Recently, an influential aficionado of Carnatic music publicly expressed the view that Hindustani music is lacking in “bhakti”. There was more than a suggestion that Hindustani music has abandoned the transcendentalism fundamental to the Hindu artistic tradition. Such perceptions appear to be widely shared amongst members of the Carnatic music community. Hence the need to address them.

They arise evidently from the fact that the lyrics of mainstream Carnatic music are predominantly devotional, while those of Hindustani vocal music tend to feature a wider variety of themes with a bias, perhaps, towards “sringara rasa” (the romantic/erotic sentiment). Without getting into the philosophical niceties of the rasa theory, I attempt to examine whether the pattern warrants the inferences evidently drawn.