The music that refuses to choose sides
While informing the audience, the 24/7 news coverage tends to create a smokescreen that overshadows the picture of society that needs to be seen. The headlines will tell you a story of rigid lines, borders drawn in the sand, identities stamped on identity cards, cities divided by sect and creed. They paint a picture of a binary world, us versus them, believer versus non-believer, mosque versus temple. To understand the true sound of Pakistan, you must first ignore the noise of the news cycle.
If you step off the main road, into the dust of the Thar Desert or the narrow, tangled alleys of old Lahore, you hear something else. You hear a melody that refuses to stay in its lane. You hear a culture that has survived not by building walls, but by finding the secret, fertile ground between them.
There is a concept called the "Third Space." Theorised by the scholar Homi K. Bhabha, it describes a unique zone of ambiguity, a place where cultures meet, clash, and ultimately create something entirely new. It is a space where the "original" identity is not lost, but opened up. It is the threshold where a Muslim poet can become the voice of a Hindu deity, and a Hindu devotee can become the guardian of a Muslim saint.
I recently watched a short film on YouTube titled The Chorus Within or Rooh Ke Taar by the Centre for Social Justice, which documents this phenomenon in Pakistan. It is a quiet, stunning testament to the indigenous multiculturalism of the Indus Valley. It shows us that while politicians draw maps, artists inhabit the Third Space. They live in the hyphen between faiths.
This is not just a story about "tolerance." Tolerance is passive; it is merely putting up with your neighbour. This is a story about entanglement, the beautiful, messy, inescapable reality that in Pakistan, to sing your own song is often to sing the song of the other.
The film takes us first to Tharparkar, a district in Sindh where the sand dunes stretch like frozen waves of gold. In the popular imagination, the desert is a place of emptiness. But in Thar, the silence is so profound that it forces you to listen to the soul.
Here, we meet the legacy of Haji Muhammad Dal. He was a Muslim man, a poet, a playwright. By the rigid logic of the census, he belonged to one category. But his spirit belonged to the land. Haji Muhammad spent his life writing Bhajans, devotional songs traditionally sung by Hindus to praise the divine.
Why would a Muslim write a bhajan? To answer this, we must look at the instrument of the region: the yaktaro. It is a simple, single-stringed drone instrument. It holds one note, a constant truth, while the voice weaves around it.
Haji Muhammad understood that the human condition in the desert is one of longing. When he wrote his famous play Ram Lakhan or composed songs for widows, he was tapping into the archetype of the Banvasi, the exile, the forest dweller. This is a concept found in the Hindu epic Ramayana, but it is also deeply present in Islamic Sufism, which views the soul as an exile from God.
In this cultural Third Space, the specific theology matters less than the shared emotional reality. When Haji Muhammad wrote, "You are a forest dweller, while I am domesticised" he was not converting to Hinduism. He was translating the universal pain of separation into a language his neighbours understood.
The beauty of this interaction is in its naturalness. In the cities, we intellectualise interfaith harmony. We hold conferences and seminars. In Tharparkar, it is just life. As one local puts it in the film, "We don't look at who is who. We see that a brother lives among brothers." The desert is too harsh for division; survival requires the Third Space. You share the water, and you share the song.
The camera then moves to the town of Chachro, introducing us to a man who shatters every stereotype we hold about religious identity. His name is Ravi Shankar, a Hindu man who defines himself as a Mada-Khwan (a praise-singer) of Imam Hussain.
Ravi belongs to the Hindu Khatri community. Yet, for decades, he has served at a shrine. His devotion goes deeper than local service. Ravi has walked the Arbaeen, the gruelling ninety-kilometre pilgrimage from Najaf to Karbala in Iraq, to pay homage to the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
"In Hussain’s path," Ravi says with a quiet intensity, "religion makes no divisions.”
This is where the theory of the Third Space becomes visceral. Ravi has not stopped being Hindu. He is not a convert in the traditional sense. Instead, he has found a home in the narrative of Karbala. He recites the Marsiya, the elegy of martyrdom.
The marsiya is a unique art form. It is the music of weeping. It uses microtones to bypass the intellect and strike the heart. By reciting it, Ravi participates in a grief that transcends dogma. The tragedy of Karbala, the stand of the few against the many, of truth against power, is not the property of a single sect. It is a human story.
When Ravi Shankar recites, his voice carries a texture that is impossibly moving. It is the sound of a man who has refused to choose between his heritage and his heart. He stands in the doorway of the shrine, a Hindu with the name of a Vedic music master, weeping for a Muslim Imam. He is a living bridge. In a world that demands we pick a side, Ravi Shankar chooses the middle. He chooses the grief that connects us all.
Finally, the film takes us to the concrete sprawl of Lahore, a city of Mughal gardens, colonial brick, and relentless traffic. Here, amidst the noise of the modern world, we find a recording studio, a small, soundproofed room where the extraordinary happens.
We meet Hassan Badshah, a Muslim music producer. And we meet Ismail Fida, a Gospel singer.
In Pakistan, the Christian community often lives on the margins of social life. The genre of "Gospel" or Masihi Geet music is their heartbeat, a fusion of Western hymns and Punjabi folk rhythms. It is music born of resilience.
The story Hassan tells is one that should be taught in every business school and seminary. Ismail Fida came to the studio to record a song for Christmas. He was a poor man. To pay the producer’s fee, he had sold his wife’s jewellery, her baliyaan [earrings].
In a capitalist society, this is just a transaction. You pay the money; you get the product. But Hassan Badshah operates in a different economy. When he discovered where the money came from, he refused it.
"I told him, 'Take this back. Go buy your wife’s earrings back. I will make your songs for free,'" Hassan recalls.
He didn't just waive the fee. He poured his soul into the composition. He composed "Hallelujah."
Think about that for a moment. A Muslim artist is sitting at a mixing desk, closing his eyes, and trying to find the melody for Hallelujah, a Hebrew word, sacred to Christians, meaning "Praise the Lord." To do this, Hassan had to enter the Third Space. He had to empathise so deeply with the Christian joy of Christmas that he could translate it into sound.
He describes the process not as a job, but as a spiritual act. "I made the music such that... Hallelujah," he said and trailed off singing, letting the melody speak for him.
This musical outreach generates a transcendent vibe that rips apart the narrative of exclusion and intolerance. It shows us that in the creative act, hierarchies may dissolve. The Muslim producer used his privilege, his studio, his skill, to amplify the voice of the marginalised Christian singer. He restored the dignity of the family (by returning the jewellery) and elevated the dignity of the faith (by composing the hymn).
What The Chorus Within reveals is that Pakistan’s "indigenous multiculturalism" is not a relic of the past. It is a living, vibrant reality of Pakistani musical culture. It is happening right now, in the dust of Thar and the studios of Lahore.
These stories, Haji Muhammad, Ravi Shankar, Hassan Badshah, are examples of what anthropologists call syncretism, but they are more than that. They are acts of defiance.
In an increasingly polarised world, where algorithms feed us outrage and politicians feed us fear, these men are engaging in a radical act of love. They are proving that culture is not a fortress to be defended. It is a garden to be cross-pollinated.
The "Third Space" is not a comfortable place. It has accompanying vulnerabilities. It requires you to step out of the safety of your own tribe and walk ninety kilometres in the shoes of another. It requires one to sing a bhajan when the world expects only a naat. It requires you to compose a Hallelujah when you pray to Allah.
However, as this film shows us, that uncomfortable, undefined, hybrid space is where the real music happens. It is where the beauty of the human spirit is most visible.
Pakistan is often called a difficult situation. And perhaps it is. But as these musicians show us, the harder the ground, the deeper the roots must go to find water. And when they find it, that water belongs to everyone.
The chorus is within all of us. We only need to hear it.
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer
Brian Bassanio Paul is a musicologist and cultural critic. He writes about the intersection of music, society, and the human condition. He can be reached at brian.bassanio@gmail.com