Much ink has already been spilt on the recent controversy around the conferring of the Sangita Kalanidhi award by the Madras Music Academy to T M Krishna. His detractors feel outraged. They see him as an activist daring to step out of his proper place as a dignified, discreet master of the genre and questioning such non-musical subjects as professional conventions, caste and privilege. To them, he has shown himself to be devoid of ‘Hindu’ sensibilities. They claim to be offended to the extent that they have pulled out of the forthcoming music season at the Academy and have expressed their reservations in print.
What is striking about these expressions of outrage is that they seemingly have nothing to do with Krishna’s stature and accomplishments as a musician but everything to do with his activism, which they see as being anti-Brahmin, anti-Hindu and therefore, by default, anti-Carnatic. It is in the collapsing of these categories that we actually find an implicit and rigid fixing of certain prescriptions that make for an appropriate Carnatic musician who should communicate not only his/her virtuosity but also her bhakti/devotion, which is foregrounded as a vital aesthetic value.
What is often overlooked in these discourses is that these values were put in place quite recently, over the course of the 20th century, when nationalism in its cultural iterations placed music and performance practices within a very particular template, in which the Madras Academy played a major role. It was no mean accomplishment, for it widened a listening habit within a modern urban setting, albeit to a small self-selecting community of connoisseurs whose location enabled them to play the role of gatekeepers and facilitate the transition of art music’s social location from the court, temple or salon to the modern concert stage. This involved a serious engagement with the aesthetics of vocalisation and percussion, with standardisation and anthologising of compositions and melodies that were seen as vital for the modern institutionalisation of Carnatic music.
The project was not without casualties—hereditary communities did not get to tell their story, the subtleties of which were lost in the overall wave of enthusiasm for musical reform. Musicians participated enthusiastically in the deliberations of the Madras Academy, and this is what made the Academy in its early years an interesting experiment where the gap between those who preached and those who practised music was bridged. Subsequently, the Academy went on to consolidate its status as a premier sponsor of classical music, becoming, as some detractors would have it, like a prestigious club whose members had to stay in line. The unwritten rules were the celebration of an aesthetic and its accompanying accessories, the gatekeeping of which was the responsibility of the Academy and its stakeholders.
Cut to the present: the questions that the recent controversy raises are two-fold. First, how and whether T M Krishna has in fact questioned the unwritten rules and, if so, what does that say about the larger question of spirituality and music? How has spirituality been understood? Was it about the self-conscious celebration of devotee singers like Tyagaraja, or did it attempt to go beyond? Sadly, the refinement of the bhakti and bhava aesthetic has meant that any questioning is seen as taboo.
This is not to question the primacy of composition in Carnatic music, or to take away its salience as the scaffolding for musical expression, but to simply engage more subtly with the idea of spirituality. Does the singer or the listener have to be a believer and practitioner? Surely one can be moved by Abeeda Parveen’s rendering of a Bulleh Shah couplet or of a kriti by Krishna even if one is not integrated within the faith context in which the composition is anchored, and can even question the larger social value system underlying the compositions. Take the famous couplet of Kabir where he equated women with maya, the great deceiver—hardly a sentiment that can find favour with women the world over, not to speak of feminists.
Secondly, what rules has Krishna transgressed and why do his detractors react so adversely to criticism of caste and exclusion? Is there something emerging in today’s context that is taking the politics of communal and caste polarisation to such a stage that any critique of privilege is seen as derogatory? It is no coincidence that even before this controversy, we have had headlines about Krishna as a ‘musical urban naxal’. None of these objections and accusations show any real engagement with his thoughtful interventions. Rather, they all end up revealing the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of debate and discourse in today’s India.
Let us look at some of Krishna’s interventions. As a musician, he has explored new boundaries, dabbled with restructuring the format of the concert (kachcheri), provided more space for the accompaniment. Trying, in effect, to engage with a new aesthetic of ambient sound. In terms of his larger engagement with music, the practice of which he sees as an extension of his existential condition, he has questioned the linkages between caste, gender and music, found refuge in the writings of Ambedkar and Periyar, who espoused the annihilation of caste, and tried in his own way to broaden the social base of Carnatic music.
None of these ideas seem especially offensive. Why, then, do his critics feel such hurt and humiliation? After so many years, it is very striking to see an invocation of Brahmin victimhood, a narrative that questions the accomplishments of social justice that have been painfully fought for more than 70 years.
The answer lies in the steady undermining of hard-won progressive social and constitutional values that have been so painfully evident in the cultivated middle class in recent years—all in the name of identity, tradition and spirituality. Apparently, for them, the decision of the Academy to honour an artist like Krishna comes as an unexpected roadblock to this revisionism, an irritant that has punctured their cocoon of complacency.
(Views are personal)
Lakshmi Subramanian | Former professor of history, CSSS Kolkata, and former visiting professor, BITS Pilani Goa
