Varanasi: Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite song Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram played by the family of the legendary musician Bismillah Khan was an instant hit at Rahul Gandhi’s roadshow. Bismillah Khan’s son, Zamin Husain Bismillah, was in the news for refusing to be one of the proposers for Modi’s candidature. He refused because he did not want to be in politics.
After the Rahul roadshow, he clarified that he was playing for the music lovers and not for any political party. Â
“If Narendra Modi or Arvind Kejriwal had asked us, we would have played for them too,” Afaque Haider, the grandson of Ustaad Bismillah Khan, told a television channel.
Bismillah Khan (1913 – 2006), often referred to by the honorific title Ustad, was credited with popularising the shehnai, a sub-continental wind instrument. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 2001, becoming the third classical musician after M S Subbulakshmi and Ravi Shankar to be accorded this distinction.
Though a pious Shi’ite Muslim, he was also a devotee of Saraswati, and often played at Hindu temples, including the famous Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi. He is one of the finest classical musician who exemplifies Hindu-Muslim unity in post-Independent India.