VD Paluskar: The Man Who Saved Hindustani Music 

“My aim is to create ‘Kānsen’s (passionate-discerning listeners) rather than Tānsens,” declared Vishnu Digambar Paluskar while inaugurating the Akhil Bharatiya Gāndharv Mahāvidyālay in Lahore in 1901. So prophetic were his words that today, after almost a dozen decades, he is clearly acknowledged as the person who single-handedly pulled music and musicians out of the rut and almost-bohemian pleasures it had sunk into and restored respect to this profession.

Although establishment of the Akhil Bharatiya Gāndharv Mahāvidyālay in 1901 was the turning point in the modern era of Hindustāni Classical music, the story of this stalwart began much earlier in the small princely state of Kurundwād, near Miraj in Maharashtra, in 1872.

Born into a family of a ‘keertankār’ (practitioner of musical religious discourse, a very famous form of entertainment in the era) originally named Gādgil, young Vishnu was naturally attracted to singing as he started accompanying his father in keertans at a very young age. The family hailed from a place called ‘Palus’ near Sāngli and had adopted the name ‘Paluskar’, dropping the original family-name altogether. Young Vishnu, with a flawless voice and an absorbent mind, was able to pick up musical nuances just by hearing once and was, therefore, getting noticed.

However, Fate had to intervene. In this case, a fire-cracker at the celebration of a religious festival caused near-total damage to the young Vishnu’s eyesight. The royalty in Kurundwād had him sent to nearby Miraj—which had far better medical facilities by way of a Missionary Hospital—under the care of Dr. Bhadbhade. The doctor not only tried his best to restore some sort of normalcy to the young lad’s eyes but also recognized Vishnu’s innate musical talent and persuaded his parents to put him under the tutelage of Pt. Bālkrishnabuwā Ichalkaranjikar, the legendary musician who had trained under renowned ustāds at Gwalior and then repatriated to Maharashtra to spread Hindustani Classical music to this land.

Pt. Bālkrishnabuwā, by then, had several disciples; notably Anant Manohar (Antubuwā) Joshi, Mirāshibuwā, Wāmanbuwā Chāphekar, etc. The typical gurukul style of learning meant staying humbly at the Guru’s home, helping complete all household chores and remaining forever expectant of catching the Guru’s eye to be favoured with some tāleem and bandishes (compositions).

The Gurus, in turn, had their own methods to test the tenacity of the disciples, as also the intensity of their desire to learn. Vishnu went through all these hardships and learnt some of the finest ‘Gwālior gāyaki’ under his taskmaster Guru till almost 1896.

Now, it was again time for Fate to play its role. It is widely believed that the short-tempered Bālkrishnabuwā had a serious fall-out with his young disciple and Vishnu left Ichalkaranji to undertake an extensive tour of India.

The first notable success as a performing artist for Vishnu came at Baroda, the city known for patronising art and artists. It was here that he established himself as a performance par-excellence. But, on the flip side, he also became a subject of envy for other artists in the royal court. He then travelled further northwards to erstwhile Saurashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi andPunjab (with a short stint at Amritsar), and finally reached Lahore around the turn of the century. All this exposure to various parts of India, its arts, artists and the social milieu of the times made a great impact on his mind. He learnt various dialects of Hindi because the bandishes in Hindustani music were composed in those languages. He also interacted with vast cross-sections of audiences in central and northern India extensively.

All this exposure led him to firmly believe that a new kind of music listener had emerged. This listener was educated and also had the capacity to pay for his or her enjoyment. The new listener also found music artists’ tasteless culture, indulgences and decadent life-style a big turn-off. Vishnu, therefore, strongly felt the need for a ‘clean-up’ act that could lead to the growth of disciplined, cultured and respectable musicians. With this in mind, he set out on a path that proved to be a game-changer for music and musicians.

Today, have to recognize ‘Pt. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar’ for the vision he carried and the indefatigable work that he did for music in the early years of twentieth century.

Remembering his days at the Gurukul, with no set teaching methods, syllabi, routines andtime-lines, ‘Mahārāj’, as he later came to be respectfully known, set out to frame a curricular that covered a range of subjects from the basics in music for a beginner to the advanced concepts andpractices for a well-versed disciple. Using the standardized notation system (unlike the verbal Guru-Shishya tradition), he wrote down previously undocumented compositions in Hindustani music and drafted text books for a structured courseware on music training. He himself wrote three volumes of ‘Sangeet Bāl Prakāsh’ to aid this effort.

And then, he founded Akhil Bharatiya Gāndharv Mahāvidyālay, the first school for music run by a commoner for common aspirants without any royal patronage or donation, in Lahore in 1901. This really was a turning point for Hindustani Music’s future! Surprisingly, the building where Mahārāj-ji established this institution was still standing (although in dilapidated condition) in 2005 when a friend visited the city on a cultural tour sponsored by SAARC World Peace Forum. A photograph taken at the time is reproduced here courtesy Sachin Chandrātre, a young vocalist from Nāshik and a disciple of Pt. Govindrāo Paluskar, the grandson of Pt. VD Paluskar.

Mahārāj-ji brought together a few hand-picked disciples at the newly founded institution, taught them to the level of ‘Vishārad’ (graduate-equivalent) in music and then inspired them to set up similar schools in various parts of this vast sub-continent under the bigger umbrella of Akhil Bharatiya Gāndharv Mahāvidyālay. He set a strict moral code, teaching practices and social interaction rules for his students. A number of his early disciples went on to become reputed performers and teachers of music in the entire North India. Pt. Vināyakbuwā Patwardhan, Pt. Omkārnāth Thākur, Pt. Nārāyan-rāo and Shankar-rāo Vyās, Prof. B.R. Deodhar, all of whom trained under Pt.VD Paluskar, went on to achieve iconic status in Hindustani Music. They also established branches of Akhil Bharatiya Gāndharv Mahāvidyālay in the cities they chose to settle in. With the interest in music education growing, Mahārāj-ji decided to head back to the homeland and established another branch of Akhil Bharatiya Gāndharv Mahāvidyālay in Bombay (now Mumbai).

Around the time Mahārāj-ji recognized the emergence of the new class of listeners (during his journey through North India), he also started a completely new (and shocking, going by the existing social norms) practice of singing in ticketed concerts. Till then, the concerts used to happen only in the havelis of rich and royal or in courtyards of temples. They were also funded by the rich patrons. But with the kings-nawābs-&-riyāsats becoming almost extinct, this financial support had more or less vanished but the artists still had to earn their living. Although ticketed concerts were the way to go, no one had courage to take the first step. Mahārāj-ji again pioneered this practice in Hindustani Music. Much later, Gān-Heerā Hirābāi Barodekar (another Maharashtrian incidentally) introduced this concept for independent women’s concert.

Mahārāj-ji also was an organizer of considerable talent. He aligned himself with the Indian Independence movement and supported almost all top leaders of the then Congress party. His famous bhajan ‘Raghupati Rāghav Rājārām’ became a standard feature of all satyāgrah meetings androute marches while his composition of ‘Vande Mātaram’ was invariably sung at every patriotic meet. With these associations and conscious efforts, Pt. VD Paluskar tried to convince the society that music and related arts were an inseparable part of a healthy social life and must be encouraged. In hindsight, it must now be said that he was enormously successful in his mission. The success was evident from the growing number of girl-students attending music classes in branches of Akhil Bharatiya Gāndharv Mahāvidyālay’s branches across India.

Although highly successful as an ideator, inspiratory andorganizer; Pt. VD Paluskar and his institution was handicapped by insufficient andinexperienced management skills. While branches of Mahāvidyālay grew across the country, so did the debts taken to keep the wheels running. The ambitious printing press, especially started to print text books for music with Indian notation system, had to be sold off. Although Mahārāj-ji earned a lot in concert fees, he spent it all for promotion of music without a thought for financial planning, not just personal but also organizational. And then one day, while Mahārāj-ji was on a concert tour, the creditors of Akhil Bharatiya Gāndharv Mahāvidyālay successfully procured a decree to auction its building to recover their loans!

Somewhat dejected by the turn of the events, Pt. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar took to ascetic living. The simple home he made for himself in Nashik was called ‘Rām-Nām Ādhārāshram’ near the banks of holy river Godāvari. His health, including the already severely affected eyesight, deteriorated. Even then, he kept travelling across India, right up to Nepal, for the propagation of music.

But the health was taking a heavy toll and the Rājā of Miraj (near his place of birth Kurundwād) arranged for him to be shifted there for better medical care. Of the twelve offspring he sired, only one survived and even this child did not have the good fortune of learning under his father’s tutelage. Dattātreya was just eleven when his legendary father Pt. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar left for his heavenly abode on 21/Aug/1931. Dattātreya would later learn from his father’s disciples like Pt. Vināyakbuwā Patwardhan and become a legend in Hindustani Music known as Pt. DV (Bāpurāo Paluskar). More about him at some other time, but he was also ill-fated to have a very short life span!

Today, Akhil Bharatiya Gāndharv Mahāvidyālay has become an autonomous and apex body for setting music curricula and examination systems across India. It also grants degrees from entry-level citations to Doctorate in music. However, there is very little of Mahārāj-ji’s memorabilia available anywhere in the country. Nashik’s ‘Rām-Nām Ādhārāshram’ used to keep a number of personal belongings used by Mahārāj-ji, such as his specially-written ‘Tulsi-Rāmāyan’, his tamburi, his robe, etc. on display. However, the building which houses ‘Rām-Nām Ādhārāshram’ itself is under litigation and Mahārāj-ji’s personal effects seem to be vanishing one-by-one in the past couple of years. There is, however, a good docu-drama made by Indian Films Division on the life of Pt. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar that can be seen here –

Had it not been for Pt. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar’s missionary zeal to promote music and musicians, it is quite possible that this great tradition would have remained mired in the havelis of nawābs or kothās of nautch-girls and may never have received recognition and respect it has received today simply because there wouldn’t be any passionate and knowledgeable listeners. Cult figures like Pt. Ravi Shankar or Pt. Bhimsen Joshi may never have emerged because many may never have followed concerts, recitals or sent their progeny to learn it. Music-lovers of today, therefore, certainly owe a better memorial to this stalwart who made learning & enjoying Hindustani music easier for all the generations to come.