TUNED TO INDIA

Sitar maestro Hidayat Husain Khan drops a fresh rendition of the national anthem with his composition Jai Hind ahead of Republic Day

- PRIYAMVADA RANA

THERE’S no one answer to the ‘best version’ of the Indian national anthem. Jana Gana Mana has been sung by many artists. from Naga music sensation Imnainla Jamir playing a rock version on electric

guitar in 2022, Grammy Award-winning musician Ricky Kej bringing a 100-piece British orchestra and 14,000 tribal children on board last year to an AI-powered musical experiment done by Google in 2020 inviting users from across India to sing it — new technology, Western instruments and grand orchestras have been put into service of the anthem.

On January 21, sitar maestro and son of legendary sitarplayer Vilayat Khan, Hidayat Husain Khan, dropped a new version, ‘Jai Hind’. With countless versions being made since the inception of the national anthem in 1911, why does the country need another version? Khan has all the answers — rooted in the syncretic culture of India.

Simply Indian

The music video of ‘Jai Hind’ out on YouTube, uses just Indian instruments and classical vocals. It opens with a surreal picture of Mount Kailash kissed by sunrise. The video spotlights Khajuraho temples, Delhi’s Jama Masjid, monasteries in Leh-Ladakh, the desert of Rajasthan, backwaters of Kerala, and several temple towns against the shimmering sound of sitar. Khan says, “The composition begins with a meditative