The movement for the revitalization of Hindu music in northern India, 1860-1930: The role of associations and institutions

This study traces the historical development of an Indian movement to encourage the cultivation of music, to place it on a scientific theoretical footing, and to remove the prejudice against music that formerly pervaded much of Indian society. Important though individual efforts are, associations and institutions more clearly reveal attitudes towards music in nineteenth and early twentieth-century India. This study of the movement is approached primarily through examination of the aims and activities of these groups, which ranged from local clubs to large societies with many branches. Certain important features consistently characterized the movement and promoted its development, such as the increasing force of Hindu pride, the impressive capabilities of interregional communication even before the advent of the railroad, the influence of Hindu religious and social reform movements, Hindu-Muslim cultural relations, and the amateur focus of the movement. This dissertation analyzes how these social and cultural forces shaped the Hindu music revival, comparing how they emerged at first regionally in Bengal, Maharashtra, and Gujarat, and then finally on the national level. Although the movement was dominated by Brahmans and placed authority in Sanskrit literature, it won the support of many Muslim musicians, some of whom founded music schools modeled on those of their Hindu colleagues. Examining the development of the movement, this dissertation traces a discernible historical shift in the orientation of the musical associations. Whereas they began in the nineteenth century with apologetics for Hindu Music to the British in India and sought sympathizers in Europe, with the increasing strength of nationalism in the twentieth century the movement began to bypass foreign opinion. All of the more important musical organizations studied intended to achieve a pan-Indian presence, but this ambition was realized only by two founded in the twentieth-century