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 challengesA 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.
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