If you’ve ever visited Haridwar or Rishikesh, chances are that you have heard sonorous Bollywood songs that underlay “pure and pious” bhajans. I’ve heard some really strange ones like kajrare kajrare mata tere kare kare naina and bhakt badnaam hue mata tere naam se while river-rafting in Rishikesh.
Disturbed as I was when I first heard the sacrosanct version of Munni Badnaam Hui, I went up to the temple priest and asked him the relevance of playing such bhajans. If the message of God is to be conveyed, shouldn’t it be in a novel manner, I thought to myself, but the priest’s response was epic:
Our agenda is to make bhakts chant God’s name constantly and make bhakts out of atheists. The ear that is bereft of God’s word is as good as a snake’s hole.
We were caught in a double-bind, I felt. On one hand we condemn the language used in such songs and on the other hand, we use the tunes of these songs to convey God’s message. Reasons, I reckon, are two-fold:
1) Bollywood item songs invariably go viral, hence everyone should make hay while the sun shines.
2) Every bhajan gets pitched as a brand (of a God). Since the bhajans are tuned on an item song, they have a massive recall value.
Needless to say that the priest’s analogy was too stretched, yet the strategy worked like magic; I couldn’t stop singing the bhajan versions of the item songs!
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