The brouhaha around the Sangita Kalanidhi awarded to T M Krishna by the Madras Music Academy is not going away soon. In his new capacity, after having boycotted the academy for nine years, Krishna gets to preside over its sessions during its annual festival in December. In South India, that is a big deal.
Two popular and gifted singers, sisters Ranjani and Gayatri, wrote to N Murali, the president of the academy, stating that Krishna’s award meant they would not perform, as invited, at its festival in December. Ditto the talented Trichur Brothers, who also said they would not perform at the Music Academy in December because, if they did, they would not be true to themselves.
So did Dushyanth Sridhar, a well-known Harikatha exponent. Chitravina Ravikiran, virtuoso vaggeyakara, returned his Sangita Kalanidhi award in protest. However, the mightiest banyan tree fell when the family of mridangam vidwan, Palghat Mani Iyer — a titan, and a real ratna, or jewel, of Bharat and of global classical music, not merely Carnatic music — returned his Sangita Kalanidhi award.
N Murali’s truculent response to Ranjani-Gayatri was unwarranted: They have a right to take a stand. None of the aforementioned living artistes has questioned the worth of Krishna’s music. Alas! The Music Academy will never again be the same.
Krishna is a noted singer, who would have done well to stick to his singing. Instead, he has traversed a rather dubious path, often making outrageous pronouncements. If the practitioner of an art form vilifies its treasured and time-tested bedrock, she or he is complicit in its violation. When any musician strays into the path of a specious and disruptive activism, chaos ensues.
Actions speak: After much fanfaronade, how many Dalit and deprived musicians has Krishna seriously trained? And why is the Music Academy’s advisory committee chock full of the very Brahmins it denounces?
The Nadabrahma is sacred, and held to be the origin of the universe. Nicolas Malebranche and George Berkeley said that everything, including art, derives from the consciousness of God. In a world rife with banalities, we need faith, a sense of the magical, and beauty. We also need to develop kindness and compassion — in myriad ways, music does that for us.
The ancient sages of the Sanatana Dharma dwelt on the paravidya that affords moksha, through prayer, seeking, and music. To have this exalted thought despoiled by a Krishna is, understandably, anathema to the protesting musicians, as well as to millions of rasikas, and fellow artistes.
Krishna reduces the wealth of Carnatic music, spread over centuries, to Brahminical patriarchy. This is boring, and untrue: Leading non-Brahmin artistes are aplenty, starting with the forefather of Carnatic music, Purandara Dasa, from Karnataka. M S Subbulakshmi, still the most celebrated Carnatic musician, Rajaratnam Pillai, and Mandolin Srinivas, to name a few, and their meteoric rise and sustained stardom should roundly negate these theories.
I belong to the Pandanallur school of Bharatanatyam, whose founding gurus are not Brahmin; neither are those of the Vazhuvoor or Thanjavur school. We often dance to compositions by the non-Brahmin Sirkazhi Trinity: Muthu Thandavar, Arunachala Kavi, and Marimutha Pillai.
Carnatic music’s core is spiritual. You can innovate all you want, but there is no need to dismember the tradition. At each of his concerts, Krishna must be asked: You berate Hindu gods, and then sing their praises. How does that work, without causing rupture?
The imposing legacy of songs by composers, including the trinity of Thyagaraja, Shyama Shastri, and Muthuswami Dikshitar does not merit wanton desecration. Among Krishna’s ill-advised, retrospective idealisations is a tearing down of Thyagaraja. Will a Krishna, or the raft of anti-Sanatanis, provide us with anything like the magnificent corpus of Thyagaraja’s 700 works, replete with depth, beauty, range, timelessness, and richness?
Krishna’s flawed methodology of retrospective social engineering causes him to repeatedly lapse into imposing today’s constructs and values on bygone eras. Artistes and writers flourish — and are evaluated — in the context of the social and religious milieus of their eras.
My distinguished Carnatic musician and Bharatanatyam dancer friends teach everyone alike. I have discerned no caste — or any other — bias in them. If these biases exist, there is a more intelligent, effective, and holistic way to iron them out, as they must be — but through consensus, rather than disruption.
One of the favourable outcomes of this fracas is the diminished importance of those demanding lockstep loyalty. Musicians and dancers live through, and for their audiences; without an audience there would be no sabhas, concerts, concert halls, rasa nishpatti, or chamatkara. The stranglehold of a few sabhas and official bodies needs to vanish, and performance opportunities need to be equitable.
Periyar, Krishna’s hero, who wrought a few positive changes in society, was, nevertheless, someone who repeatedly called for the killing of Brahmins (as a distressed Jawaharlal Nehru mentions in a letter to K Kamaraj). I believe with such statements, his “good” work is intractably tainted.
Today, the discourse against Brahmins — who constitute a mere two-three per cent of Tamil Nadu’s population, some of whom are priests, and desperately poor — is an act of violence. More power to the artistes who make up the resistance — may their sublime music regale us for many more decades.
The writer was appointed Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in 1990. She is also a global adviser on public policy, communications, and international relations and is an award-winning Odissi and Bharatanatyam artiste and choreographer
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