First appeared in www.scroll.in on September 12, 2015. Long before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Australia, a seemingly insignificant gesture in the nineteenth century attempted to build a bridge between the two countries. Sourindro Mohun Tagore (1840-1914), a prominent musicologist, patron of music of the Pathuriaghata Raj family, and a key figure in Calcutta’s Hindustani music scene in the nineteenth century, sent a collection of traditional and hybrid musical instruments and books written by him to Australia.  The collection