Though He Actually Never Met Her…

A very nice article in remembrance of the Late Sandhya Mukherjee- a rare Colossus in the field of both modern and classical Indian music. It’s hard to find anyone else who straddled the disparate worlds of both Thumris and film songs, with the elan and elegance that she did it with.

Your article is also noteworthy for pointing out the injustice meted out to the fantastic foursome from Bengal in terms of Governmental honours and awards. But let’s be honest, the reason they – and many others like them before and after, were ignored is simply because of the one “common factor” that binds them all.

The likes of Debaki Bose, S. Mukherjee, Anil Biswas, Pahadi Sanyal, Phani Majumdar, Ritwick Ghatak etc., were all shamefully left in the lurch when it came to being awarded such prestigious honours like Dadasaheb Phalke award. This, when they all lived long enough after these awards were constituted-and thoroughly and truly deserved to win these honours for their outstanding and immortal contributions to the Indian cine- screen.

That this bias exists is best proved by the example of Suchitra Sen. She wasn’t granted the honour for refusing to attend the award ceremony arising out of her religious and spiritual beliefs. Strange ground for refusal this! When the likes of dead people like Prithiviraj Kapoor and Vinod Khanna could be honoured posthumously, surely in a secular country like ours, a much-alive Suchitra Sen should have been honoured in keeping with her wishes regarding the mode of recieving the prestigious recognition. Alas! That didn’t transpire and they came up with a ‘bunkum’ of an excuse, justifying their wrong decision.

That this ‘neglect’ exists is further supported by many more such examples. Like if a thoroughly deserving VK Murthy could be awarded the Dadasaheb for his genius cinematography, why were the likes of Radhu Karmakar, Kamal Bose, Dinen Gupta and above all Subrata Mitra denied the same honour? If the Chopra Brothers in BR and Yash could be awarded, what wrong had the likes of Shakti Samanta, Bibhuti Laha, Asit Sen and Ajoy Kar did? Gulzarsaab, whose legendary work in films, is right out of the Bengal school of filmmaking thought, was awarded (and rightfully so), then why the other giants from the same school of thought left out? People would prefer to be diplomatic, but the facts clearly shout out that “ethnicity” was- and is the differentiating factor here.

Even today, the likes of Sharmila Tagore, Madhabi Mukherjee, Sabitri Chatterjee, Mithun Chakraborty and Gautam Ghosh are all extremely worthy candidates for such honour. But I am quite confident that at best, only one of these will win it (if anyone does so in the first place!). Most likely they all will join the illustrious company of Tarun Majumdar, Basu Chatterjee and Buddhadeb Dasgupta- three rather recently deceased icons, of going unrecognised and unhonored.

In the near future, one will see composers like Ilayaraja, AR Rahman and MM Keeravani winning this award (and rightfully so), though their winning it won’t hide the disturbing fact that the likes of SD Burman, RD Burman, Salil Choudhury, Hemant Kumar etc., were all gleefully denied such honours.

By the same token, screenwriters too would be awarded as they ideally should be. Indeed, Salim- Javed would have been awarded by now, if the powers that be were different at the axis. Yet, there exists the good chance that they or Parachuri brothers will get it, while the greatest of them all in Nabendu Ghosh and Sachin Bhowmick will continue to be ignored- in death as they had been in life when it came to such honours.

In all probability, the only Bengali among the soon-to-be-legends to most probably win it will be Arijit Singh, while the likes of Shreya Ghoshal, Pritam, Shoojit Sircar, Dibakar Banerjee, Kaushik Ganguly, Srijit Mukherjee etc., will all most likely continue to be ignored in this regard. And we all know the reason why it would be so.

And no, no amount of regional fan celebration at death of such artists is enough to compensate for such blatant and biased neglect, even if a much respected and much “awarded” Gulzarsaab says something else to the contrary.

The crux is, if undiplomatic things and actions can be- and are being done through the years, then there is little point in brushing aside all this under the carpet of fake diplomatic words. Actions speak louder than words ever could (and their actions have spoken for them quite clearly!), and there is no better speaker than history. And history says that this bias must atleast be pointed out openly, if not rectified for the times to come. This much truth, merit and honesty, honestly deserve.