With the diminishing of maharajas, maharishis and magicians," the late painter J. Swaminathan was wont to say, "Indian musicians constitute an exclusive and exotic class by themselves."

Yet, it would be unjust and unfair to suggest that Ravi Shankar's legend rests on exotica alone. He knew that instead of merely pandering to an orientalist patronage, he would have to plumb the depths of his tradition and find for it modern contexts and global markets.

This led him to forsake the easy comfort of brother Uday Shankar's dance troupe in 1936 and relocate to the tiny principality of Maihar and risk a comparatively late beginning in Hindustani classical music at the feet of a recluse and temperamental master like Ustad Allauddin Khan.

Ravi Shankar's detractors ascribe his success to his marketing abilities and crafty packaging alone. "Everything about Ravi Shankar," says a fan of rival sitarist Vilayat Khan, "from his elaborately stitched dhotis to his music is tailored with an eye on the audience and the media."

There might be a kernal of truth in this. Shankar has always had a designer look to both his persona and his art. He says this is to enable him to present classical Indian music to a modern, international audience. There lies his essential contribution. Even in India, it is largely after Ravi Shankar's example that the present day format of an instrumental concert evolved. Especially in the opening Alap-Jor sequences his contribution stands unrivalled.

Also having an innate sense of rhythm he revelled in its play and it is he who started the practice of giving the tabla player his due on the concert stage. He raised north Indian instrumental music to its current level of structural sophistication, musical expression as well as public appeal.

Then as a prolific composer he was the first to interface with western musicians to make the space for fusions of all sort which have followed in his wake. This had provided an easy handle to his critics to beat him with. Today they are too busy vying to outdo his record. "But I did not compromise the essential spirit of classicism," insists Ravi Shankar, "besides, I never played with popstars."

True, he might have taught the Beatles but he did not play with them. And his legacy will be as much a watershed in our cultural landscape as that of his Liverpool acolytes on the global stage.