- 1 This article is part of a larger exploration of Mumbai’s urban cultures. The research began in 2007 (...)
- 2 «Hindu-ness», or the «essence of being Hindu», a term adopted by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1922 i (...)
- 3 One of the main Dalit communities of Maharashtra.
- 4 Bajirao II (1775-1851) was the last Peshwa ruler of the Maratha Empire. He ruled from 1795 to 1818.
1I first listened to the voice of the lok shahir [bard] Sambhaji Bhagat in 2012 and I have followed his work throughout these past years. In January 2018 I had the chance to meet him personally, at his home in Navi Mumbai, where he welcomed me upon his return from a long journey. Albeit visibly tired, he granted me his time and gave me the opportunity to listen to a live performance of his songs. He explained to me how his songs aim to give voice to the outcast, to those who suffer most from the ongoing processes of social marginalization and urban expulsion1.The days before our encounter in Mumbai were marked by a very intense social conflict, because January 1st, 2018, was the two-hundred years anniversary of the battle of Bhima Koregaon, an occasion which is celebrated by the Dalits with different events, which were attacked by Hindutva militants2, who deemed this commemoration «anti-nationalist». Bhima Koregaon is a small village in the district of Pune, where a crucial phase of Maharashtra’s – and indeed of all India’s – modern history played out two hundred years ago. During the battle that took place on January 1st, 1818, at Koregaon, on the shores of the river Bhima, 500 Mahar3 soldiers of the army of the East India Company, led by the British Captain Staunton, defeated a 3.000 men strong contingent of the Peshwa army, led by Bajirao II4. Ever since, this battle has been acknowledged as one of most celebrated events of Dalit history, and every year a ceremony takes place around the Vijay Sthamb, the pillar of victory, built by the East India Company to honor all those combatants who put an end to the Peshwa dominion.
- 5 A form of protest akin to a general strike. It’s a powerful means of civil disobedience that exerts (...)
- 6 For an in-depth analysis of the events in Bhima Koregaon and its political and social implications, (...)
- 7 The folklore scene of Maharashtra is very rich, and, even if these forms tend to overlap and can’t (...)
2During the last commemoration there were serious casualties (one person dead and several wounded), with violent episodes spreading throughout the State. Mumbai was theatre of these riots with the proclamation, on January 3rd, 2018, of the bandh5 by Prakash Ambedkar, grandson of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and he himself prominent Dalit leader of Maharashtra. Just as anyone can imagine Mumbai as a lively, busy city, one can also imagine the city while shops shut down, the railway – real engine of the city – stop, and the streets empty out of fear of riots and violent clashes in the main roads. A situation that I have only partially experienced first-hand, mainly through the words of my flat mates, who strongly warned me not to leave the house. Some commentators at the time have pointed out the unprecedented character of the 2018 Dalit mobilization, remarking that it put the violence carried out against the Dalits by the ruling political and caste establishment in the public and political spotlight like never before6. And yet, a precedent of this sort of social action can be found in the long standing Marathi folklore tradition of setting vernacular poetry into song7 to express dissent and resistance, a form of art which also serves to bring back to life the memories of a shared communal space, a space where it is still possible for people to «be in the world» (de Martino 2002).
- 8 I am referring to the definition of folklore provided by Antonio Gramsci: «[…] ‘conception of the w (...)
3This particular mode of popular expression is by no means a recent phenomenon. Indeed, the songs of the dispossessed are the fruit of a centuries-old tradition, and they keep dynamically renovating received formats, metrics and melodies, which keep upholding a «conception of the world and of life»8 (Gramsci 1975: 2311) that is alternative to the dominant cultural models. However, these songs are not just venting social grievances and shaping political opposition, indeed they are a lens through which it is possible to understand the material and socio-cultural conditions of all marginalized subjects: of the Dalits, the Bahujans, the working classes, the Adivasis, the Muslims, as well as of women. They are tightly linked to daily life and to the way in which a specific division of labour preserves and strengthens social inequalities. However, the cultural relevance of these songs cannot be confined only to this perspective of social resistance, because their meaning reaches across a wide variety of different interpretations and situations. They give shape to a rhythmical and sensorial impulse towards «collaborative survival» (Lowenhaupt Tsing 2015: 19), and they fit well within the folklore dynamics learnedly explored and described by Roman Jakobson and Petr Bogatyrëv (Bogatyrëv, Jakobson 1929).
4According to these scholars, songs are extra-personal, in the sense that they truly come alive only when they are welcomed by a community of people who make them their own, usually by preserving the traits which are relevant to them and discarding those that are not (anymore). Before they reach out to this community, songs are only «potentially alive». Interpreted from this perspective, songs are important not only for those who sing them, but perhaps even more for those who listen to them. Their importance doesn’t lie as much in their originality, as rather in the relationships that they build within the community that adopts them and keeps regenerating their socio-political relevance. What remains is what is being reassembled in the dialogue between the bard and the listener, because the audience’s role during the songs’ reproduction should not be understood merely as passive acceptance, but rather as part of a process by which what is transmitted becomes generative and fruitful.
- 9 Fanelli writes: «Social song instead connects traditional culture with modern historical and politi (...)
5It is possible to draw an analogy between the way this process plays out for social songs (Fanelli 2015: 3029) and a similar dynamic observed in the performance of songs of protest and resistance (Shah 2004). In both cases, the performance is construed as a collaborative project, one that is community-based in the case of protest songs or rooted in local tradition in the case of social songs. This project generally has no owner, no leader, but rather allows for an ongoing exchange of themes from one form to another, a borrowing and lending out of meanings from one person to another (Matera 2015: 5-12). Oppressed communities, particularly, make use of musical performances to affirm their identity, turning them into platforms of participatory activism, focused on collaboration, dialogue, protest and social justice. Zoe Sherinian defines this process as a veritable «Dalit action theory», highlighting the way Dalits use music for social affirmation and emancipation from oppressive hierarchies based on class, caste, and gender (Sherinian 2020: 256). The objective of this process of knowledge and empowerment is transformative because it reverses the consolidated patterns of power (ivi: 268).
6The commemoration of the Bhima Koreagon battle has dramatically showcased how the opposition between discriminating and discriminated subjects is still very much at the heart of modern India’s social conflicts. And it is also within the framework of this event that Sambhaji Bhagat has told me his story and has explained to me his thoughts on singing protest songs. «We are not here to entertain you, we are here to disturb you. We are not here to sing a song, we are here to sing a thought». This is one of the claims that open many of his concerts. As he explains:
From a philosophical point of view, human beings are not in the state of singing a song because the way we live our lives is not that of human beings. This society is full of pain, when there will be equality among all people, then we will sing a song, the song of humanity. Songs today are commercial, they are a commodity, music is not for human beings, but for the market. What they call music in today’s world is not music, it’s an object, and it’s made for industry. So, I heard that I had to tell people: «this is not the time to listen to great songs; it’s time to fight against inequalities. And to be good human beings». So, I am not here to entertain you, I am here to disturb you, this is not perfume, it is alcohol, you are under the influence of alcohol. Great songs, great singers say: «This is music», but they don’t talk about society, they don’t talk about people, they don’t care about people, they just sell their voice. And the industry sells itself, and I say: «I’m out of this state, I’m not here to entertain you», entertainment is through the market and I’m not that kind of person. I have seen people in difficulties, in repression, in pain, I want to talk about this, and therefore annoy people. Singing and saying life is okay, all is well, but I do not say this, I say life is not good, we do not live like human beings. Even if you have everything, you are not happy because you are [happy] at someone else’s expense. Human beings must be equal, at that moment real music will begin. And I sing a thought because singing a song is fine, but singing a thought is difficult, so I try to give a content of life, of philosophy, of politics, of fighting to my songs. This is not song, but thought, ideology. Not a particular ideology, but human beings live their lives fully when they live it through ideology, so life is full of meaning, otherwise it is empty.
7As lok shahir, Sambhaji Bhagat is the heir of a centuries-old tradition of songs of participation, protest and peace.
- 10 Tukaram Bhaurao, alias Annabhau Sathe (1920-1969) was a lok shahir born in the Sangli district of M (...)
There are many lok shahirs, the most recent ones are Annabhau Sathe, Amar Sheikh, they are great people, and they are like my fathers, fathers of that period. I descend from those people, I take inspiration from them. Gaddar [Gummadi Vittal Rao] is my brother, Sheetal [Sathe] is my daughter10.
8Moving from Annabhau Sathe and Amar Sheikh, Sambhaji Bhagat is one of the main innovators of the shahir tradition. Born into a Dalit family in a small village of Maharashtra called Mahu, he moved to Mumbai in 1979 to attend the Ambedkar College in Wadala (Mumbai), and he lived in the hostel of Siddharth Vihar. In this building, where he stayed until 1994, he could live and breathe the history of Ambedkarism. Indeed, the place wasn’t only a student hostel, but one of the main centers of elaboration of Dalit culture, where protest was born in the forms of poems and novels.
- 11 During our meeting, Sambhaji Bhagat used the term Untouchable and not Dalit. Dalit is the recent te (...)
I belong to a village where there were castes, ours is a caste society. I come from a family, from a community of Untouchables11, and what we could do was sing and beg. Mahars, Mangs, Chambhars, these three castes were Shudras. In my childhood I saw many people around me singing and in my life, I saw the strong connection between singing and pain. Many other communities came to my village to sing for the upper castes, and I also heard folk songs, my mother sang ovi [song composed by rural women] with other women. And in my childhood, I grew up hearing this music and these songs. Ours was a rich musical culture, my childhood was very sad because we had no land or work, but our culture was very rich. So, I grew up in the midst of all this. I started singing in my village and then I went to school and work. Then I came to Bombay for university, and I was at Siddharth Vihar’s hostel, and I met many Ambedkarists and Marxists. And there I started singing for the movement with Avan Natyan Manch.
9The encounter that shaped his cultural resistance occurred at the beginning of 1980 with the group Avahan Natya Manch, a branch of the student movement called Vidyarthi Pragati Sangathana (Kappal 2015). In those same years he met Vilas Ghorge, a bard born in 1946 into a Mahar family of the Pune district. Fond of music, but extremely poor, he emigrated to Mumbai to work in a factory. His experience as a factory worker and his knowledge of social inequality would make him one of the main protagonists of the protest movement, singing the songs of the downtrodden, of the Dalits (Ukey 2012). Sambhaji cooperated with Vilas and the Avahan Natya Manch until the mid-Nineties, traveling in Maharashtra villages to understand their socio-cultural conditions and to study their folk music.
10During the Eighties he took part in many episodes of the Mumbai labour conflicts of that time, including the great strike of the cotton mill workers. Indeed, between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, a great many mills eventually shut down, giving rise to a complex and socially stratified process of transformation, precipitated by a great number of causes, which is generally explained using the broad concept of «deindustrialization» (Altena and van der Linden 2003). One song, in particular, embodies the legacy of the struggle that occurred in that moment and expresses the ultimate defeat of the working class. Latent in Sambhaji’s words are the consequences of deindustrialization, the sense of powerlessness the workers feel as they witness the city’s most recent development, and the impossibility for the lowest social classes and castes to take part in it.
- 12 Song taken from the documentary A Tale of Two Cities by Alankrata Seth, Anurag Tyagi, Divya Chowdha (...)
O brother, look at the new look of Bombay12
Mills were razed to build towers
Towers became the supertowers
Oh supreme beings of the towers
Enjoy the internet and the jumbo jets (4 times)
While our empty bellies are sitting at the factory gates
At the factory gates (3 times)
There is development all around with bars and discos
And big glass buildings of multinational company offices
This is the world of casinos and the magic corporates
Slogans of progress hide evidence of destroyed fates
The poor are but a pawn in the games of the global gangsters
Amidst talks of development the living dead roam the streets
Known as social waste by the elites
And the superbroom called Shanghai sweeps us off the streets (2 times)
Oh brother, for how long will you sit and watch?
11In those same years Sambhaji Bhagat developed his political orientation, strongly inspired by Marxism and Leninism. It is a path accomplished together with many comrades including Vilas Ghogre. His song Listen to our story, people, which reports the appalling working conditions of peasants, factory workers and labourers, is inspired by socialism (Teltumbde 2012).
- 13 Song taken from the documentary Jai Bhim Comrade by Anand Patwardhan, 2011. Translation into Englis (...)
Listen to our story, people (2 times)13
The elegiac story of us workers (2 times)
Come and learn the story up close
Listen to our story, people (2 times)
The elegiac story of us workers (2 times)
Come and learn the story up close
Comrades, sisters, brothers!
With our hard work brother (2 times)
We have tilled the earth
We sowed the seed in the soil (2 times)
We made the earth as beautiful as a bride (2 times)
We were sweating, the master earned a lot (2 times)
The interest of usurers has forced us (2 times)
From the village to the city
We workers crave every grain of wheat (2 times)
The difficulties of life
This is the truth brother
Why?
It is a feudal domain (2 times)
Where there is nothing to eat
No water to drink, no home to live
No clothes to wear
What kind of government is it brother? It’s a hypocritical government (3 times)
Comrades, sisters, brothers
With our hard work brother, we dug the earth (2 times)
From the earth we made clay, from clay we made bricks (2 times)
We built the buildings with bricks
They started touching the sky (2 times)
The rich got the infrastructure (2 times)
We have given them comfort, ease
While for us there is no place to live
Things get more and more expensive every day
Why is it like this brother?
Why….
Money governs (2 times)
There is nothing to eat, no water to drink, no home to live in, no clothes to wear
What kind of government is it brother? It’s a fake government brother (2 times)
Comrades, sisters, brothers
With our hard work brother, we spun cotton
We mounted the cotton threads on the frame (2 times)
We made the fabric
We have decorated the fabric with colored borders (2 times)
We accepted tuberculosis
And the rich have earned (3 times)
We lie dead half naked on the ghat [step]
Even the kafan [shroud] is expensive (2 times)
Why is it like this brother?
Why….
This is the time of the masters (2 times)
There is nothing to eat, no water to drink, no home to live in, no clothes to wear
What kind of government is it brother? It’s a fake government brother (2 times)
Comrades, sisters, brothers!
Their uniform during the elections, clothes made of khadi [fabric] (2 times)
These beggars with their hands clasped hands clasped asking for votes
They use intelligence to deceive (2 times)
They provide us with tap water, poor wheat and rice (2 times)
In their speeches a latrine (2 times)
They play the drum of party (2 times)
We elected these bastards, they do well only to themselves
Why is it like this brother?
Why….
Liars rule (2 times)
There is nothing to eat, no water to drink, no home to live in, no clothes to wear
What kind of government is it brother? It’s the tyranny brother (2 times)
Comrades, sisters, brothers
Now listen to the latest news, the government’s negotiation (2 times)
To keep the rich rich (2 times)
They screwed us
A law was passed, it made us guilty
It made the police destroy our huts with cruelty (2 times)
There will also be a three-year sentence and a ruthless beating
Why is it so brother?
Why….
The police govern
The builders govern
There is nothing to eat, no water to drink, no home to live in, no clothes to wear
What kind of government is it brother? It’s a fake government brother (2 times)
Comrades, sisters, brothers
Is there a solution, or not?
There is a solution
Leave caste and religion, base our relations on work (2 times)
On the strength of this organization, on the strength of this union, we demolish the lies of the parliament
When we rule, everyone will have home and food (2 times)
The world is based on the strength of the worker
There will be the law of labour (3 times)
The slogan of the revolution screams (2 times)
Only then malice will disappear
When will?
When….
When labour will govern (2 times)
There will be food to eat, water to drink, a home to live in, clothes to wear
Brother let that power happen, brother let that government happen
Comrades!
12His political ideals, his dissent against the abuses of power, and the denunciation of social inequalities eventually led to Sambhaji’s imprisonment, together with other bards, among which Gaddar (Kumar 2010). But, as he claims, his music can’t just be reduced to its political import, because to him it’s above all a medium of analysis and liberation.
Some people think I am a Marxist, but I talk about people. We all need to know what the production is and the mode of production in which we are all involved. We all should know.
- 14 Mahad Satyagraha led by B. R. Ambedkar on 20 March 1927 was a Satyagraha made to allow Dalits to us (...)
- 15 Jyotirao Phule (1827-1890) was a social reformer and writer from Maharashtra. Although he deals wit (...)
13The voices of the oppressed, of those who are expelled from any forms of representation, rarely arise in public discourse. Instead, they find an outlet in music, in songs which become their main forms of cultural agency. These are accessible means that draw strength from known cultural resources, such as those of village culture, local heroes and heroines, folkloric tales (Sherinian 2020:267). It can therefore be stated that the Dalit song, as a form of resistance, in this case study is anchored on the one hand to the folkloric heritage of Maharashtra and Mumbai and on the other to the political experience of B. R. Ambedkar, whose political action marked a point of no return in the fight against the caste system. At the beginning of the 1930s, following the Mahad Satyagraha of 192714, the Ambedkari Shahiri, a form of popular social theatre, established itself in Mumbai after the decline of the Satyashodhak Jalsa inspired by the ideals of Phule15. The mainstay of this particular form of folk theatre are traditional ballads, which, renewed with the themes of the anti-caste movement, eventually became a sort of «sonic literature», capable of shaping the political conscience of illiterate people in order to usher in the achievement of a more egalitarian society. According to Yogesh Maitreya, the Ambedkari Shahiri gave impetus to the imagination of Dalit writers of the 1970s in developing a Dalit literature capable of confronting the Brahmanical one (Maitreya 2019:71). Sambhaji Bhagat explains that music is born from, and moves towards, the community, because the bard, thanks to his acquaintance with the poorest layers of the Indian society is able to funnel the individuals’ feeling of frustration, and even of utter defeat, into a wider interpretative framework.
The role of artists is to be with people. Artists should be with the toiling masses, they cannot say «I am an artist, and I am out of the world», no they are not god, they must be with people to help them to use their brains, because people must understand that this table is made by workers, artists should support this effort. Every artist should alert, make aware of the exploitation, artists should understand the world philosophically, politically, economically sociologically. They must be very strong ideologically; without ideology they cannot write songs. Entertainment songs can be written by everyone, but to write good songs, philosophical songs, you have to understand the world. I always think of the ordinary man to understand the world. I think of the chaiwala [tea-seller], how he lives his life, where he comes from, I think of the ordinary man, of his struggle to survive. Ideologically I must be very strong, I know Ambedkarism, Marxism, and I can scientifically analyze reality. The scientific instruments must be studied by the artist, otherwise it is possible to create good songs, cinema, theatrical performances, but they are useless for the masses.
14The content of his songs varies along with social change, but it is funneled in consolidated forms which are easily recognizable by the widest audiences.
I start composing the music and then I write the words. I compose with the harmonium, I take the time and then record the music. And then I write the lyrics. I take inspiration from all the traditions, powada [ballad], tamasha [theatre]... my working methodology is being with people ... if I want to study something or someone, I’m with those people, I work with those people, I go to concerts, I play with them, and I understand the form to give to music, I understand everything through practice, experience. I read the books, but I believe in people. Then after living with them, I compose and then go back to listening to what I composed. I try to understand people’s response to music and if they like it, I keep it, if they don’t like it, I change it. I do not change the content but the form.
- 16 Shivaji Bhonsle (1627-1680), great Maratha commander, considered by his followers the founder of th (...)
There are many examples [of how I compose] ... when I was in college, I met Ambedkarists, and they sang and sang good things, so I was there, they sang in public, there were many stimuli, I took them. This experiment has moved on. I felt a bond with these people, they sang the life of Ambedkar, how he was born, when he went abroad to study and then he returned, when he started working for our people, and then the conversion. I liked that song, it was original, and after listening to it I wrote another ... A song that was not only about Ambedkar, but It was in the name of Ambedkar, was about all the Untouchables, about how they live their lives. And that song became very famous, it also became part of a film. My methodology is this: I go with people, I stay with them, I learn from them, I don’t teach to anyone, I don't like to teach, I always go to learn. I go and talk to people, but my role is not to teach. My role is to go and be with people because they are the true teachers, because they live their lives and create their lives and learn from their lives. I go and stay with them for no reason, sometimes people come and say: Why are you here for no reason? ... but I understand, I learn. Then I come home and write and then go back to the people. If they like the songs, I keep them, but if they don’t like them, it’s garbage. I like the comments. So, it is in the case of Shivaji Underground Mohalla16, I was with those people and I learned from them. Now that show is very famous in Marathi theaters ... I believe in the toiling masses, but I don’t believe in political parties, or organizations, or leaders, I believe in theories, in ideologies, but I don’t believe in any person. Maybe big, but no ... Because the world is run by these people, the world is controlled by governments ... but who creates the knowledge? Who creates good things in this world? The masses. Then believe in them, respect them.
15In order to better connect with those who listen to his songs and to his music, Sambhaji Bhagat uses icons of Indian history, symbols of resistance and independence.
- 17 Bhagat Singh (1907-1931) was a patriot and martyr, who died for India’s independence.
I use different icons to sing, Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh17, Savittri, Shivaji are symbols, images, and people connect through these images.
16An example is the song dedicated to Bhagat Singh, a Sikh patriot born in Punjab in 1907, acknowledged as a symbol of the struggle for Indian independence. His socialist ideals came from his studies on Marx, Engels, Lenin and from parents who were deeply involved in the fight for independence. He thus dreamt of a republican, secular India, whose main interest was workers’ rights. Some events had deeply touched him, such as the 1919 massacre at Amritsar al Jallianwala Bagh, and in 1928 Bhagat Singh conspired with other patriots to murder James A. Scott, the head of police responsible for the death of the Indian writer and politician Lala Lajpat Rai during a silent march against the Simon Commission. In a tragic case of mistaken identity, the officer J.P. Saunders was killed instead. After fleeing from Lahore, in 1929 Bhagat Singh made a bomb explode at Delhi’s legislative Assembly to protest the implementation of the Defence of India Act. As a consequence, he was imprisoned and on March 23, 1931, he was hung together with his comrades Rajguru and Sukhdev. This was done at night, before the officially arranged time, in order to prevent disorders and protests (Verma 1986).
- 18 Song taken from the concert held at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (Gujarat) on 21 (...)
Oh Bhagat Singh, you are still alive, in every single drop of blood (2 times)18
In every single drop of blood, in every slogan of the revolution (3 times)
Oh Bhagat Singh, you are still alive, in every single drop of blood (2 times)
You had already predicted at the time, this is not freedom, this is a deception
This is not freedom, this is deception (2 times)
This is not a complete liberation, friends,
This is a business between whites and those who govern us (3 times)
In the glitter of these fake celebrations,
Among the imprisoned peasants (3 times)
Among the imprisoned peasants and those young people who are lost
Oh Bhagat Singh, you are still alive, in every single drop of blood (2 times)
We were hungry in the past and still today we eat dust,
And still today we eat dust (2 times)
Someone sacrificed lives in the name of God, even today invoking with force the name of God someone takes lives
Still take lives today (2 times)
Today we remind you Bhagat and the fire blazes in our hearts
Oh Bhagat Singh, you are still alive, in every single drop of blood (4 times)
In every slogan of the revolution (2 times)
17Starting from the Nineties, Sambhaji Bhagat moved away from traditional Indian Marxist politics because he too believed, as many Dalit activists also believed, that it did not fully understand the importance played by caste in social inequality. As explained by Ambedkar, the concept of caste produces a domino effect, called «infection of imitation», a process that shapes a graded inequality system, where:
The only class totally lacking any kind of privilege is the one at the bottom of the social pyramid. The privileges of the other classes are graded. Even those who are in low positions are privileged compared to those who are at the bottom. And, given that every class has its own privileges, it is also interested in preserving the system (Ambedkar 1989: 102 quoted in Roy 2017: 41).
18For the Dalits, castes were – and still are – incorporated in India’s cultural and economic structures, because Brahmanism has imposed an oppressive hierarchy that didn’t come from the outside, but had become part of everyone’s imagination, including those in the lowest positions. This system created barriers that were impossible to overcome just by means of political or social solidarity. Communism underestimated the deep implications of this caste system, because of its preference for the more abstract notion of class. Indian communists considered caste as part of class and did not view caste hierarchies as a discrete system. According to Bhimrao Ambedkar, Communists lacked the theoretical tools and the empathic experience of belonging to subordinate castes (Roy 2017). To this remark, Sambhaji adds his own personal experience:
Since I am Dalit, I was naturally attracted by Ambedkarism and Marxism, both ideologies deal with the living conditions of the Dalits. Marxism gave me a vision of the world, Ambedkarism gave me the real vision of society, of our reality. Marxism could not see the caste issue, but both gave me a lot.
19Among the consequences of this political distancing, there was Bhagat’s decision to leave the Avahan Natya Manch group. This happened in 1997, when Mumbai’s Dalit community was shaken by a dramatic event. During a protest staged against the desecration of a statue of Ambedkar in the area of Ramabai, in the North-East district of the Mumbai, the Maharashtra State Reserve Police Force assassinated ten Dalit activists. For the Dalits, these statues, which are generally built in community spaces and around which people assemble on specific occasions, are not inanimate objects, but symbols that keep doctor Babasaheb’s legacy alive (Jaoul 2006: 175-207). This tragic turn of events prompted Vilas Ghogre to commit suicide in protest against these killings. When he was found, he was wearing a blue bandana, the symbol of the Dalits and close to the place of his death there was writing on the wall: «Long life to Ambedkarians’ unity». Reminiscing about his friend and comrade, Sambhaji recalled this unresolved conflict between Ambedkarism and Marxism:
Vilas Ghogre had entered the movement. I had heard him sing and I thought he was a great man. Other comrades and I went to him and asked him to join the movement. He wrote many things, good songs. He was in the movement, and he and I were in conflict between Ambedkarism and Marxism. Now I have understood the issue, but he could not understand it, he was in conflict, he was born Untouchable and knew the caste system. We have always tried to focus on the caste system with the Marxist leaders, and Vilas also tried to make people understand this, but Marxist politicians belonged to middle-high urban classes, and they had very European ideas, they were good people not bad, but they didn’t understand. Vilas’ suicide was the product of this conflict. I felt very bad about what happened and then I realized that Marxists and Ambedkarists create extremisms and create problems. But why are these conflicts going on? Because they confuse people and I believe in working on problems, staying with the masses, working with the masses, learning from the masses.
20Vilas’ loss severely hit Bhagat, making him more aware of the necessity of carrying forward a cultural revolution. One of the first steps, for him, consisted in promoting several initiatives of cultural unity, like the Vidrohi Sahitya Sammelan in 1999, a conference held in Dharavi that involved Dalit writers, musicians, artists from all around Maharashtra. The meeting reinforced Bhagat’s need of creating a pluralist movement, going beyond politics, because the power of art is amplified when it becomes communal. In the beginning, this effort to use his art to move beyond the traditional divisions and ideological categories disorientated the audience, but subsequently this approach succeeded in fostering a way to rethink one’s role in society:
I am part of a movement, and the movement teaches all these aspects. Not a single person, but there are many people with whom I have shared meanings. The movement taught me, sharing with people who work hard [taught me]. I don’t believe in the teacher and student relationship, but the movement is my guru, my teacher, that’s why I can talk like that. I do not differentiate things because I am an artist, I believe in philosophy, ideology is part of philosophy, but I believe in those who struggle for improvement. This is a movement centered on the human being, in the movement there is Marxism, the Dalits, the struggle of the Adivasis, of women, all these people are fighting for an improvement of human beings, against the State, capitalism, industry... I am part of that movement.
21During the Vidrohi Sahitya Sammelan, the Vidrohi Shahiri Jalsa [Rebel Cultural Programme] was formed, a group with which Sambhaji Bhagat started touring the entire State, promoting songs of cultural resistance against caste segregation and challenging the mainstream Dalit leaders, who in his opinion had betrayed the promises of social equity and rights originally made to voters who had supported them. Through his chants and public shows, he tried – and keeps on trying – to rejuvenate the thought of one of the constitution’s founding fathers, which he believes, has today largely sunk into oblivion.
Why don’t people react? I keep thinking about this. The ruling classes are working on the minds of the masses in this regard. They are buying their consent, they are working on people’s minds and people get confused, they don’t know how to fight, they don’t know who their enemies are. The ruling classes create this misunderstanding and spend a lot of capital to maintain this state of non-knowledge, of confusion. They control the universities, the centers of knowledge, and keep people in ignorance of how we are living, of how we are governing the world, people do not understand. Prisons are built for people who understand.
22As lok shahir, Sambhaji Bhagat opens up to his audience the possibility of reading their country’s current events from a double perspective: on hand, he promotes a more profound understanding of these events, but, on the other hand, he also highlights the historical continuities which bear on them, thus seamlessly connecting everyday life to India’s age-old history. However, his songs not only rejuvenate memory, but they also produce it: by singing about it, people preserve memories of oppression and learn to use them as tools for change. Concurrently, the same songs also inspire those without any experience of lived resistance, offering uplifting examples and symbols of empowerment. The bard is aware that singing alone can’t lead to a subjective and collective catharsis, but he nonetheless considers it a crucial vehicle for promoting and spreading cultural resistance.
Songs alone cannot change people, there must be a movement, without movement things will not change. Songs are a part of change. I am an artist, that’s why I write songs, but there must be someone who builds a cultural movement. What needs to be done? I write songs but then we need to form a cultural family.
- 19 Song taken from the concert held at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (Gujarat) on 21 (...)
Oh brother, listen to the history of India, our great land19
Brothers listen to its story (2 times)
The great Himalayan chain is in the lead
Many rivers flow, Gange, Yamuna, Brahmaputra, Godavari, Krishna, mines, jungle, mountains
From our very green land pearls overflow and gold comes out (2 times)
Our shops are full of wheat, markets full of things
You beg for food from home to home
And nevertheless, go to sleep hungry (2 times)
- 20 These lyrics are taken from Vande Mataram, an ode to Mother Earth published in Bankim Chandra Chatt (...)
Rich with thy hurrying streams, bright with orchard gleams20,
Brother why is bread so expensive in the same country? (2 times)
This is the country where cows are celebrated
We celebrate cows, let the cat enter the kitchen
We leave the dogs at the door of the house, we consider holy the urine of the cow
We decorate the courtyard with manure (2 times)
Oh you cobbler, you who graze the cows, the buffaloes
You take the milk of cows and buffaloes and give it to drink (2 times)
The father goes to the gym, he is also called an Indian tiger
He is also called the Indian tiger (2 times)
The one who elevates the human being, who elevates the human being (4 times)
Brother how can he be an Untouchable
- 21 Daughter of Ashvapati, king of Madra, whose tales are narrated in the Mahabharata.
- 22 Queen Laxmi of Gansi or Jhansi (1827-1858), was the spouse of Raja Gangadhar Rao of Jhansi, modern (...)
Our women become gods (2 times)
Virtuosos like Savitri21, like Sita of Ram
Brave like Queen Chadma, like Queen Laksmi of Gansi22
Oh someone in Delhi will say (3 times)
Indira’s was a very successful policy (3 times)
What didn’t happen to women (4 times)
To give bread to their children, to give bread to their children (2 times)
Why should they sell their body?
- 23 The term mavali comes from Mumbai urban slang. It refers to an urban character, with occasional job (...)
These are our religious rites (3 times)
How can leaders allow this?
These bastards are all white elephants
Thugs and mawali [pimps]23 are their friends
What can they know about us, poor people?
They are people who do not know fatigue (4 times)
Oh, the lion will kill the deer
Why should the lion let go the trapped goat
The butcher is in the face of every leader
How could we go free?
- 24 It refers to the garment generally called Nehru jacket, worn in formal and institutional occasions.
Oh, you will find the hidden evil (3 times)
Oh, brother hidden in their topi [hat] (4 times)
Oh, you will find the hidden evil
Oh, brother hidden in their jackets24 (4 times)
- 25 He is the lord of the dead, «the one who keeps».
23During the present century, Sambhaji Bhagat has worked on different projects of cultural dissemination. In 2012, he composed the music and the powada for the play Shivaji Underground at Bhimnagar Mohalla, to demystify the hagiographic rhetoric surrounding Chhattrapati Shivaji. The script, written by Rajkumar Tangde, was inspired by actual events occurred in Mumbai between December 1992 and January 1993, and by the interpretation of those events proposed by the different political parties of the time. The play starts with the request made by the god Indra to Yama25 to go look for Chhattrapati Shivaji on Earth. However, Shivaji decides to hide and leaves Yama his turban, which the lord of death uses to look for him by having it tried on by all pilgrims that he meets during his quest, to find its true owner. After many attempts, Yama arrives in a small village where there is a family that steadfastly upholds the greatness of Shivaji. It is a place where both Dalits and Muslims live, hence the name Bhimnagar Mohalla, who consider the lord Shivaji benevolent and tolerant towards all communities. Moving from this village, the play showcases Shivaji’s progressive policies and his deep respect for all religions and all castes. At the end Yama, after all his attempts to find Shivaji have ultimately failed, gives the turban to the audience, a symbolic act to show that Shivaji’s ideas are a collective heritage for all peoples.
24In 2015 the film Court is released, directed by Chaitanya Tamhane, which was awarded the National Award for Best Film. It portrays the trial of Narayan Kamble, a lok shahir who ends up imprisoned because his songs – according to police reports – have allegedly pushed Vasudev Pawar, a street cleaner of Mumbai’s Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, to commit suicide. During the film, we learn that Kamble, aged 65, used to be a worker in the cotton mills of Mumbai. After the mills were shut down, as he found out that he was not entitled to a pension, he decided to dedicate himself to teaching and making music. During his youth he became a member of the controversial right-wing political association RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), but later he became active in left-wing and Ambedkar’s movements. The film analyses the prejudices of the powers that be towards the bard and his role of public denouncer of modern society, and it also exposes the labyrinthine workings of the State, that become apparent as the Kafkaesque trial proceedings unfold. Through the different witness statements in court, the mystery shrouding the death of the street cleaner slowly unravels. The most moving witness being the cleaner’s wife who, with extraordinary composure, talks about her husband’s habit of drinking alcohol in the morning in order to be able to bear the stench of sewers, the only possible protection against toxic gasses lingering underground. Sambhaji Bhagat composed the film’s soundtrack using the typical structures of Maharashtra folklore and he himself inspired the bard’s character, albeit as he explains:
The film is not about me, there are many people who are struggling, and the story is about all these people...
25The film focuses on the movements and ideas of social reform of Maharashtra and Mumbai sung and transmitted by the lok shahirs. But it regretfully points out that today most people prefer to just keep quiet and submit, just like the street cleaner Vasudev Pawar. In the absence of dialogue and empathy across different strata of society, his ultimate sacrifice becomes the tragic outcome of this passivity. The lok shahir’s songs try to counter this lack of communication, this social segregation that preys on the downtrodden, even pushing them to give up their own existence in their attempt to survive. The songs instead urge people to wake up and to acknowledge, as Sambhaji Bhagat sings in Marathi in the film, «the illusion of illusion»:
- 26 Sambhaji Bhagat’s own translation into English.
Listen brother26
Pandemonium is here
Time to rise and revolt
Time to know your enemy
Though times are here
We are uprooted from our soil
This era of blindness
Has gouged our eyes
A gent appears a crook
An owl resembles a peacock
A giant becomes babyish
A baby turns into a giant
The good ones are forgotten
The good for nothing, praised
The enemy is all destructive
Yet we sing his praise
Time to know your enemy (2 times)
Satan is black and white
Your life trapped in his vice
Colour is his weapon of choice
As death raises its voice
Colours play a game of dice
The rules are divisive
Humanity is in its cage
It burns, it disintegrates
Colours that multicolour
Colours that discolour
The colour, it breaks
Now it looks fake
You are stupefied
How much will you forsake
These dense jungles
These rusty jungles
Religious jungles
Casteist jungles
Racist jungles
Nationalist jungles
On this deathly night
We lose all our senses
Hands bruised and burnt (3 times)
Get a gift of boiling wax
Time to know your enemy (3 times)
The delusion of illusion
Money, it reigns supreme
Has turned a man into a mongrel
This mongrel has 17 breeds
The blood is infested with hunger
Will this hunger be content, ever?
The search for happiness is on
But all directions are blurred
This razzle dazzle,
Yes brother
This razzmatazz
Yes brother
This scam sham
Yes brother
These fancy malls
Yes brother
Free for all
Yes brother
This great fall
Yes brother
Scam sham, huge malls
Great fall, great fall
Malady and gluttony
Gluttony e malady
26The bard, as he acts as a testimony to unceasing increase of social marginalization, takes a stand against the temptation of silence: he feels compelled to try to speak for all those people whose voices can’t be heard. This is the path on which Sambhaji Bhagat has ventured forth long ago. During his concerts he doesn’t just sing, but he engages in an intimate dialogue with his audience, challenging it to actively become part of the show: «In this cultural war we will win, not today, but tomorrow, that’s why we sing…Let’s go!» These words are used to urge the audience to join in the show and take action in a communal effort of cultural resistance. Here Sambhaji showcases his ability to connect with the audience by modulating the lyrics, slowing down or speeding up the pace of the music, guiding the musicians who follow him. The artist’s aim is not purely performative, but actively pursues change, it openly fosters a subversion of the established order.
The lok shahir is he who is always on the ordinary man’s side, «lok» means people, he is the poet of the people, the singer of the people, and the writer of the people. There is a main feature, that of fighting for the masses through songs, art. People call me lok shahir, but I feel like a very simple man, I’m like any ordinary person, I don’t segregate myself from people, I don’t think «I’m a god», no no...
27Bhagat’s approach is nurtured by the lok shahir that came before him and sustained by the formation of new bands of singers, some of which he has supported directly, fostering their artistic growth. The best known of these bands, one that he often performs with, is Kabir Kala Manch, or KKM, founded in 2002 by some Dalit students of Pune, whose songs have quickly become popular throughout Maharashtra. The themes they showcase concern the country’s social inequalities: the living conditions of Dalit workers and of the most disadvantaged people in society. Their songs, especially when they demand equal rights and dignity for all human beings, have been met with hostility by local government institutions, so much so that in 2011 several members of the band were charged of terrorism and consequently imprisoned. Among them was the band’s leader, Sheetal Sathe, later released because she was pregnant at the time. Sathe is the performer of one of the most moving songs about the ties that unite womenfolk, meaningfully entitled My Mother. It is dedicated to maternity as a metaphor and also as a bulwark of the strength that women have been passing on to each other throughout the centuries, and it recalls the ovi songs on which Maratha women traditionally relied upon to draw mutual support and protection.
- 27 Song taken from the documentary Jai Bhim Comrade by Anand Patwardhan. Translation in English made b (...)
When I see a cow calls out and lovingly lick her calf27
I’m reminded of my mother
Women in the neighborhood were recounting
When I was an infant there was a drought
And the milk dried in my mother’s breast
She poured water into a gruel made of flour
My mother nursed me on this thin gruel
So, I remember my mother
When I hear the cow’s call
28The passing on of the shahir’s art to the new generations is perhaps the hardest challenge facing Sambhaji Bhagat, because it entails knowing and appreciating the most recent expressive forms while also preserving their traditional heritage. The release of the War Beats channel on YouTube provided an important platform to reach out to a wider audience. It was first launched in 2017, featuring recordings of concerts held in India as well as promotional videos28.
We built War Beats to spread our message and it was really a good thing to connect artists even away from India. We want to bring artists together to a global community.
29The videos are different from the concerts held in city streets or in the villages. They feature special effects, as well as more sophisticated direction and editing, but their themes always lead back to the need to foster a cultural awakening, to call for active resistance against the imbalances caused by the many contradictions of our contemporary world. During the interview, I asked Sambhaji Bhagat why he made these different stylistic choices, but I sensed a certain impatience towards this question. He dismissed the request with a curt nod of his head, as if to state that this aspect is not really that important. I interpreted it as a way to underscore fact that it is primarily the music and the lyrics’ message that really matter, not the medium used to disseminate this content. While I agree with this premise, I was also made aware by my own experience of listening to his music live that there is indeed a significant difference between experiencing it live and watching it performed on a screen in a curated video. Should we then consider these two kinds of experience as completely different forms of oral narratives? Although I do not have an answer to this complex question, I believe that John Miles Foley’s notion of a Great Divide between orality, literary and electronic media has been definitively undermined by modern information and communication technology (Foley 2012). But in listening to Sambhaji's voice live, I also felt that the uniqueness of the event was shaped by several important factors, like the physical proximity between the listener and the singer, which gave the performance a depth and richness that was not just bound by the sound of his voice and of his music, but also expanded by the complex pragmatics expressed by his gaze and his body language, which made the performance truly intersubjective. Thus, the act of listening really became a multisensory experience, involving the whole body of the listener, because it seemed that the sound was everywhere, consonant with the noises of the everyday life activities that took place in Sambhaji’s house during the interview and during his performance. The sound satiated the soul in a very different way than how it felt when listening to his songs on the internet.
- 29 Sane Guruji Rastriya Smarak Trust is an organization committed to the education of young people. It (...)
30According to Bhagat, social media are just a means to spread his message and a container to promote music and films that are alternative to dominant cultural models. Kesava Kumar has stressed the role played by Dalit music and Dalit songs in combating the cultural imaginaries of both Brahmanism and neo-liberalism, which conspire to keep the extant hierarchy and hegemony of castes and classes unchanged (Kumar 2005). Yet another such instrument of cultural awakening is the collective Kalasangini, founded in 2017. It gathers artists coming from rural areas who find it difficult to achieve media exposure. The first meeting was held at the Sane Guruji Rastriya Smarak Trust29 in Raigad, when some 120 people attended the event to compose music together and shoot independent films. Sambhaji Bhagat believes that it is his task to train these artists and to organize them to uphold the ideals of democracy and equality that are so dear to him:
After thirty-five years of experience in the cultural world, I realized that artists are one community and that they can work on people’s minds. We must organize artists to produce more cultural products, songs, plays, films and go to the masses. Sambahji Bhagat alone cannot do anything, but one hundred Sambhaji Bhagat can. So Kalasangini serves to organize artists, but it is not an organization, we are creating a family of artists. The organization can be easily destroyed, but the family can’t because the family structure is not lost, people come here, create new things and then go among the masses and spread what they have created. The basic ideology is that Ambedkarism gave the Constitution to this country, the preamble to our constitution is our manifesto. We do not say: «you should be a Marxist, an Ambedkarist, you should be this or that». The preamble is given by our constitution. In the first lines of the preamble, it is said that India is sovereign, socialist, secular, a democratic republic and that it guarantees all citizens justice, freedom, equality and brotherhood. Ambedkar, the main architect of our Constitution, says of the preamble: it is a model of life that recognizes freedom, equality, and brotherhood as vital principles and that cannot be divided from each other. Freedom cannot be separated from equality and freedom and equality from brotherhood. Without equality, freedom would produce the supremacy of a few over many. Equality without freedom would kill individual initiative. Without brotherhood, freedom and equality could not play a role. They are simple things, but now in Maharashtra we are more than five hundred people, artists, who are together, work together.
- 30 A popular legend tells the deeds of the Dalit hero Mahar Amrutnak, who volunteered to save the quee (...)
31Listening to the songs disseminates the legacy of a folklore that Eleanor Zelliot defines as one of pride (Zelliot 1995: 63-85). This definition describes a kind of discourse that cannot be described merely in terms of counterculture, parallel culture or subaltern culture. It is discourse that enshrines the demand that the role of the Dalits, of the Bahujans, of the working class and of women is acknowledged as a generative and foundational one in Maharashtra and in Mumbai history. According to Zelliot’s analysis of the cultural expression of the Mang-Mahar caste, this folklore can be understood as a discourse of pride, because it redefines the origins of the Dalit as India’s first inhabitants, a people who were already present before the Aryan invasion. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, who had always challenged the notion of a caste-based social stratification, held a similar view. The rejection of the caste system, as well as of fundamental Hindu concepts of purity and contamination, also led many Dalits towards non-castal religions aiming to bring about the end of the cycle of death and rebirth. A famous example is the mass conversion of the local Dalits to Buddhism that took place in the city of Nagpur in 1956, as the new converts were drawn to Buddhism by their appreciation of Buddhist tenets of egalitarianism and logic-based rational debate. While these elements of social critique are a prominent feature of Dalit folklore, this heritage also traces its descent from a pantheon of warriors willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good30 (Zelliot 1995: 75-76). It is this semi-mythical legacy that made it possible for the Dalits to join the Shivaji army engaged in the creation of the Maratha State in the seventeenth century and to fight alongside the British East India Company army against Peshwa rule in 1818. This proud legacy has come to the fore on many occasions even after independence, as it fueled such counter-cultural movements of the 1970s such as the Dalit Panthers, who fought the enduring injustice of the caste system (Zelliot 1995: 65).
32As a testimony to the way that, in Maharashtra, songs have always been crucial in spreading the values and the struggles of the defiant Dalits, Daya Pawar recounts a very popular proverb in which Brahmans are associated with intellectual activities, Kunbis with agricultural ones and the Dalits, who are excluded from the prior two occupations, are tightly linked with oral tradition (Pawar 1974: 2):
In the Brahman house, writing
In the Kunbi house, grain
In the Mahar house, singing
33This perspective of a popular heritage rooted in pride and social redemption challenges the idea of a «speechless subaltern», as posited by Gayatri Spivak in her seminal 1988 essay Can The Subaltern Speak? in which she argued that the Indian subaltern woman embodied the absolute impossibility of speaking and being heard. Her condition is the product of an unsurmountable systematic historiographical absence and social aphony. Spivak traces this social invisibility back to the system of power relations which has been historically grounded in the division of labor imposed or compounded by Western imperialism and colonialism, which made Indian subaltern women an exemplary subject of exploitation (Spivak 1988). Recently Zoe Sherinian criticized Spivak’s argument, because it fails to recognize that the Dalits, as any other oppressed people, do have agency, and that this agency comes alive in their rich oral tradition. (Sherinian 2020: 265-66). The Dalit songs, throughout their various transformations, connect myths, history, politics, gender issues and modulate themselves to answer the needs of a Dalit discourse on the world that they interact with. The themes put forward by the lok shahirs of today express the aspects of precariousness and exploitation affecting the Dalit at this time, as well as the hope that may uplift them. As also claimed by Fiona Margaret Page Dalton: «Folk singers may also act as leaders, gathering oppressed peoples and providing them with hope through the messages and values which they espouse» (Dalton 2008: 79).
34Italian anthropology, from its peripheral, but not marginal, point of view may enrich this interpretative framework. In my analysis of Bhagat’s work, I propose to employ the concept of «presence» first used by the Italian anthropologist Ernesto de Martino in 1948 (de Martino 1948; 1958) to define the subject’s struggle to exist, to avoid the risk of «no longer being». De Martino explains that «presence», understood as the autonomy of the subject, is rooted in the knowledge and in the awareness of being present. In this sense, it is made up by a web of strong relationships within the world which the subject inhabits: the subject is thus present to himself in his own domestic world. This domesticity is crucial to the subject’s sense of self, but it also always needs to be supported in order to exist. Any culturally oriented action expressed by the subject ultimately depends on it, without it, her or his world disintegrates. That’s why this «presence» is so fundamental, and why it shapes both the individual and the collective’s ability to preserve memories and experiences of a cultural world replete of meaning, the one in which the subject is deeply rooted.
35Presence is always threatened by the risk of no longer being, by a possible crisis, therefore it must be continually reaffirmed. Its perpetual struggle is, ultimately, a fight to avert the collapse of the known world. This struggle is implemented through ritual, a process that redefines human nature in a particular cultural context, giving shape to anguish and activating a healing process. In other words, the ritual suspends catastrophe by mending the cracks of impending disaggregation, allowing the subjects to «find themselves» once again, as individuals and as part of a collective. By continuously reaffirming their presence, humans make and mend the world. Yet this presence is always precarious, it must never be taken for granted, because the forces of change, and the constant pressure of an unrecognizable and ultimately invincible present impress upon it the need to adapt and transform.
36In the case of Sambhaji Bhagat, music and songs constitute a bulwark against the risk of cultural disaggregation, because in the world they call into being with their lyrics, individuals are not merely acted upon by external forces, but are indeed able to act themselves, using their cultural heritage to mend the fissures threatening their «presence», thereby attempting to guide and control social and cultural change. As de Martino writes: «Human culture in general is the solemn exorcism against this radical risk, whatever – so to speak – the exorcistic technique adopted is» (de Martino 2002: 219). It is mostly through the act of «being together» that the subject manages to give a cultural form to the threat of «not being», ritualizing the crisis menacing his or her world and finally overcoming it through a collective process of re-appropriation. History itself thus becomes an expansion of self-awareness that allows action to be illuminated from within, a malleable process of change in which social actors themselves can foster a common future.
37In this sense it is possible to talk about a «song alliance», because when people sing together, not only are they tangibly refusing to disappear, but they also provide means for their own cultural and physical self-preservation, as bodies that persist and that have needs and desires. Linda Hess writes that: «One of the great features of oral tradition is that it is embodied, with givers and receivers physically present in the same place and time» (Hess 2015: 1). The Dalit bards thus open to the possibility of a plural sense of existence that «is not in any way a triumph over all forms of precarity, though it articulates, through its enactments, an opposition to induced precarity and its accelerations» (Butler 2015: 29). Even more powerful than the experience of singing, or even than the effect purported by the songs themselves, is the experience of being and staying together. An experience at once individual and collective, that manifests itself beyond words, this «staying» testimonies the need of a life that goes beyond oneself and that sees cooperation as the only possibility of cultural survival.