Ullekh NP/ഉല്ലേഖ് എൻപി

Deeply shocked and saddened by the razing of Ustad Bismillah Khan's ancestral home in Varanasi, the very house in which he practised and perfected his music. It is highly unfortunate that instead of protecting and preserving our shared cultural heritage, we are denying ourselves and our future generations even its relics. When offered the chance to move to the US and set up a music school there, Ustad famously denied, asking whether it was possible to make a Banaras in America, a place where the Ganga flows and Shiva is worshipped. For him, there was no way he and his music could be separated from his beloved Banaras. Till his death, he never left Banaras, but Banaras has no place left for him now. The neglected state of Ustad's house and the interests of commercial developers have been public knowledge for years. It is a travesty that Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not intervene in his own constituency to ensure that the house remained as a heritage monument. The sad truth is that the rich, syncretic tradition that gave birth to Ustad Bismillah Khan and allowed him to take his shehnai to the world is no longer valued in Modi's Viksit Bharat. We are all poorer as a result.