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.
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/vaishnava-jana-to-gandhijis-favourite-song-now-in-sanskrit/article29571433.ece
youitube link:
https://youtu.be/1RVAViQs_p4
