New Delhi: While Gen Z is reaching for the soundscape of the 2010s for its protest playlist, some Marathi content creators are taking it back to poems composed centuries ago. They’re digging up abhangs, or devotional poetry, by saints from the Bhakti movement, Janabai and Tukaram.
“Why have our kids taken to the streets? I have found the answer in an abhang by Tukaram,” said Chandrakant Redican in Marathi, in a reel posted Wednesday. He runs the page @poetryisprotest on Instagram.
Redican went on to recite the entire abhang, explaining in simple words the meaning behind the lines composed in Middle Marathi. He put the bhajan in the caption:
ऐसा कोणी नाहीं हें जया नावडे ।
कन्या पुत्र घोडे दारा धन ॥
No one in the world dislikes
Having daughters and sons,
Houses, horses and wealth.
निंब घेतें रोगी कवणिया सुखें ।
हरावया दुःखें व्याधि पीडा ॥
Does a diseased person
Drink the bitter juice of the neem tree
For happiness? No.
He does it to conquer sadness,
Disease and pain.
काय पळे सुखे चोर लागे पाठी ।
न घालावी काठी आड तया ॥
If a person is running anxiously,
How can you say they are satisfied?
It must be that a thief is chasing them;
One should not stand in their way
Or do something vile
Like tripping them over.
जयाचें कारण तोचि जाणे करूं ।
नये कोणां वारूं आणिकासी ॥
None but the doer knows
The reasons behind their actions;
None should get all high and mighty,
Or righteous, over anyone else. Act righteous
तुका म्हणे तरी सांपडे निधान ।
द्यावा ओंवाळून जीव बळी ॥
But still, says Tuka:
In case you do find the hidden treasure
Of life’s true meaning,
It is well to offer one’s life
In sacrifice for that treasure.
While Tukaram was speaking about his search for divinity in the abhang, Retican applied it to the student protesters at Jantar Mantar.
“The page of Cockroach Janta Party, created for time-pass, is proving tough for the government… Think, why have all these kids descended onto the street? These are students who give entrance exams, which means they have a future and they’re fighting for it,” he said in the reel.
In a reel posted Friday, Retican used another abhang by Tukaram to answer the people writing ‘FCRA’ in his comments, alluding to alleged foreign funding for student protests. This time, he chose a fiery poem where Tukaram soundly roasts people who speak without a second thought. In the abhang, the 17th-century poet compares such people—quite close to modern-day trolls—to donkeys, bullocks, and excrement.
The Bhakti movement challenged medieval social hierarchies, frequently targeting caste discrimination and ritualistic Brahmanical dominance.
‘Songs that fuel revolutions’
Musician Shruthi Veena Vishwanath, on the other hand, reached for an abhang by Janabai.
“I am thinking of songs that quietly fuel revolutions, that help generations stand at the picket line and endure police brutality. This one comes from Janabai… she says I have no fear, the behinning and end is you, my lord,” Vishwanath said in her reel, singing some verses from the abhang.
Janabai belonged to the Matang community and worked as a maidservant in the household of prominent saint Namdev. She often critiqued the caste system and societal norms.
“Thank you Gen Z and thank you so many people at the frontlines for exemplifying this courage that Sufi, Bhakti poets, the revolutionaries for hundreds of years in India have expressed through their bodies, through their songs,” Vishwanath added.
Also read: Rakhi Sawant slams police action during student protests—with a red sanitary pad