The Bard opens his play Twelfth Night with these words: “If music be the food of love, play on”. The speaker asks for music because he is frustrated in courtship; he wants an overabundance of love so that he may lose his appetite for it.
The ministry of civil aviation has more mundane reasons to ask all the airlines and airports in the country to play Indian music. It got into the act after the Indian Council of Cultural Affairs (ICSSR), a Centrally-funded outfit that promotes Indian culture in foreign countries, brought together a group of musicians to impress upon Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia the need to promote Indian music. As it is, few may remember listening to any music, Indian or foreign, while boarding or alighting from the airlines.
However, on international flights, Air India and other airlines provide music of various genres that individual passengers can choose from. This is provided under the customer-is-the-king principle. What the ICSSR wants is the compulsory playing of Indian music in all airlines and airports. For argument's sake, it has been said that as American Airlines play jazz, Austrian airlines Mozart and West Asian airlines Arabic music, Indian airlines should play Indian music.
If choral music is the strength of the West, India’s musical tradition rests on vocalists and instrumentalists. Indian music is richer with not just Carnatic and Hindustani traditions. There are innumerable traditions of folk and tribal music.
It is easy to order airlines to play Indian music, while it is difficult for them to choose the music. Also, we do not have leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru who, after listening to a recital by M S Subbulakshmi, said that he was just a Prime Minister while she was the empress of music. Also, for many a tired traveller, silence is nothing but music.
