T M Krishna: The Musical Urban Naxal

What ails T M Krishna?Wrong question. The right answer: T M Krishna is himself an ailment. To those who have followed Thodur Madabussi Krishna’s musical career for a while, it’s evident that while his career’s metamorphosis has been along expected lines, it has reached its logical end.  The only way forward is downward. Here’s a wealthy, well-connected and mediocrely talented Carnatic classical musician who has today morphed into a poster boy and mouthpiece of the nation-wrecking, rogue, Radical Left-Liberal ecosystem. Also known as an Urban Naxal.

Over the past decade or so, his reverse Darwinism from being a practitioner of one of the most sublime and evolved forms of music into an unabashed and crude political propagandist has been as swift as it has been soulless. Especially over the last five or six years, he has converted the sacred podium of Classical Music into a pedestal for spewing said propaganda than providing joy for the Rasikas. Unsurprisingly, the putrid stench of Far Leftist ideology jars the true Rasika’s ears even when he performs an Alapanam today.

The Ideological Iyengar

It appears that there’s nothing under the sun that T M Krishna doesn’t have an opinion on. From detecting the Great Insight that “power that flows from the backseat of a car” to “concluding” that the festival of Raksha Bandhan discriminates against women to writing commentaries about the functioning of the Lok Sabha and then advocating for the human rights of Jihadi Saints like Ajmal Kasab, there’s no low that this Ideological Iyengar hasn’t plumbed. His Ajmal Kasab piece is both illustrative and symptomatic of the lamentably condemnable mentality of a garden-variety specimen of a section of the Musical Mamas of Madras. Sample this:

If I hadn’t already revealed that this was written by T M Krishna, you would’ve correctly concluded that this pile of textual rubbish would’ve been written by the likes of Sitaram Yechury, Arundhati Roy, or similar bleeding-heart liberal hypocrites. Because it’s characteristic of them to celebrate terrorists, to pile court petitions urging the taxpayer to feed them biryani in prison, etc. Therefore, the deserved hanging of Ajmal Kasab becomes “the death of a humane society” in their words. Except that these are T M Krishna’s words.

And the instances I’ve quoted so far are a tiny fraction of the entire rancid corpus of T M Krishna’s pearls of wisdom archived fittingly in the Red Vaults of The Hindu, the Communist paper run by deracinated Madras Iyengars. At one time, the pages of The Hindu were adorned by fine writing flowing from the pens of such luminaries as D V Gundappa. And today, T M Krishna seems to have become a permanent ideological furniture in this paper.

Small wonder that T M Krishna’s writings are much sought-after by every Far Left rag including The Wire, Scroll etc. Because one of the chief strains that’s concomitant with the ideology he proudly espouses happens to be the fact-free, unremitting and vulgar bashing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP, the RSS, the VHP and every organisation and person sympathetic to Hindu causes. And T M Krishna makes no bones about his hostility against them. Here’s what he writes, mourning the murder of the Naxal-sympathiser Gauri Lankesh:

His own words.

The Journey from a Musician to a Useful Idiot of the Radical Left

It’s thus imperative that we need to trace in brief the journey of how T M Krishna got here. One can begin anywhere but in the interests of space, we can peg T M Krishna’s rise to Urban Naxal stardom on the launch of his book titled A Southern Music at the hands of Communist China-Addict Amartya Sen in December 2013 who gave a clarion call to “make classical music accessible to the masses.”

In effect, it was the farmaan.

Ever since, the constant refrain of T M Krishna has been to “take Carnatic Classical Music to the Dalits, to the slums,” and his pet theme, to “de-Brahminize it” whatever that means. If classical music is “Brahminical,” every Brahmin should’ve been a classical musician, right at the foetal stage. Equally, if a non-Brahmin attains mastery in classical music, will this “Brahminical music” say to him/her, “I refuse to emanate from the mouth of non-Brahmins?” The only thing common between “Left” and “Logic” is the letter, “L.” As history is witness, the galaxy of Carnatic Classical Music has been decorated with innumerable non-Brahmin stalwarts since for example, the time of Purandaradasa, widely revered as the Pitamaha of Carnatic Classical Music.

But such questions only skim the surface of the hypocrisy of the kind of discourse that T M Krishna hawks. Why for example, doesn’t he ask that Hindustani Classical Music be “de-Brahminized?” After all, there are any number of Brahmin musicians there as well. But T M Krishna answering that question is akin to touching a live wire: because there are plenty of Muslim Hindustani Classical Musicians, and that is one lobby no Leftist eminence will dare to piss off. As an accomplished Classical Musician, I’m sure T M Krishna knows fully well that the distinction of Bharatiya Music as Hindustani and Carnatic is artificial yet he touts this “de-Brahminizing” sleight of hand.

In reality, there’s a deeper ideological ploy underlying said “de-Brahminization.”

The Caravan Hitjob Against M S Subbulakshmi

Fortunately, T M Krishna has himself revealed this ploy in full technicolour detail in his October 2015 cover story in the Johnny-come-lately Communist magazine, Caravan. Pompously titled M S Understood, this long form essay can be charitably, politely described as a vicious hitjob against one of the greatest Carnatic Musicians of our time, the rightly-revered M S Subbulakshmi. This is not the place to dissect his hitjob but a few things are in order.

The first thing that stares at you is his cowardice. What are the chances that T M Krishna would’ve written this had M S Subbulakshmi been still alive? He’s able to get away with such repeated hit jobs against her simply because she’s now a posthumous soft target.

The second obvious element is the practised technique and tactic of the Leftist narrative. Take an eminent, revered personality, pry into their private life, rely on hearsay and “private conversation” that the reader has no way to verify, and conclude that, “you know, they weren’t so great after all.” One only needs to look at how effectively this slander tactic was applied by the same Leftist cabal to ruin the careers and lives of truly honest scholars and historians.

The third and indeed, the very aadhara-shruti (base note) of T M Krishna’s textual assault against a dead musical eminence who has no way of rebutting him is this: his naked Brahmin-bashing, yet another prime weapon in the arsenal of the Leftists. This indeed is why T M Krishna repeatedly stresses on M S Subbulakshmi’s origins as a Devadasi who became “Brahminised” to gain “social acceptance.” This disgusting approach shows two things: one, that although T M Krishna has learned Classical Music, he never imbibed the Samskara that it brings, which in turn adds effulgence to its performer; two, by invoking her origins, this great Musical Messiah of the Masses has actually slandered the “low classes” he claims to “liberate” with his music. A qualified shrink needs to tell him he needs to liberate him from himself.

The fourth and the final element, or rather the defining tenor of T M Krishna’s hit job, when you strip it of all its fluff is the fact that it follows the standard Leftist template. Name the catch phrases and standard terminology of Leftists, you find them in his slanderous pamphlet: oppressive patriarchy, feminism, free-spirited women, ugly Brahminical superiority, upper caste privilege, and the rest. Or how patriarchy and marriage killed M S Subbulakshmi’s music and its soul.

Here are some nuggets from the hitjob:

It’s quite rich that T M Krishna should be criticising the same “latent patriarchy of Myalpore” and the selfsame “Mylaporean conformity.” In many ways, he is among the landed gentry of Mylapore, being the grand nephew of India’s former Finance Minister and industrialist, and one of the heralds of perhaps the first corruption scandal, T T Krishnamachari who was also one of the founding members of the Madras Music Academy. The kind of clout that T M Krishna enjoys in this circuit is anybody’s guess.

While it’s all fine and dandy for T M Krishna to rely on conjecture and hearsay and make convenient interpretations about M S Subbulakshmi and assess her contribution to Classical Music to suit his twisted narrative, what about his own record as a Carnatic Classical performer? I’ll quote John Dryden’s verses by way of contrasting M S Subbulakshmi’s musical contribution with his.

In passing, this is a good and detailed deconstruction of T M Krishna’s hitjob.

The Magsaysay Award and its Aftermath

While T M Krishna’s hitjob in the Caravan invited a maelstrom of outrage, it also raised his stature in the Left-Liberal stratosphere of ideological delusion. His stature as its prized idiot grew more frenetic. Sure enough, a Magsaysay Award followed in 2016 for his efforts at promoting “social inclusiveness in culture.” This award drew widespread condemnation as well, with culture and music aficionados like Jataayu and Jeyamohan writing stinging reproofs calling out T M Krishna’s credentials as a “pop sociologist.”

But more fundamentally, Carnatic Classical Music was one bastion the Left could never break into despite their toughest efforts. In one of his interviews, Padmashri Dr S L Bhyrappa had stated that unlike literature which has been nearly monopolised by the Left-Liberal clique, Classical Music largely remained out of reach because, “what [Communist] revolution can you bring about by singing an Alaapanam in say, the Todi or Bhairavi Ragam?” But then, Dr. Bhyrappa had perhaps not foreseen or bargained for the revolutionary genius of T M Krishna.

And so, in T M Krishna, the Left-Liberal circuit now has a wealthy and well-connected tool that they can use to peddle the same dangerous agenda that led Stalin and Mao and others to commit genocide on an industrial scale. Or the societal breakdown that came out in full force during the Hillary Clinton campaign trail. As the history of the last century has shown, there are any number of rich industrialists, businessmen, corporates etc whom the Left can exploit by crafting a narrative based on compassion and feelings than on facts. Or to borrow from Christopher Hitchens, the Left preys on “the rich [which] has a poor conscience.” A recognition doled out by the likes of Amartya Sen & co is still much sought-after, still counts. The Left has indeed caught the pulse of how some innate psychological impulses work.

The point is not to single out T M Krishna for criticism. There have been numerous musicians, artists, and poets throughout history who have praised their kings and patrons and espoused their causes. Even independent India has its share of such artists who have curried favour with politicians and businessmen but it would be really hard-pressed to find classical musicians donning the garb of and vociferously dedicating themselves to a destructive and nation-wrecking ideology like Communism . Indeed, it appears as if T M Krishna’s current full-time occupation is the dissemination of Leftist ideology, and not music.

And it is this that explains his frequent tirades against M S Subbulakshmi, his chosen target of relentless attacks. But this time around, it seems that he has been paid back in the same coin from the same Classical Music fraternity which has given him so much, and which he has repaid with brazen ingratitude.

Of course, one can be certain that none of this will deter T M Krishna, who’ll find some or the other Leftist “cause” at the altar of which he will continue to pimp his music. One such recent “cause” was the much-publicised Chennai Poromboke Paadal to which he lent his voice. While this campaign was flagged off and publicised ostensibly to raise awareness about environmental damage around the Ennore Creek, one also suspects a deeper agenda when you hear names like Perumal Murugan associated with it.

Whatever the drawbacks of M S Subbulakshmi, her Bhakti was genuine both towards Ishwara and Classical Music, and conducted herself with refined grace and dignity.

And so, before T M Krishna tries to embark on another round of Subbulakshmi-bashing, it will behoove of him to look up the other meaning of the word, “Poromboke” and see where he stands in relation to that. Or the meaning of the word, “Samskara.”