A Shehnai of Secular Tunes: Ustad Bismillah Khan’s Vision of a Banaras Beyond Bigotry and Communalism

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June 27, 2024

“There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.”

-Toni Morrison, from No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear.

The aforementioned excerpt from Toni Morrison’s essay, highlights the significance of art and artists in uniting people and speaking to power, amidst socio-political and cultural crisis. In a different context from Morrison yet in a similar crisis was placed Ustad Bismillah Khan, an artist whose name today stands synonymous with the shehnai, or the clarinet. However, Bismillah Khan was not the typical artist and though deeply humble and rooted in his origins, he transcended them effortlessly and is today remembered not only for popularizing the shehnai throughout the world as a Hindustani classical instrument, but also for his secular outlook and embodiment of artistic resistance to forces of communalism and bigotry. This can be best witnessed in his very decision, as a Shia Muslim, to play the shehnai in the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, and his relationship with the city of Banaras. This essay explores Ustad Bismillah Khan’s vision of Banaras and his secular outlook, and reads it as an act of artistic resistance that unites rather than divides people of different identities.

Though born in Buxar, Bihar, in 1916, Khan shifted to his maternal grandfather’s home in Banaras in his early years and has lived in the city since, till his death in 2006. The city of Banaras has been very dear to Khan to the extent that people associate him more with Banaras than with his hometown Buxar, and he is referred to as “Bismillah of Banaras”, that also happens to be the title of a documentary made by Nasreen Munni Kabir. The famous scholar Ramachandra Guha also notes the rather uncommon and even ironical association of Bismillah Khan with Banaras:

“In a delicious paradox that can only be Indian, the man who best embodied the spirit of the holy Hindu city of Banaras was a Muslim.”

Despite his worldwide fame as an artist, Khan, in a famous anecdote, refused to leave his beloved city even when he was offered residence in America with all his family members and the 300 people he had given shelter in his home, only because the rich man who was taken away with Khan’s music, could not, as Khan claims, “bring river Ganga, the same people as Banaras, and the very atmosphere of Banaras to America”.

However, as the 1989 documentary Sange Meel se Mulaqat (Meeting the Milestone) by Goutam Ghose accurately captures, the Banaras of Khan’s childhood and that of the late 80s, are two different worlds. The secular society of Banaras that embraced all faiths, except for its caste-ridden aspects, and that Khan was such an integral part of, was slowly disintegrating into the 80s with the rise of Hindutva and communalism that manifested in several communal riots in the late 80s and 90s and continued in the early 2000s with the bomb blasts of 2006. Interestingly but not surprisingly, Khan though refers to Banaras both in the present tense and in the past tense, it is mostly a poignant recollection of the city than an expression of its present state, as he remembers his childhood in the city and how there would be an environment of joy and communal harmony in the city on the day of Holi back then. Khan’s vision of the city, though seems to be one of the past, is still relevant, as a segment from the documentary was popularized and ran viral on social media platforms, in January 2020, when once again communal forces were being opposed in the anti-CAA movement. In the segment, Khan stands in front of the Ganga, speaks of his childhood and how one could take a dip in the river, read the namaaz in the nearby mosque, and also go to the temple to worship the Hindu gods, pointing at the syncretic culture of Banaras and the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb that he is said to have embodied. The Ganga in his analysis then, represents not merely the symbolic focal point/centre of Banaras but also that of India, suggesting and affirming a syncretic culture that has always characterized Indian society . The reproduction of the documentary clip during the anti-CAA movement is in itself a firm example of artistic resistance to communal forces that characterized the very persona of Ustad Bismillah Khan.

Caption: A photograph of Ustaad Bismillah Khan captured by the famous photographer Raghu Rai

Credits: Raghu Rai

As the Goutam Ghose documentary shows, Khan’s vision of art unites people rather than dividing them, and as he himself stated and embodied, “music has no caste, no creed, it welcomes everyone.” And so it did welcome a Shia Muslim who practised music in traditional Hindu temples like his ancestors, despite opposition from the majority of both Hindus and Muslims who were against Muslims playing music in Hindu temples due to his identity and music being haraam, respectively. However, not only did Khan continue with his music despite receiving flack from both communities, but he also went as far as to worship Allah and Saraswati. However, his decision to continue practising music and worshipping deities from both the community was not the only reflection of his secular outlook, for his very art was devoted to uniting people, as his defiance is rooted in his very choice to be an artist and to play the shehnai. This instrument was looked down upon in the gatekept, elitist, and as several incidents have time and again shown along with the very experience of Khan, casteist world of classical music. His devotion to his arts is in itself a form of resistance that sets the grounds for his secular outlook of Banaras. This can also be witnessed in his small yet significant acts of protest that involved his refusal to celebrate his birthday during the bomb blasts of Banaras to register his dissent with the direction Banaras was taking. This eventually did bring down the communal tensions in the city.

Time and again history has witnessed several artists of finesse who have revolutionized their respective arts. However, there does exist a severe lack of artists who unite people with their arts, who speak in the face of authority in the sweetest yet sharpest of tunes. And this is what makes Ustad Bismillah Khan so significant and relevant in 2024. He continues to speak to us with his humble persona about his love for his begum, i.e his shehnai, and of course about the city of Banaras, the city that he so dearly loved, recalling its syncretic cultures that gave birth to Kabir, whose legacy he continues, and subtly resisting with his music and his secular tunes. With the loss of Bismillah Khan, there lies not only an emptiness in the world of classical music but also the world of active and responsible citizens and dissenters, a void that artists like Rabbi Shergill, T.M. Krishna, Rahul Ram, and other lesser-known artists are filling with their music and secular outlook.

Bibliography and References

Sange Meel se Mulaqat. Directed by Goutam Ghose. 1989, YouTube, https://youtu.be/CzMkXbiY4pw?si=tHwNVsvWwzVpneje .
Sirur, Simrin. “Ustad Bismillah Khan, a Muslim who reveled in the sound of shehnai in Varanasi.” The Print, 21 Mar. 2019,

https://theprint.in/theprint-profile/ustad-bismillah-khan-a-muslim-who-reveled-in-the-sound-of-shehnai-in-varanasi/208079/ .