HDS Students Celebrate the Arts through South Asian Devotional Music and Events

Last spring, more than 100 people gathered in Williams Chapel to take part in the South Asian Devotion Devotional Music Night, an event dedicated to honoring the diverse and rich spiritual musical traditions of South Asia. While the religious traditions of South Asia differ in many ways, music is a powerful unifying force among them.

This South Asian Devotional Music Night was a night filled with instrumental and vocal performances, readings, and became a space where those in attendance could shift from “the head and into the heart,” as one of the event organizers Rucha Modi, MTS '25, describes. Organized by HDS Ganga, HDS Muslims, and HDS Justice and Music (J.A.M) Collective, this collaborative effort reflected the spirit of Harvard Divinity School and its commitment to interfaith dialogue, providing a space for the Harvard community to reflect and celebrate across cultural and religious divides.  

Harvard Divinity School spoke with event organizers, Modi and Jamail Khan, MTS ‘24, about why they chose Harvard Divinity School, their experience at the school, and their motivations for getting involved on campus. 

Harvard Divinity School: What brought you to Harvard Divinity School? 

So far, my experience at the School has been powerful. I think the community is what makes HDS. Being around so many curious, spiritually hungry, humble, and service-minded people has been energizing because it feels like this condensation of people who have similar values, even if through different spiritual forms and tones. I have felt like I can hold it all, the love, the messiness, and the longing because my community here is willing to hold it all. It's been beautiful to connect with so many curious people at HDS and coming here has been its own sort of homecoming for me.

Rucha Modi: I was doing a Fulbright in India focusing on youth interfaith dialogue and peace education. While completing my research, I realized how my academic interests in international affairs, human rights, and interreligious conflict were deeply related to some of the spiritual and religious questions I had been grappling with for a long time but had not had the opportunity to engage with in the classroom. When I learned about HDS and the values of the community, I knew that the School would be a powerful and supportive place for me to do some of the deeper spiritual and moral exploration I was craving, while also continuing to expand my understanding of religion's role in peace, conflict, and violence.  

Harvard Divinity School: What inspired you to create multireligious events on campus? 

Jamail Khan: In my experience of being a part of HDS Muslims, I have time and again witnessed the de-emphasis on demarcating spiritual identity. HDS Muslims, in my experience, has never been about creating boundaries between the Muslim students and other students. All of our events are open to everyone. In fact, I think that's an ethos that runs through a lot of HDS communities. These spiritual groups exist, but they really exist in conversation, grace, and love with each other. We are an inclusive guild, that manifests itself in so many ways. 

Rucha Modi: When I came to HDS, there wasn’t an established Hindu student space, the last one had sunsetted with the graduation of its founders. Because of my various identities and lack of religious training, I did not think I had any authority to start a Hindu organization, let alone help run one. However, I immediately felt so empowered by how people at HDS really lean into their traditions and create beautiful spaces, whether or not they know scriptures or histories inside and out, whether or not they can quote the texts, and whether or not they have the official garb. Being received by my peers and supported by the visiting Hindu monastics inspired me to co-found HDS Ganga. 

Harvard Divinity School: Can you share with us how you have successfully planned several community events to celebrate faith through music and the arts?   

Jamail Khan: In the fall of 2022, my friends and I started HDS Muslims Poetry Night. Poetry Night has become popular across the Harvard community, attracting students from various schools to the Divinity School. Each event reaches capacity, with over 100 people filling the Braun room. While free food usually draws students to events, our poetry nights offer no food, just chai and poetry.  

What is amazing is that there is no original English verse; everything is recited primarily in the original (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, etc.) and then in translation. The English text consists solely of translated lyrics, the power of which often strikes many attendees, especially since we often hear the belief that translation kills poetry.  

I think this really speaks to the power of this community that we have formed. Even in translation, the message resonates so much that it draws hundreds in. It has been an amazing experience to discover how the arts—particularly poetry and music—bring people together across various divides. At our last poetry night of the spring 2024 semester, despite polarizing tensions across campus, we had the largest turnout we have ever seen. It is incredible to witness people uniting to celebrate the arts. 

Harvard Divinity School: What is your favorite memory from an event you planned as a student leader? 

Rucha Modi: My mom, a traditional Gujarati folk singer, flew in to attend and participate in the South Asian Devotional Music Night.  I am not a singer. I am a percussionist, but at the celebration my mom wanted us to sing together, so we did. It was special because my mom, a first-generation immigrant, speaks and thinks in the languages of religion and music. A lot of the spaces I have co-created in the past, like research and organizing spaces, used a different language, one less accessible to her. On this night, we got to connect and create through the language of a of bhajan (devotional song) called “Achyutam Keshavam.” To sit and sing with her on stage in devotion is a deep honor.  

This moment aligned directly with the intent of the music night—it was to honor the languages, harmonies, and wisdom of our ancestors. To experience this in an intergenerational format in community with my mother, through a bhajan that honors prominent women devotees in Hinduism, was incredibly powerful. Everything that I was able to help create and contribute to the HDS community rests on the shoulders of the Divine and my mom. 

Jamail Khan: During the Voices of Infinity event, an event organized by Dr. Santosh Raut with world-renowned Indian folk singer Padma Shri Prahlad Singh Tipanya (Guru ji), two things really touched my heart. The first was seeing the many small interactions that happened throughout that evening-- interactions that manifested as just pure acts of love. I did sound for the event. Doing sound for Guru ji was amongst my great honors at HDS. The time I spent with him as I was doing sound was truly priceless. I would be doing the most mundane things, like adjusting his microphone or getting him water, and Guru ji would extemporaneously drop such deep pieces of wisdom out of nowhere. A couple times it was so unexpected that I could not help but laugh. I could see so clearly how he not only performs Kabir but actually lives in him. The second impactful event that evening was hearing Guru ji unpack Kabir in the post-concert discussion. Kabir, an Indian poet who explored both Hinduism and Islam, it was an amazing conversation in the truest sense of the word--a moment that will stick with me for the rest of my life. In that conversation, Guru ji dismantled the scholar-practitioner dyad in the most systematic and effective way.  

The way that he was shedding light on deeply intellectual debates and points of scholarly attention with his personal sadhana (his personal spirituality and experiences with Kabir) was just remarkable to see. It really proved the point that if you dedicate your life to anything, you will end up exploring all sides of it. Being a practitioner of tradition or of an art form does not exclude you from scholarly attention or a scholarly outlook on the matter. That was immensely special to witness. 

Harvard Divinity School: How did these events and the efforts of your student groups strengthen the HDS community and work toward the HDS mission?  

Rucha Modi: By holding spiritually inclusive events like South Asian Devotion Music Night, Poetry Nights, Voices of Infinity, HDS Noon service hosted by HDS Ganga, even in the South Asian Diaspora, we are going against current political trends. The fact that—Rajeev, a Guyanese Hindu pandit, and I, a Gujarati-Hindu woman, and Jamail, a Pakistani Muslim man, served our communities together as kin is deeply precious.   

Additionally, these events were a reminder that we do not have to exclusively rely on Western frameworks for interfaith bridge-building.  Holding devotional events in the language of our ancestors—with plenty of syncretic history, content, and intergenerational memory--shows us that we can also do this work in a way that that is more harmonic with our communities.  Collaboration like this does not happen enough. Especially in explicitly devotional contexts, and I think it needs to, and it certainly can. I think some of these events, even if imperfect, demonstrate that.

Jamail Khan: The work that I have done with HDS Muslims, such as poetry night; collaborating with Rucha as she spearheaded events like the Devotion Night and jamming and performing with J.A.M Collective; these three things that I've been involved with really speak to the power of the arts. The power of the arts lies in transcending divides; a number of divides, including political, cultural, racial, and spiritual divides. There is no shortage of the number of lines across which human beings are divided in the world right now. However, there is something about the arts, which if done right and if done with the utmost sincerity, can really bring people together. 

Isaiah Briggs: I'm so deeply inspired by all the work that has been going on, and even just hearing you all share your experiences as leaders at Harvard Divinity School makes me feel emotional because we are living in a time where there is a crisis of hope. Seeing you two work to create events that foster love, joy, and community—these things just fill me up and inspire me. They make me feel like I am ready to continue this work, and they make me grateful to work in siblinghood with Khan and Modi.  

As part of the J.A.M Collective and key collaborator with Khan and Modi, it meant a lot for Isaiah Briggs, MDiv ‘24, to help bring to life events that spotlight the arts and encourage multi-religious conversations and connection across the Harvard community.  

HDS Ganga, HDS Muslims, and the J.A.M. Collective have many exciting events planned for the 2024-25 academic year, including J.A.M. Collective’s weekly jam sessions and HDS Muslims’ poetry nights, all aimed at leveraging the arts to foster connection within the Harvard community. To stay up to date on these student organizations’ events, please visit the HDS Public Events Calendar.

—by Dionne Wareham, EdM ‘24, HDS Communications Assistant