Piramal Group’s Anthem-Songs and the “Commercial” Appropriation of Tagore

Piramal Group’s Anthem-Songs and the “Commercial” Appropriation of Tagore

Posted on 24/04/2024 (GMT 16.50)

Updated on 26/04/2024 (GMT 06/00)

I. A Brief Sketch of Mr. Ajay Piramal

A. Dr Jekyll⤡

He is a Paramavaiṣṇava–a follower of non-violent cult: Vaiṣṇavism.

He often interprets the Gita without citing any sloka (psalm) from Gita. Special mention should be made to the 32nd sloka of the ninth chapter of the Gita, where Vaisyas are categorized as person with “sinful birth”.

He is guided by his guru Radhanath Swami⤡,

He is a renowned philanthropist,

He is “healer” through his medical enterprise.⤡

He is a prestigious CBE-awardee⤡⤡.

He had donated the BJP 85 crores through electoral bonds⤡ alone for “altruistic” (Orwellian Double Speak, where “bribery” is interpreted as altruism) reason.

Last but not the least, he is a secondary kin of Mr. Mukesh Ambani, whose pet is the pet current ruling party of India, viz., BJP.

B. Mr Hyde⤡

1. Mr. Piramal is an alleged insider trader (2016) as alleged by the SEBI⤡.

2. He is an environmental-terrorist (for polluting Digwal, Telangana in 2019)⤡ and also who sought “blanket stay order”⤡ at the National Green Tribunal, which was rejected.

3. In the case of the DHFL also, he wanted such a similar stay order on the “controversial” NCLAT second verdict (27/01/2022). In each case, he appears to be “more equal than others” ⤡ when it comes to getting ‘justice’ for himself at the cost of harming people and nature.

Thus, if anyone has to follow Mr. Ajay Piramal’s favorite sacred book, the Gita, which is used as book of management and motivation,, he, a vaisya (merchant), should really be stamped as pāpayoni (cf. Gita, 9.32) or the nimitta kāraṇa for creating carceral society⤡–the instrumental cause of suffering of the more than 1.5 lakhs of DHFL FD and NCD holders!

4. He was involved in Flashnet Scam⤡ ⤡, 2018 (though Mr. Piramal was ready to defame The Wire, who first exposed the scam, for reporting the same, but till date: no such step has been taken by him against The Wire)

Cf. In Selling Firm to Piramal Group as Minister, Piyush Goyal Pushes Ethical Boundaries VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 28th April, 2018 ©The Wire)       

4. He is possibly involved in contempt of court during the DHFL resolution process by ignoring NCLT’s first verdict (19/05/2021) and skipping the points raised by the NCLAT second order (27/01/2022).⤡

The Psychoanalyst⤡ thus used the following technical terms for him:

A schizophrenic, i,e. possessor of divided selfhood;

A fugitive from the perspective of law;

He is suffering from Dissociative identity disorder (DID), which is otherwise called as split, multiple, or dual personality. Metaphorically, it may also be called as duel personality.

II. A TAGORE SONG AND MR. PIRAMAL’S COMMERCIAL

Mr. Piramal has grabbed (by means of exercizing a synthetic hegemony or rarefaction) a song of Rabindranth with the help of Javed Akhtar, as “Piramal Group’s anthem”.

Rabindranath Tagore wrote and composed the following song in 30th November, 1917, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Bose Institute in Kolkata under the guidance of pioneering scientist Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose.

Given below is its complete original lyrics along with the authentic English translation:

মাতৃমন্দির-পুণ্য-অঙ্গন কর’ মহোজ্জ্বল আজ হে

বর      পুত্রসঙ্ঘ বিরাজ’ হে।

শুভ     শঙ্খ বাজহ বাজ’ হে।

ঘন      তিমিররাত্রির চির প্রতীক্ষা

পূর্ণ কর’, লহ’ জ্যোতিদীক্ষা,

যাত্রীদল সব সাজ’ হে।

শুভ     শঙ্খ বাজহ বাজ’ হে।

বল      জয় নরোত্তম, পুরুষসত্তম,

জয় তপস্বিরাজ হে।

জয় হে, জয় হে, জয় হে, জয় হে।

এস’     বজ্রমহাসনে মাতৃ-আশীর্ভাষণে,

সকল সাধক এস’ হে,   ধন্য কর’ এ দেশ হে।

সকল যোগী, সকল ত্যাগী, এস’ দুঃসহদুঃখভাগী—

এস’ দুর্জয়শক্তিসম্পদ মুক্তবন্ধ সমাজ হে।

এস’ জ্ঞানী, এস’ কর্মী নাশ’ ভারতলাজ হে।

এস’ মঙ্গল, এস’ গৌরব,

এস’ অক্ষয়পুণ্যসৌরভ,

এস’ তেজঃসূর্য উজ্জ্বল কীর্তি-অম্বর মাঝ হে

বীরধর্মে পুণ্যকর্মে বিশ্বহৃদয় রাজ’ হে।

শুভ     শঙ্খ বাজহ বাজ’ হে।

জয়      জয় নরোত্তম, পুরুষসত্তম,

জয় তপস্বিরাজ হে।

জয় হে, জয় হে, জয় হে, জয় হে ॥

‘Tis to the Mother’s temple ye are come

Her sacred inner courtyard: light ye them

Her precinct, ye who are her favour’d sons.

Make here your dwelling; and with omen fair

The Conch Shell, horn auspicious, Sound O Sound!

Accepting this initiation bright

The deep dark night of waiting terminate.

O band of pilgrims all be ready girt:

The Conch Shell horn auspicious, Sound O Sound!

Say “Victory to this peerless man of men,

This kingly sage, School’d in austerities!”

And “Victory! Still, Shout “Victory Victory!”

Come with the mother’s blessing, ye whose minds

Unshakable throne on the thunder bolt!

Come, all who struggle upward and aspire;

To Glorify this our dear Country, Come!

All ye who, meditating on one thought

Your souls concentre, all who have renounced;

Come ye whose lot insufferable is woe;

Come ye whose earn’d wealth is unconquered strength;

Come, brotherhood of freedom in the soul;

Come, ye who know, Come ye whose work destroys

Together the long shame of Bharat-land!

Come thou blessedness, thou glory come.

Thou fragrance of unfading righteousness;

Come, burning Sun, blazing amidst the sky of deeds, in strength of Virtue’s heroism

And righteous acts, live thou, thou chiefly thou.

Pulse in the heart and Centre of the world.

The Conch Shell horn auspicious,

Sound O Sound! Say,

Victory to this peerless man of men,

This kingly sage, School’d in austerities!”

And “Victory! Still, Shout “Victory Victory!”

(Trans. Manmohan Ghose)

Let us listen to it:

The above song, written and composed by Rabindranath Tagore, is an ode to a male messiah, whose locus is the temple of the Mother Goddess, a scientific institute. The addresser poet is referring to the addressee male God with too many eulogizing adjectives, e.g., , “The Greatest Male”, “The King” etc. So, the addresser-addressee or I-thou relationship is somewhat a “waiting” from the perspective of the addresser(s) (“Son”, “Magi”), who is waiting for the supra-powerful male God to build up a free and just society while also giving a call for action for God’s sons (and daughters?!) to join in God’s task as karmayogins. In fact, the addresser is not a singular one. It is a journey as well as waiting within the darkest night. Tagore also used a special “call” to the messiah as well as king cum saint (rajarsi) by a Hindu musical instrument Conchshell (sankha) for hailing Him.

Therefore, this messianic song, as said before, was written in 1917 on the occasion of the inauguration of the Bose Institute in Kolkata, much after writing a prose on the unity of the Hindus: Hindu-r Aikya (1897). However, from the second decade of the ninetieth century onwards, Rabindranath had more-or-less changed his stance from such caged identities, including the nation-statist identity. This lyric reveals Tagore’s ambivalent attitude, involved in the hangover from his heathen Hindu to formless Brahmo inheritance.

This onto-epistemological rupture in Tagore’s biography, as observed by Jyoti Bhattacharya in his book Pariprasna, is also vivid in two consecutive songs of the Bangla version of Nobel prize winner book(1913), Songs Offerings, viz., Gitanjali. The first one is full of Hindu metaphors and second one is condemnation of Hindutvavadi insult of the the untouchables, i.e., the filthy casteism and bigotry.

Oceanic expanse of the mankind lay in front,
Liven up my soul on this great land of India.
I stand erect and bow the god within mankind,
My hymnic chants ever-appraising,
Clasped hands thrust out in respect.
Musing earth, prayer-stream encircling fields,
Behold the ever-holy form of the earth -
On this vast expanse of the great mankind.
   
No one knows from where and on which invitation
Streams of immigrants gush and ease out into the ocean.
Aryans, non-Aryans, Dravidians and Chinese,
Shaka, Hun, Pathan and the Mughals -
All merged as a single race.
The western gates have been removed,
Deluge of gifts flow like boon,
Traditions exchanged, racial barriers removed,
No one returns empty-handed -
From this vast expanse of the great mankind.
   
Come O' Aryan, non-Aryan, Hindu or Muslim,
Come O' Englishman, come O' Christian.
O' Brahmin, grab others' hands to waive prejudice.
Come O' condemned, stains of contempt be erased.
Hurry, Mother's coronation on the way, holy pitcher yet to brim -
With the divine water sanctified by mass-touch –
Now, on this vast expanse of the great mankind.

                                Translated by Anjan Ganguly

O my wretched country

For each one upon whom you have heaped insult

Through insult it is, one day, you shall be their equal!

Him you have denied the very rights of a human being

Left standing before you, degraded, yet took not into your lap-

Through insult it is, one day, you shall be their equal!

Rejecting their human touch, those you kept afar

It is the divine within that demeaned human you have insulted

By retribution from the Lord of Destiny, at the doorway of famine

Will you sit down to a shared meal, there with the downtrodden

Through insult it is, one day, you shall be their equal!

There, where you pushed them derisively from your hallowed seat

There, too, in stupefying nonchalance, you banished your own power

Crushed under the merciless boot, there they fell to the dust

Come down to that degraded nether world, else there is no salvation

Through insult it is, today, you shall be their equal!

Him that you push underfoot- he shall bind you to the lowest depth

Him that you have purposefully left behind, shall pull you right back.

Him that you heap the blemish of ignorance upon in an obscure world

Covering anything blessed in your fate, he shall create a chasm

Through insult it is, one day, you shall be their equal!

For a hundred centuries a mountain of insults has descended upon them

Yet you refuse to bow before the very Narayana in your fellow Man-

Yet, lowering your gaze, do you see not yet

The God of the insulted and downtrodden has joined them there in the dirt?

Through insult it is, one day, you shall be their equal!

Do you not see, today, the Messenger of Death, there, at the door-

Placing an appalling curse upon your all-consuming racial vanity?

If you do not call one and all to the human pageantry, if you still stay apart

If you still keep yourself narrowly bound in the decrepit world of arrogance

It is in Death, then, in the ashes of your funeral pyre, you shall be their equal!

Translation Monish R Chatterjee 2020

Let us now concentrate on the song (matrimandira...), which has hegemonically selved by the Piramal Group. It was written at the opening of a scientific research institute, that was a colonial response to subversive mimic of organized science (not to be interpreted as the “science-as-commerce” in the context of colonial regime though through the particular event of Mr. Piramal’s reception of this “other” as commercial self ) as the “mandira”/temple. The word, “Vijnana mandira” or shrine of science is a colonial response to the totalizing effects of the “Macaulay’s poison tree” ( a line from the poet Samar Sen)

This shift that was actually observed in as early as the Enlightenment from the legitimatizing mechanism of the clergy to the legitimizing mechanism of reason (as a privileged domain of analysis as well as meta-analysis) was depicted in “The Life of Galileo” (Brecht, 1940/1964), where Galileo metaphorically became the “new pope” by getting into the role-reversing cloak of the “erstwhile” Catholic pope through a paradigm shifting of appearances. Institutionalized organized and funded Science as the embodiment of reason is obviously assuming a privileged position here as it brings forth this new “motion” of intellectuality into the hitherto “stagnant” world. Even the religious authority is subsumed within the incoming discourse of this new legitimizing mechanism, wherein “overnight the universe has lost its centre” (Brecht, 1940/1964, p. 4).

The later Rabindranath suffered (in the Lacanian sense of the term, it may be referred to as ‘sinthome’) an ontological as well as epistemological break in his life when he took his recourse to internationalism and the notion of “no-nation” (Cf. Personality Lectures, 1917; and Nationalism lectures, 1917). In today’s Hindutvavadi jargon, pejoratively, Tagore’s stand would have been decried as “anti-national” (cf. Ashis Nandy, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994)

The poet appears somewhat ambivalent ( as expected in the colonial rule: hybridity is inevitable) in the juncture of his life when he composed the aforementioned song, as the heathen “Hindu” metamorphosed as “Brahmo”–from polytheist religion to monotheist dharma without any rituals as initiated by Raja Ram Mohan Roy . The male God, whom he addresses in the lyrics, is blessed by the mother Goddess. Thus, the song represents the male-female dyad in the trajectory of Hindu to Brahma marga (road).

What is important to note here is that a well-known atheist, Mr. Javed Akhtar, who was hired by Mr. Piramal, rendered this song in Hindi for the “commercial man” (particularly for Piramal Group) in the market-place of cheap profits, to use Tagore’s words. Mr. Akhtar is trapped by a corporate tycoon, giving out an excellent Hindi rendition of the song in the Raga Iman Kalyan with the use of eastern as well as western instruments (post-colonial hybridity) in the voice of Kailash Kher.

It is, peculiarly enough, also branded as “Piramal Science Anthem”

In another Piramal’s song, the three major principles of the Gita, viz,. jnana, karma and bhakti are interpreted as knowledge, action and care. Care? Really So? And care from Piramal? If anyone looks into the details of DHFL Scam, one may find the foreclosure of “care” that is substituted by the “animal spirit” of a savage pre-debt-or capitalist.

The visuals with which this song is re-presented in a commercial advertisement for this corporate tycoon, viz., Mr. Ajay Piramal, are at a time antithetical to each other, e.g., the children of the poor in schools is juxtaposed with the corporate buildings, which is again juxtaposed with random, incoherent scenes from the natural world (to show the corporate social responsibility of a self-proclaimed paramavaisnava, who utilized the Gita as a book of management; note that there are also scenes showing the use of “Water ATMs” by the poor, when in fact Mr. Piramal is an environmental terrorist known for his mis-deeds through his pharma-plant in Digwal, Telengana) and imageries of the charkha also carrying the narrativized projection of the Gandhian tradition of Charkha Cult, in a cunning attempt to merge his questionable business/corporate activities with the construct of “national duty”. This use of internationalist “no-nation-alist” Tagore’s song for the purpose of a nationalism agenda seems problematic. Mr. Piramal’s projected ambivalence, his to-and-fro movement from water pollution to water ATMs, from making victims suffer a manufactured financial abuse to working for “Seva Kendras”: all of this is a result of his alleged schizo-persona, occupies the limelight in this case.

The choice of the song by Mr. Akhtar for the purpose of dirty business is not at all surprising as he is a ‘professional’ lyricist, and his spouse, Mrs. Shabana Azmi, is also a singer of Rabindrasangeet. It is to be also noted that Mr. Javed Akhtar’s son, Mr. Farhan Akhtar, was chosen (or rather, was trapped) as the Piramal Realty’s Brand Ambassador in 2021⤡.

As the viewers-listeners-readers of this very text of Tagore, we have forgotten the hate-mongering speeches of the Hindutvavadins, e.g., thefollowing statements made by contemporary insane Hindutvavadins are to be noted:

• “Mr. Akhtar has a “Muslim” identity” (?);
• He translated a song written-composed by a “Hindu” (?)/ “Brahmo Theist” (?), who used “Hindu” metaphors for hailing the Lord of the universe in the course of the song.

Keeping in mind the divisive politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as well as the face of crony, savage, cannibalistic capitalism, for which the song was rendered into a commercial, to show the “success” of Mr. Ajay Piramal in mutually contradicting montage.

Thus, the poet (Dronacarya) and the translator (Ekalavya) ⤡ have been subsumed by the world of commerce. In this way, the antithetical others are projected as the simulated masks for the world of exchange through fragile and arbitrary commodified money-signifier.

There is a word in the song “duhkhabhaga”, i.e., the sharer of sufferings, which reminds us of the famous Vedic mantra:

ॐ सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः। सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु मा कश्चिद्दुःखभाग्भवेत। ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः॥

Aum May all beings be at peace May all be freed from suffering May all see goodness None should be the cause of others’ miseries Aum peace, peace, peace. [Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (1.4.14)]

Mr. Piramal is way far from becoming such a sharer of sufferings of the DHFL Victims…

Is he not a hypocrite?