Like Sankara Award for EVR Periyar?
“TM Krishna’s MS misogyny S Gurumurthy calls out the conferring of the ‘Sangita Kalanidhi MS Subbulakshmi Award’ on TM Krishna despite the latter’s misogynistic tirade against MS, who Nehru said was the Queen of Music”
As a Brahmin by birth, TMK gained fame in Tamil Nadu, the land of Brahmin hate, by his virulent anti-Brahmin tirades, which automatically made him a progressive in today’s discourse. Since he is a leftist and a liberal, no one can dare call him a misogynist for his dirty and sexy remarks about MS.
Imagine Bhagwan Mahaveer Award for promoting vegetarianism is given to a butcher—a Jain by accident of birth who says the Bhagwan is a hoax. By a jury that has no reverence for the Bhagwan. And the apostate butcher proudly accepts the award in the name of the apostle. How humiliated his Jain devotees will be? Apologies to Jains for taking the Bhagwan’s name for a fictional analogy. Similarly, devotees of Carnatic music to whom it is not just an art but divine and sacred, have been hurt and humiliated in Tamil Nadu. Here unfolds the sordid story.
MS – “Greatest Hoax”, “Barbie doll”, “Sexy” to infatuated eyes?
“A young aspiring musician told me MS Subbulakshmi is the greatest hoax of the twentieth century”.
Who declared, on an anonymous testimony, M S Subbulakshmi as the greatest hoax?
“We have never thought of her music as being worthy of any serious investigation. What is there to say? We treat her [MS Subbulakshmi] like a saintly Barbie doll. Yet we duped the outside world into thinking we revere her.”
Who described MS as a saintly Barbie doll?
“Isn’t it astounding that we will all agree that MS has been one of the most beautiful musicians in the Indian classical musical scene, but the word sexual has never been used in the context of describing her….Let me make it clear I am not referring to her inner beauty. She was what my daughter’s generation would call sexy.”
Who saw MS as sexy, not her inner beauty?
“Let any honest man besotted with her beauty deny that his fascination had to do with her looks as with her music and that Cupid played with her darts wherever she went. The Smarta Brahmin kattu [a specific style of wearing sari] has never looked more fetching, been more alluring than on the daughter of Madurai Shanmugavadivu. She was a diva, yet we are unable to openly celebrate her physicality, even in 2016.”
Who spoke about men besotted — meaning “blindly, utterly infatuated” — with MS’ beauty? And said Cupid — Greek God of Erotic Love — played with MS wherever she went? Not so much her music. Who’s this misogynist — to use the modern term liberals quite often use to brand other men who they think demeaned women?
MS award – for abusing, demeaning, hating her?
It is no congenital Brahmin hater E V Ramaswami Naicker (EVR) or his disciples, nor the DK clones in the DMK, who continue to hate all the good work the Brahmins did and do, all their Gods, icons, literature, worship, traditions and devotion. It is T M Krishna (TMK), a self-proclaimed heretic among Carnatic musicians, and a Brahmin himself. Ironically, TMK who declared MS the greatest hoax, described her as a saintly Barbie doll, derided her as sexy, and spoke of men besotted more with her looks than her music, is the proud recipient of the Sangita Kalanidhi MS Subbulakshmi Award for 2024. TMK spoke so ‘honourably’ about MS not long back. Just eight years ago but long after MS left this world in 2004. The Award in MS’ name to TMK now is automatic after the Madras Music Academy conferred on him its ‘Sangita Kalanidhi’ Award for 2024.
TMK has unquestionable liberal and wokeist credentials to demean the gentle and humble MS – citing her birth, music and looks. As a Brahmin by birth, TMK gained fame in Tamil Nadu, the land of Brahmin hate, by his virulent anti-Brahmin tirades, which automatically made him a progressive in today’s discourse. Since he is a leftist and a liberal, no one can dare call him a misogynist for his dirty and sexy remarks about MS.
As a Carnatic musician who has turned an iconoclast to demolish all sacred and devotional foundations of Carnatic music that owes its body and soul to great saints like Tyagaraja, he has emerged a hero of atheist Dravidian liberals. Most importantly, like Kejriwal who, now neck-deep in scams, was promoted by the Ramon Magsaysay Award as a crusader against corruption, TMK too was adorned with the Magsaysay Award for unleashing “what music has to offer not just for some but for all”.
But, in the “for all” inclusiveness that the Magsaysay Award mentions, TMK reserves the choicest of dirty words for MS. His appetite to demean MS seems insatiable. He refers to MS’ ‘past’ as a single mother’s daughter and adds “what does MS’ metamorphosis [from that past] into a perfect Brahmin housewife say?… She sought respect and dignity and that she got only because she erased her past from her life and mind.” Without successfully erasing her past — as a woman of low birth, according to TMK — MS would not have got the dignity and respect she commanded.
More than all his credentials, what makes TMK more qualified to mock MS as a ‘Brahmanical’ pretender is that he is a proud fan of EVR. Not many, not even TMK, may know today that EVR, who not only wanted all Brahmins killed and burnt, also desired that Mahatma Gandhi be annihilated along with the Congress! Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Kamaraj (on 5.11.1957) calling for action against EVR who, he said, was a “pervert, criminal and lunatic”. But speaking about MS, Nehru said: “Who am I, a mere Prime Minister before a Queen, Queen of Music”.
Diametrically opposite to Nehru, TMK character-assassinates the noble MS before whom Nehru felt humble, and eulogises EVR who, in the eyes of Nehru, was a criminal. TMK wrote and tweeted a song last year celebrating EVR as “the one who told us to think”. In the same tweet he glorified EVR, TMK also held aloft a perverted writer Perumal Murugan who wrote that women, who pray all night on a Holy Day in a temple in West Tamil Nadu for begetting children, actually slept with unemployed youth stealthily to get impregnated by them! The liberal TMK eulogised him for dirtying both women and their faith. The liberal in him is also liberal in dirtying not just MS but womankind as a whole.
Proud to humiliate? Or shameless to accept?
On the Sangita Kalanidhi Award given by the Music Academy to MS as far back as 1968, TMK says “there is a lot to discuss about the negative impacts of her musicality” with a snide comment on her “artistic journey on the Kalanidhi landscape”. What a shameful remark 50 years after MS was honoured by the Academy with Sangita Kalanidhi? And 18 years before TMK was born! He went on to characterise the award given to MS as beyond his reach.
To quote him, “Of course that is a space (Sangita Kalanidhi) we can never enter; how can we pollute the garbhagriha of her memory.” TMK, who spoke so disparagingly about the award to MS then, has gleefully accepted it now and finally entered the garbhagriha of “Sangita Kalanidhi MS Subbulakshmi Award”, that he never dreamt he would ever do. Is it his karma or his lust that made him accept the honour of the award that bears the name of MS he had wantonly dishonoured? Did he accept the MS Award proudly – to humiliate and damage her memory even more? Or was he so shameless to accept it because he was desperate to enter the Sanctum Santorum of the memorial of MS he had longed for? Either way it is petty and low.
Music Academy – negligent or conspirator?
Now come to the role of the owners of the Music Academy in conferring the Sangita Kalanidhi Award to TMK who had scorned MS, the Academy’s own Sangita Kalanidhi Awardee. TMK got two mutually interlinked awards. One is the Sangita Kalanidhi Award of the Music Academy 2024 – which is just a hall of fame award. The other is in the name of MS herself – ‘Sangita Kalanidhi MS Subbulakshmi Award 2024’ which carries a cash prize of `1 lakh. The eligibility for the second award in MS’ name is the first award of the Academy.
Not long ago, a jury of Carnartic musicians used to select the Academy’s awardees. But de-franchising the musicians, the non-musicians who own the Academy and know very little about the philosophy or even the contents of music, took over that task. In truth, the same set of non-musicians now control both awards. The owners of the Academy know that giving the Academy’s Sangita Kalanidhi Award to TMK automatically makes him eligible to the other award, the MS Award. What follows?
The responsibility of both the awards is on the Music Academy. If the Academy chose TMK without even Google-based due diligence that would have brought out TMK’s vilification of MS, it is guilty of willful negligence. But if it knew that he had maligned MS and still chose him, it is guilty as an active co-conspirator to vilify MS.
MS’ progeny challenges
A grandson of MS has filed a petition in the Madras High Court challenging the very idea of an award in her name itself. The petition says that, by her Will, MS had forbidden any award or statue or other symbols in her memory. The humble lady’s final wish clearly reflects the self-effacing humility that marked her entire life of unparalleled popularity.
That such a humble and noble icon is being trivialised long after her death by petty men who instituted the award in her name against her wish and gave it to TMK, the man who spewed venom on her is an inexcusably terrible story. Whether the case yields the result MS’ grandson is seeking or not, his petition has put the sordid facts in the public domain and shamed both the giver and receiver of particularly the MS Award.
The awards to TMK is a wake-up call for the Carnatic music fraternity, which increasingly sells the soul of divine music for such awards. Carnatic music will become Madonna’s Pop Music if it loses its soul of divinity and devotion. Musicians who revere music as divine must reject the awards given as favours by those who are illiterates in the devotional philosophy of Carnatic music.
By its single act of honouring the man who dishonoured MS, with the honour of the MS Award, the Music Academy has ended up irredeemably dishonouring itself. The Academy’s value today seems to be the worth of the price of its real estate at the prime place where music devotees live. Imagine it shifts to Velachery — just 12 km away — it will lose all its celebrity value.
There is still an honourable way out for TMK to atone for his shameless attempt to humiliate the iconic MS in the minds of the devotees of Carnatic music. If he introspects and turns humble like MS and apologises for his mad behaviour and blind hate for the greatest icon of the 20th century Carnatic music — whether he deserves the award or not — he would at least wash away his own shameful and sinful conduct. To end, the MS Award to TMK is like the Sankara Award for EVR. It will humiliate not only the givers but the receivers EVR and TMK too.
Sankara who would never have allowed an award in his name and MS who did not want an award in her name, would remain unaffected and stand tall any way.
Note to the Reader: This article originally appeared in Thuglak Tamil Weekly Magazine. It was translated in English by Shri Venkateshwaran, who is the Chief of Thuglak Digital and personal secretary to Shri S Gurumurthy, exclusively for www.gurumurthy.net.