Nusrat fan from Kumaon breaks the caste barrier

MUMBAI Sarvjeet Tamta was 15 years old when he first fell in love with the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. A cousin visiting the family home in Uttarakhand’s Almora played him ‘Sanu Ik Pal Chain Na Aave’—a heartbroken lament about being separated from one’s lover—on his phone. The legendary qawwali singer’s soulful, melancholic vocals cast an instant spell on the young boy.
“Once that voice entered my ears, no other voice could compete,” he says. “I decided then that I wanted to sing qawwali.”
Fourteen years later, the 29-year-old is living his dream as the frontman and bandleader of Rehmat-e-Nusrat, a group of young musicians from the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand who perform qawwali and ghazals with a subtle Kumaoni-folk twist. As the name suggests, the group’s repertoire is dominated by Nusrat sahab’s music, though they also perform poetry by Faiz, Bulleh Shah, Kabir, Ghalib and Amir Khusrao.
“Qawwali has always united people,” says Tamta, speaking over the phone from his home in Haldwani. “That’s also what we’re trying to do, to inspire people to live with clean minds and with love for each other.”
Growing up in Almora, Tamta’s earliest musical memories were of his father—a government school teacher—performing popular folk songs at local baithaks. By age six, he was singing too. His first public performance was at a local Holi baithak, where he sang a Nepali folk song along with his father. Soon he was singing at school functions and local singing competitions.
“I really liked playing the harmonium, but we didn’t have one at home,” he remembers. “So I would go to school an hour early so I could play on their harmonium.”
Tamta’s father, who had seen enough folk musicians in Kumaon struggling to make ends meet, was dead-set on his son becoming an engineer. But Tamta had already decided that he was going to devote his life to music. At 16, when his father refused to buy him a harmonium despite years of entreaties, he ran away from home.
Initially, he eked out a living teaching art and music at a private school in Pantnagar, 115 km from Almora, devoting all his free time to musical practise. But he hadn’t reckoned with the harsh reality of casteism. One day, his upper-caste employer asked Tamta—who is from a Dalit caste—to clean the school’s toilets.
“It was clear why they asked me to do that. I refused to do it and left,” he says.
The years that followed were rough. He struggled to earn enough money to sustain himself, even spending nights sleeping on the road. But Khan sahab’s music remained his guiding light. He would listen to the songs on his phone, jotting down Urdu lyrics in many notebooks. He taught himself how to play the harmonium and sing like a proper qawwal.
Along the way, he found a few mentors. He spent some time in Punjab learning from Sonu Nusrat Ji Moga—whom he calls Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s biggest murid (or disciple) in India—and the Wadali brothers. Later, he also trained under Manganiyar folk singer Fakira Khan.
Rehmat-E-Nusrat was formed in 2014, when Tamta brought together a handful of fellow Nusrat-crazy Kumaonis to perform the Pakistani singer’s music. In 2019, the group—which features a rotating cast of musicians, as old members regularly leave and new ones come in—was signed by New Delhi label Amarrass Records, known for their work with Rajasthani folk musicians such as Lakha Khan, Sakar Khan and the Barmer Boys.
Since then, the group has performed at some of the country’s biggest stages, from the Jaipur Literature Festival and Ziro Festival of Music to the Surajkund Crafts Mela. Last year, they travelled to Kazan in Russia for their first international appearance. At the insistence of Amarrass Records’s co-founder Ashutosh Sharma, Tamta has also returned to the Kumaoni folk he grew up on, performing folk music with the same musicians under the moniker HimalMou.
Though he loves the music, Tamta remains a bit wary of identifying as a folk musician, largely because of the way the music is interlinked with caste identity. In Kumaon, Dalit folk musicians are disparagingly called Hudkiya, ostensibly a reference to the percussion instrument Hudak, but deployed as if it was a caste slur.
“I’m happy to perform it, but I don’t want to become the custodian of this culture,” he says. “If someone tells me that it’s my responsibility (as a Dalit musician) to take this culture forward, I disagree. Whoever wants that responsibility can teach their own kids to play the dhol.”
It’s a stance that hints at the strong political consciousness underpinning Tamta’s musical engagement. He performed at the Shaheen Bagh sit-in protest, and Rehmat-e-Nusrat’s sets are often punctuated with original protest songs written by his mentor Deepak Tiruwa. Many of these songs have already been recorded, though given the current political climate, he’s not sure if or when they will be released.
In the meantime, Tamta is working on adding Farsi nazms by Rumi to the group’s repertoire. Amarrass Records is also planning to release the group’s debut single soon, alongside a live album released on vinyl. On paper, the future looks exceedingly bright for Rehmat-e-Nusrat. But Tamta, who has faced so many challenges throughout his young life, remains cautious.
“Before the dream comes the anxiety of whether we can keep the group together,” he says. Because so many of the musicians he works with come from economically challenged backgrounds, he explains, many have day jobs. This makes it hard to have a stable lineup, because people keep having to leave the group for more financially stable work. But Tamta remains committed to his lifelong passion, regardless of who comes along with him on the journey.
“I’m very clear that I want to do this till my last breath,” he says. “When I die, it should be mid-melody.”
(Watch Rehmat-e-Nusrat at Opera House on September 5 at 7pm.)