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Jasdeep Singh explores the profound effects of Indian independence and partition on the music of north India.

On the 15 of August 1947, India gained its independence and was simultaneously divided by lines drawn through Punjab in the north-west and Bengal in the east, creating the brand new, Muslim-majority country of Pakistan.

As millions fled across these new borders - Muslims going from India to Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs coming the other way, this violent, destructive and traumatic partition also affected centuries of musical tradition.

Muslim musicians had played and sung in the heart of the Golden Temple, the holiest of Sikh shrines, since the founding of the religion centuries earlier. Many now fled to Pakistan where they encountered a profound lack of interest in their skills or repertoire and could no longer earn a living. Slowly, their musical knowledge and compositions, which had been passed down through generations in an oral tradition, were abandoned, and much disappeared for ever.

On the Indian side of the border, classical music also suffered. The Gharana system, the traditional way that people learned music, by living with and training under a specific musician for years, fell apart, because many of these ‘guru’ musicians were Muslims and had gone to Pakistan.

However, female singers in the new India were unexpected beneficiaries of this great exodus. Before partition, courtesans, most of whom were Muslim, were the only women who sang in public. When the great majority left for Pakistan, they created a gap, a vacancy and so respectable women gradually began to perform in public.

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