given us the subject of history.

History evidently contains a story. A story that was actually enacted in the past by real and living people and also a story that was seen and observed and ideally recorded by one or more of them. When two people tell a story, sometimes the same story seems to be different. History also has this delightful quality. Different writers have interpreted the events of the past in their own way. The story of Jesus Christ is told by four apostles, St Mark, St Mathew, St John and St Luke in their own style and they have all contributed to the richness of the story. These stories combine to form the bulk of the New Testament. The French revolution as described by Thomas Carlyle is significantly different from its description by Edmund Burke.

Jawaharlal Nehru, our first prime minister wrote history as his personal experience, Prof Irfan Habib, one of India’s greatest living historian, writes with academic rigour and scholarly depth, Tiberius Claudius, the great roman emperor was taught by famous historian Livy and wrote with unusual passion and rhetoric. One historian, who single-handedly changed the subject of history and its application to our life, is Karl Marx, the German philosopher and economist.

Karl Marx did not stop at giving his interpretation of history where he argues that economics has been the prime force behind all historical events. He inspired and continues to inspire people who are not happy with the existing state of the world. Those who are fired with the ideals of equality and justice, who are troubled by the apparent rich-poor divide and those who are willing to take a few steps forward and shape the world in their own image have always found solace in the ideas of Marx.

A few such men came together and altered the map of the world. Marx’s ideas gave birth to October Revolution, the socialist and the communist movements and a number of new states led by Soviet Union. Karl Marx died on March 14, 1883 and quite appropriately, the tombstone of Karl Marx bears the inscription “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point however is to change it”. The latter, he still whispers to the ears of youth.

Institutionalization in Classical Music

We often forget that we live in a world where Balma moso raho na jaye in raga Lalit ushers in the sun every morning and Guru Bin Gyan Na Pave in raga Marwa sees him off at dusk. Piya  bin nahi avat chain in raga jhinjhoti bereaves the loss of Sun every late evening as Phulwan ki gendanwa maika na maro in raga jaunpuri welcomes the beautiful dawn again. This is a world created by pundits and ustads of classical music who guarded it so zealously that entry to it was restricted to only their sons and son in laws and often only to a deserving shagird.  Access to this world was not allowed to interested masses as a stranglehold was maintained on the treasures of not only the compositions but also the basic structure of ragas and other necessary nuances.

As we probably know this delightful world has its own clock and its own language. SA, RE, GA, MA, PA, DHA, NI, SA are the eight letters of the musical alphabet. They are called notes, individually and an Octet, collectively. You may notice that there are two SAs in the octet. The last SA is very different from the first SA when we hear them and in fact the last SA is the first note of the next octet. These notes must be heard to be enjoyed. As we hear, we feel that some of them are flat and some sharp in their tone. This distinction was carefully utilized in both Hindustani and Carnatic  classical music and five new notes were introduced. They are flat (Komal) RE , Komal GA, Sharp (Tivra) MA, Komal DHA and Komal NI and so a full twelve-tone scale is formed.

These Komal or Tivra notes are used as per some rules. These rules were formed by a number of Ustads and Pandits who practised the art of Hindustani classical music. Venkatmakhi, the famous south Indian musician of 17^th century said that there are 19 such combinations that historically exist out of a possible 72. Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande reduced it to a more manageable combination of 10. Pt Bhatkhande did an extensive research and travelled across the length and breadth of the country, met numerous experts and practitioners of classical music and was able to conclude that each one of these 10 combinations can be represented by one major raga.

These combinations were given a delightful name of Thaat (manner or style) and each was named after a principal raga. These Thaats are Bhairav, Asavari, Bhairavi, Bilawal, Kafi, Kalyan, Khamaj, Marva, Poorvi and Todi. These Thaats stood for unique musical ideas and were distinguished by use of scale, phrases, performance practices and internal vigour of the principal raga.

Pt Bhatkhande stands tallest among the legends and doyens who have contributed to the growth of classical music in India among the interested masses. His scientific classification of musical practices and standardization of notes led to a systematic and easy study of classical music even among the people who did not have the good fortune of knowing or receiving education from a Pandit or an Ustad. His magnum opus “Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati” is a book in four volumes spread over 2000 pages in the form of a logical dialogue between a teacher and a pupil on the topic of music. Marris College of Music in Lucknow was established by him and is today called Bhatkhande Sangeet Vidyapeeth. There are several such schools in the country today.

Pt Bhatkhande was a lawyer by profession. He studied at Elphinstone college Bombay and practiced law at Bombay and Karachi High courts. After the early death of his wife and his daughter he devoted himself to the cause of music. He wrote books and essays under the pseudonym Chatur Pandit. It is probably more than a mere coincidence that he was born on the day of Janmashtami in 1860 and passed way on the day of Ganesh Chaturthi in 1936.  

Malls, Money and Microeconomics

Shining shop windows, glittering ornaments, fancy gadgets, delectable sweets, inviting sports gear and of course fashionable dresses, the list of things that attract us and that we wish to buy is endless. It is only the amount of money that we have in our wallet limits us from buying everything we want. It is sad but true that most of us have only limited resources with which we try to prioritize fulfilment of our wants. If we total the wants of all citizens of a country and also its resources, we get a similar situation. The country in question then has to judiciously use its resources so as to ensure the greatest good for all.

While this game of choosing what to buy now and which buying to postpone, we indulge in every day with great difficulty and considerable pain, the country finds doing it even more difficult. The countries that have been able to do it with foresight and effectiveness are today the rich nations of the world.  This game when played by us as an individual is studied as a part of Microeconomics and studied when played by countries is called Macroeconomics.

The Wealth of Nations, the famous work by Adam Smith, deals with the games mentioned above, as played by both individuals and the nations. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages”, so he said in his treatise on economics, which is akin to the first book on the subject. He coined the two famous and frequently-used terms “Invisible Hand” and “Division of Labour”.  The first is only a beautiful and evocative picture of our self-interest helping the nation in making prudent use of its resources where as the second is just a tool to make sure that the usage is efficient. 

Smith was not an economist as we know them. He was a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, England. He had a large nose, bulging eyes and a protruding lower lip that gave him a not so handsome appearance. He famously quoted, “I am a beau in nothing but my books” He was also a classical absent-minded professor who once put bread and butter into a tea pot and drank the concoction, declaring later that this was the worst tea cup he had ever had.