The Woke Raga
Was TM Krishna awarded the Sangita Kalanidhi by Chennai’s Music Academy for his politics?
Sandeep Balakrishna
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29 Mar, 2024
TM Krishna performs at the Music Academy in Chennai, February 4, 2024
When I saw the image of the smiling public prosecutor holding what looked like a file or a book with the cover picture of Kasab and a noose, I was quite taken aback by the happiness on his face. On May 6 I realised that this was the universal feeling all over the country. People were actually dancing and celebrating the declaration of death. (The Hindu, May 15, 2010)
Let me say this out loud, the BJP and company have not only poisoned the minds of their own supporters, they have achieved a larger goal. They have made the rest of us crass and inhuman to the extent that we are unable to empathise when an RSS member is killed. (Scroll.in, September 9, 2017)
—Excerpts from essays written by veteran Carnatic musician TM Krishna.
THE MADRAS MUSIC Academy’s prestigious Sangita Kalanidhi award to Krishna has already become a cultural controversy. Former recipients like Chitravina Ravikiran have returned their awards following the protest campaign by the Ranjani-Gayatri duo, respected names in Carnatic music.
The overwhelming opinion within the Carnatic music circles has been against TM Krishna ever since he became a vocal leftist-activist. Awarding him this coveted honour was the unkindest cut of all. Cultural bodies like the Madras Music Academy derive their eminence from sustained patronage bestowed by an eclectic host of actors: the institution itself, its founding ideals, its financial patrons, artists and, above all, music lovers. This harks back to a foundational principle of Indian aesthetics: the symbiotic relationship between the Kalavida (artist) and the Sahrudaya (connoisseur).
The communications that have flowed back and forth between the Music Academy and the protesting artists have only served to further tarnish the Academy’s reputation, revealing uncomfortable truths ranging from an opaque jury process to dictatorial tendencies on the part of the current management, which clearly tilts to the left.
The most unfortunate fallout: a musical tradition steeped in sacred antiquity has become the undeserved casualty of a fracas scripted and played out by radical actors determined to see its destruction.
Art forms like Indian classical music (in fact, any classical art form of Bharatavarsha) are the refined outcomes of centuries of Tapas. They are not creations but realisations of this Tapas. They are not the work of one person or one school but are profound offerings that a culture gave to itself. The classic Purandara Dasa lyric in a way alludes to this when it says kereya neeranu kerege chelli—just like pouring the water of a lake back into it, offer the fortune that Hari gave you, back to Hari himself. Every musician and vaggeyakara (lyricist and composer) who belongs to this tradition has pretty much echoed Purandara Dasa’s spirit in his or her own unique method. As the adage goes, one realises the real value of something grand and beautiful once it’s lost. And when we contemplate in silence far away from the din, this is truly what is at stake here.
IT IS ALSO in this backdrop that we need to examine the issue to get well-rounded insights. Lyrics like the one I just quoted were prescribed at the primary-school level when I was growing up. In generations past, the standard of this cultural education had been much higher and deeper. And this cultural curriculum was almost uniform throughout South India.
Musicians with a political agenda like TM Krishna not only threaten to undo this exalted legacy but also to replace it with something soulless and grotesque. Both the online and offline spaces of Carnatic music show that he has already gathered quite a following among impressionable youth who want to emulate him as some sort of Carnatic music equivalent of Che Guevara and Pablo Neruda combined. Add to this mix a mishmash of ‘Periyarism’, ‘social justice’ and woke, and the ugly picture has a self-fulfilling quality to it.
TM Krishna’s journey as a committed Leftist has seen him escalate faultlines and create schisms in the world of Carnatic music. And now, the same ideologue who had boycotted the Sabha culture of Chennai Carnatic music wants re-entry
Which brings us to the story of TM Krishna’s transformation. Like every true-blue leftist, Krishna, too, has made no secret of his intent and agenda. Over the past decade or so, he seems to have been indulging in a reverse evolution of sorts—from being an exponent of one of the most spiritual and evolved forms of music to transforming himself into a leftist rhetorician.
WE CAN PEG TM Krishna’s ideological rise to the launch of his book A Southern Music: The Karnatik Story at the hands of Amartya Sen in December 2013. On that occasion, Sen gave a clarion call to “make classical music accessible to the masses.” In effect, it resembled a Farman.
Ever since, TM Krishna has trodden on Sen’s path. His pet slogans and writings have been along these lines: “to take Carnatic Music to the Dalits, to the slums”, and “to de-Brahminize it”, whatever that means. If classical music was “Brahminical”, every Brahmin should have been a classical musician. Likewise, if a non-Brahmin attains mastery in Carnatic music, will this “Brahminical music” refuse to emanate from his/her mouth? Such formulations are plainly illogical but lethal, given the history of leftist ideology. The long history of Carnatic music shows that its galaxy has been adorned with innumerable non- Brahmin stalwarts, beginning with Purandara Dasa, revered as the Pitamaha of Carnatic music.
But let’s extend this ‘Brahminical’ formulation to Hindustani music and see what emerges. Till date, TM Krishna has not called for Hindustani music to be “de-Brahminized”.
Clearly, there is no dearth of Brahmin musicians there. TM Krishna’s convenient silence here can be easily explained by the significant numbers of Muslim Hindustani musicians. That is one lobby no leftist will dare to offend. Would Krishna abuse an Amir Khusrau—whose lyrics are the staple of Hindustani concerts—with the same ease with which he abuses Tyagaraja Swami? This hypocrisy holds true even on the larger plane. As an accomplished classical musician, Krishna knows that the distinction of Bharatiya music as Hindustani and Carnatic is merely for the sake of convenience. Yet, he reserves this “de-Brahminizing” sleight of hand exclusively for Carnatic music.
In reality, there is a deeper ideological ploy underlying this alleged “de-Brahminization” project. It played out most notably in 2015.
The October 2015 cover story of The Caravan magazine was titled ‘MS Understood’. Written by TM Krishna, this essay can charitably be described as a hit job on one of the most revered Carnatic musical icons of our time, MS Subbulakshmi.
The first thing that strikes the reader about the essay is its timing. It is doubtful if Krishna would have mustered the ‘courage’ to write it when MS Subbulakshmi was still alive. The ethics of firing at a posthumous soft target is best left to the author’s sense of decency.
The other glaring element in the essay is a practised leftist tactic. Take an eminent, revered personality, pry into their private life, rely on hearsay and ‘private conversation’ that the reader has no way to verify, and conclude that the eminence was not so eminent after all.
The communications that have flowed back and forth between the music academy and the protesting artists have only served to further tarnish the academy’s reputation, revealing uncomfortable truths
All of this forms the basis for TM Krishna’s obsession: Brahmin-bashing. In ‘MS Understood’, he repeatedly stresses her origins as a Devadasi who became “Brahminised” to gain “social acceptance”, and how “Brahminical patriarchy” and marriage killed MS Subbulakshmi’s music.
This shows two things. One, although TM Krishna has traditionally learned Carnatic music, he perhaps forgot its other fundamental lesson: Sangita (music) and Samskara (culture, refinement) are inseparable. Two, by invoking her origins, TM Krishna, who wants to take music to the masses, has actually slandered the ‘low classes’ whom he claims to ‘liberate’ with his music.
The Magsaysay award to TM Krishna in 2016 followed the publication of ‘MS Understood’. While the distasteful essay invited a maelstrom of outrage, it naturally raised his stature in the left-liberal realm. The award was given not for his music but for his efforts at promoting “social inclusiveness in culture”.
Ever since, TM Krishna’s journey as a committed, radical leftist ideologue has seen him escalate faultlines and create schisms in the world of Carnatic music. And now, the same ideologue who had boycotted the Sabha culture of Chennai Carnatic Music wants re-entry. And the Music Academy has obliged him by conferring the Sangita Kalanidhi.
Former Sangita Kalanidhi recipients like Chitravina Ravikiran and others have returned their awards following the protest campaign by the Ranjani-Gayatri duo, respected names in Carnatic music circles
More fundamentally, Carnatic music was one bastion that the Left could never break into despite its toughest efforts. In one of his old interviews, SL Bhyrappa had stated that unlike literature, drama and cinema, which have been nearly monopolised by the left-liberal clique, classical music had largely remained out of their grasp because “what Communist revolution can you bring about by singing an Alaap in say, the Todi or Bhairavi Ragam?” Clearly, Bhyrappa had not foreseen the emergence of TM Krishna.
Postscript
TM Krishna forfeited the qualification to have his music evaluated by Rasikas the day he became a leftist-activist. It was the same day he stopped being a musician in the Carnatic tradition. He thus needs to be assessed solely on the basis of his politics. The Sangita Kalanidhi, too, was awarded for his politics, not music. With that, the Music Academy is fast joining the league of Kalakshetra, that other iconic cultural institution of Madras which was de-Hinduised by Leela Samson.
However, it is a heartening consolation that prominent members of the Carnatic music fraternity have united for once to protest against this infraction. A good first step, no doubt. However, the tougher task that faces them is to find ways of building long-term immunity against similar trespasses in future.
That immunity had existed for centuries in the form of musicians for whom Sangita and Samskara were indivisible. Tyagaraja Swami who is so revered was essentially a profound mendicant. He chose music as a vehicle that enabled his quest for Sri Rama. And music chose him to bestow immortality.
No Music Academy or Sangita Kalanidhi can do that.
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