Singing a Hindu Nation: Marathi Devotional Performance and Nationalism by Anna C. Schultz (review)

For far too long the study of musical nationalism in India has maintained an almost singular focus on the “classical” traditions. Such a narrow view reflects the longstanding perception, inherited from colonial discourse, that nationalism in India was principally a project of the cosmopolitan elite, a class whose ideas, formed in response to Western education, were readily accessible through the texts they produced and the institutions they founded. Theories of Indian nationalism more broadly, therefore, have tended to mold themselves according to the shape of elite ideologies. Partha Chatterjee’s distinction, for example, of an “inside” spiritual sphere, which served as a proxy for the lack of indigenous political power in the “outside” material sphere, has become virtually axiomatic in the study of cultural nationalism, including music (Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993], 5–13).

Anna Schultz’s book thoroughly disabuses this elite-centric division between the spiritual and political spheres of nationalism by illuminating alternative nationalist ideologies that “operated almost entirely outside of post-Enlightenment discourse” (p. 11). Schultz’s critique is occasioned by her unique focus on a genre of devotional-nationalist music known as rāṣṭrīya kīrtan (nationalist devotional song), which developed in the Western Indian state of Maharashtra in the early twentieth century. The performers of rāṣṭrīya kīrtan, or kīrtankārs, whom Schultz considers, sit at various points along the spectrum of nationalist ideologies and allegiances. Though they have used, and been used, by elite nationalist ideologues of different stripes, Schultz demonstrates that kīrtankārss were never simply the mouthpieces of the parties with whom they were sometimes associated, but have instead made their own creative and strategic choices. Most importantly, they did not adopt the “schizophrenic dance” of inner devotion and outer politics that Chatterjee posited (p. 75), but instead saw their devotion to dev (god) and devotion to deś (country) as one and the same. They skillfully integrated nationalist leaders into devotional narratives (what Schultz calls “nationalizing devotion”) and glorified nationalist heroes using devotional rhetoric (“devotionalizing the national”).

Schultz produces a highly convincing account of how early kīrtankārs “resisted modernity” by holding to “a nationalist world beyond middle-class reform that is vast, variegated, and shaped by local leaders who sang for the nation without worry about whether it was homologous with other nations” (p. 51). This perspective comes across most strongly in chapter 3. As the book unfolds, however, it becomes increasingly clear that the majority of performers featured in Schultz’s text, including those with whom she has worked most closely, resisted modernity by advocating some of the most socially repressive and chauvinistic ideas on the political spectrum. Even the insular brand of ethnic nationalism known as Hindutva (Hinduness), which placed Muslims and Christians as impediments to India’s independence, was seen by some of these kīrtankārs as moderate and accommodating because of its reformist take on Hindu caste taboos. As orthodox Brahmans, they instead saw themselves as protectors of conservative caste-based practices. It is interesting, however, that they did not view their position as aligned to any particular political party or leader. Political parties come and go. The truth that they lived and preached went beyond party politics; it was eternal (p. 96).

The percentage of the book given over to illuminating this “alternative civil society,” (following Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999], 123) is sizable, thereby fulfilling a sorely needed account of Hindu nationalism as it is lived and experienced by people in the ethnographic present—hitherto nonexistent in the ethnomusicological literature (p. 8). The thoughtfulness with which Schultz negotiates the extraordinary conflict between her own moral assumptions and those of her informants is inspiring. She is considerate...