As Gandhi commits suicide.

Byline: Jawed Naqvi

A MEMORABLE thing about Lucknow's La Martiniere College, on which the school days of Rudyard Kipling's Kim were modelled, was its 18th-century baroque chapel shored up by its mesmeric organ music.

Occasionally, a preacher from Korea or America would come visiting and leave the school choir with new songs to hug and play with. 'When through the woods and forest glades I wander, then sings my soul, my saviour God to thee. How great thou art! How great thou art!'

The crescendo in the Korean visitor's composition nearly touched the ornate ceiling of the chapel and gave us goosebumps. It mattered a lot to the joy of the moment that some of us were not even Christian, coming as we did from Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Parsi families. All were welcome to the chapel, and to join the singing if they had the requisite uncommon talent for it.

The same was true of Baba Sarandas's Ram Mandir in Lucknow's Nirala Nagar neighbourhood. The Baba's sense of music was iffy, but then we had DV Paluskar and MS Subbalaxmi on the radio practically every morning to make up for the lapse. The temple had come up overnight, and rumour had it that the Baba was a dacoit before he made good as a dope-smoking, affable and an essentially open-minded priest. Everyone was guaranteed the best vegetarian meal by Sarandas, as we squatted in multi-ethnic lines in the temple courtyard, served with syrupy malpuras on dried banyan leaves that were stitched into a plate. Steaming puris were always served with at least three kinds of vegetarian options scooped from zealously scrubbed steel buckets.

Yogi Adityanath and his 20th-century forebears crushed the spiritual pantheon into rubble.

June 1991 derailed the romance, quite possibly for the foreseeable future, and it has struggled ever since to withstand the challenges of contrived hatred that has been orchestrated by the Hindu right to blow up India's syncretic bonds into smithereens. That was the month the first Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government was installed in Uttar Pradesh, applauded by many who claim to be feeling its bite today.

A few months into BJP's rule in the state, the Babri Masjid was destroyed in Ayodhya and the rest is history. If there is still a ray of hope for the country's quest for an inclusive culture it comes from the Sikh gurdwaras that have remained scrupulously musical, each culturally resplendent shabad tied distinctly to a particular raga, and every human soul welcomed to the precincts...