Hindustani classical vocalist Rumi Harish is breaking down gender barriers

One of the most watched videos from an India Foundation for the Arts event is one in which Harish sings 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' with all the grand and subtle notes that define Hindustani music

Soon after a concert at an upmarket venue in Bengaluru, patrons of Hindustani classical music thronged Rumi Harish to tell him how much they enjoyed an evening marked with ragas such as Puriya and Kamod. One elderly connoisseur added, “It would have been better if you had performed in a sari.” Harish wore a kurta to the event; he hasn’t worn saris for a long time.  

“Why should it matter what I wear?” asks Harish. “What matters is how you perform. It takes years to arrive at this understanding because everything is so gendered,” says the Bengaluru-based Hindustani classical vocalist. The 45-year-old is also a researcher, activist, playwright and music composer. As Harish talks, the sunlight glances off his silver nose ring. He sports another ring in his right ear. These are the few visible remnants of Harish’s past. 

It has only been about two years since the musician has gone by the name Rumi Harish. Before that, everyone knew him as Sumathi, daughter of Kanaka and Narayana Murthy. He took the name Rumi because of his fondness for Sufi music, says Sunil Mohan, a researcher and long-time associate. 

“Even as an eight-year-old, I knew I wanted to marry a woman when I grew up. I thought there was something wrong with the world because a man traditionally married a woman,” says Harish. In later years, Harish also realised he didn’t identify with the gender he was assigned at birth: “I had always felt like a man, but just didn’t know how to express it. Besides, music took preeminence over everything in my life. I’d spend at least 10 to 12 hours practising every day.” 

Soon after watching Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan as a child, Harish wanted to become a tawaif, not understanding the struggles that came with that ancient profession. “It was probably the colours that attracted me. And I wanted to marry Rekha,” he laughs. Gender-reassignment surgery, though once considered, is out of the equation for now, he says.  

A few evenings ago, Harish sat cross-legged in front of an intimate audience at the India Foundation for the Arts in Bengaluru. Soon after he started to sing, many began to record his khayal and thumri renditions. But one of the most watched videos from that evening is one in which Harish sings “Baa Baa Black Sheep” with all the grand and subtle notes that define Indian classical music.

There was a time when Harish would have baulked at the thought. But his guru of 17 years, the late Pandit Ramarao Naik, taught him otherwise. “He’d say if he doesn’t make fun of music, he won’t be as close to it as possible. He’d say if he took singing seriously, he should also be confident enough in his relationship to make fun of it.”

A few months ago, Harish had to travel to Abu Dhabi for a performance. Only after he had wrapped up the performance and inboxed a video did his colleagues discover that he had performed at the grand, newly opened Louvre Abu Dhabi. “He’ll perform at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, then at a rally or a café with barely 10 people. And he’ll do it wearing jeans,” says Radhika Raj, a researcher working on gender and cities. “His music is accessible. It is not behind closed doors, or for the rich who can pay, it is for anyone who wants to be a part of that experience. That’s spectacular.” 

Harish first started exploring gender through music when he found discrepancies between what was practised and what was preached. “The voice of a woman has long been described using the same standards that are used to describe a woman’s beauty,” he says. “Being thin-bodied, melodious or honey-like are the qualities that people expected from female musicians, but this rhetoric didn’t fit with the women whose voices mesmerised me.” The deep and powerful voices that left a mark on him belonged to legends like Gangubai Hangal, Zohrabai Agrewali, Kesarbai Kerkar and Siddheswari Devi.  

Harish’s childhood was marked by days spent with his guru. Soon after Harish began training in the Agra gharana, his family found they couldn’t afford his music lessons. But Naik insisted that they continue to send “Sumathi”. So Harish’s education was shaped not just by sitting through sessions Naik held for others, but also while accompanying him to buy spinach. 

“He didn’t just teach me music, he taught me about life,” says Harish, recalling how his music guru coached him to ride the TVS Champ moped Harish got when he turned 16. 

“I think one reason my mother wanted me to spend so much time with guruji was so that I didn’t disturb her practice,” smiles Harish. His mother, Kanaka, was learning to perfect stone sculptures at the time from Devalakunda Vadiraj, one of modern India’s most respected sculptors. Kanaka continues to be one of the few women in India whose stone sculptures find a place in temples. 

For Harish, activism isn’t a field of exclusion or of select, chosen causes. 

Even as he tries to challenge the rigid norms of classical music, he continues to work with youth, sex workers, and also for women’s rights. He also works with pourakarmikas, or municipal sanitary workers, a practice he started years ago while working with Kannada Dalit feminist writer Du Saraswathi.

Harish’s compositions have also gone beyond concerts. Ravindranath Sirivara’s 2016 Kannada film Koudi, for instance, has music by Harish. In 2009, he finished a play where the Yaman Kalyan raga comes to life to talk about its nomadic journey through ancient Persia and medieval Greece, across oceans and into the lives of composers such as Amir Khusrao. Called Sanchari, the monologue was directed by Chennai-based scholar and theatre practitioner A Mangai. It was a tribute to Naik on his 100th birth anniversary. “He’d often talk about how a particular raga was angry with him so he couldn’t sing it properly. It took me a long time to understand what befriending ragas truly meant,” says Harish. 

What strikes Arundhati Ghosh, executive director, India Foundation for the Arts, the most about Harish’s work is the seamlessness between his artistic practice and activism. “He does not see the two as silos in his life. Rumi’s questions about his music arise from his lived experiences of gender, sexuality and caste,” she says. 

Owing to his work with promoting gender sensitivity and case interventions, there’s barely a police station he hasn’t been to, Harish jokes. “In fact, I’ve also had the police assuming I was a hijra. They’ve asked me why I decided to become a hijra when I am educated and can speak English,” he recalls. He’d take that opportunity to educate the police about the discrimination faced by the hijra community.

Many, including Harish, believe that his activism has cost him the recognition he deserves, especially after he asserted his identity as a man. “This is true. But because Harish is so gifted, how long can they keep him out?” asks Mohan.

Being caught between two contrasting worlds has its problems. “Activists think I am a musician first so I should stick to performing, musicians think I am an activist,” says Harish. But slights and slurs don’t hurt him as much as they used to — after all, the ragas continue to see him as a friend.