The biggest problem of liberals in the country is creating a dominant narrative condescending of faith, religions and rituals. There needs to be an overhaul of the liberal idea and it needs to be rooted in cultural ideas, said Carnatic musician T.M. Krishna, who delivered the third U.R. Ananthamurthy Memorial Lecture in the city on Sunday.

He said faith is essentially a hope for a better tomorrow. It needs challenging and questioning, yes. But we need to renegotiate faith and rebuild rituals. Of course it will be problematic as we need to handle the question of caste. But we should not discard the goodness of humanity, he said, giving instances of the dilemmas he faces on singing certain regressive lyrics of many composers.

Delivering the speech as an open letter to the late Ananthamurthy, Mr. Krishna said India as a country had failed to inculcate the culture of democracy over the last seven decades. The greatest danger of the present regime is that it may have changed the social fabric of our society and the way we think. Politicians will keep it going if it works and it will be normalised. We are very precariously poised and we need to recognise that, he said.

The Constitution is itself our samskara and not western as some people want us to believe. Civilisationally, India has never been of one religion, language or rule. We need to take ideas like secularism and fraternity to the people, he said. But who understands secularism? The preamble should have been sung as songs. Why did we not institute Sarvadharma Prarthana in every school? he posed. Critiquing the private education system, which he was also a part of, he said it had essentially created a segregated schooling system on class, caste and religious lines, and it was hard to expect children who go through it to understand egalitarian values suddenly.

But he expressed hope in the youth taking part in protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019. While showing us what is precious, they have showed us we need to be on the streets and not in our homes, he said.

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Liberal argument in India needs an overhaul, says T.M. Krishna - The Hindu