Travelure
By Hugh & Colleen Gantzer
This column is about the Beating Retreat Ceremony this year. It is about its origins, its evolution, and distortions by ill-informed netas. This Ceremony, to mark the end of the day’s fighting, began in 17th century England. Major Roberts of the Indian Army created the original ceremonial of the massed bands performing in New Delhi’s Vijay Chowk in the early 1950s. It was very popular and everybody sat enthralled. In particular, they waited spellbound for members of the Indian Naval Band to strike silver chimes from the North and South Blocks. These silver chimes played Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite hymn ‘ABIDE WITH ME’. The present government abolished this. We understand that this was done at the behest of one or more netas claiming that they were eliminating a vestige of colonial rule. Did these demented people really believe that the man who led our revolt against colonial rule was actually a crypto-colonialist?
Moreover, ABIDE WITH ME is a Christian hymn. Christianity was brought to India by St. Thomas, an Apostle of Christ, in 52 AD and the Government of India commemorated this event by issuing a postage stamp on 2nd December, 1964. It has, thus, officially recognised the fact that Christianity is an older Indic faith than at least three others. There are today an estimated 28 million Christians in India. Why, then, has a Christian hymn been deleted from the Beating Retreat Ceremony?
But then there is always a danger when politicians put their noses into matters they know very little about.
According to a popular Defence Services Officers’ Mess Tale, General Sam Manekshaw told Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, “You and I both have long noses. If you keep yours out of my affairs, I’ll keep mine out of yours.”
Politicians should stay clear of the customs of the Defence Services.
Ceremonies and Traditions are the cement that binds the Armed Forces together. Their lives are at the service of the nation, 24 x 7. They retire young and physically fit. They do not have time or opportunities to build up fortunes before they retire. This is why the Government gives them inexpensive metal tokens dangling from brightly coloured ribbons to display on their chest. This means nothing to the vast majority of other humans but it is what makes for the cohesion of the Armed Forces.
When a fauji sees the ribbons on the chest of another colleague, he knows where that person has been, done and for how long. This visual recognition establishes an instant bond between the two.
They need this cement because no service person realises when his life may depend on his or her uniformed colleague. To march in unison is also to display the fact that your colleagues and you form a unit. Particular drum beats have a direct impact on heart beats. Clearly the people who chose the so-called Indian music for this year’s Beating Retreat did not have any idea of what they were doing. If they left the composition of such music to Military Band Conductors, it was a bad choice. Conductors of even the most famous orchestras in the world are not composers. Most of the music played on this year’s Beating Retreat was a mismatch of blaring wind instruments and crashing percussion. The marching, however, was superb.
We need to create a great album of Indian Martial Music and we must do this at the highest priority. The Government must announce an All-India Competition for martial music composed in Indian style. What is an Indian style? We don’t know. But we have the world’s largest and most varied music industry. The Music Composers of Bollywood, Tollywood and Sandalwood, etc., are masters of varied musical modes.
We have heard superbly coordinated drummers in Dravidian temples. If their cadence could be arranged to a military beat, we are certain that the brass wind and percussion instruments would respond eagerly to the challenge. All Beatles fans will recall how Paul McCartney’s ‘Mull of Kintyre’ was changed into martial music by the Bagpipe Bands of the Scots Guards to reconstruct the words of an old song. In a slightly ungrammatical way, “anything they can do, we can do better. We can do anything better than them”.
(Hugh & Colleen Gantzer hold the National Lifetime Achievement Award for Tourism among other National and International awards. Their credits include over 52 halfhour documentaries on national TV under their joint names, 26 published books in 6 genres, and over 1,500 first-person articles, about every Indian state, UT and 34 other countries. Hugh was a Commander in the Indian Navy and the Judge Advocate, Southern Naval Command. Colleen is the only travel writer who was a member of the Travel Agents Association of India.) (The opinions and thoughts expressed here reflect only the authors’ views!).
