Ram Prasad Mishra

Very little is known about this great maestro from Gaya.


Shri Gajendra Narain Singh in his book "Surile Logon Ki Sugandh" has written that when it came to Purbiya Thumri and Tappa, then after Ustad Moujuddin Khan, there has been none like Ram Prasad Mishra or Ramujee. This is not to say that he was not good at Khayal singing. I have a 28 minute piece in Chayanat from his that is exquisite. In fact, I do not have any tappa pieces from this great maestro.

He was from Dewaria in Uttar Pradesh and learnt his music in Benares, but he later shifted to Gaya where he spent the rest of his life. After 1960, he had to give up public singing because of Asthma but he continued to teach. His son Goverdhan Mishra is still one of the finest tappa singers in the country.

Bade Ghulam Ali Khan used to call him the "Gateway to the East". Almost all contemporary Bais considered him their guru and Kesarbai Kerkar wanted to keep him in Bombay and had offered him an impressive payment for that, but Panditji had refused, wanting to stay in Gaya.

Shri Gajendra Narain Singh in his above-mentioned book has written that he had heard a tape, which is now untraceable, where Akhtaribai sang with Ramujee, and Godai Maharaj and Munne Khan were on Tabla in accompaniment. Shri Singh says that even Akhtaribai could not keep up with Ramujee in that tape.

I have some pieces of this great maestro. As a sample here is one for download:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=8663 … fe0b5a8db2

Ustad Vishmadev Chatterjee and Kumr Shyamanand Singh, his disciple

Ustad Vishmadev Chatterjee of Bengal was a great genius who unfortunately was lost for many years to his spiritual pursuits in Pondicherry. But many of his recordings in 78 RPM are left behind. People who took taalim from him were Rajkumar Shyamanand Singh of Banaili Raj, Sachin Mukherjee, S.D Burman (Music Director), Suresh Chakraborty and Film personalities like Kanon Devi, Chhaya Devi, Lily Chakraborty. Besides, Begum Akhtar, Uma Bose, Juthika Roy, Prakash Kali Ghoshal, Protima Bandyopadhyay, Bhabani Das, Himansu Roy, Saila Devi, Chinmoy Chattopadhyay and Jayanta Chattopadhya also took talim from him. His Gurus were Ustad Badal Khan and later Ustad Faiyaz Khan. He also gave music for 12 films and S D Burman was his assistant in 4 of them.
To listen to his music, please visit http://www.vishmadev.org/M_GALARY.htm

There were four main centres of classical music in Bihar – (a) Bettiah Gharana, mainly known for Dhrupad but has been in obscurity for a long time which has helped to keep them away from modernistic influences and maintain age-old purity; (b) Gaya Gharana, famous for thumris and tappas. In fact it is living exponent, Govardhan Mishra, is considered by some as the finest tappa singer in the country; (c) Darbhanga Gharana made famous by Mallicks who are mainly dhrupad exponents; and (d) Champanagar Banaili, where Kumar Shyamanand Singh (not any more with us), arguably the most able disciple of Ustad Vishmadev Chattopadhyaya, was the finest exponent.


I do not think that either Ustad Vishmadev Chatterjee or Kumar Saheb had any direct Paluskar influence. Ustadji had his initial talim from Shri Nagendranath Datta. Later, Ustad Badal Khan of Sonipat adopted him as a disciple and took him away from his father to teach him music. He learnt from Ustad Badal Khan for 14 years. Many years later, Ustadji was enticed by Ustad Faiyaz Khan on a Barwa composition and was asked to come to Baroda to become his gandbandh disciple. However, when he reached Baroda, not much happened by way of learning.

As for Kumar Shyamanand Singh, his only gandabandh guru was Ustad Vishmadev Chattopadhyaya. He also learnt for more than 20 years from Ustad Bachu Khan, son of Ustad Badal Khan. He also obtained a few cheez from the Pandit Bholanath Bhatt of Allahabad, Kedarjee from Pratapgarh, Ustad Altaf Hussain Khan of Khurja (who used to live with Kumar Saheb in Champanagar for many years), Ustad Muzaffar Khan sahib, Mubarak Ali Khan, Mahaveer and Jaduveer Mullick of Darbhanga, and some others. His singing style was very much on the lines of Agra Gharana beginning with a nomtom alap, rendition of a vilambit bandish as learnt from the guru followed by innovations, layakari, and taankari and then a drut composition.

A common factor with Paluskar (and I can only compare with D V Paluskar whose recordings are available) is the quality of bhajans. Both Ustad Vishmadev Chatterjee and Kumar Saheb’s bhajans were exquisite and perhaps incomparable with any that we have in public domain. In fact, the story goes that Kesarbai Kerkar was so enthused by Kumar Saheb’s rendition of “Bin Kaj Aaj Maharaj Laaj Gayi meri, dukh haro dwarikanath sharan me teri” that she offered to make him a gandabandh guru to learn this song from him. This song was an adaptation of an old composition by Ustad Vishmadev Chatterjee who had later passed it on to Kumar Saheb. I am yet to hear a more beautiful bhajan than this.

In case you are interested in reading about music traditions of Bihar you can read Gajendra Narayan Singh’s books : Swar Gandh and Surile Logon Ki Sangat. Both are in Hindi and deals with broader subjects but have a lot of stuff on music traditions in Bihar.

The Book Ban debate has been raging in the media last month. Arguments range from an outright freedom to write whatever one likes in the name of creative freedom to an unabashed right for the government to effect bans as and when felt necessary in the name of maintaining public order. Both arguments seem faulty. There cannot be an absolute freedom to write, to express oneself, and there have to be reasonable restrictions as in case of other fundamental rights. At the same time, nobody can argu that there be a right to ban especially as this right is usually exercised for political reasons.

In my opinion, the right to ban must exist but it is important that this right be exercised with restraint and on rational grounds. Government of the day may not be the right agency for the purpose as all its actions would either be or will be perceived as politically motivated. A better option would be to have a Group of publishers and writers that self-regulate themselves. The Government of the day may refer the matter of a book ban to this Group or the latter suo motto may take action.

What is wrong with Bihar .... contd

Let us see now where Bihar was at the time of independence and in the first three decades after independence. People have the spectre of Bihar as a state in perpetual disorder – not just economically backward but plain and simple unruly, not ready to give in to Administration. But in 1952, Paul Appleby, a noted American academician and researcher of public administration, who was visiting India to advise Pandit Nehru on Administrative systems in the country, had felt that Bihar was the best governed state in India. Surprising to many who see Bihar at the bottom of the pit today, Bihar, then, even after two centuries of most intensive exploitation, had a per capita income 5% higher than the national average. I, myself, recall during my early school days in early 1970s, that while going to school early in the morning, I saw streets being swept and washed. The traffic lights on the road intersections seemed to work all the time and traffic seemed to be obedient and observed the traffic rules. Roads were not the widest in the world, perhaps, but were in good condition - it was possible to travel 300 Kms in less than 5 hours. Though I did not have exposure to other parts of India, then, I doubt that this was the case in many other parts of India then. Though Bihar had already slipped on most social and economic indicators by 1970s, it still had a decent education system in place. Patna University was highly respected and had an excellent faculty. So was the case with Ranchi University, then a part of Bihar. There were schools in Patna and Ranchi that produced students that were among the best in country. Of course, there was the ultimate model school located at Netarhat near Ranchi.

What went wrong then? Where did it yake the wrong turn? There were many turning points, all of which were in the reverse direction.

As I mentioned earlier, there was the fact that Bihar was subjected to most oppressive forms of exploitation and did not seem to get the benefits which came to some other parts of the country during the British period. However, worse was to come and this was neglect from our own national leaders. A comparison of Bihar and Punjab and government spending through five year plans during the period 1950-2001 would illustrate this:

• In 1955, the total national outlay for irrigation
  was Rs.29,106.30 lakhs. Of this Punjab got Rs.10,952.10 lakhs or
  37.62%. Bihar, on the other hand, got only Rs.1,323.30 lakhs, which is
  only 4.54% of the irrigation outlay. Even if we were to take the expenditure on Bhakra Nangal Dam as a national venture, Punjab's outlay was still about 2.5 times that of Bihar.
• Punjab has 5.036 million hectare of land out of which 4.288 million hectare is arable. Further, about 89.72% or 3.847 million hectare of this arable land is irrigated. Therefore, we can say that 76.38% of all land in Punjab is irrigated. In contrast, only 40.86% or 7.1 million hectare of Bihar’s total area of 17.38 million hectare is under cultivation. Of this, only 3.642 ,illion hectare or 51.30% is irrigated. Despite being almost 3.5 times larger than Punjab, it has less irrigated land than Punjab.
• The per capita outlay of the five year plans administered by the Government of India have been consistently much higher for Punjab as against for Bihar. For example, in the 10th Five Year Plan, Bihar had a per capita outlay of Rs.2,536.23 while Punjab had a per capita outlay of Rs.7,681.10, more than thrice that of Bihar.
• There were other benefits that came to Punjab and not in commensurate amounts to Bihar. With more than 50% of food procurement of GOI coming from Punjab, most of the government expenditure on food subsidy benefitted Punjab. Similarly, with highest consumption of fertiliser in the country the huge subsidies on fertiliser prices also benefitted Punjab more.

More later ............