Renowned Carnatic musician and Chitravina maestro N Ravikiran on Thursday returned the M S Subbulakshmi (MSS) award bestowed by the Madras music academy in 2017. He also gave back the cash reward of Rs 1 lakh – that was part of the MSS award – with an extra Rs 10,000.
Ravikiran’s act follows last week’s Madras High Court (HC) order that restrained the music academy from presenting the prestigious MSS’ ‘Sangita Kalanidhi’ award instituted by The Hindu to Carnatic musician T M Krishna. Ravikiran had seven months ago returned the music academy’s ‘Sangita Kalanidhi’ title when the music academy announced T M Krishna as the designate for the award this year.
Krishna’s nomination had met with opposition from many stalwarts and young musicians based on his earlier acts of boycotting the December season, withdrawal from the Chennai December music concerts in various sabhas in the city and also due to his controversial writings and talks relating to Carnatic music.
Following his defamatory remarks against legendary MSS, the latter’s grandson V Shrinivasan had moved the HC, seeking restraint on an award instituted in her name being conferred on T M Krishna. The court considered the will of MSS and said the music academy can honour Krishna with the award, but cannot give the cash component of Rs1 lakh.
In his letter to the music academy, Ravikiran said, “… my returning the Dr MSS Award is neither to disrespect the music academy or its office-bearers nor to gain extra mileage for myself. I chose to club the return of this award with the return of my ‘Sangita Kalanidhi’ in March for three reasons.” One, he said, N Murali, music academy president, was outraged about posthumous tarnishing of MSS’ name till 2017. The second reason behind Ravikiran’s move was the academy’s return of an endowment created by him in honour of Mridangam vidwan Palghat Ramachandra Iyer after the former gave back ‘Sangita Kalanidhi’.
Though it was an institutional endowment, the music academy chose to return the endowment amount to his personal bank account, while he was abroad, Ravikiran said. Not only that, he also mentions about the insinuation from the music academy about returning ‘Sangita Kalanidhi’. One of the academy’s communications insinuated non-existent financial motives behind returning ‘Sangita Kalanidhi’, said Ravikiran, adding that’s why he gave extra Rs 10,000 with the reward.
Late Mridangam Vidwan Iyer’s family too announced the return of ‘Sangita Kalanidhi’ conferred on him following the announcement of the title to Krishna. His grandson Palghat Ramprasad, Trichur Brothers, Ranjani-Gayathri, harikatha artistes Vishaka Hari and Dushyant Sridhar had also announced their withdrawal from this year’s December conference at the music academy.
The academy’s act has outraged the Carnatic music fans and also polarized the fraternity.
