The story of khayal shows how attempts to remove the imprint of Muslim rule will impoverish Indian culture

Source: The post is based on the article “The story of khayal shows how attempts to remove the imprint of Muslim rule will impoverish Indian culture” published in The Indian Express on 17^th April 2023.

Syllabus: GS 1 – Art and Culture

Relevance: About khayal style of music

News: NCERT has recently deleted chapters on the Mughal Empire from its Standard 12 history textbooks. However, deleting chapters will not delete the association of Mughal Empire from the Indian culture.

The Mughal Empire had association with India in varied forms such as tangible heritage, monuments, culture, clothes, food, language and music. One of the famous music from the Mughal era that still exists is khayal.

How did khayal music develop with time?

The early form of khayal emerged in the late 16th century when Sufi musicians based in the region between Delhi and Jaunpur adapted the cutkula form. This form used a Hindi dialect.

There were also devotional forms such as the Persian qaul and tarana sung in Sufi communities from Amir Khusro’s (1253-1325) tradition.

The cutkula was a regional form of khayal used during the reign of Sultan Hussain Shah Sharqi of Jaunpur, who ruled from 1458 to 1505 and was a great music lover.

The earliest version of khayal evolved into today’s drut bandish. It is the fast composition, also called the chhota khayal, which is meant to be sung in a spritely tempo.

The members who played this style had close relationships with Vaishnava sects.

Later, Niyamat Khan Sadarang (1670-1748), a famous dhrupad singer played a key role in developing khayal.

He began creating khayal compositions with some melodic movements from dhrupad, setting many of these compositions in a slow tempo. His both slow and fast compositions are widely sung to this day.

By the end of the 19th century, hereditary khayal musicians, who were largely Muslim started to teach the genre to people outside their respective families, including Hindus.

This eventually gave rise to celebrated Hindu musicians such as Bhimsen Joshi, Kishori Amonkar, Kumar Gandharva, etc.

Today, khayal is sung by both Hindu and Muslim groups and deleting chapters on Mughal from the textbook will not delete rooted culture from the society.

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