From Azad Hind Radio to Gandhi: The forgotten Indian story of Surinamese composer Majoie Hajary

Any serious conversation about Gandhi and music would be incomplete without discussing a French record from 1968. Requiem pour Mahatma Gandhi was composed by Majoie Hajary, who was born in Suriname, trained in Amsterdam and Paris, spent time in New Delhi and moved throughout her life between musical worlds that others had preferred to keep apart.

Hajary was born in 1921 in Paramaribo, capital of the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America. While her father was born in Suriname, her paternal grandparents had come from India. Her mother was Afro-Chinese mother. Her ancestors had come to the colony as indentured labourers.

Hajary grew up in comfort, principally with Western classical music at home.

Ellen de Vries, author of the 2025 Hajary biography Surinaamse Rapsodie and the researcher behind a website about the composter, majoiehajary.org, helped fill in some of the gaps in Hajary’s Indian story.

In an email message, de Vries said that 15-year-old Hajary left for Amsterdam in 1937 to study at the conservatory, already carrying more than one musical language with her. Her interest in Indian music deepened in the Dutch capital, and later through encounters with Indian musicians and teachers in Berlin in Germany and Caracas in Venezuela.

That interest was already clear in her early work. Hindoestaansche Fantasie, performed with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in...

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