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Date : 07/04/2004
Source: Department of Education
Title: K Asmal: Celebration of Indian music and culture


ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR KADER ASMAL, MP, MINISTER OF EDUCATION, AT A CELEBRATION OF INDIAN MUSIC AND CULTURE, Cape Town 7 April 2004

It is a pleasure to be with you tonight, celebrating the boundless creativity of Indian music and culture. We are here for the music, I know. So I will be brief. But it is not every day that I get a chance to talk about music that I love.

Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. But music is in our hearts, our minds, and our bodies. Music is memory; music is life.

I have always loved the music of the sitar, its tones and its intricate melodies, its rhythms, and its pulse of life. I have especially loved the music of the sitar's greatest international exponent, Pandit Ravi Shankar.

For many years, Ravi Shankar has exemplified the best of our culture. By "our culture, here, I mean our Indian culture, but I also mean our human culture, at its best, when we learn about ourselves by learning about each other.

Culture, at its best, is not an obstacle, but an avenue for intercultural exchange. Ravi Shankar placed the sitar at the centre of an intercultural exchange, an international cultural exchange-that changed the world by inspiring people-East and West, North and South-to enter into profound human exchanges with each other through music.

We recall testimonials of musicians from the West who played with Ravi Shankar. The great violinist, the late Yehudi Menuhin, said: "Ravi Shankar has brought me a precious gift and through him I have added a new dimension to my experience of music. To me, his genius and his humanity can only be compared to that of Mozart." Here, East meets West.

In another testimonial, his student, the late George Harrison, referred to Ravi Shankar as the "Godfather of World Music." Here, East meets World.

Music, then, is a place of meeting.

How did Ravi Shankar accomplish all this? I think his genius might be found in his ability to do two things at once: He affirmed the integrity of culture and enabled the sharing of culture.

Affirming the integrity of culture, Ravi Shankar submitted himself to the discipline of Indian classical music. As a young man, he entered rigorous, demanding training prescribed by his guru-Baba Allaudin Khan.

He learned that music was a science, following an exacting method. But he also learned that music was spirituality, liberating the human spirit. He learned that music was logic, adhering to absolute logical precision. But he also learned that music was emotion, evoking the entire emotional spectrum of the human heart.

In the art of the raga, Ravi Shankar found a music that was a science of spirituality and logic of feeling. That was the integrity of the tradition.

However, even as a student, submitting himself to the discipline of a musical tradition, Ravi Shankar saw the potential for cultural exchange. His guru was a Muslim who showed profound respect for Hindu religious beliefs and practices.

Sometimes, respect can be shown in the simplest ways, in ways that we might take for granted. In his autobiography, Ravi Shankar said of his teacher: "As a devout Muslim, he does not eat pork; but, like a Hindu, he does not eat beef either." Baba Allaudin Khan was a devout Muslim, showing respect for Hindus. But he also participated with Hindus, performing puja at Hindu shrines.

A religious "purist" might object that you cannot be a Muslim and participate in Hindu devotions. As part of our culture, religion often seems to divide us. But religion can also provide a basis for developing mutual recognition and respect. Certainly, our differences can sometimes be obstacles. But they can also be vital avenues for opening up communication.

A musical "purist" might object to Ravi Shankar's efforts to share Indian musical traditions with the world. Certainly, he developed new techniques of presentation; he worked out different methods of translation. But he always saw these ways of sharing tradition-these ways of opening tradition-as part of tradition's own profound integrity.

Usually, we think of tradition-a musical tradition, a cultural tradition, or religious tradition-as something that we faithfully repeat. Line for line, note for note-we repeat what went before. But a tradition-if it is a living tradition-is not just handed down from the past. It is taken up in the present. It is infused with life by the creativity of our artists and poets, our musicians and singers, our cultural innovators and religious visionaries.

This capacity for affirming our cultural integrity, while opening ourselves to cultural exchange, is our greatest human resource.

I have never liked the way our history books have told the story of Indian South Africans. They say we came to South Africa as already different. They say we came here as different from each other. Coming here in different ways, as indentured workers or enterprising merchants, we had different languages, cultural backgrounds and religious traditions. And they say we came here as different from indigenous African people of South Africa. For decades, the standard histories of South Africa have just been making us look different.

New histories are showing that Indians in South Africa have been like Ravi Shankar. We have affirmed the integrity of cultural traditions, but we have also been open to cultural exchanges.

For example: When MK Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi-was in South Africa, his Hindu, Muslim and Christian followers in Phoenix, Natal, often visited the centre of the Zulu Christian leader, Isaiah Shembe. After all, they lived in the same neighbourhood. They entered into conversations about non-violent strategies for resisting oppression. These cultural exchanges between India and Africa-between Hindus, Muslims and Christians-show us an alternative story about South Africa.

That story, the story of cultural exchange-has been important in my own life as an Indian South African. Growing up in Stanger during the 1940s, I learned about the integrity of my culture. But I also learned that my culture was open to new and creative possibilities.

When I was thirteen, in March 1947, I learned about the "Joint Declaration of Co- operation" that was signed by leaders of the African National Congress, the Natal Indian Congress and the Transvaal Indian Congress. This declaration was known as the "Three Doctors' Pact" after the congress leaders, Dr AB. Xuma, Dr GM. Naicker, and Dr YM. Naidoo.

Immediately, I wanted to be a doctor. Then, when I learned that doctors had relied on lawyers to work out all the details, I wanted to be a lawyer. But the "Three Doctors Pact" was a landmark of non-racialism. It was a landmark in the struggle for freedom. It was a landmark in defining Indian South Africans, not only as Indians, but also as Africans in South Africa.

Almost sixty years later, looking back on the "Three Doctors Pact," we can see that they were demanding the simplest things: full franchise; equal economic rights; removal of land restrictions; free and compulsory education; freedom of movement; and the elimination of discriminatory and oppressive legislation.

At the time, of course, it was quite radical to claim these basic human rights, as Africans, as Indians, but most importantly as South Africans, on behalf of all our people. In the "Three Doctors Pact", African and Indian organisations, working together, made that claim.

For me, as a boy in Stanger, the "Three Doctors Pact" was a milestone on the path of non-racialism, giving me a clear sense of what it is to be South African. But the Pact also gave me a sense of the international scope of the struggle for human rights. The declaration by the doctors concluded by urging that "a vigorous campaign be immediately launched and that every effort be made to compel the Union Government of South Africa to implement the United Nations' decisions and to treat the Non-European peoples in South Africa in conformity with the principles of the United Nations Charter." The struggle for human rights, I saw, was both non-racial in principle and international in scope.

But we are not here tonight to talk politics. We are here to celebrate our music, our culture, and our creative spirit. So, you must forgive me if I find that our music, especially the music of Ravi Shankar, has been like our politics-non-racial and international-in affirming our integrity while opening us to new possibilities of exchange.

I am a politician. I have a political past. I might even have a political future. Everything depends upon the upcoming election. But I am also a human being. I also live and breathe in our culture.

On the one hand, our culture is ordinary. Our culture is what we take for granted. It is our ordinary, everyday ways of eating and dressing, of marrying and raising children, of living and dying.

On the other hand, our culture is extraordinary. It is what we value most. It is what is most important to us. It is the highest aspiration, and the highest accomplishments-of our human spirit.

Our music carries our culture. Our music carries our ordinary culture. It carries our extraordinary culture. Our music carries us on the melodies of the sitar and the rhythms of the tabla.

In celebration of our music and our culture, I now want to stop talking. I now want to listen. With you, I now want to just be here and love the music.

I thank you all.

Issued by: Department of Education
7 April 2004
Source: Department of Education (http://www.education.gov.za)

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