“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.

