RMIM Archive Article "417".
From the RMIM Article Archive maintained by Satish Subramanian
#
# RMIM/C Archives..
# Subject: Great Master's series
# Great Masters #28: Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, the Chaturpandit
# Posted by: Rajan Parrikar (parrikar@colorado.edu)
# Sources: Great Masters of Hindustani Music by Susheela Mishra
#
Subject: Great Masters 28: Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, the Chaturpandit
Namashkar.
We reproduce here, in Great Masters 28, Susheela Mishra's brief account
of Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande. It does scant justice to the man,
his life and times, and his monumental contributions to Hindustani
music. It is hoped that this piece will serve only as a tempting
hors d'oeuvre preceding a fuller course of study of the great
"Chaturpandit", which, by the way, is a nice little pun. It is
Bhatkhande's nom-de-plume but also alludes to the clever, ingenious,
devious and sometimes surreptitious measures he employed as he
wheeled away compositions from their unwilling guardians.
Warm regards,
r
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>From: Great Masters of Hindustani Music by Smt. Susheela Mishra
Chaturpandit Bhatkhande
by
Susheela Mishra
Towards the end of the last century, Hindustani music had run into
"doldrums". Music had become the monopoly of a small coterie of
illiterate professionals who jealously guarded their art. Living
luxuriously under lavish courtly patronage, these narrow-minded
custodians of music took care not to create rivals out of their own
pupils. Gradually, these professionals acquired disrepute, and the
Muse whom they served fell from her high pedestal into the depths of
public apathy and alien contempt. The so called "intellectuals" began
to look down with "moral horror" on this noble art. No other country
in the world had placed music so contemptuously low, and "nowhere were
the natural instincts of the young, for music and rhythm so completely
repressed, censored, and banned, as they happened to be in the country
that Vishnu Narain was born to serve". An utterly selfless and
dedicated music-devotee was needed to create order out of chaos, to
restore harmony into disharmony, and to salvage and re-instal the
fallen image of the Muse once again on a lofty pedestal, for us to
worship today.
Born on the auspicious Gokulashtami day of 1860, Vishnu Narain
Bhatkhande was destined to play a most significant role in the
renaissance of Hindustani classical music. In the words of a cultured
royal patron of music who was a contemporary and a great admirer of
Panditji, "When Bhatkhande resolved to translate his love for
Hindustani Music into a continued, unwearied day-to-day programme of
service, he had to confront social, intellectual, and finally,
professional prejudices. These took shape as positive obstacles,
definite active resistance. He had to face all this very early in
life, even as a student seeking no more than information and
enlightenment, and later on, as a crusader in the cause of classical
music".
A lesser man, or a man inspired by a lesser passion for music would
have fled from the field defeated and crushed by the endless obstacles
in his path. But Bhatkhande's was really a dedicated life, inspired by
a single, undivided aim. In the words of the late D.P. Mukerji:- "If
the renaissance of classical music in the North is due to one man than
to any other, it was due to Bhatkhande."
Born into a cultured, though not well-to-do, Maharashtrian family in
Balukeshwar, Bombay, Gajanan (as he was called in his childhood) was
gifted with rare musical talent, intense love for the art, a
remarkably shrewd brain, indefatigable powers of industry, an
impressive personality, and most winning manners. Equipped with so
many great qualities, it is no wonder that he finally succeeded in the
gigantic tasks of reawakening "the sense of history and pride among
people who had slept over this vital aspect of Indian culture", of
reconciling the theory and practice of music, and of collecting and
putting at the disposal of music lovers, thousands of traditional
compositions hitherto closely locked up by the professionals.
Bhatkhande's life and work fall into four clear stages: The first
stage consisted of his own preparation period, his muscial training,
and his important association with Gayan Uttejak Mandal of Bombay. His
earliest musical education was imparted to him by his pious mother who
could beautifully sing passages from the works of great saints and
devotees. He had inherited a sweet voice from his mother, and a keen
musical ear from his father who could play on the Qanoon. He learnt
the flute, Sitar and vocal music from some very eminent gurus like
Jairajgir, Raojibua Belbagkar, Ali Husain Khan, Vilayat Hussain Khan
and others. Along with his academic studies, he devoted nearly 15
years to the study of all the available ancient music-treatises in
Sanskrit, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Urdu, German, Greek and English
with the help of scholars and interpreters. After taking his B.A. and
LL. B. degrees, Vishnu Narain joined the Karachi High Court and
became a very successful lawyer. But his highly successful legal
career was only a brief interlude in the life of this Sangeet-Bhakta
who was destined for work of a nobler kind. With the death of his
young wife and only daughter, he decided to give up Law and dedicate
his entire life to the cause of Music. He had earned just enough to
keep his body and soul together; and that was all that this devotee
needed for the simple life of ceaseless service for music that he had
chalked out for himself.
The next stage in Bbatkhande's life was a period of extensive touring
for the purpose of deep musical research, study, and discussions with
the ustads and pandits all over the country. He toured the entire
length and breadth of the country from Kashmir to Rameshwaram, and
from Surat and Broach to Calcutta and Puri. He visited all the
important music libraries, avidly going through ancient Granthas, and
meeting every living authority on music then. His bulky private diary
running into hundreds of pages gives us glimpses into the pattern of
frugal living and high thinking that he had set for himself. For
instance, it was one of his self imposed rules that he would devote
every day of his tour entirely for study in music libraries, and never
waste a single day for amusements like sight seeing or social
engagements. By his infinite patience, presuasive ways, and utter
sincerity of purpose, Bhatkhande was gradually able to break down the
opposition and suspicion of some of the great ustads of the day. Those
who scorned him for "looting the great treasures of Ustads," stayed to
become his associates, teachers, and friends. Among the many who
helped him immensely were great Ustads like Mohammad Ali Khan, Asgar
Ali Khan and Ahmed Ali Khan of Jaipur; they gave him more than 300
precious compositions of the Manarang Gharana.
Then followed a period of prolific publications. After pondering
deeply over the voluminous materials he had collected during his
exhaustive study-cum-research tours, Panditji sifted the valuable
materials and set about the magnanimous work of publishing all this
laboriously collected material in a large number of volumes in
Sanskrit, Marathi, Hindi and English such as: Abhinavaragamanjari,
Abhinavatalamanjari, Lakshya Sangeetam, the Hindustani Sangeet
Paddhati, the Kramik series in 6 volumes, the Swara-malika and Geet
Malika series, Grantha sangeetam, Bhavi Sangeetam, A Short Hiytorical
Survey of Music, Philosophy of Music, and so on. Thus be has
unstintingly spread out before the music loving public his entire
musical wealth. As he himself wrote:- "My sole object has been to
place before my educated, music-loving brothers and sisters, the
present condition of the Art". The fact that he published all his
works under his pen-names "'Vishnu Sharma" or "Chaturpandit" shows his
utter indifference to fame. Besides hundreds of traditional Dhrupads,
Dhamars, Khayals, Sadras, Taraanas, Chaturangs, Thumris, etc. that he
has published with notations in his Kramik series, he has also
composed and included in this series, scores of his own compositions,
mostly Khayals and Lakshangeets (nearly 250 or so) under his pseudonym
"Chatura". He also published several ancient music-granthas whose
manuscripts he had salvaged during his country-wide tours.
Although Bhatkhande shunned fame, it came to him unsought. His fame
spread. The cultured rulers of various states like Baroda, Gwalior,
Rampur, Dharampur, Akbarpur etc. became his staunch supporters and
admirers. They sent students to study music at his feet. Under his
inspiration, and direction, music colleges sprang up in various places
like Baroda, Gwalior, Lucknow, Bombay, Nagpur and so on. Besides
these institutions which Panditji used to visit and guide till the end
of his life, there were several others which uniformly followed his
system of teaching, syllabus, textbooks and notations. There are
critics galore who "pooh pooh" at the idea of learning music in music
colleges. But if you ask these critics how else interest in classical
music can be awakened widely, they have no alternative constructive
suggestions to offer. It is not possible for every music-student or
music- lover to go and stay with a guru for years and years trying to
squeeze out some "ilm" out of him by propitiating him with services. A
well-known music connoisseur who is no more with us today, wrote :
"Bhatkhande has done perhaps most for the reawakening of interest in
Indian music and its proper development through its organisation in
educational institutions throughout Northern India. In the provinces
where he started music colleges, his efforts have borne a rich harvest
by training up batches of accomplished music teachers who have spread
far and wide the gospel of this great and noble heritage of our
country".
Rightly called the "Father of Music Conferences", Pandit Bhatkhande
was the life and soul of five consecutive All India Music Conferences
held in Baroda, Delhi, Lucknow (twice) and Varanasi. These conferences
were not merely entertaining but were highly educative as well, since
they provided a common platform for musicians and musicologists from
all over the North and South to listen to one another, to discuss, and
come to an agreement on disputed aspects of music. These conferences
achieved a lot for Hindustani classical music and paved the way for
the Chaturpandit's favourite dream. "The mighty mansion of music," he
wrote, "should become accessible to all - rich and poor, high and low,
girls and boys - irrespective of age, and social status." Today All
India Music Conferences are the order of the day not only in big
cities, but in smaller towns as well.
Bhatkhande's ceaseless efforts for music continued till he became
helplessly bedridden in 1933 with a tragic attack of paralysis and
thigh fracture. It is a strange coincidence that this great
"Sangeeta-Bbakta" who came into this world on the auspicious day of
Lord Krishna's birth, shook off his mortal coils on an equally
auspicious Ganesh Chaturthi day (1936). The wealth that he earned in
his life-time of service to music is the eternal gratitude of
music-lovers. Year after year, during Ganesh Chaturthi week, lovers of
Hindustani music get together in numerous places all over Maharashtra
and North India to pay grateful homage to this unforgettable architect
and great law giver of modern Hindustani music.
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From the RMIM Article Archive maintained by Satish Subramanian