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Conversion and Continuity: How Hereditary Muslim Families Came to Lead North Indian Classical Music
Part III: The sociology of Muslim musicianship, the evidence for conversion, and why the music never changed In brief: One of the most striking facts about North Indian classical music is that its most prestigious performing lineages came to rest,…
Mufaddal Khumri
A philosophical banker by cast of mind (something of a homo universalis), Mufaddal carries to the counting-house an abiding devotion to the fine arts, to history, and to philosophy, a humanism that leavens the exacting rigour of finance with amplitude of spirit. His is a temperament that weds gravitas to an irrepressible levitas: festina lente in the boardroom, yet an intrepid adventurer and inveterate hobbyist beyond it, animated by a near-Stoic amor fati and an unstinting appetite for a full and effulgent life. A committed champion of inclusivity who revels in the company of colleagues drawn from every nationality and vocation, he is at once epicure, bibliophile, and raconteur, finding his keenest felicities in books, gastronomy, classical music, and the sonorous cadences of Urdu poetry. And, with a twinkle rather than a whit of self-importance, he is quite as apt to introduce himself as Chief Entertainment Officer as by the graver title his card confesses. Yet for all that he has built, he remains, in the spirit of Tennyson’s Ulysses, a seeker of newer worlds, his purpose holding still to sail beyond the sunset.
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Sanctified Sound Music, Faith and Cultural Synthesis in Medieval North India, circa 1200 to 1550 How the history of Hindustani classical music was shaped by the Delhi Sultanate, the Chishti Sufis, and the temple stream
Part II Introduction Few chapters in the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent are as consequential, or as persistently misunderstood, as the musical encounter between…
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The Sound of the Sacred Land: A History of Hindustani Classical Music
Introduction to the Series This is a series of essays on Hindustani classical music, conceived to unfold across the ages and to illumine the nuances,…
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The Quiet Joy of Fortitude
On Stoicism, the East, and the Art of Not Growing Dull Speech delivered at the Maldives Professional Speakers Summit held on July 11, 2026 A very good morning to you all. Friends, when people hear the word “stoic,” they conjure…
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The Chalice of Malice
Homo sapiens have dominated the planet earth for millenniums as they kept evolving in to an incredibly rapacious species. But that dominion came with disastrous…
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A thousand years of peace!
The world that we have bequeathed from nature has now come to war with it! As humans attempt to overpower and rein in the primordial…
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A not so Accommodating World
An epoch is in the making as we move ahead with technological advancement and are faced with the choice of plenty to deal with. At…