THE LATE P.V.R.K PRASAD was one of the rare, saintly IAS officers who sculpted his life in the mould of Rishis. His tenure as the Executive Officer (EO) of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams from 1978 to 1982 is arguably one of the sunshine periods of the sacred shrine. In an interview he gave to a Telugu channel about eight years ago, Sri Prasad narrates a resonant episode that depicts the innate divinity residing within M.S. Subbulakshmi (MSS).
By the time Prasad had become the EO of Tirumala, the family of MSS had been reduced almost to penury. A protracted court battle went against her husband, Sadasivam, the cofounder of the iconic Tamil weekly, Kalki. The family pretty much lost everything and moved into a humble rented dwelling.
Which is when PVRK Prasad received a message from the Mahaperiva of Kanchipuram, who requested him to help the family. It was a fragile situation. Both Sadasivam and MSS were fiercely independent and self-respecting. Years ago, MSS had taken a lifelong vow to not charge money for her concerts. She immediately donated any money from a concert that was raised in support of a noble cause.
PVRK Prasad narrates how he received divine guidance of sorts from Tirumala Venkateshwara Swami to whom he prayed for a solution to this intricate problem. Around this time, the TTD’s mammoth and ambitious Annamacharya project was in full swing. The goal was to record the lyrical compositions of Tallapaka Annamacharya — the fabled 15th century Telugu devotional poet and musician — onto LPs, audio cassettes and CDs sung by eminent classical musicians.
Who better than M.S. Subbulakshmi?
Accordingly, PVRK Prasad visited her home in Chennai and placed the proposal before Sadasivam, who instantly, vehemently disagreed. For a rather straightforward reason: all of Annamacharya’s compositions were in chaste and even archaic Telugu while MSS had little or no understanding of the language.
Minutes later, MSS walked in and was apprised of the matter. And then, Prasad took out a beautiful Murti of Tirumala Venkateshwara Swami from his bag and presented it to her. That settled the issue. She simply said, “Perumal (generic name for Vishnu in Tamil) has himself come home. There is no question of refusal.”
Then, there was the matter of royalties. After all, Prasad had visited her at the request of the Kanchi Paramacharya himself, a fact that he concealed from the couple. Her reply: “It is a sin to take money for getting this unasked blessing to do seva to Perumal.”
What happened next is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice to say that the outcome of this fortuitous meeting enriched, ennobled and elevated the world. Balaji Pancharatnamala, a five-part musical series of immortal devotional compositions was released by the TTD. It contains fifty Kritis of Annamacharya apart from various Stotrams and Bhajans drawn from the fecund repository of Hindu saints — Shankaracharya, Jayadeva, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Tulsidas et al. There is almost no Hindu home in South India that has not been enthralled and uplifted by these songs.
M.S. Subbulakshmi was sixty-five years old when she first began recording the Balaji Pancharatnamala musical garland.
This remarkable episode is a real-life showcase of Emerson’s brilliant rendition of a timeless axiom:
Man, made of the dust of the world, does not forget his origin; and all that is yet inanimate will one day speak and reason. Unpublished nature will have its whole secret told.
WITHOUT SUCH A BACKDROP, it will be difficult to grasp the nuances and the full significance of the Madras High Court’s ruling on 19 November, which restrained the Madras Music Academy and The Hindu from presenting the Sangita Kalanidhi M.S. Subbulakshmi Award to the urban naxal, T.M. Krishna. The verdict was delivered in response to a petition filed by M.S. Subbulakshmi’s grandson, V. Srinivasan who challenged the bestowal of such an award upon T.M. Krishna.
The relevant portion of Justice G. Jayachandran’s judgement is highly illuminating:
The “desire and mandate” refers to an explicit clause in her will which prohibits the establishment of any trust, foundation or memorial in her name after her departure from the mortal world.
The judgement is also the latest proof of the wanton, ethics-free depredations of T.M. Krishna and his urban naxal acolytes in Music Academy and The Hindu ecosystem into the sacred world of Carnatic classical music. It also exemplifies an ancient Communist tactic dating back to Lenin. Communists start with scatology, follow up with incursion and end with usurpation.
It beats every known gnome of credulity to believe that the Madras Music Academy and T.M. Krishna were unaware of these clauses in M.S. Subbulakshmi’s will. But it was the charateristic diabolism embedded in all devotees of Leftism that impelled these Madras urban naxals to hijack the last will and testament of a saint like MSS. This is the classic specimen of soul-vulturing.
MADRAS MUSIC ACADEMY had to face sustained outrage earlier this year when it unilaterally announced the prestigious Sangita Kalanidhi award to the selfsame T.M. Krishna. In protest, a good chunk of the Carnatic fraternity boycotted the Academy, refusing to sing in the acclaimed, annual Marghazi music season held in Chennai.
But the Far Left ecosystem which patronises T.M. Krishna is nothing if not shamelessly dogged. As far as Krishna is concerned, his maiden, below-the-belt assault against MSS began with a vulgar cover story in the October 2015 issue of Caravan, a mouthpiece of anti-Hindu and Woke forces. This filthy article established Krishna’s cred as a mid-rung hireling of the Woke and Magsaysay mafia.
The explicit intent behind targetting M.S. Subbulakshmi was not her per se. The intent was to vilify, soil and demolish what she truly represented — sanctity, which is inseperable from Carnatic classical music. This is a rather familiar subterfuge — to destroy Carnatic music by de-Hinduising it. And the most effective — and tried and tested Leftist tactic of accomplishing this was to assassinate her character by imputing illicit affairs. The late Sita Ram Goel provides one of the clearest analyses of this third-rated tactic in Indian public discourse:
This diparagement of personal character was a significant contribution made to India’s… public life by the language of Leftism. It opened the floodgates for all sorts of questionable characters to…occupy the front seats on the public stage. The full harvest of these seeds sown in the years before independence was reaped in the post-independence period when… public life became progressively a safe haven for all sorts of scoundrels masquerading as servants of the people.
T.M. Krishna’s decadal onslaughts against everything that the Carnatic fraternity regards as sacred and inviolable ticks every check box that Sita Ram Goel has provided. They also open up deeper questions of his psyche and personal pathology. At the least, they evoke a fundamental question. Despite being trained in the same rarefied Carnatic musical milieu, why is T.M. Krishna unable to imbibe the devotion that MSS embodied when she told PVRK Prasad that “Perumal has himself come home?” Why can’t he see what she saw?
Yet, all this hasn’t prevented him from attempting to appropriate her hoary legacy by getting his Music Academy comrades to confer an award upon him in her name! This, when she herself unambiguously forbade it. Nor has T.M. Krishna or the Academy had even the basic decency to approach her family in this regard.
Is this hijacking? Or approval-seeking?
A study of Leftist methods points to a near-accurate answer. It is hijacking and appropriation but with a clear, long-term goal. If Madras Music Academy succeeds in appropriating MSS’s exalted legacy, it will pave the way for legitimising T.M. Krishna as a musical heir of sorts to her. This reminds us of a similar ploy that the Bengal Communists had attempted at the height of their institutional power. In a desperate attempt, they had tried to “prove” that Swami Vivekananda was a “pure” Communist when their earlier attempts to brand him as a “reactionary, militant Hindu communalist“ had failed.
M.S. Subbulakshmi’s grandson deserves our heartfelt acclaim for preventing Music Academy and T.M. Krishna from sullying her honour. The words in his court petition are quote-worthy:
And based on his sustained and voluminous attacks against the deceased MSS, it is clear that T.M. Krishna needs help. Of the clinical sort.
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