RANJAN BEZBARUAH, SINGER, WRITER

Gandhiji's favorite bhajan 'Vaisnava Jana To' now in Sanskrit

The Hindu, Oct. 2. 2019

A Sanskrit teacher in Assam, Ranjan Kumar Bezbaruah, says he wants to pay homage to Gandhiji in a way no one in India has done before.

As a tribute from Assam to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary on October 2, the first Sanskrit version of ‘Vaishnava Jana To’, his favourite devotional song penned by 15th century Gujarati poet Narsinh Mehta, will be released.

Ranjan Bezbaruah wanted to pay homage to Gandhiji in a way no one in India has done before. So, as a translator of several Bhupen Hazarika songs into Sanskrit, he conceptualised Gandhiji’s favourite bhajan in the ‘mother of almost Indian languages’.

Mr. Bezbaruah teaches Sanskrit in a premier educational institution in central Assam’s Nagaon and is a trained singer in Indian light classical music.

Although he has translated and sung the Sanskrit version of songs such as Muhammad Iqbal’s Saare jahaan se achchha, Mr. Bezbaruah relied on two Sanskrit pandits for translating the bhajan.

“I needed help since the song was composed in Gujarati. Alok Kumar of Varanasi translated the song and Narayan Dutt Mishra of Jawaharlal Nehru University edited it. Pranjal Bora from Assam arranged the music,” he told The Hindu on Tuesday.

Vaishnava Jana To in Sanskrit will be aired by State-run as well as private radio and television channels on Wednesday, timed with Gandhiji’s 150th birth anniversary.

Mr. Bezbaruah has been translating popular and patriotic songs from Assamese, Bengali and Hindi into Sanskrit and singing them since 1999. He attributes his zeal to Vaartavali, a weekly Sanskrit programme on DDNews.

“Indian lyrics, especially of modern Indic languages, can successfully be translated into Sanskrit and may also be presented as fresh pieces of musical composition. Assamese lyrics, like other lyrical compositions of Indo-Aryan languages, are loaded with the sound and resonance of Sanskrit,” he said.

He has translated and sung the compositions of 15th Century Assamese saint-poet-reformer Srimanta Sankardeva, besides the songs of Hazarika, often called the Bard of Brahmaputra.

Mr. Bezbaruah has also collaborated with Sanskrit scholars elsewhere in India to sing songs of legends from Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore to A.R. Rahman.

“Translating lyrics from any language into Sanskrit might help our society in many ways. It can help our upcoming generation in developing an acquaintance and interest with the rich Indian languages as well as our unparalleled literary and musical heritage,” he said.