Rhythms of resistance: Mandloi’s 'Prem Dhrupad' as poetic protest against war

By Ravi Ranjan* 

Leeladhar Mandloi, one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Hindi literature, has long been celebrated for his ability to weave socio-cultural reflection with lyrical depth. His oeuvre spans poetry, prose, and aesthetic criticism, consistently engaging with displacement, marginal lives, and the fragile intersections of heritage and modernity. Collections such as “Ghara-ghara ghūmā”, “Rāta-birāta”, “Magara eka āvāja”, and “Dekha-adekhā” testify to his mastery of evocative language, while “Jalāvatana” stands as a thematic cornerstone, embodying exile and loss as metaphors for the human condition. 

Mandloi’s long poem “Prem Dhrupad” (Love Dhrupad) is perhaps his most ambitious work—a grand epic of love that transcends personal emotion to become a cosmic and political statement. Structured around the discipline of classical music, the poem transforms love into a rigorous practice, a rhythm of resistance against war, violence, and social decay.

Love as Discipline: The Musical Grammar of “Prem Dhrupad”

The choice of “Dhrupad” as the title is itself a philosophical declaration. Dhrupad singing, known for its gravity and purity, rejects ornamentation in favor of stability and sublimity. Mandloi equates love with this discipline: not fleeting passion, but a rigorous practice akin to musical penance.  

The poem opens with “Rāg Bhūp”, a pentatonic raga celebrated for its simplicity yet notoriously difficult to sustain. Just as the raga demands patience and precision, love in Mandloi’s vision requires waiting (intazār) and worship (ibādat). Even the smallest gestures—a flicker of a glance, a pure smile—become as significant as subtle musical notes.  

Equally striking is the metaphor of “Jasrangī”, pioneered by Pandit Jasraj, where male and female singers perform simultaneously in different ragas and scales. For Mandloi, this symbolizes the coexistence of love: man and woman need not erase their individuality to unite. Their differences, like musical shifts (mūrcchanā), create harmony rather than discord. Love, then, is not homogenization but a duet of distinct voices.

The Aesthetics of Age and Time

Mandloi situates love within the twilight of life. At seventy, he writes of love not as youthful excitement but as mature discipline, akin to the evening practice of “Bhūp Rag”. Age, far from being an obstacle, becomes an opportunity to deepen love’s gravity.  

Images of “falling mercury” and “unseasonal winters” symbolize physical decline, yet Mandloi insists that love in old age is radiant, stubborn, and transformative. Memory, even when blurred, becomes liberation—stripped of excess, retaining only the essential: “your kiss trembling on the forehead of creation.”  

This is love as defiance of time. Even as the hourglass empties, companionship at “two chairs in the lawn” or a trembling touch over evening tea becomes proof that love alone can prevent creation from perishing. In Mandloi’s vision, mature love is not farewell but rebellion, capable of softening “hard bones” and sustaining hope for future generations.

Between the Personal and the Global

One of the poem’s greatest strengths lies in its movement between intimate domestic scenes and global concerns. A table and two chairs in the lawn symbolize companionship, yet Mandloi immediately expands this private joy to cosmic dimensions—the galaxy, the incomprehensible space, the trembling kiss on creation’s forehead.  

References to Stephen Hawking and the vanishing language of the Great Andamanese highlight this fusion. Hawking’s struggle against physical limitation becomes a metaphor for resilience, while the extinction of a language signifies the loss of an entire culture of love. Private separation thus merges with global cultural tragedy.  

Mandloi’s art lies in connecting personal ache with cosmic emptiness. The fading vegetation within the self mirrors growing black holes in the galaxy. Love, therefore, is meaningful only when it resists the ugliness of society, when it becomes a stubborn insistence on beauty and compassion.

Love as Protest: Against War and Oppression

The culmination of “Prem Dhrupad” is explicitly political. Mandloi invokes Picasso’s “Guernica”, the most piercing document of war’s horrors, to insist that love must culminate in peace, not destruction. His prayer—“ab kisī Pikāso ko Guernikā na racnā pade” (may no Picasso have to create another Guernica)—is a direct protest against the mentality of violence that has bloodied the world.  

Equally powerful is the invocation of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, whose poetry fused love and revolution. For Faiz, ishq (love) was inseparable from inqilāb (revolution); the beloved’s absence became a metaphor for political oppression. Mandloi echoes this tradition, proposing love as an “alternative system” based on dialogue and collaboration rather than hatred and division.  

The poem’s resistance is also social. Mandloi challenges oppressive morality that criminalizes love, writing: “Society is against it within religion… forbid those thoughts which are needlessly stopping the blood-flower blooming in the chest.” Here, the blooming of the “raktapuṣp” symbolizes biological and emotional freedom, crushed by institutions of power. Loving, for Mandloi, is the most essential act of rebellion in an increasingly ugly society.

The Philosophy of the Abstract and the Manifest

In its final stages, “Prem Dhrupad” transcends physical reality to explore the duality of sagun (manifest) and nirgun (abstract). Love becomes ineffable (akath), beyond words and shapes, yet most radiant in its abstraction.  

Distance and exile do not diminish love; they intensify it. The metaphor of the “invisible duet” captures this paradox—two people separated physically yet united in unspoken rhythm. Absence becomes more powerful than presence, echoing the sorrow of lost languages and unspoken calls.  

Mandloi insists that abstraction is not escape but survival. When mirrors crack and languages scatter, abstraction becomes the mirror of essence. Love, ineffable yet inexhaustible, erases ego and merges into the whole. This transformation makes love immortal, impervious to the black holes of time.

Conclusion: Love as the Ultimate Resistance

“Prem Dhrupad” is not merely a lyrical exploration of private love. It is a profound socio-political resistance against war, violence, and oppressive morality. By weaving musical metaphors, personal experiences of age, cosmic consciousness, and global tragedies, Mandloi elevates love into a discipline, a philosophy, and a protest.  

In invoking “Guernica” and Faiz, Mandloi situates himself within a lineage of artists who saw love as inseparable from justice. His vision of love as duet, as stubborn defiance, as ineffable abstraction, becomes a global prayer against destruction.  

Ultimately, “Prem Dhrupad” teaches that to love is to resist. It is to hold the speed of time, to soften hard bones, to prevent creation from perishing. In Mandloi’s words, love is the “two and a half letters” that alone can save the world from extinction.  

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*Professor & former Head (Retd.), Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad. This is the abridged version of the author's original paper