Kirana gharana maestro Pandit Bhimsen Joshi has been awarded the highest Indian civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna. Express News Service has the report.
Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, chosen for the greatest civilian award, describes the decision as an honour for Indian classical music.
“I accept this award on behalf of all those who have contributed to Indian classical music. This is the first time that someone from the kirana gharana has been honoured with the Bharat Ratna,” the maestro said, a day after he had been named.
Tehelka’s Shoma Chaudhury visits exiled artist M.F. Husain in Dubai
ON 19 JANUARY, 2008, the day twenty men with hockey sticks smashed NDTV’s office in Ahmedabad, and beat two of the staff, for running an SMS poll on whether MF Husain should be awarded the Bharat Ratna, the master himself sat quietly on the floor of his home in faraway Dubai, rapt in a sketch of two ceremonial horses – a wedding card for Ustad Amjad Ali Khan’s son.
A meditative silence enveloped the room, heightened by the rhythmic sound of his sketching pen. Nothing could touch him, immune in his concentration. The sun set outside on a brilliant skyline. The beautiful room acquired a sense of prayer. Husain had just spent hours outlining his love for Hindu philosophy and culture, a life lived in its worship. Eight years spent painting the Ramayana, as many painting the Mahabharata.
Hundreds of canvases of Ganesha and Shiva and Parvati and Hanuman, the ragas, the natyas and Benaras. Seventy years spent as “Chobi Das”, a devotee of the image. Seventy years spent roaming the earth, seeking to enrich its understanding of India. And now, they were smashing offices in his name. Declaring him an apostate.
Indian self-confidence is despite and in spite of its political class writes Namita Bhandare in Mint
Politicians aren’t known to be thin-skinned. Yet, even the thickest of this amazing breed must have noticed a serious image problem that just got worse this past one week.
In no particular order: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Maya memsaab had a birthday party—her own symbolic “let them eat cake” moment, with diamonds and a helicopter as gifts. Even as a shocked nation watched senior bureaucrats feed behenji her favourite cream cake in a spectacle of sycophancy came the news that one of New Delhi’s most awaited, and needed, expressways (to Gurgaon) was ready to roll but that the aam aadmi (common man) would have to wait.
The reason? No VIP was available to inaugurate this “very important road”. Despite a “people’s inauguration”, the expressway remains shut—it is now to be inaugurated by Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit and other significant politicians later this week.
Then there was the absolutely unedifying hullabaloo over the Bharat Ratna.
Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, chosen for the greatest civilian award, describes the decision as an honour for Indian classical music.
