Batanagar concerts and more, have connected India and Czech Republic in harmony over the decades

Small things often reveal a larger story: a programme note from a concert, a wartime theatre bill tucked in a private album, a short embassy press release announcing a choir’s tour. These are the scraps that stitch together the story of India and the Czech lands, connected through music! It's a shared history that moves between the concert halls of the factory town of Batanagar, the music schools of Prague, diplomatic gala nights in New Delhi, and the surprising moment when a Czech orchestra played old Bollywood songs for an Indian president. Read together, these modest artifacts show music as a living bridge between two curious societies.

The first example takes us to Batanagar, the Bata township outside Calcutta in India. In October 1943, some sixty Czechoslovaks who had settled in Batanagar performed a Czech comic opera to a packed house at the New Empire theatre; the evening began with Dvořák’s New World Symphony. That small, jubilant event , recorded in oral histories and later gathered by music historians , is more than a local anecdote. It is evidence of how industrial migration (the Bata company’s transplant of Czech workers and managers to India) carried its culture with it: songs, operas, and ensemble pieces that became part of a shared civic life in colonial Calcutta. The Batanagar concerts remind us that cultural diplomacy is not always staged in the capital city's venues; sometimes it happens in factory town squares too.

A second, more recent episode brings us back to Prague. when the Martinů Czech Philharmonic, conducted by Debashish Chaudhuri , a Calcutta born conductor trained partly in Prague , performed a concert hosted by the Calcutta School of Music. The program included Dvořák and local favourites; at one point the encore became a sing along to a popular Bengali song. The image is telling: a Czech orchestra conducted by an Indian maestro, performing Dvořák to an Indian audience and ending on a Bengali encore. That moment summed up long histories of support, migration, and learning in a single, audible event. It also shows a two,way musical exchange: Czech musicians in India learning Baul folk songs, Indian conductors leading Czech orchestras.

Music and memory also appear in smaller institutional records. The Czech Embassy in New Delhi’s “Singing for Masaryk” programme in April 2017 brought a choir from Louny and staged a musical story imagining a symbolic meeting between Rabindranath Tagore and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. The scene , a Czech choir singing in Delhi in English, Czech and Hindi, with the ambassador invoking shared ideals of independence , is typical of official cultural diplomacy: modest in scale, rich in symbolism, and carefully staged to underline continuity in relations. That same embassy has been active over years bringing Czech puppetry, recitals and folk song events to Indian audiences as well; boosting cultural diplomacy further.

Another strand in this musical weave is the role of refugee musicians and cross, cultural composers. Walter Kaufmann, a Czech born musician who became director of European Music at All India Radio in the 1930s, is credited with composing the AIR signature tune, which some say was inspired by an Indian raga. These are the small biographies that matter: musicians displaced by political turmoil arriving in India, taking up posts in broadcasting and conservatory life, and in the process shaping local music with European techniques. The result is a clear blend , tunes, recurring motifs and orchestration that speak of refuge, adaptation and creative exchange.

Personal and institutional threads meet again in a scene reported years later: a Czech orchestra performing a program of old Bollywood songs for India’s President. When an orchestra trained in Western symphonic tradition plays the tunes of another nation’s film songs for its head of state, the performance is not merely entertainment. It is a formal recognition of cultural ties and an act of cultural diplomacy , a reminder that musical memory crosses language and political borders. News reports noted the delight of listeners and the careful programming choices that made the concert both accessible and dignified.

There are also quieter teaching links that sustain this relationship over decades. The Calcutta School of Music and similar institutions have maintained links with Prague music schools; Indian students trained in Europe have returned as conductors, teachers and cultural entrepreneurs. At the same time, Czech universities teach Bengali and other Indian languages; scholars in Prague lecture and publish on South Asian topics, and Czech choirs learn Hindi and Bengali songs for their tours. These exchanges , classroom by classroom, rehearsal by rehearsal , create a durable musical literacy that builds lasting ties. Institutional pages and contemporary portals describe how such collaborations are organized.

If one steps back from these examples the broader pattern is clear. Music has been a medium through which industrial migration (Bata’s township), refugee resettlement (European musicians in India), cultural diplomacy (embassy choirs and festivals), and modern concert exchange (Czech philharmonics touring India) have all found a common language. Festivals, from the local Namaste India events in Prague to embassy nights in New Delhi, stitch together informal appreciation and understanding, and formal statecraft. Even when political currents shifted, from colonial rule to independence for India, from Cold War alignments to EU integration for the Czech Republic, the musical ties have proved adaptable, serving both as a comfort in exile and a resource for use in diplomacy.

One last snapshot will close this short survey. Imagine an old concert poster folded into a family album: on one side, the Czech names of a choir and the date of an April evening recital in New Delhi; on the other, a newspaper clipping of the Martinů Czech Philharmonic performing in Calcutta under an Indian conductor. These small objects - programmes, clippings, embassy press releases , are the primary documents of cultural history. They tell us that friendship between nations is not only negotiated in ministries but also rehearsed in practice rooms, celebrated in town halls, and recorded in modest programme notes that future historians will one day find.

Sources:
https://tinyurl.com/262zg2ml

https://tinyurl.com/22dh8dt5

https://tinyurl.com/28abhpd3

https://tinyurl.com/y7ulkxfe

https://tinyurl.com/2bv5kzek

https://tinyurl.com/2c46bblm

https://tinyurl.com/2b7r92gf

https://tinyurl.com/292469dc