Carnatic musician TM Krishna is in the news again. For the same reason as in March this year: he was conferred the title of Sangitha Kalanidhi and received the MS Subbulakshmi Award for that honour.
The Madras High Court is contesting the decision to award him the award in memory of the legendary Carnatic singer. Ms. Subalakshmi’s grandson V Shrinivasan requested the court to stop awarding Krishna the award named after her.
Since 2005, the MS Subbulakshmi Award presented by The Hindu Press Group is automatically awarded to Sangitha Kalanidhi. Shrinivasan, in his petition filed in the Madras High Court, compared the awarding of the Krishna Subrakshmi Award to the awarding of the Bhakti Award to an atheist.
One of Krishna’s comments about the legendary singer was in December 2017, when he said that Ms. Subrakshmi must stay away from her ‘Devadasi’ roots to be accepted into the upper caste society accepted.
For the uninitiated, MS Subbulakshmi is the “OG” singer of Sri Venkateshwara Suprabhatam. TM Krishna is a Carnatic singer, author, Ramon Magsaysay Award winner and activist who spoke out against caste inequality in Carnatic music.
The mildest of TM Krishna’s criticisms of her was to call Subrakshmi a “Brahminised” woman, far removed from her “Devadarsi identity”. S Gurumurthy, editor of Thuglak, a Tamil political weekly, wrote in a newspaper article that Krishna referred to Subrakshmi as a “divine Barbie” and quoted “a young musician” as saying, The Carnatic legend is “the greatest hoax of the twentieth century”.
Krishna’s other comments were worse because they belittled Subrakshmi’s achievements. At one point, Krishna called the music legend a “diva” and said men were “obsessed with her beauty” and they were “obsessed with her looks as much as she was with her music.” On another occasion, he commented on Subrakshmi’s “Artistic Journey through the Kalanidhi Landscape” and said there was much to discuss about the “negative impact of her music”.
Gurumurthy criticized the Music Academy and TM Krishna on the X website in view of the petition filed by MS’s grandson in the Madras High Court. He wrote: “…the Music Academy has humiliated itself by honoring TM Krishna, who humiliated Carnatic music’s noblest icon MS Subbulakshmi, and received the award in the name of the MS he humiliated. …..”
In his newspaper article, Gurumurthy said Krishna had belittled the “gentle and humble lady” by “quoting her birth, music and appearance”.
Shrinivasan mentioned the same in his petition stating that Krishna had made a “vile, abusive and defamatory attack” on Subrakshmi and his “tirade” was aimed at “defaming the national icon “.
The petition also states that Subrakshmi’s will prohibits the establishment of any trust, foundation or memorial in her name.
This is the irony. Krishna was the vocal critic of the Academy of Music and was awarded the highest award, which had been awarded to MS Subbalakshmi way back in 1968. It is also ironic that Krishna is the automatic winner of this award by becoming this year’s Sangitha Kalanidhi. MS Subbalakshmi Award, named after the singer he had despised for years.
Ironically or hypocritically, depending on one’s perspective, Krishna did not turn down the Sangeeta Kalanidhi Award from the institution he has been so critical of.
Additionally, the college has questioned Krishna’s rationale for receiving the award, especially in light of Shrinivasan’s revelations about the college’s current architecture. “The current building of the Chennai Music Conservatory was built largely with funds raised from the many charity concerts my grandmother gave in the 1950s,” he wrote in the newspaper article.
Shrinivasan also questioned the college’s reasoning in the article. “What is truly mind-boggling is what prompted a protocol-driven institution like the Conservatoire to waive its rules for someone who had refused to perform for him for nearly a decade!”
Vedic speaker Dushyanth Sridhar also expressed similar views in an interview with India Today. He said: “For the past eight to ten years, it was the same ‘vidhvan’, the award winner, who boycotted the December (music) season… when he did not perform at all… when one did not attend If you pass the competition, what prize will you get?”