Sahana Bajpaie calls for peace

Despite the transcendent and unifying nature of music, a recent incident has created discord between Bangladeshi and Indian music lovers. On the special occasion of the Independence Day of India, Miles and Fossils, two leading bands from Bangladesh and India respectively, were scheduled to perform at the Azaadi concert. The show was to go on air from Red FM on August 13. But Fossils raised objections about sharing the same platform with Miles. They claimed that some members from Miles had constantly and continuously been posting hateful comments from their Facebook profiles regarding India. A Facebook fan page began the hashtag trend #BoycottMiles and pointed out how the main members of Miles (Hamin Ahmed and Shafin Ahmed) have ceaselessly slandered India with “distasteful comments” since the 2014 World Cup days. After that, Fossils also declared their stance with the campaigning fans saying, “as for Fossils, it is very clear that our only objection was about the performance of Miles – whose music we have all grown up listening to but they have been extremely vocal against India openly in their social networking pages.” This incident caused hurtful feelings among music lovers on both sides of the border. While some musicians jumped in to inflame the rift further, there have been some who were disheartened and troubled by the whole episode. Sahana Bajpaie, a noted Rabindra sangeet artist based in West Bengal in India, recently expressed her disappointment in an article she wrote in Ananda Bazar. She wrote about her experience in Bangladesh, good memories, loving people and their hospitality. Bajpaie mournfully wrote that people of these two countries should not stop talking about their rights. She thinks that it is natural to talk about the problematic issues. “But let us not make cricket matches an excuse for rotten jingoism,” Bajpaie wrote. She asked muscians to rise above shallow nationalism saying that “music has no boundaries.” This bold article by Sahana has brought some much needed calm and rationality after a lot of mud slinging.