Carnatic artistes object to award to T M Krishna; he glorified Periyar, say musician sister duo

THREE DAYS after Chennaibased Music Academy awarded vocalist T M Krishna with the Sangita Kalanidhi, the highest recognition in the world of Carnatic classical music, an open war broke out in the Carnatic classical establishment with a number of musicians protesting against the move.

On Wednesday, sisters and musician duo Ranjani and Gayatri withdrew from the December Music Season, the annual music festival that’s one of the largest such in the country, refusing to attend “the conference that will be presided over by Mr TM Krishna”.

In a letter addressed to the Music Academy that they shared on their social media platforms, they wrote, “It’s dangerous to overlook Mr TM Krishna’s glorification of a figure like EVR (Periyar) who openly proposed a genocide of ‘brahmins’, repeatedly called/abused every woman of this community with vile profanity and relentlessly worked to normalise filthy language in social discourse.”

The sisters were scheduled to perform at the Academy on December 25.

Krishna had released a song in 2023 in honour of Periyar, political activist and ‘father of Dravidian movement’, to commemorate the Vaikom Satyagraha, the anti-caste agitation in 1920s to enter the prohibited premises of Vaikom Temple in Kerala. The song, penned by noted writer Perumal Murugan, questioned caste discrimination.

Responding to the sister duo on Thursday, N Murali, the president of the Music Academy, said their joint letter was “replete with unwarranted and slanderous insinuations verging on defamation” and that he was shocked by “its vicious tone against a respected senior fellow musician”.

Murali also said the decision to award Krishna was based on “careful deliberation” and “with the sole criterion being musical excellence demonstrated over a significant and sustained career… with no extraneous facts influencing our choice”.

He also said the duo’s stand was “unbecoming of artistes and in poor taste” and termed their act of making their letter to him public on social media as “discourteous”.

Soon after Ranjani-gayatri made their position public, another vocalist duo — Srikrishna Mohan and Ramkumar Mohan, better known as Trichur Brothers — also withdrew from the Academy’s Annual Music Conference for this year and wrote on social media that Krishna “believes and propagates a value system that is diametrically opposite to our core values”. Amid the escalating war of words, vocalist Vishaka Hari too joined the chorus, slamming the recent honour to Krisha.

Chitraveena Ravikiran, another popular name in the Carnatic music circuit, went a step further and decided to return his Sangita Kalanidhi in a letter addressed to N Murali, the president of the Academy. Ravikiran was awarded the honour in 2017. The Academy had in 2018 dropped Ravikiran and six other artistes after a slew of sexual harassment allegations in the #Metoo movement surfaced against them.

But in a letter addressed to the Music Academy, Ravikiran has said that his decision to withdraw his award does not stem from the “inestimable angst” he experienced in October 2018 but his “inability to relate to the kind of values the Academy is glorifying today by honouring an individual who has… tried to polarise and destabalise Indian classical music and dance and a country as a whole… has painted some of the greatest architects and institutions and its culture black… drawn numerous young minds away from the pursuit of excellence”.

Ranjini-gayatri added that Krishna had “caused immense damage to the Carnatic music world, willfully and happily stomped over the sentiments of this community and insulted the most respected icons like Tyagaraja and M S Subbulakshmi”.

This is a reference to Krishna’s writings and lectures on the two subjects. While singing Tyyagaraja kritis for several years, Krishna has attempted to scrutinise the complexity of the personality of the famed Telugu saint while questioning some of his aesthetic choices, politics and social commentary. In the case of M S Subbulakshmi, Krishna revered the power of the vocalist’s music while touching upon her Devadasi roots and argued that Subbulakshmi Brahminised herself to receive wider acceptance. Many had accused Krishna of “Brahmin-bashing then”.

In their letter, Ranjanigayatri also said that they were boycotting the whole season. “We believe in a value system that respects art and artists, vaggeyakaras, rasikas, institutions, our roots and culture. We would be in moral violation if we were to bury these values and join this year’s conference,” the duo said.

Krishna is seen by conservative Brahmins as one who tarnishes the image of the community and its huge stakes in the Carnatic world, but many others see him as a musician who has democratised the Carnatic classical space by questioning issues like caste, gender and class.

Many credit Krishna, who won the Ramon Magsaysay award in 2016, with reforms like changing the sitting positions on stage to make everyone visible to the audience, not making classical music a conserve of certain spaces only, making the field inclusive and breaking convention to merge Carnatic music with local art forms.

T M Krishna