Jan 11, 1999
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LAKSHMAN PANDIT Handing Down Heritage Lakshman Pandit is the last surviving doyen of the hoary Gwalior gharana. By S Kalidas If the Biblical adage "The meek shall inherit the earth" were to be half-way true, then Lakshman Krishnarao Pandit, 64, should have got a lot more than has come his way. There is no yellow Mercedes parked in the driveway and at a time when reputations are built on media hype outside the domain of music, his is not the face that has launched a hundred brands. Yet recently, this last surviving doyen of the hoary Gwalior gharana of Hindustani classical music was in the news for being bestowed with the Sangeet Natak Akademi award by President K.R. Narayanan. "It does not matter much to me personally though, I would not have stopped singing had I not got it," he tells you as you sip tea in his modest Delhi Development Authority flat in the city's Munirka locality. "Even bathroom singers have got the award," he adds in a bout of cynicism.
The noted music critic Prakash Wadehra puts it thus: "His voice is not as sweet as that of a Jasraj or Ajoy Chakrabarty and his lyrical appeal is limited. But as his father used to say, the voice was not of great concern in the traditional aesthetic; rather it was what you did with it in terms of musical content that mattered." In a scenario bereft of all signposts pointing to true tradition, it is this element of anachronism which makes him worthy of interest. And the pandit is not unaware of it. In fact, it has been the dilemma of his life: he could never decide whether to succumb to the pressures of changing times or to stick by the rules of the game as were laid out in the bygone era of feudal patronage. "The music scene has changed so completely from the time of my childhood," he says, "that many things that were cardinal to my father's generation are now totally gone." And despite the well-intentioned efforts of groups and organisations like the Society for Promotion of Indian Classical Music And Culture Among Youth and the itc Sangeet Research Academy, Calcutta, in this direction, he laments, "All they have managed to do is to enforce a star system that is oblivious of all traditional values and repertoires." For several generations the Pandits of Gwalior had been steeped in shastriya learning and devotional singing. But their heyday as musicians came when Lakshman's grandfather Shankarrao and his brothers Ganpatrao, Gopalrao and Eknathrao became pupils of the founding trio of the Gwalior gharana, Ustads Haddu Khan, Hassu Khan and Natthu Khan sometime in the mid-19th century. It was a remarkable relationship because here was a Maratha court patronising Muslim ustads who in turn passed on their art to Maharashtrian Brahmins who kept it alive and spread it far beyond the principality of what used to be the Gwalior state. "When Haddu-Hassu Khan were asked why they preferred Maharashtrian Pandits to Muslim shagirds (disciples)," Lakshman informs, "they said, 'These Pandits will not only keep our style intact but also keep our names alive. Muslims who learn from us will not acknowledge our training and credit it to their own families for it'." So even today, three generations down the line, Lakshman Pandit never tires of speaking about the legends of Haddu-Hassu Khan. Lakshman was trained by his grand-uncle Eknathrao and father Krishnarao in the age-old oral system of taaleem and has an enormous repertoire of old compositions of Khayal, Tappa, Thumri, Tarana which comprise the Gwalior gayaki or style of singing. As he was born when times were changing and academic education was also gaining force, he was also the first matriculate and then the first BA in his family even if his father, was highly suspicious of bookish learning. Although Lakshman started performing as a youth, those were not the days when children of the gharanas were launched in the music market with great fanfare. In fact by the time he was in his 30s, the music scene had changed so radically that it was now ruled by non-gharana talents who knew better how to adjust to the demands of the market in a democratic polity. Unable to support a family through freelance singing alone, he joined the Delhi station of All India Radio as music producer in 1961. Later he joined the music faculty of the Delhi University of which he is still a respected member. On the family front too Lakshman has been far from lucky. Just when his elder son Tushar was blooming into a fine vocalist, the young man was killed in a Delhi Transport Corporation bus accident. Soon after he was to lose his younger brother Chandrakant Pandit. "The two deaths had left him a deeply saddened and depressed man," says Wadehra adding, "He is essentially a good-hearted person who never wished anyone ill." However, in Lakshman's lonely horizon there now is a silver lining, his talented daughter Meeta is fast emerging as one of India's most able and well trained female vocalists, and in keeping with her times is one who knows how to deal with the post-'90s world. Over the past few years, she has become his sole raison d'etre: he is the vital bridge between the music of a century that is coming to a close and that which is to come. Listening to Meeta sing, the initiated are confident that in the next millennium too there will be a Pandit from Gwalior keeping alive a tradition that flowered over two centuries ago. And that would be reason enough to thank Lakshman Pandit. |
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Neither a star performer nor a recluse, Lakshman
Pandit has been a well-known -- if modest -- presence in the classical music scene for a
good three decades now. As the third (and only surviving) son of the great Krishnarao
Shankar Pandit, he was weaned in the traditional repertoire of the Gwalior gharana and
brought up on the romance of oral history handed down from one generation to the next.
These were tales about how Gwalior was the unquestioned citadel of classical music
tradition in north India over the last two centuries or more. "Every new-born child
in Gwalior cries in tune and even the rickshaw-pullers discuss ragas," went the local
boast. And now when true tradition is fast eroding and the glory of Gwalior all but gone,
Lakshman Pandit cuts a somewhat tragic figure whose sole USP is in being that rare
repository of unalloyed gharanedaari (family tradition), as the jargon would have it. 
